A musical pioneer who played a central role in defining a genre of music that now dominates the airwaves has been accused of child molestation by four men, who say the man abused them when they were boys in the 80s.
Where’s the media outrage?
The answer to that question tells us a lot about the racial divide in the US — and the racial divide in our mass media.
The allegations against Afrika Bambaataa, the hip hop DJ whose early tracks, particularly the Kraftwerk-swiping Planet Rock, helped to define and popularize both hiphop and electro in the early 80s, have been covered on black-oriented radio talk shows, in the hip hop media, and in black-oriented publications like Jet and The Root.
But the story has barely made a ripple in the mainstream — that is, white-dominated — media, with the notable exception of the New York Daily News, which has broken key elements of the story.
The details of the allegations are certainly troubling enough. Vulture — one of the handful of other outlets in the mainstream media to cover the story — sums up what we know so far:
Last month, Ronald Savage, a former New York State Democratic Committee member,accused Bambaataa of sexually abusing him in 1980, when Savage was 15 years old.
Since then, three more men have come forward with similar allegations: A man named Hassan Campbell told the New York Daily News that Bambaataa repeatedly sexually abused him when Campbell was 12 and 13, calling the DJ a “pervert” who “likes little boys.” Two other men whose identities were not fully disclosed also say Bambaataa abused them when they were minors — a former bodyguard also claims Bambaataa abused “hundreds” of young boys since the early 1970s. Bambaataa has denied all of the allegations.
[NOTE: The reference to the early 70s is puzzling. Elsewhere in the interview quoted in the NY Daily News, the apparent former bodyguard simply referred to “the 70s,” so I’m assuming he was misspeaking when referring to the early 70s. Bambaataa was born in 1957; he started his career as a DJ in 1977.]
The leaders of the Universal Zulu Nation, a sort of hip-hop advocacy group that Bambaataa founded in the 80s, first responded to the allegations by dismissing Savage, the first accuser to step forward, as “mentally challenged,” and denouncing the Daily News as a propaganda organ “compromised and controlled by U.S. government intelligence.”
But on Friday the group reversed itself, issuing a statement announcing that
ALL accused parties and those accused of covering up the current allegations of child molestation have been removed and have stepped down from their current positions.
If the allegations against Bambaataa are true — especially those coming from the man who says he was the hip hop producer’s former bodyguard — we’re talking about abuse on a Jimmy Savile scale. So why isn’t this story getting written about in the New York Times or talked about on CNN? Because the alleged victims were black boys? Because white people see Bambaataa more as a one hit wonder than a cultural icon?
Maybe Hannibal Buress needs to start talking about Bambaataa in his standup. That might get this story the attention it deserves.
@dhag
I think this is just a misunderstanding.
I took this to mean “Great artist, but I’ll only like them for as long as they’re a good person,” not “Great artist = Good person.”
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
This. Actually, I don’t even want them to be a “good” person. I just expect, well, some level of human decency. If they turn out to be good, well, all the better. Actually, on a personal level I don’t even go that far (huge Noir Désir fan…) but even then it DOES affect how I feel about the art. I used to love Metallica, then Hetfield turned out to be a scumbag. Now it’s kinda hard for me to listen to their stuff. As a wannabe-writer I have to admire Céline’s style, even though the guy was also a scumbag. There’s a pretty long list there.
@IP, totes! Lots of people don’t really consider the artist as a person before they hear some news about them, though, so their reaction to the music is all they have available when querying their brain about “what do I know about this person.”
Reacting in a way beyond what our emotions reveal is difficult and takes a lot of discipline, and it’s something that our culture neither teaches nor particularly encourages outside of conforming to gender and social roles. The only reward for doing it is self-validation, usually, so only people who were brought up to value that sort of discipline will do it regularly.
Emotions are tough!
