It’s unfortunate to learn that our heroes are susceptible to the pressures of money and power. But this can feel additionally jarring when the behavior our hero is accused of is the opposite of the persona and values they have shared with the world.
Lizzo is only one hero who has demonstrated this contradiction. There have been many others.
But there is also nuance in each situation.
When does someone go from a hero to a monster? All of us have heroes who are monsters to other people- our heroes make it through our acceptable filter, given our personal experience and connection to their work.
Now, if you’ve been paying attention to the podcast at all, my feelings on harassment should be pretty clear to you. I’ve spent a good chunk of my academic and professional career working to prevent harassment, including a recent episode of Mid-Riff specifically on the topic of hostile environment sexual harassment, which was Episode 69 if you want to listen to or read more that for context.
I believe that it’s extremely important to believe victims when they report a crime like this, for a number of reasons. First, only 2-8% of sexual assaults are falsely reported (Lonsway, Archambault, & Lisak, 2009). That’s because there are so many barriers to reporting, from the unfortunately very real worry about retaliation to shame, to victim-blaming. The list goes on and on. Second, there is research showing that when someone discloses their harassment of assault, the way the person they disclose to responds has a dramatic impact on their negative health outcomes. If they are believed and supported, there’s a much greater likelihood that it will have less of a negative impact on them moving forward.
At the same time, I think a transformative justice approach to harm is more helpful than cancelling someone and cutting someone out of a community entirely. Though, of course, this is different for community members vs. those with power. But, we’ve probably all been in a music scene where someone commits harm, people cut them off, and then they just go to another community and do the same thing all over again. That’s not helpful. But, guided by victims, survivors, and allies, if we can try to understand and change the ways that the community supported this person in the harm and also hold the person individually accountable, that is much more productive. It’s more work than simply cancelling someone, but it helps society and individuals grow if we normalize this approach.
I recently read the book “Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma” by Claire Dederer, which I found as a helpful read in its ability to dig into the nuance and complex dynamics of these situations.
And the situation with Lizzo is particularly complex. This is not black or white.
Let’s address some of the complexity.
As someone who has been a positive force against anti-fat culture, it is hard to hear that she engaged in fat shaming and is deeply hypocritical.
However,
1) it’s not hard to believe that a fat woman in our culture might internalize some of the messages and use her newfound power to reinforce them,
2) the media seems to be focusing on this even though it is arguably not the most egregious behavior in the case,
3) many people, especially white men, have engaged in fat-shaming in workplaces, especially in entertainment, without push-back for decades.
Of course, it isn’t surprising that we are holding Lizzo to a higher standard, both because she has been held up on a pedestal by many (especially white women) as their sort of impossibly cool, body-positive, fat black friend, and because, as a black woman, to achieve what she has, she’s had to be “better”- as a musician and as a celebrity role model, in order to survive in our culture.
How does this all fit into our view of “Monsters” in our culture? Or problematic faves. Or whatever you want to call the people who have harmed others, but who have made art that with which we deeply connect. We all have them. My biggest personal “monster” is Morrissey. Woof. That guy is awful. But I love his music so much and it’s had a huge impact on me over the years. What do I do about that?
In “Monsters” (based on a piece she’d written in the Paris Review) Dederer addresses several of these issues, which we could apply to Morrisey, to Lizzo, or any number of other artists.
Dederer describes what a monster is. In her eyes, it is an artist who has done something in their life that interferes with or distracts from our viewing of the art, itself.
She then discusses genius and whether we should allow for “geniuses” to engage in bad behavior or, if geniuses are only creating great work because they, perhaps subconsciously, want to make up for their personal mistakes or “monstrousness.” That’s a tough, perhaps Freudian, take (especially in that, like Freud’s work, it is basically impossible to research), but an interesting piece in the puzzle, nonetheless.
But what if a piece of art by a “monster” has helped people to fight against other monsters (like racism?)? Dederer also spends some time talking about dynamics of race and gender, arguing that when there is less representation of a group, sometimes a particular piece of art might be more meaningful to members of that group and that the work it does, culturally (say, for example, The Cosby Show’s impact on black culture and beyond), might, for an individual, outweigh the monstrousness of the artist (in this case, Bill Cosby).
She also argues that women artists, in some cases, might need to be MORE monstrous. If monstrosity is partly about being selfish and women (especially mothers) are encouraged to be self-less- giving their time and energy to their family, rather than their art- in order to create great art they might need to fight cultural expectations and, at least at times, prioritize their art. And when women are viewed as monsters, it is often because they shirked familial responsibilities.
For the most part, Dederer isn’t necessarily providing a particular take on these questions, rather uplifting them to provide a nuanced discussion. Ultimately, she says that none of us are able to decide who is a monster for other people because that is determined differently for everyone based on their own life experience and connection to the art the person created.
I brought up Dederer’s book because this is a topic I think about a lot and feel like it gets at its nuance in a way that a lot of other arguments don’t. Another book that complicates this conversation is “We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice” by adrienne maree browne.
browne argues that cancel culture is often used internally, individuals in oppressed groups using it against others in often the same oppressed group, when it should be used against those with power. If we are part of a group working towards liberation, we recognize that we have all been socialized in a culture that is systemically racist, sexist, heterosexist, capitalist, etc. As a result, we have all internalized those messages and we are hopefully all working to undo them at the individual and structural levels. But this takes time and we will all make mistakes in this process. If we focus on shaming those within our own groups who are working with us towards liberation, shutting them out instead of helping them grow, we are ignoring our own understanding of how oppression works— and we are all one step away from being canceled, ourselves. None of that is healthy and it is not going to help us get free.
None of these arguments are to make excuses for bad behavior or to dismiss the very real harm committed by these folks. That’s why accountability is so important.
Personally, when incidents like this occur, if the individual admits their wrongdoing, provides a sincere apology, and demonstrates a commitment to real change (whether that means therapy, training, or stepping down from a role), I am often willing to forgive them, at least eventually. But the commitment has to be real and exhibited over time.
A true community accountability process would involve the person harmed and others involved in the incident or behavior, and possibly friends or community members. However, in our litigious society, this type of process isn’t usually recommended by lawyers who encourage their clients to deny wrongdoing. Plus, who is part of the community when someone is famous around the world and their behavior is role modeling well beyond those directly involved?
You may be disappointed by the lack of answers about how to respond here, but that was never the point. The point is to think about the complexity of our value judgments of art, artists, and the systems in which they exist. When we jump to make conclusions about any artist’s behavior, there are many things to take into consideration, but ultimately, it’s up to each of us how we deal with our relationships to the art and artist, but it’s crucial to understand that our judgments don’t exist in a vacuum and are likely related to our own experiences and biases. My hope is that we can think critically, and hold some of these contradictions together, while recognizing where our biases come into play when we are grappling with our own monsters in the future.