The Rihanna and Chris Brown Round-up

(Other press responses to the topic can be found at theNPR blog here and at MTVact here.)

Chris Brown and Rihanna just released two songs together. Most people have concluded that this means everyone is “moving on.” It turns out time flies when you’re not punching someone in the face.

 

Three years ago, almost to the day, Chris Brown beat Rihanna so hard the weekend prior to the Grammy awards that both had to cancel their appearances. I believe he more specifically engaged in “punching, kicking, choking and biting” Rihanna and then leaving her on the side of the road. He threatened to kill her, according to the police report. She survived by pretending to call her assistant.

Years after her very public break-up from Brown, Rihanna came out with the video for “We Found Love,” depicting a volatile, manic relationship between her and a strangely Chris-Brown-ish character.

In the end, she leaves.

It was sort of what people had been waiting for, but then they went back to attacking her for not wanting to be a domestic violence advocate just because Chris Brown had punched her in the face. It probably doesn’t help that a majority of girls in the United States blame her for her own potentially fatal brush with domestic violence.

Then, the 2012 Grammys happened. The Producer said the award show was the “victim” of the last-minute cancellation in 2009 and so they took him back with open arms, giving him a Grammy this year and even inviting him to perform. A bunch of girls then took the opportunity to tweet that they wished they were in love with him, only to them that meant they wished he was beating them.

How did Chris Brown feel about this? The way he always feels. Like a champ.

And now Chris Brown gets to have Rihanna’s “Birthday Cake” and remix it, too. And fans don’t even know how it makes them feel, which is perfectly understandable. After all, take a glimpse at the lyrics by Brown, who remixed the track from Rihanna’s latest album:

Girl I wanna fuck you right now (right now)
Been a long time, I’ve been missing your body

The problem here is this: Chris Brown punched Rihanna in the face.

That’s vital, you see – punching in the face. I am hopeful that for the rest of your life, when you read “Chris Brown,” you see “dude who punched Rihanna in the face.” I see it each time, and I think more people should. It should be a knee-jerk reaction. “Chris Brown” should trigger you to think “punching in the face.”

This is me being willing to take a position on this, unlike most of the music industry or really most people at all – not that there is one to take at all. Abuse is never a matter of opinion. See, some things really are cut and dry: murder is wrong, rape is wrong, and punching your girlfriend in the face is wrong. But Chris Brown doesn’t think so. Chris Brown hasn’t apologized. Now, he doesn’t even have to, since the music world has “moved on.”

So what about Rihanna? Has she moved on? Where is her public statement that she has moved on? I wonder what it would sound like. “Thank you for being so impatient and disrespecting my privacy, for forcing Chris Brown back into my life, for creating an environment in which my career meant seeing my abuser regularly, for giving him a Grammy, for forgiving him. I am now over it. One hundred percent completely over it by my own choice.”

Chris Brown followed up his abuse with 180 days of community service and an inflated ego that fits him like it would a 12-year-old who thinks he’s “badass” for pushing a kid in the dirt. He followed it up like this:

Getting vengeance on the idea that abuse is wrong is awesome, am I right? We live in such a great place, you all. A world in which rapists and abuser not only run free, but they win international awards, they lunch with important people, they are “moguls,” they are people with fan bases, and, in the end, they get to feel vindicated. Like they pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes. They should make a tee shirt: “I punched Rihanna in the face and all I got was this lousy shirt.” It’s just so fucking funny.

Chris Brown witnessed abuse between his father and mother as a boy, and some have said that it’s the reason he is an abuser, which leads me to think that they feel bad for him, they wish they could fix him, but they know they can’t. It makes them feel like he has some sort of excuse to keep perpetuating a cycle we all know is wrong, but refuse to condemn. Rihanna almost died the night Chris Brown punched her in the face. Now he’s telling her he’s “missed her body,” winning Grammys and saying “fuck you” to people disgusted by his behavior, and rapping while surrounded by bikini-clad women. So how bad am I supposed to feel for the millions of people who will see all of this happening on television screens and computer monitors, and iPads and iPhones, and in the newspapers? How do I feel for the boys watching a man beat his wife in the public eye only later to get applauded and rewarded for his miniscule contributions to the music industry afterward? (Seriously, can I please get one person to admit that his music isn’t even good?) How do I feel for the boys who have now watched a man get away with abuse – without even saying “sorry,” or claiming to have gotten better without throwing furniture afterward? I feel bad.

And I feel bad for the girls who think love can look like a woman letting an abusive man back into her life, or keeping him there in the first place. I feel bad for the boys becoming men under Chris Brown’s watchful eye, following his career and forever knowing that punching Rihanna in the face wasn’t even a setback for him – it was a publicity stunt. In the end, it got him somewhere, didn’t it? That’s what it looks like to me.

When people say Rihanna and Chris Brown have “moved on” there is a part of me inside wondering if a woman ever moves on from being left on the side of the road covered in her own blood. But the bigger part of me is wondering how millions of people could be so quick to do so from the memory of that themselves.

Tags: assault, carmen rios, chris brown, domestic violence, grammy's, rihanna