If you were watching MTV in the late nineties, you remember the night the world tilted. It was 1997. The Prodigy had just dropped the visual for "Smack My Bitch Up," and suddenly, the BBC, the National Organization for Women, and every concerned parent in the UK were in a total tailspin. It wasn't just another music video. It was a cultural hand grenade. People saw the title and assumed the worst. They heard the lyrics and thought Liam Howlett was advocating for domestic violence. They were wrong, obviously, but the controversy was the point.
The Prodigy Smack My Bitch Up video didn't just push boundaries; it relocated them to another zip code.
The First-Person Chaos of Jonas Åkerlund
Swedish director Jonas Åkerlund was the mastermind behind the lens. Or, more accurately, the mastermind behind the head-mounted camera. Before GoPro was a glimmer in a tech bro's eye, Åkerlund strapped a rig to an actor to create a "point of view" experience that felt dangerously real. It starts with a shaky hand in a bathroom mirror. From there, it’s a blur of straight vodka, snorted lines, public vomiting, and high-speed driving through the streets of London.
It’s messy. It’s ugly.
The POV perspective makes the viewer an accomplice. You aren't just watching the protagonist harass people in a club or get into a fistfight; you’re doing it. This was a massive departure from the polished, big-budget music videos of the era. While Hype Williams was making everything look like a shiny futuristic dream, Åkerlund made "Smack My Bitch Up" look like a grainy, booze-soaked nightmare.
The sheer aggression of the editing matches Liam Howlett’s production beat-for-beat. The song itself is a masterclass in big beat—sampling Ultramagnetic MCs' Kool Keith for the titular line. Despite the outcry, the phrase "Smack my bitch up" was actually hip-hop slang for doing something with intense energy or "changing my pitch up." It had nothing to do with hitting women. But try explaining nuance to a 1990s tabloid editor. It didn't happen.
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That Ending Change Everything
Most people talk about the "Smack My Bitch Up" video because of the twist. You know the one. If you don't, where have you been for three decades? After five minutes of testosterone-fueled carnage, the protagonist stumbles home with a woman from the club. They head to the bathroom. The protagonist looks into the mirror.
The person we’ve been "playing" as for the whole video isn't some hulking skinhead or a generic "lad." It’s a woman.
Everything you thought you knew about the video's gender politics flipped in an instant. It was a brilliant, cynical subversion of the "male gaze." It forced the audience to reckon with their own assumptions. Why did we assume the person puking in the sink and starting fights was a man? Because the behavior was "masculine"? Åkerlund and The Prodigy were playing a much deeper game than the censors realized. They were trolling the audience's inherent biases.
The actress, Shass (who was a stripper at the time), became an overnight icon of the underground. She didn't look like a music video vixen. She looked like someone who had actually spent twelve hours in a warehouse rave. That authenticity is why the video still feels raw today. It’s not "staged" in the way modern TikTok "POV" videos are. It feels like a genuine artifact of a subculture that was starting to burn out.
Censorship, Ban, and the MTV Aftermath
Naturally, the media lost its collective mind. MTV initially banned the video outright. Then, they moved it to a 1 a.m. graveyard slot with a heavy disclaimer. Eventually, they pulled it entirely after pressure from groups like the National Organization for Women (NOW). It was a PR nightmare that turned into a marketing dream. Every time a news anchor mentioned the "offensive" Prodigy Smack My Bitch Up video, the sales for The Fat of the Land climbed.
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The Prodigy weren't strangers to controversy, but this was different. It wasn't just about "Firestarter" looking scary. This was about social decay.
Interestingly, the band stood their ground. Liam Howlett and Keith Flint didn't apologize. They knew what they’d made. They knew the twist at the end made the "misogyny" argument look ridiculous. In a 1997 interview, Howlett basically told the critics they were missing the point entirely. He was right. If you watch the video through to the end, the person being "exploited" isn't who you think it is.
Why It Matters in the Age of 4K
Look at YouTube today. Everything is crisp. Everything is 4K. The Prodigy Smack My Bitch Up video looks like it was filmed through a layer of grease and cigarette ash. That’s the charm. It’s a time capsule of Pre-Millennium Tension. It captures a version of London that doesn't really exist anymore—before every corner was a Pret A Manger and every club had been turned into luxury flats.
It also pioneered a visual language that would be ripped off for years. The movie Crank with Jason Statham? That’s basically a 90-minute version of this video. The "shaky cam" aesthetic of the early 2000s? You can trace it back to Åkerlund’s rig.
The Technical Nightmare of the 1997 Shoot
Filming this wasn't easy. You couldn't just stick an iPhone on someone's forehead. They had to use a heavy, modified 16mm camera. The actor—often Åkerlund himself or an assistant—had to move their entire body to simulate head turns. It was physically demanding and technically frustrating. If the focus was off, the whole take was ruined.
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They shot in real locations. They used real people in the background who often didn't know they were being filmed for a music video. That’s why some of the reactions of people being shoved or shouted at look so genuine. They were genuine. It was "guerrilla filmmaking" in the truest sense.
The club scenes were filmed at a spot in Central London, and the sense of claustrophobia is palpable. You can almost smell the stale beer and the sweat through the screen. Most modern directors try to replicate this "gritty" look with filters. Åkerlund just used real grit.
Legacy and the Death of Keith Flint
When Keith Flint passed away in 2019, the "Smack My Bitch Up" video saw a massive resurgence in views. It reminded everyone that The Prodigy were the ultimate punks of the electronic world. They weren't just DJs; they were a riot.
While Keith isn't the primary focus of this specific video (he’s barely in it), his spirit is all over it. The defiance, the "fuck you" to the establishment, the refusal to be "clean." The video is the visual equivalent of Keith’s snarl.
Today, the video is often cited by film students as a masterclass in perspective. It’s also a reminder of a time when music videos could actually start a national conversation. Now, a controversial video might trend on X for six hours before being replaced by a meme of a cat. In 1997, "Smack My Bitch Up" was a debate that lasted for months. It changed how we looked at gender, violence, and the role of the viewer in media.
What You Should Do Now
If you want to truly understand the impact, don't just watch a low-res rip on a social media feed. Find the highest quality version available (though "high quality" is a relative term here).
- Watch it without distractions. Pay attention to the sound design. The way the music muffles when the protagonist goes underwater or into a bathroom is genius.
- Compare it to modern POV content. Notice how Åkerlund uses the "body" of the camera to tell a story, rather than just showing a first-person perspective for the sake of it.
- Listen to the full album, The Fat of the Land. The track itself is the peak of the Big Beat movement. It’s the sound of the 90s collapsing into the 2000s.
- Research Jonas Åkerlund’s later work. He went on to direct for Lady Gaga and Madonna, but you can see the DNA of the Prodigy video in everything he does. He’s the king of the "beautifully grotesque."
The video remains a landmark. It’s a reminder that art should be dangerous. It should make you uncomfortable. And sometimes, it should make you wait until the very last frame to tell you that you've been wrong the whole time.