@dlouwe,
Certainly! This sort of stuff is all so interesting, really – the connection between hearing the art and thinking about the artist is very quick, but the activation of the emotional responses are slow, and the arrival of the persons’ attention is slower still. So the two brain areas activate first, followed by the emotions being generated, followed by the conscious mind recognizing what’s going on. So you get to be aware of a chaotic mess of feelings and thoughts as the two networks try to resolve into a stable state, after which you get to apply a rationality to explain why you’re having such a hard time! Consciously concluding “I dislike the artist and don’t want to hear him, but I really like the band” is a great way to resolve the two networks into a stable state by forcing separation between them by way of inhibitory neurons (I think).
This stuff is so cool D:
@Scildfreja
I got the part about emotions being tough. No, joke aside, congrats on managing to somehow make all that comprehensive enough that I actually understood all of it (I think).
Although I think it’s more of a conscious choice thing, ie “this person is awful, and although I do genuinely enjoy their art, I’d rather stay away from it because it feels a bit hypocritical on my part”. Kind of a moral thing. And I really hope that you can translate what I just said into comprehensive talk because you’re much better at it than me.
@Sinkable John
Hm! First, I am not an expert – cognitive science is parallel to my field and I do refer to it in my work, but it’s not the thing I actually study. So, buyer beware!
The conscious choice exists, but it exists overtop of your emotional reaction. Emotions happen before conscious thought, so your thoughts are more explanations and expansions. They’re how you maintain a working model of the world. Part of that model of the world is a model of yourself – your model of how you react to things, what you think, what you feel.
Our models almost never match reality – we are not the people that we think we are. We may believe that we love the taste of alcohol (for example), but in reality we don’t, we’re just avoiding the social ramifications of not drinking. That’s the lens of our conscious mind interpreting and redirecting our emotions.
So, you can say and believe that you are rejecting some artwork because it would be hypocritical and not because you dislike it, this is a lens overtop of an emotional reaction to the music and how it makes you feel. The feeling of hypocrisy itself is how you are interpreting the conflict between negative and positive emotions that the music now generates. Does that make sense?
(Note, you can reject an artist and enjoy the art based on purely rational, moral reasoning, like you talk about. It’s just much harder to do and more unlikely.)
Its practically a faux pas to mention Bill Clinton is a rapist. Or Bowie. Or even Trump. or that Bill Murray beats on women. Even ppl who have gotten press and even been proven guilty or pretty much all-but proven so have defenders, to stick w just white ppl on that front, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski
& its controversial but Ill say it, FUCK their art and careers, aint seperate, stop giving them your money and soul.
@Scildfreja
That’s all really interesting! I practice long-term non-monogamy, so dealing with difficult emotions is something of a given in my life, and the mantra of “all emotions are valid” is pretty common and I’ve found it to be highly effective. Essentially, negative feelings can happen regardless of our conscious thought process, so it’s more productive to affirm the emotions and address how we handle them rather than trying to prevent them from happening in the first place.
Also I think it illustrates why “and how does that make you feel?” – despite being such a cliche – is a very effective tool in getting people to “talk out” their problems.
@Policy of Madness
The reason we don’t talk about separating the artist and the art when the person is fantastic is because it’s completely obvious in the other direction. Everyone instinctively recognises that someone being a decent human being doesn’t make their musical compositions any more haunting, but we definately act like people who do bad things wear the mark of Cain and admitting they ever had any skill is a moral failing. I completely disagree with you here. We’d have less problems like Whoopie Goldberg wrongly defending a child rapist if she’d not felt that acknowledging that he was a child rapist made her previous enjoyment of his films a reflection on her and been stupidly defensive. And this happens – I had whole history lessons about why all Nazi art and style was kitsch rubbish, but it’s such a bad lesson, because really it’s possible to be a great architect or filmmaker and a really bad person. Taste is not morality.
I’m not saying anyone is a bad person if they acknowledge that this art is good art. I’m not saying you’re a bad person if you don’t agree with me, either.
What I’m saying is that there is a cultural impact to enjoying art by awful people. Roman Polanski gets a pass from his fans because they are fans. And they are fans because we say that it’s okay to enjoy art made by child rapists. Because so many other people also enjoy his art.
