"It's about the way you hold me...in the A.M." - Mary J. Blige, Ultimate Relationship (A.M.)
I've been thinking all evening about Rose from Feministing's reaction to both Chris Brown's performance on the BET Awards and the response afterwards. I agree wholeheartedly with her and Jorge Rivas that, were it up to me, Mr. Brown wouldn't be performing on my stage or show. Where I disagree is with her criticism of Ann Powers's piece at Pop & Hiss. I rather enjoyed her take on it all and was struck by how differently Rose and I read the same paragraph (which is the strongest in her column):
Chris Brown’s actions…shattered his image and destroyed the main function of his music. It’s hard to imagine how he can move back into his role as a teen dream, now that he’s admitted doing something no young woman would want done to her. (Not to mention the parents of girls who might have crushes on this handsome and smooth, if eager to reform, criminal.) The BET performance was problematic precisely because it felt like a bid to be washed clean, and because the audience members shown seemed ready with the baptismal water. Whatever Brown does, however sincerely remorseful he is, he can’t go back. He will forever be in recovery. To acknowledge this is not to condemn Brown as an artist.Rose keys in on this sentence "He will forever be in recovery" while I took more note of this one "The BET performance was problematic precisely because it felt like a bid to be washed clean, and because the audience members shown seemed ready with the baptismal water."
This is my challenge -- why is the BET audience, and by extension, potentially Black Folk In The Main* willing and ready to forgive Chris Brown? Does the prevalence of domestic violence in the African-American community make his unsavory actions more acceptable? Is this the playing out of a common theme in African-American pop culture--the redemption and reclamation of fallen, tarnished, damaged stars? And, if so, maybe there's a more positive spin on this considering that despite many attempts at said redemption, Brown, to this point, has failed to regain his stratospheric popularity and career from before his crime?
Rose also asks "What about the victims?" and in this case, while I get the point, I can't blame pop culture critics or pop culture fans for not looking at this through Rihanna's particular prism (BET and the executive producers of their show are another story). Rihanna, for reasons that are obviously her own, has chosen not to be public about how she is dealing in her life after the incident. If the awards show in which she was nominated (and also in town during) is any indication, she wants nothing to do with playing this out publicly. So, the only way for interested gawkers to look at and process this is through the actions of the abuser in the last year.
And Ann Powers's piece is one of the most reasonable and well thought out looks at that.
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*In The Main is a turn of phrase I'm stealing from Ta-Nehisi Coates. I like it.
