You know, in a perfect world we could all just agree that Chris Brown is an evil, psychotic scumbag whose greatest contribution to humanity would be jamming a Glock in his gob and pulling the trigger.
His half-assed, petulant “apology” for the vicious assault on his equally talent-free girlfriend would have been universally rejected with the derision it deserved, and we wouldn’t be debating his performance at last week’s Grammy Awards, because Brown would have been too busy playing a non-consensual and disturbingly brutal version of Happy Families with his cell mate. This would have been a given, if this planet had but a skidmark’s worth of justice.
But instead we live in a world where domestic violence is excusable if the abuser has a cute bum. No, scratch that. Actually, it’s worse.
“Everyone shut up about Chris Brown being a woman beater. Shiiiit he can beat me up all night if he wants” (sic) was just one of many dozens of depressing tweets from Brown’s unfathomably huge fan club – who call themselves Team Breezy, presumably named after the air displacement caused by a rapidly approaching fist – on Grammy night.
“I don’t know why Rihanna complained,” tweeted another, no doubt moved by Brown’s mad miming skillz and dismal dancing. “Chris Brown could beat me up any time he wanted to.”
Now in my perfect world, this would have been a joke. Wouldn’t it be awesome if these shocking tweets were actually part of a collective satirical protest by women using irony to illustrate how perverted and hateful society would have to be for Brown’s appearance at the Grammys to be acceptable?
If every one of these tweets was actually saying, “Is this how you want us to think? Do you really want to live in a world where women are conditioned to act like willing victims of abuse for any arrogant asshole with a dick and a dance move? Fuck you, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences!”
In fact, that’s exactly what I’m going to think from now on. Those tweets are a powerful demonstration of how women can stand up and speak out against the injustices and hypocrisies inherent in out patriarchal, femicidal culture. To quote Adam Savage, “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”
Because if Brown’s fans can pretend that the savage beating that put his girlfriend in hospital was somehow deserved, or that it happened too long ago for anyone with a life to care, or that anyone who mentions Brown’s violent felony is somehow a bigger asshole than Brown, I guess I can also pretend anything I want.
So I’m going to pretend we live in a world where violence, for whatever reason, is intolerable, and violent abusers don’t get to simply resume their lives as if nothing happened, especially if their career puts them in the public’s eye where they can be seen as an example of success by the rest of us. And then I’m going to pretend that rather than wishing a damn good beating for every member of Team Breezy, the rest of us realise that their comments say more about the world we’ve built than it says about them.
I mean, so long as we’re all making shit up…