And the Beat Goes On: Chris Brown, Too $hort, and the Disposable Conscience of Consumer Society

Andthe Beat Goes On:  ChrisBrown, Too $hort, and the Disposable Conscience of Consumer Society by Lisa Guerrero | special to NewBlackMan
Last week while still reelingfrom the controversy put into motion by Too $hort's avuncular primer for youngblack boys on how to violate young black girls, people momentarily paused toconsider, and by "consider," I mean "rush to judgment," on Rihanna's decisionto collaborate with Chris Brown, her former abuser, on a remix of her song"Birthday Cake."  
As one of myfriends on Facebook put it: "Rihanna needs to sit down and have a talk with Tina Turner."  I can't say that I necessarilydisagree.  The idea that a womanwould choose to invite her abuser back again to play a role in her life afterhaving broken free from his abuse is seemingly unfathomable to many people, menand women alike.  What seemsungenerous in many of the criticisms of Rihanna circulating around thisdecision is that she isn't the first woman to make such a choice, and sadly,won't be the last.  The cycle ofcodependency isn't one that is neatly broken, not even by the act of thedissolution of the relationship, which is "getting away" only in terms ofphysical proximity. 
I can say to myself that I would never make such an obviouslysilly choice, but then, it's only "obviously silly" to me because I'm not inthat situation.  However, what I doknow of Rihanna's situation, and why I feel that her decision is more complicatedthan people assume that it is, is this: much of the rest of the world seems tohave forgiven Chris Brown his trespasses, if they ever held him accountable inthe first place.  So why is it thesole responsibility of Rihanna to withhold her forgiveness and force hisaccountability?  Why should she beanymore forceful than a legal system that apparently felt that his domesticviolence merited no jail time?  Ora fan base that apparently feels his talent far outweighs a little thing likebeating his girlfriend?  
Yes, sheis his victim.  Yet she is no lesshis victim than she is the victim of a society who so cavalierly and quitesystematically ignores, dismisses, and erases the violence enacted by the day,the hour, the minute against black girls and women.  Chris Brown violated her.  But she has since been continually violated ideologicallyand discursively by an excessively self-centered consumer public who has neverdemonstrated a sustained outrage against Chris Brown long enough to stop buyinghis albums, but has enough outrage to go around for Rihanna that she would everchoose to collaborate with him.
This latest flap over Rihanna andChris Brown comes on the heels of the furious flurry of ever more outrageousmanifestations of a problematic performative black masculinity that anchorsitself in the unapologetic denigration of, and dominance over women generally,and black women in particular.  Letme say upfront that this critique is not a new one.  The ongoing critical narrative around the misogyny andhomophobia of, for example, the singular arena of hip hop is, on its own, amedia and scholarly cottage industry, and not without good reason.  But my interest here is not necessarilyto rehash this well-trodden and well-deserved critique of commodifiable blackmasculinity.  My interest is inthinking critically about the relationship between the discursive moves withinmedia culture that work to serve consumerist desires while ideologically andmaterially sacrificing the safety and subjectivity of black women.
Daysbefore Chris Brown was in the news for collaborating with the woman he onceleft bloody and bruised in a car while he worked out the way to "spin" domesticviolence with his PR manager, he was in the news for his surprising andungracious win at the Grammys, his enfant terrible behavior in its aftermath,and the sad and ignorant Twitter parade of the predominantly white female fanswho said that Chris Brown "couldbeat [them] anytime." 
Then, with barely enough time toassemble a coherent critique of Brown, Too $hort, aka Todd Shaw, and XXL Magazine dropped the "rapehow-to" heard 'round the pop culture world.  Besides both being instances of a shameless flaunting of anunrepentant, violent black masculinity, they also both starkly demonstrate howAmerican media culture in the 21st century works in earnest tocreate an impenetrable discursive distance wherein no one is responsible forthe consequences of their words and actions when they exist within the mainlyethereal boundaries of pop culture. In these two cases particularly, violence against women plays out as aperformance separate from material realities.  In other words, when women, especially black women arebeaten and raped "in the real world," we are meant to believe that it hasnothing to do with Chris Brown's fans using his violent history as a means of flirting, or with Too $hort's mentoringof teen boys where he "takes [them] to the hole."  In the latter example, Too $hort's "apology" was, in fact,"I'm not responsible."   
Hisapology, which he tweeted, stated that while in "$hort mode" he "had a lapse ofjudgment," and that's "not how I get down."  So under this logic, Todd Shaw didn't encourage such a vile crime. Too $hort did.  And following the logic further, Too$hort is merely a commodified persona who isn't real, ergo no one isresponsible for telling young black men how to "take it to the hole."  This farcical defense, along with XXL's equally ludicrous attempts atdeniability (both of which have been sharply analyzed by various scholars andcultural critics including hereand here)illustrate not only the discursive distance the guilty parties are trying toconstruct for themselves, but also the discursive distance they are providing toconsumers who themselves want to remain blameless when they play "Blow theWhistle" on their iPods or read about their favorite hip hop stars in XXL.
Similarly,the rhetorical refrain of "I'd let Chris Brown beat me anytime" that wastweeted with enthusiasm and shocking frequency by a chorus of Brown fans duringhis Grammy performance, would likely be copped to as "just a joke" if thefemale fans were questioned about it. Their use of his violent tendencies as articulations of their adorationis risk-free for most of them in that: 1) it is highly unlikely they will ever have an interaction with Brown,especially one long enough to open a space for violence to occur, and 2) ifChris Brown were ever to beat them, even with their weakly informed consent, thefact of their race, (again, the tweeters were disproportionately white women),would likely mean that the social value place on them (versus the socialdevaluing of black women) would translate into harsh sociocultural and legalpunishment for Brown, neither of which he has faced after his assault onRihanna.   