Dish Network doesn’t know that you are reciting, “I know Roman Polanski is a horrible person and I’m separating his art from his person” when you watch his movie. All Dish Network knows is that you watched the movie; ergo, an audience exists; ergo, they need to play more of his movies. His popularity rises, and his defenders feel that they are in the majority. His defenders then walk around, or in the case of Whoopi fucking Goldberg they go on national TV, and make the argument that what he didn’t wasn’t rape-rape. That has an impact, and the impact contributes to rape culture. The personal is political.
What if nobody watched Roman Polanski movies? Would we be hearing that this thing he did, which checked off literally every box in the “legitimate rape” checklist, isn’t rape-rape? I don’t think we would. That is the cultural impact of his popularity at work, visible in the world for everyone to see.
If you make the decision that you don’t agree and that it’s fine to make that separation and no harm done, then I’m not going to argue this any further. But I want everyone to think about it.
What I meant was that the art/artist separation is literally never mentioned unless the artist is awful, which makes it come across to me like a rationalization. Outside of the academic study of art, this separation is just not done under other circumstances. I have never heard anyone examine Schindler’s List and start with, “But we have to separate this from Steven Spielberg. Spielberg as a person has nothing to do with this film.” Actually, every examination of Schindler’s List that I’ve seen that goes deeper than the “thumbs-up/4.5 stars” level has explicitly brought Spielberg’s background into it, talking about how his personality and history influenced the film.
We only want to rip the artist away from the art when the artist is a child rapist.
When I was around three to five years old, I listened to commercials completely uncritically. I’m sure that my brain just didn’t have the capacity yet to be critical. My mother used to chuckle at the ridiculousness of the ads. I couldn’t reconcile these two things in my mind. The friendly ads wouldn’t lie to me — there was (to my undeveloped mind) no motive! And yet my mother had no motive to lie about the ads being lies.
I resolved this issue by deciding to (1) believe both the ads and my mother; and (2) revisit the issue when I was older.
@PoM
Yeah, I agree with Wickedwitch here. We don’t point out the art/artist separation when the artist hasn’t done anything awful because it’s not necessary. The belief that creating good art says anything about your moral character is so obviously stupid it doesn’t need to be mentioned. People understand that this reasoning is flawed.
I’d actually say the exact opposite: it’s only when the artist has done something terrible that we start acting as if art and artist are inseparable. In all other contexts it would go without saying that the quality of the art says nothing about the artist other than the fact that they had the capacity to create that piece of art.
Roman Polanski made his American directorial debut with Rosemary’s Baby, a film that I see as deeply feminist.
Rosemary’s husband betrays her in the worst possible ways so that he can have career success.
I loved the movie and before that I loved the book by Ira Levin. But Levin doesn’t seem to enjoy Rosemary’s incredible suffering at the hands of her husband, other men, and women who do the bidding of the patriarchy. It seems as though Polanski probably did.
I mentioned earlier that I do personally avoid art made by rapists. The Whoopi Goldberg/Polanski thing is a perfect example of why. People have a tendency to explain away rape as “not real rape”. There are all sorts of rationalizations like “she really wanted it” or “she lied about her age” or “it was a different time” etc etc etc. You don’t often hear people say about a killer that “he didn’t kill-kill”. Or that the victim secretly wanted to be killed but only regretted it afterwards. Or that in those days it was normal for people to kill each other.
That’s why I view rape as particularly problematic in this context.
Maybe because that’s not what I’m saying? Even slightly?
Feminism has done a wonderful job of setting up new protections for white women and children. It has a LONG way to go regarding the existence of black people.
Some of us are not surprised that you care about Kesha more than these kids.
I realize you’ve taken these questions a hundred times, but you have not provided satisfactory answers.
Not you, David. But if you think this is about you, it’s about you.
While the mainstream press and mainstream entertainment press is ignoring the accusations, I’ve found a rabbit hole of hip-hop and talk You Tube videos that are on this like a mouse on cheese. Most are harshly critical of Bam and KRS-One.
Robert Towne was responsible for the screenplay for China Town; that along with the performances from cast members were largely responsible for the critical success. The Pianist is of course based on an autobiography. More recent projects have been stage-to-screen adaptations.
