This comment was from Mark Radcliffe on Chris Brown, Woody Allen and Other Bad Men
Great piece, but I feel like the world suffers much more potential harm from people supporting Chris Brown than supporting Picasso or Woody. The bigger he gets and the less of a price he pays for his actions, the more it says to the world, “It’s totally cool if you beat a woman. As long as you look good on stage, you’re allowed to be a monster off-stage.
I think there’s a separation between Picasso’s art and his crime that makes it ok to still patronize his art, somehow. It’s not like his paintings are about beating up women, but with Chris Brown, his songs ARE about sex and his bravado, and perhaps about even sexual aggression. So there’s an immediate correlation between the “art” he’s creating and his real-world behavior. He portrays a charming, cocky Casanova onstage, and unsurprisingly, he’s a self-absorbed womanizer off-stage. And it’s that same charming persona as he’s smiling with his shirt unbuttoned that leads to reactions like these 25 women who tweeted disturbing claims of “He can beat me all he wants.”
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/horrible-reactions-to-chris-brown-at-the-grammys
By taking your kids to see Picasso’s art, you’re simply supporting his artistic vision, not his actions as a person. But when you’re buying Chris Brown’s album or seeing his show and helping him making more money and getting more adoration, you’re directly fueling the fire of his bravado. You’re inflating his confidence and sense of entitlement, the same things that leads him to think he can do whatever he wants to whomever he wants. This approval gives him the exaggerated sense of importance that leads him to beat a woman, or just explode in anger whenever he wants. Every time you buy his music, you’re patting him on the back, saying, “How cool you look is more important that how you act.”
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photos: Picasso AP Photo / Chris Brown AP Photo
What most people also forget about the Chris Brown / Rhianna incident is that by all accounts she initiated this by scratching him, NOW before you,all get in a huff, his reaction was WAY WAY WAY over the top BUT, one has to wonder, what if she didn’t scratch him first. I can hear it now, “Victim Blaming”….nope not at all. Rhianna did not deserve the beating she got BUT you know, she should never have put her hands on him. The fact is short of him doing NOTHING, it would have been too much for some people. Here imho… Read more »
I do not understand this point of view. It implicitly assumes that the writer knows exactly what is going on in Chris Brown’s mind. This entire sentence is an unsubstantiated assumption: “You’re inflating his confidence and sense of entitlement, the same things that leads him to think he can do whatever he wants to whomever he wants.” The facts are that Chris Brown entered a guilty plea, accepted punishment, apologized, performed community service, apologized again, apologized likely some more times after that, and stepped out of the public eye for two years. All of that is thrown away by someone… Read more »