Unfiltered reflections on Chris Brown and Rihanna

Dark side of the moon: Therapy as public relations. Where were the heavy hitters in Chris' life when stories of abuse were making the rounds?

Chris Brown: The sunny side has a dark side …..  intensified and insulated  by  power just like others like him; men who made it inspite of their humble beginnings and then lived large  until their vices burst upon the public’s consciousness like a tumescent boil.

Chris Brown is not alone in this. The annals of sports and entertainment history are littered with men whose fatal flaw brought them down.  Part of the problem lies with hubris: the affliction of the rich and powerful that leads them to claim exemptions where rules, regulations and values are concerned.  This sense of  entitlement in time  metastasizes to all kinds of things. To a kid who grew up on the street where the cult of menace is a prime mover of things, the idea of manhood and manliness  can often assume grotesque and inflated forms which  undermine the idea of  the ghetto ubermenschen in its more  idealized or substantive form.  Do real men hit women? Are they threatened by what can be conceived as their “hormonal” antics? Are challenges by a frantic  woman the same as those by a hooded thug across a sub-way station?

Rihanna: A tragic figure whose psyche is coming into sharp relief on the most public of stages. (Copyright AP Photo/Matt Sayles)

There is an underground/Mafiesque code that says a real man is respected by his woman, and not keeping her in line is a sign of weakness. It is true, but only to a point. Remember the afore-mentioned ubermensch – a  punk as young as Chris Brown cannot be depended upon to decipher the  nuances of this idea;  the ubermensch as a noble  creation above the fruited plane where underlings joust for soiled crumbs.   Chris needs to read this post because he got caught up in his own peevishness, and the people around him failed him the way the Memphis mafia failed Elvis Presley.

FACT: Chris Brown’s  balls are caught up in a vice. His team knows that and he, after days and  nights of churlish denial,  has come face to face with his Machiavellian moment; that moment of private vulnerability.  The writing is clearly  on the wall and Chris Brown and his people are desperately trying  to salvage what remains of his career.  In this larger scheme of things, Rihanna is the sacrificial doe;  a means to an end. In this sense she is  clearly being used.  If she runs, Chris’  ass is toast blacker than Manute Bol’s ass.  If she stays, he has a chance of extending his 15 minutes of fame.

Beauty & the Pixie: Behind the couture and retro glitz is an insecure little girl lost on a stage bigger than any she ever dreamed of. All things being equal, Rihanna needs her family more than she ever did. Copyright: Ultimate-Rihanna.com

Rihanna is a tragic figure, and one whose  wounded psyche is coming into sharp relief  in the most public of ways. There is some lesson in all of this.  This is the Rihanna the public never knew: an emotionally destitute ingenue who is trying to find herself on a stage larger than anything she has ever known.  Her M.O. -  hang with the in-crowd at all costs  …. The movers and the shakers and men who wanna nail anything with an onion butt. High school playgrounds are littered with  girls who  trade in their self-worth for a pottage of affirmation. They often sleep with the high school jock and give their  friends a little something  on the side.  If  Rihanna was not a star, she would have morphed into a serviceable groupie. My sense is that where Chris Brown was concerned, she slipped in and out of those roles with a facility was as surprising as it was distressing.  The same probably applies to the powerful men she has met  in her life.

Rihanna comes across as someone who probably gives it up on the first date, which is no big deal as long as there is no pathology behind it. The cognoscenti think otherwise. And Rihanna would be well advised to listen to them. (And her father, Ronald Fenty, really needs to stand up for his little girl .)

The debut of young romance: Chris Brown and Rihanna canoodling publicly for the first time at Peter Beard’s party at the VIP Club in Paris, France in late 2008. Did the romance veer off into obsessive territory; the pathological symbiosis of insecurity, need and control?Did it, at some point become an all-or-nothing gambit for both of them?

Rihanna is being used in the current P.R. onslaught by Mark Geragos, Chris Brown and company.  The  reunification of Rihanna and Chris Brown at the end of February was never a case of simple puppy love. Rihanna may have wanted her man regardless of whether he had bashed her face in or not. That is desperation hatched in the fever swamps of emotional desperation. But equally desperate have been the machinations of people who have wanted Chris and Rihanna to kiss and make up before the judge hauls their young asses  into court.

Rihanna's father, Ronald Fenty.

I would look very carefully into Rihanna’s background to see how she was brought up. This is a girl who clearly has self-esteem and belonging  issues, her stunning looks notwithstanding. (The zit-faced dweebs who knock her beauty lack the clubs to swing with real women in addition to having an underdeveloped sense of beauty.) At this rate, Rihanna may very well  end up as the second wife of a commune potentate. What she may not realize is that she is riding the knife’s edge of public sentiment, which until now has been very supportive because of the treatment she probably received at the hands of Chris Brown.  If she disregards public sentiment, she runs the risk of being dismissed as just another  troubled tween who failed to represent when the issue of “domestic” violence was on the line.  To be fair, such kind of pressure is never warranted, especially on a tween who is a decade from joining the “thirty-something” crowd, but it does not alter public expectations when it comes to accidental role models.  It’s just the nature of the beast.  Period.  Disregarding such public sentiment will,  sooner or later,   hit Rihanna in the pocket book. Like Chris Brown, she is not that big a star to ignore public opinion which wants abusers to be punished.  If Rihanna fails to do what the public sees as the right thing, she is going down with Chris Brown.

Rumors that Rihanna wants Chris Brown to apologize on the Oprah Winfrey show maybe grounded in the fact of a Rihanna camp that is belatedly trying placate the public in the wake of the once reported Rihanna-Chris reconciliation. Oprah Winfrey did not help the Geragos-Brown damage control machine by  doing a series of shows on spousal abuse  with a male dramatis personae that were as articulate as they were was convincing. (Paging Dr. Robin Givens! Paging Dr. Robin Givens! Please report to talk show E.R.)  It is IMPOSSIBLE that Chris Brown’s appearance would happen independent of the disposition of the court case.

But by the way things are going on right now,   Rihanna will most probably  be a tabloid has-been by the summer of 2010 …. along with a “skidrow” Chris Brown who wouldn’t be needing her then.  Then a tree will fall in the forest  ……..

Mark our words.

copyright© 2009 cyberaxis.wordpress.com

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POST SCRIPTUM

We Googled the “cult of menace” today  and came up with nothing. Zilch. Nada. It then occured to us that we ought to  flesh it out a bit in a form that is as discrete as it is fungible in the currency of pop culture. If the coinage doesn’t exist, we are pressing  it right here.

The cult of menace is what rules the roost on “Cell block C” and the corner  street where thugs peer at each other from black hoods that  often conceal more than sweaty noggins. A “wrong” look at the wrong time can bring out heat in ghetto nano seconds.

The cult of menace is the stock in trade of the Mafia underground  where soldiers swagger and Dapper Dons rule territories with faux reticence and inscrutable miens.

The cult of menace is the lightning rod of vigilantes that inflame the hood  and renegades with protean causes. It is the prime mover of embattled masses and renegade bands that roam the countryside with manifestos and black market  M16s.

The cult of menace  is what separates the Alphas from the Omegas in subcultures where violence is often the arbiter of things.

copyright© 2009 cyberaxis.wordpress.com

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