This makes me sick. Not just angry. Physically nauseated. Three years after Brown's brutal and extremely public assault on Rihanna and this is how we treat him? By welcoming him back to mainstream pop society with accolades and open arms? What does that say to a generation of young women growing up with Brown & his apologists & champions at the helm of the music industry?
That domestic abuse is okay. That women's bodies, concerns, and voices are secondary. That their personal safety and well-being isn’t such a big deal, and why are we still talking about it, anyway? That their status as human beings worthy of respect is up for negotiation, depending on album sales.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be so shocked at this casual normalization of misogyny and violence. After all, Brown’s comeback has been gaining steam for years. At first, I felt deep disappointment with artists like Busta Rhymes and Ludacris who decided to collaborate with Brown after his return. I’m still disappointed, I guess, but it’s transmogrified into a sort of blunted resignation. If I stopped listening to everyone who still works with him, I'd have to delete half my iTunes library.
This shit is just ridiculous. It's a statement made by Grammy producers on finally getting Brown back after two years of benching him:
“We’re glad to have him,” said executive producer Ken Ehrlich. “I think people deserve a second chance, you know. If you’ll note, he has not been on the Grammys for the past few years and it may have taken us a while to kind of get over the fact that we were the victim of what happened.”Good work, Grammys. You were definitely the victims here. Not Rihanna, whose face we've all seen, beaten and bloodied. Not the women who now think it's desirable, or at least kind of funny, to talk about how much they want Brown to punch them. Nope. You had to twiddle your thumbs a few years before getting this monster back on stage. What a fucking imposition.
No comments:
Post a Comment