Defending Rihanna: Gabrielle Union and the 'Man Down' Director Have Singer's Back on Violent Vid

Last week, Rihanna debuted the music video for her single "Man Down" on BET, and the video was met with a mess of controversy. The issue that groups like the Parents Television Council took with it had to do with Rihanna portraying a girl who is sexually assaulted and later shoots her attacker dead, which plays out more as an act of revenge than self defense.

But the director of the video, Anthony Mandler, isn't surprised by that people are up in arms about the video. "It's doing exactly what Rihanna and I hoped it would do," said Mandler, "which is shine a light on the very dark subject matter." Mandler went on to say that the general reaction to the video has been a "knee-jerk" one.

Mandler isn't the only one jumping to Rihanna's defense: actress Gabrielle Union took to Twitter to give her two cents about the video. Union, who was sexually assaulted when she was 19 years old, seems to understand the message that Rihanna was getting to.

"Durin my rape I tried 2 shoot my rapist, bt I missed. Over the yrs I realized tht killin my rapist would've added insult 2 injury," tweeted Union. "The DESIRE 2 kill someone whose abused/raped u is understandable, bt unless its self defense n the moment 2 save ur life, just ADDS 2 ur troubles."

If you listen to Rihanna's lyrics, that seems to be the message that she's trying to get across: if you're assaulted, you may want to kill your attacker afterward...but if you do, all you'll have is a murder charge against you. In fact, the whole song is about regret over killing the man, rather than a feeling of vindication.

Union added that she hopes the video "leads to healing," though experts like Stephanie Nilva, who runs a teen abuse prevention organization, thinks that might not happen. "I don't think viewers are necessarily getting healthy messages from it," she said.