17th
Rihanna, Chris Brown and Horribly Irresponsible Cultural Narratives
I’m pretty grossed out about the notion that Rihanna is collaborating with Chris Brown again. I don’t really have any particular investment in her as a person and only occasionally care about her music, but in terms of cultural narrative, I think she is sending a poisonous and tremendously irresponsible message to her audience. The idea of “role models” can be very corny, but this narrative between Rihanna and Brown has become a huge part of how an entire generation of Americans are thinking about domestic violence, so I think it’s worth taking very seriously.
My friend Eric Harvey tweeted earlier, asking “What if Rihanna is sick of having to be the abuse victim again, and wants to regain control of her own public image?,” and while I get his argument about her possibly attempting to do just that, it seems far more likely that this is mainly driven by cynicism, because it’s a combination of top-selling artists that will inevitably demand a lot of attention.
Even if she’s doing this because she’s forgiven Brown and wants to flip the script on her public persona, I’m inclined to think that is a very selfish thing on her part in light of how it will likely be interpreted by her fans with regards to domestic violence. I think this encourages young women to be more forgiving and lenient with men who abuse them, and gives license to young men to be violent assholes because it seems like there are no consequences. People have a habit of seeing themselves as playing out roles in these sort of narratives, and if Rihanna decides to make this behavior okay, it just becomes one more way for people to rationalize hateful behavior. It may not be Rihanna’s job to be a “role model,” but it’s not unreasonable to expect people to make responsible decisions and consider their impact on the world around them.
