Rude Boy – Guest Post by @lawrencejgreen
I have found the recent debates surrounding the Rihanna/Chris Brown situation troubling. I think they speak of a tendency to think of people as merely the acts they commit, and to see these acts as universal cultural signifiers which are the same for all people and to which there should be only one response. In terms of domestic violence, the expected response consists of anger, revilement and castigation towards the abuser, usually of a permanent nature. I in no way seek to ‘apologise’ for what anyone has done, I just wish to analyse the context where anything other than the response I have outlined is deemed as apologetics, and suggest why I think this might ultimately inhibit any open discussion on the subject of violence within relationships.
For this purpose, I will mainly talk about Chris Brown, The Abuser. What do we know about him and this situation? Well, not much really. We don’t know how many times he spoken to Rihanna. We don’t know how she feels. We don’t know what, if any, resolution has been reach between the two. We don’t really know anything about their relationship at all. We don’t know what he thinks, or does, and we don’t know how he feels when he sits alone at night. And yes, you might argue I am projecting my own feelings and experiences on to a horrible situation of which I have no great insight and thus have no right to do so. Well yeah, isn’t that what everyone is doing? As I have said, we ‘know’ very little about Chris Brown, and what we do know is highly mediated. Even in the rare moments that we do catch a glimpse of a less mediated version of this reviled character – such as the recent tweets after the Grammys – we don’t really get anything more than a snapshot of euphoria.
Ultimately, I think the way we see and talk about domestic violence inhibits the kind of reaction people would like to see from characters such as Chris Brown. Not raising your fists to a woman is almost a fundamental tenant of male honour; just below fucking kids and significantly higher than walking out on your family. To violate this tenant is bad enough, but to admit that it was your fault and to apologise also means wilfully surrendering a part of what it means to be a man. You are forever a monster; nothing you can ever do will erase what you’ve done, even a full and frank apology. In this situation what else can you do but not accept or try to shift the burden of responsibility for the horrendous act you have committed. To do so would be an assault on the self which many are unable to bear. Under this climate and in the ego centric world Chris Brown and many others live in, such an assault is unthinkable and unacceptable.
Of course, not everyone views domestic violence in these terms – the women (and many others) who posted the supporting tweets are a testament to that. But I do feel we have to recognise that these are both cultural narratives which have to be taken into account. The connections people build with celebrities – now more than ever – are connections of the self and with the ego of that person. The same affect applies. It is easier to ignore or shift the blame of someone you have been encouraged to adore than it is to truly accept and evaluate the wider meaning of those acts in almost the only other narrative available to you.
So there are two options in my view, dismantle celebrity culture as we know it or try to have a more fluid appreciation of violence within relationships. Seeing domestic violence as beyond the pale is counterproductive, seeing people as monsters and arseholes is irrelevant. However unpleasant it is, I believe you have to attempt to understand the motives of the abuser. For that, I think people have to be able to feel that can be free and open about what they have done and why they have done it. I think we have to see them, and they have to see themselves, as redeemable and human. Most of all I think we have to recognise that domestic violence is the product of relationships between people, (and not just the one between the two people involved in the violence), with all the specificities and complexities that entails.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/26/bad-people-fancy-eva-wiseman?INTCMP=SRCH
I think your opening para says it all really:
‘I have found the recent debates surrounding the Rihanna/Chris Brown situation troubling. I think they speak of a tendency to think of people as merely the acts they commit, and to see these acts as universal cultural signifiers which are the same for all people and to which there should be only one response’
I was astounded that people who are normally capable of some complexity were haranguing me for refusing to just go with the received wisdom about this case. And especially in doing so they dismissed my accounts of my own experience as a ‘victim’ of domestic violence.
also this:
‘Not raising your fists to a woman is almost a fundamental tenant of male honour; just below fucking kids and significantly higher than walking out on your family. To violate this tenant is bad enough, but to admit that it was your fault and to apologise also means wilfully surrendering a part of what it means to be a man. ‘
This relates to those ‘real men don’t hit women’ campaigns. and as Mark Simpson pointed out to me, the implication is, what kind of man are you? that would do that? a fag?
QRG
There’s definitely a strange witch-hunt mentality about domestic violence. Mention the subject as a man among a group of women, and you’re likely to instantly feel the temperature rise a degree or two. You can be made very aware (in some social contexts) of how any dissenting opinion will be met, as a kind of threat (the same holds with conversations on abortion)
I think what you’ve seen is just the same phenomenon, accelerated by Twitter, which is also known to exacerbate mob behaviour. On Twitter, thoughts should be kept short and simple, exist within a large group, and dissent is stamped out.
As you rightly say, noone knows the exact situation between Brown and Rihanna (or in anyone else’s relationship, in fact) so one might fight it puzzling why so many leap into a self-righteous frenzy, as though they know the whole story. Brown may just be a woman-beating bully – he was convicted in a court of law – but there are alternative scenarios. And attacking Rihanna for her relationship-decisions seems idiotic. She might be acting out of love. That this means more to her than her public reputation could be a positive aspect.
According to the mob the only correct attitude is of angry unrelenting revilement, and that worries me. You can see the socially approved moral stance being enforced here. Because we don’t have a clearly understood set of values any more – we’ve thrown out religion – morals seem to be the domain of the loudest-shouting voices on the internet (it’s true that morals are often enforced by social approval, but so were witch-trials)
This starts to raise concerns about fair trials and the well-known unpredictability of large assembled groups.
I notice though, both in relation to Rihanna and from my own experience, that whilst the ‘mob’ revile the ‘perpetrator’ this does not necessarily translate into support for the victim. It actually often leads to shaming the victim. I think that happened with Rihanna.
People said they ‘lost respect’ for her when she reconciled, apparently with Brown.
To continue what I learned via Simpson it is like saying: what kind of woman are you? that would go with a man like that?’
@QRG
It’s the same with the group of twenty or so women who’s online infomation was posted on Buzzfeed ect. Complete shaming of those women who then got a lot of shit for it. I think simpson has it right in both these cases. If you are not a real man and you can’t bear being a ‘fag’ then what response is left open to you. Not the one that the people screaming at you wish for, usually.
@henry
I think it is not Just and issue of mob mentality (though that is important). Something that I think is arguably worse is a lack of empathy and an inability or unwillingness to appreciate anothers mode of thinking. I see all the time people having a blazing argument over twitter and then people going off to their friends and saying ‘I just dont understand how they could possibly see it that way’ or something like that. I may be wrong, but I feel like empathy and understanding in arguments has been replaced by some faux idea of ‘rationality’ (which is why some sceptics can be so vocal on things they are so phenominally ignorant about). You don’t have to try and understand something if the argument is ‘irrational’ and therefore invalid. The denegration of experiance because it doesn’t fit into the ‘rational’ system you have created is an insidious aspect of the new mob.