Dodai at Jezebel, in the course of saying that Rihanna's darkened skin in the video for "Rockstar 101" isn't a big deal, points out that the video is boring. I think it's worth spending some time examining how boring the video is:
The video revels in a kind decadence that's become routinized and dull. Rihanna wears a lot of expensive clothing and jewelry and flashes her ass and boobs at the camera, but none of it feels revealing, we're not being given access to anything we haven't seen before. There's no context to the decadence, there's no reason she's wearing chains in the snow or a designer headdress in a pentagram, and without narrative or dance moves, we've got neither meaning nor spectacle for any of these images. They're just flat. The only one that struck me at all was the guitar strings strung across her legs, from the knees to the crotch. In a song about her theoretical empowerment through rock, the concept suggests she's the one getting played, a passive instrument. It's intriguing, and it's gone in a few seconds.
And honestly, she doesn't come across as a terribly plausible rock star, whether she's aping guitar smashing or leaning back on a verse. As Britney Spears should have been enteral proof of, standing behind a mic and in front of a band with a lot of cable on the floor in between does not a rock star make: