I hate Chris Brown. I
hate him more than getting my toe stubbed. More than mosquito bites. More than three day hangovers, having your
wallet stolen or the thought of being trapped in a rat-filled metro tunnel wearing
a suit made of cheese. I don’t usually
think it’s worth hating celebrities, because we only know what we know of them
through bias tabloid gossip reports, of the kind I hate almost as much as Chris
Bloody Brown. It’s not fair to have a
bad personal opinion of people you don’t personally know, but there are
exceptions. Such as when there is
photographic evidence and well documented proof that that person savagely beat
up their then-girlfriend, in his case Rihanna.
Then, in addition to this, when the public reaction to this offense
seems to be a brief tut-tutting, a year or so of shame, and then a return to
buying his records and appearing at his concerts in droves, like nothing
happened. Something did happen, one of
the base vile acts of human unkindness, and for this reason I argue that we as
people should stop listening to his music.
But why? The classic philosophical question raised by
this is: should we shy away from art created by an artist at fault?
The instinctive answer of a philosopher, I am sure, would be
no. This, they would conjure, would be falling
prey to the ad-hominem fallacy in
which an argument is criticised through pointing out a negative belief or
characteristic in the arguer.1 According to this argument, shunning the music
of Chris Brown based purely on his home-staged re-enactment of ‘Nil By Mouth’
is as ridiculous a reasoning as ignoring health advice from a doctor because
they’re a Twilight fan. Unfortunately, I’m
now going to have to pull out my Beretta and cap this argument’s ass, because
Chris Brown is an exceptional case. To
do so, we must consider an example of a great artist whose work stands apart
from the alleged absurdity and assholery he upheld in his personal life:
Michael Jackson. I’m here to explain why
Chris Brown is as far from Jackson as a turkey twizzler is from the kitchen of
a four-star restaurant.
As anyone with fully functioning ears could tell you,
Michael Jackson wrote, sang, and danced his way through a series of pop songs
so iconic and universally adored that they could soundtrack a video montage of ‘The
Human Race – The Best Bits’. As everyone
and their dog and their dog’s unborn babies knows, Jackson also had issues with
child abuse allegations. So why do I not
feel guilty grooving my heals to ‘Dirty Diana’ on a Saturday night?2 Firstly, because Jackson was acquitted of
these allegations. Whilst no one save for the children themselves will ever
know for sure if Jackson genuinely did all the nasty things he was accused of,
and we can all agree that he was indeed a tad strange, it is far more likely that
he was a ten-year old trapped in an adult’s body, unaware that sleepovers with
your friends go from childhood staple to bursting the mercury on the
oddness-thermometer as soon as one of the friends is old enough to drive
everyone home.3
Secondly, the allegations came at the tail-end of his career,
meaning that ninety nine per cent of his work was made and enjoyed in a
completely different era unaffiliated with these scandals. Going back and saying we should deny the joy
of ‘Smooth Criminal’ because of a court case that occurred 18 years later seems
excessive – hardly anyone believes that Jackson was up to bad business in the
era of ‘Bad’, so the creation and enjoyment of the song is surely irrelevant to
his later mental issues.
Thirdly, and
most importantly, because the kind of music Jackson was writing did not promote
and encourage the sort of personality he was accused of – all his songs that
weren’t about dancing, being in love or the alphabet were humanitarian pleas to
peace and love. He is lyrically all-age
appropriate.
This distinction is crucial to the argument that an artist’s
personal views and actions should be judged separately to their work; if the
body of work they make is itself promoting these views and encouraging or
defending these actions, this is when the two become inseparable. We are able to enjoy the paintings of
Salvador Dalí despite his apparent support for fascism4 because you’d have to
take serious critical liberties to say that the melting clocks themselves
represent support for Franco, or that a lobster on a telephone was his way of
asking the army to please kill more heretics.
Dalí was first and foremost a surrealist, and is remembered as
such. His personal politics are not
connected to his paintings.