I’m inclined to think it’s not really necessary to view the medium as a work of one individual. Although, it could be argued that with all the acclaim given to directors like Polanksi as ‘auteur’ along with the fact that Polanski has never taken responsibility for his actions, viewers should at least be willing to give some thought to whether they want to view his films or use them to praise him as personally.
@kale
I agree. I’ve always thought that Juanita Broaddrick’s narrative about Bill Clinton sounded credible, even though that story got buried quickly. She’s a right winger now; I don’t know about back in the day. And she might be using her story for political purposes. But that doesn’t necessarily make it false.
I also think that Kitty Kelley’s allegation in her bio of Nancy Reagan that in the 1950s Ronald Reagan raped a young female actor sounds credible:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/8/22/1123203/-Ronald-Reagan-Legitimate-Rapist
I wasn’t going to say anything – the art/artist distinction never meant much to me, because with very few exceptions I know nothing about the artist who produced a work that I’m familiar with, or else know a little about an artist but have no experience with their work, so there’s nothing to separate.
However, I’m wondering if DSLucia has something of a point. Bill Cosby is one of my very few exceptions. The fact that he is now known to very likely be a serial rapist seems to be a good enough reason to avoid his early stand-up work, because it’s almost all him. I mean, someone had to work the camera, and there were at least a few other people involved. But their association with the work is minimal, and any benefits of that association long expired. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem fair to condemn something like, say, The Cosby Show, based on him alone. True, he was the main actor, one of the writers, and probably could throw his weight around in other areas if he so chose.
But there were a lot of people involved. For example, Michael J. Leeson was involved in a lot of shows that are now considered classic American TV (mostly as a writer) and continued to be a screenwriter until 2009. Raven-Symoné, who played one of the kids, has since become a well-known actor in her own right. There are probably other people who don’t necessarily deserve their part in the work to be tainted by Cosby’s actions. I admit to looking up who else was involved with the show, picking out the first couple of names which sounded familiar, and then looking those two up in order to make this argument, because I barely saw the show and don’t have any real associations of it with anyone else.
I mean, if most of the people involved turned out to be awful, then fine, nuke Sodom because you can’t find even 10 righteous people in it. If you can’t look at the character of Cliff Huxtable without thinking “OMG Rapist!” then avoid it, definitely. Boycott any future works involving Cosby (assuming there are any, which I doubt, aside from maybe a ghostwritten “tell-all” book about his side of the recent rape allegations) because most of the people involved really should know better. But some of his past works aren’t his alone.
@PoM
Then I guess I still have no idea what you’re saying.
@IP
I don’t know how many other ways I can say “cultural impact” so I’m not going to bother anymore. I’ve explained it; if it’s unintelligible then any further posts will probably be equally unintelligible.
@PoM
Um. Our disagreement isn’t over the “cultural impact” part. We agree there.
This is the problem:
^This part has not been demonstrated, and I question the idea that anyone infers that art will be good because the artist is good, or the other way around. I’ve never heard anyone say this before.
Why the hell is everyone fighting over something no-one said?
@SFHC
The idea expressed by PoM is in my view exactly backwards, and as WickedWitch pointed out, counterproductive. It’s not true that we view art and artist as inseparable until they do something awful. It’s actually the other way around: we only treat them as inseparable when the artist has been shown to be a terrible person. This makes people defensive and gives them a reason to make excuses for artists who have done terrible things, because it presents a fictional dichotomy where you either enjoy a piece of art and endorse everything the artist has ever done, or you denounce the artist and all of their art (since they’re inseparable). This idea is, in my view, worthy of much side-eyeing.
This is why we have people who refuse to believe that, for example, Vybz Kartel actually murdered someone. They can’t believe that someone who created such amazing music would be capable of being an awful person. This is how people in reality actually think and behave. People like what they like, and they won’t stop liking it because the artist did something bad. Source: history. It would be much more useful to encourage people to speak out against terrible people, even when they happen to be otherwise beloved cultural figures. Maybe I’m being too pragmatic here, but at some point you can’t pretend as if reality doesn’t exist.