This internet action ofChris Brown's fans is reminiscent of Chris Rock's commentary on women'swillingness to disconnect from the implications of the misogyny of hip hop.  In his concert "Never Scared," he saysthat he is amazed by the extreme misogyny women hip-hop fans can so easilyrationalize.  Women will excitedlydance to the most violent, misogynistic music, and when confronted with theillogic of consuming a product that relies on female debasement most willjustify their consumption and fandom by blithely claiming:  "He ain't talkin' 'bout me." 
In both instances femaleconsumers fail to understand that the undervaluing, disrespect, and violenceagainst these kinds of spectacular femininities, especially spectacularfemininities of color, be they the imagined stereotyped representations ofwomen that flood pop and media culture, or the equally ethereal "celebritywomanhood," is directly linked to their own undervalued gender location in society.  That is to say that those rappers are,in fact, talking about you, and that Chris Brown could, in fact, beat you, evenwithout your permission…especially without your permission.   
We have created a consumer-basedsociety that implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, codifies violence againstwomen generally, and black women specifically, because it successfullyseparates material experiences from commodified images and performances ofthose experiences through deliberate discursive maneuvers meant to convince usthat the two things can actually exist exclusive of one another; in otherwords, that a society's popular culture can operate in isolation from thesociety in which it is created. The flawed logic in this proposition is blatant, yet we buy it, literally,again and again.  Consumers requirethese discursive narratives to absolve their consumption practices and to keeptheir own sociocultural subjectivities in tact, if only in their own minds.            Inthese most recent cases of Chris Brown and Todd Shaw we can see the insidiousdisplay of a racialized version of scholar Judith Butler's theory of theperformativity of sex wherein "sex" is a product of the process of repeatinghegmonic norms, meaning that one becomes located as a boy or a girl through thereiteration of a complicated discursive norming that she refers to as "girling"or "boying."
This is a "girl," however, who is compelledto "cite" the norm  in order toqualify and remain a viable subject. Femininity is thus not the product of choice, but the forcible citationof a norm, one whose complex historicity is indissociable from relations of discipline,regulation, punishment.  (Bodies That Matter, 1993:  232)
Accordingly, we can think of theracialized version of this theory as "black girling" or "black boying" where"the complex" racial "historicity,"as it intersects with the gendered historicity, "is indissociable fromrelations of" a particularly racialized "discipline, regulation, andpunishment."  Through theseracially particular reiterations of hegemonic norms, black girls and women arecompelled to perform a sexual subjectivity of disposability, while black boysand black men are compelled to perform a sexual subjectivity of criminality.  As Butler argues, "Gender is performative in the sense that itconstitutes as an effect that very subject it appears to express" ("Imitationand Gender Subordination," 1991: 24).  This means that inconsidering racialized gender performativity these marginally located blackmasculine and feminine subjects are "made real" through their constantdiscursive repetition, especially by the subjects themselves.   
The cases of both Brown and Shaw serveas extreme examples of those compulsive reiterations involved in the process of"black girling" and "black boying." One of the immediate results of these two instances is that blackwomanhood gets understood as almost epiphenomenal to black masculinity.  The vulnerability of black women, alongwith their very subjecthood, gets erased by the predominance of a black malesubjecthood that, itself, faces its own disposability in relation to ahegemonic white manhood.  In thisway, we can understand the "beat me" tweets of Brown's fans, the insultinglyunconvincing "apology" of XXLeditor-in-chief, Vanessa Satten, and the behaviors of Brown and Shaw themselvesas part of a complex discursive matrix that constitutively produces a"no-fault" public sphere and fortifies the lack of value of both blackwomanhood and black manhood.
In the wake of these recentinstances scholars and critics have reinvigorated various long held discussionsaround the twin crisesof black manhood and black womanhood in the United States, both of whichare crucial considerations whose urgency needs to be sustained.  At the same time, I think it is alsoimportant to consider the crisis of an American consumer culture that onlyseems able to engage society on the level of commodity without consequence. Inthis crisis American consumer citizens can be confronted with Chris Brown'sbrutality and see it as separate from the talented pop star.  They can be convinced that there reallydoes exist a distinct "$hort mode" that is different from Todd Shaw, a man whowould supposedly never advocate the violation of young girls.   
I call this the "disposable conscienceof consumer America."  It relies ona fluid, trendy "performance of outrage" that can be taken on and off dependingon if a celebrity who has committed a social sin or an actual crimesubsequently puts out a catchy hit or puts out a good movie or is having a goodseason.  This disposable consciencehas the effect that as a society we are apparently only invested in celebritymea culpa and redemption in so far as they affect our ability to consume.  With Brown and Shaw, the society atlarge is less concerned about the continuing devaluation of black girls andwomen enacted by these two predators than with their opportunity to buy theiralbums and dance to the music.  Andthe beat goes on…literally.
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Lisa Guerrero is Associate Professor of ComparativeEthnic Studies at Washington State University Pullman, editor of Teaching Race in the 21st Century: CollegeProfessors Talk About Their Fears, Risks, and Rewards (Palgrave Macmillan,2009) and co-author of  AfricanAmericans in Television, co-authored with David J. Leonard. (PraegerPublishing, 2009).