TV

Lena Dunham Skewers Celebrity PSAs By Making A Celebrity PSA About Hillary Clinton

She raps, for some reason.

by Matilda Dixon-Smith  4 November 2016

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Lena Dunham has been a super vocal campaigner for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming US election. She’s gone on the trail (along with her new gal pal America Ferrera) to promote HRC. She’s written about her extensively (as well as publishing many other women’s writing on the candidate) in Lenny Letter, the blog she runs with Girls co-creator Jenni Konner. Her Instagram is a veritable deluge of pro-Clinton sentiment.

But did you expect her to rap? DID YOU?

Well, she has. She has rapped for presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton in a new music video entitled “Sensual Pantsuit Album”. Deep breaths, Internet. We’ll get through this together.

The video, co-produced by Funny Or Die, was written by Dunham and attempts to skewer the empty celebrity endorsement as well as the notion that Dunham puts her foot in it, especially when it comes to appropriating or erasing other cultures.

It features The Colour Purple‘s Cynthia Erivo (an actual goddess of monumental proportions who is so breathtaking I can’t even talk about it right now) and Charlamagne Tha God, singing and rapping along with Dunham as she kind of spits pro-Hillary rhymes and then removes her (HRC-signature) red pantsuit to reveal “a more sensual pantsuit”. Quoth Charlamange: “Not really sure I understand the logic here…”

Is this daggy joke rap from America’s Whitest White Feminist going to help a candidate who is already suffering from a major image problem, especially when it comes to race? Dunham spoke to Vulture about the skit, claiming she has often wondered, of celebrity PSAs: “Of course we should all be doing our part, but is this the smartest way that we can be going about it?”

“It was fun to do something that played with the idea with who’s allowed to say what and how are they allowed to say it.”

See the problem here is, Dunham’s quote seems to cement the notion that she should be allowed to promote Hillary in any way she wants — including creating a kind of embarrassing rap video that makes a joke of black culture. It does make one wonder: who around Dunham is ever the “No, Lena, no” voice she seems to desperately need?

In a searing op-ed, Spin‘s Brian Joseph addresses Lena’s entry into the “comedy canon known as white people who don’t rap rapping”. Joseph also cites Jimmy Fallon, another high-profile white celebrity who makes “a nebbish joke” of rap, depoliticising black culture “to appeal to his predominantly white audience”.

“Dunham’s attempts at using black culture as comedic backdrop renders it as an exotic plaything,” he writes. “Like Clinton’s pro-establishment image, it’s alienating.”

This new video comes just over a week after Dunham’s pal Amy Schumer released a video parody of Beyoncé’s ‘Formation’ video, which she later took to Medium to defend, despite “demonstrating an almost-endearing lack of understanding about what [‘get in formation’] means, or what the song means, or what life is.”

So, jury’s out on how this new video will affect HRC’s already razor-thin lead in the election, which will take place next Tuesday. At least we get to listen to Cynthia Erivo’s beautiful, beautiful voice for a spell.