In the aftermath of Chris Brown’s savage attack on Rihanna,
however, he has crafted through his songs a sort of gangsta-lite misogynist persona
that rather than apologising for his actions, stands by his distaste for women
with typical lyrics of subjugation and self-aggrandisement. I.e ‘Look at my bling and my bitches and ho’s.’ It didn’t take me long to find an example,
from the first song on his latest turd of an album:
‘And no one asked you if you got a man / And do I care? I
don't / That's when we started sexing’5
1 Bro-fist to Wikipedia for a concise definition↩
2 Alone in front of a computer screen, ‘natch.↩
3 http://web.archive.org/web/20080523002355/http:/www.thesmokinggun.com/michaeljackson/0315051jackson_katz1.html">http:/↩
4 http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/12/06/salvador-dali-fascist//↩
5 Sexing? Sexing. From the verb ‘to sex’. Like Joyce before him, Chris Brown re-invents language.↩
6 This argument might seem excessively liberal and defensive of criminal acts, but at the very least it’s one valid and possible interpretation.↩
Later on in the same song:
‘2 girls I'm watching, no is not an option / lmma be the
captain of the ship / They gonna have my motor rocking / Singing to them like
Lionel Richie, all night long / Getting these bitches, and play in my song / And
switching positions, I got the money so I'm gonna make wishes / I'll be that
sugar daddy’
What Chris Brown did happened prior to his serious chart success, and thus each successive purchase of his albums suggests a tolerance and forgiveness of the ignorant and hateful frame of mind his lyrics promote. I’m not here to criticise misogynist rap lyrics as a whole, because that is entirely another argument. In general, I would say that gangsta speak about bitches and ho’s, within moderation, is tolerable talk to a free-thinking audience because we know not to take it seriously. If you’re old enough to know that the Death Star isn’t real, you should be mature enough to gauge that rap lyrics of this kind shouldn’t be taken as moral scripture. But in the case of someone like Chris Colour-of-poo, he is documented as actually practising the kind of mistreatment and subjugation of the fairer sex that he preaches, and this adds a very sinister element. Domestic violence is a serious and inexcusable offense. This is not like the Straight Outta Compton-rapped philosophies of drug hustling and turf-war, in which people from deprived areas are recounting through song the desperate measures taken to put food on the table and stay alive in a murder capital.6 N.W.A gave us genuine cultural insight into how some people live. Chris Brown-pants gave us ‘sexing’ as a verb.
What Chris Brown did happened prior to his serious chart success, and thus each successive purchase of his albums suggests a tolerance and forgiveness of the ignorant and hateful frame of mind his lyrics promote. I’m not here to criticise misogynist rap lyrics as a whole, because that is entirely another argument. In general, I would say that gangsta speak about bitches and ho’s, within moderation, is tolerable talk to a free-thinking audience because we know not to take it seriously. If you’re old enough to know that the Death Star isn’t real, you should be mature enough to gauge that rap lyrics of this kind shouldn’t be taken as moral scripture. But in the case of someone like Chris Colour-of-poo, he is documented as actually practising the kind of mistreatment and subjugation of the fairer sex that he preaches, and this adds a very sinister element. Domestic violence is a serious and inexcusable offense. This is not like the Straight Outta Compton-rapped philosophies of drug hustling and turf-war, in which people from deprived areas are recounting through song the desperate measures taken to put food on the table and stay alive in a murder capital.6 N.W.A gave us genuine cultural insight into how some people live. Chris Brown-pants gave us ‘sexing’ as a verb.
Thus we come to my final argument as to why we should not
forgive this clown’s behaviour, and stop funding his fame: he is no musical
genius. He is an offensively average peddler of dull dance floor filler, a
ten-a-penny r’n’b artist in an oversaturated market. He is not pushing the envelope musically like
Kanye West, he is not wowing us lyrically like Jay-Z, he’s not even making up
for his musical blandness with a few funky costumes or a memorable music video. His songs are sonic porridge. If all you want is groovy but mindless dance
tunes to soundtrack your intoxication, there are plenty of alternatives. This is why I cry inside at Chris Brown’s
continued success. If Jonathan Ross’s well-established
radio career could be killed because he told a dirty joke, than surely this
joke of a pop singer should be consigned to shelf-stacking at a Walmart in hell
for the rest of his dumbass days.
1 Bro-fist to Wikipedia for a concise definition↩
2 Alone in front of a computer screen, ‘natch.↩
3 http://web.archive.org/web/20080523002355/http:/www.thesmokinggun.com/michaeljackson/0315051jackson_katz1.html">http:/↩
4 http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/12/06/salvador-dali-fascist//↩
5 Sexing? Sexing. From the verb ‘to sex’. Like Joyce before him, Chris Brown re-invents language.↩
6 This argument might seem excessively liberal and defensive of criminal acts, but at the very least it’s one valid and possible interpretation.↩
