“Where Them Bloggers At?”: Reflections on Rihanna, Accountability, and Survivor Subjectivity

Through objectification--the process by which people are dehumanized, made ghostlike, given the status of Other--an image created by the oppressor replaces the actual being. The actual being is then denied speech, denied self-definition, self-realization; and overarching all this, denied selfhood--which is after all the point of objectification. --Michelle Cliff (1990) DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, DESPITE ITS BRAND, IS USUALLY NOT CONSTRAINED TO A domestic sphere or a zone of privacy. (1) It spills over the tenuous boundaries of an abusive relationship, implicating a public who share a knowing, witness the shadows, or sustain the consequences from the violence. Bound to a situation they cannot control, others often attempt to manage the disquiet of domestic violence by crafting overly confident explanations about the relationship and investing in the comfort of a coherent narrative about something that defiantly resists coherence. People who share community with individuals within an abusive relationship tend to provide the most primary and impactful response. Yet their own biases, premises, and needs frequently drive their evaluations and choices, which puts demands on how the principal target of violence and the person responsible for a pattern of violence are defined and narrated. How can survivors of domestic violence lay claim to the subjective accounts of their own lives as they appeal to their communities for support and repair? How can a community that mobilizes for an intervention create the testimonial space that survivors need to articulate complicated, messy, and contradictory descriptions of their experiences? Moreover, how are community-based accountability efforts imagined in scenarios with survivors who are vulnerable to being evaluated through a prism of historically rooted and institutionally reinforced discourses about the impossibility of their violability? (2) Consider the fervent public response to the February 2009 news that Chris Brown had brutally assaulted his girlfriend, Rihanna, and abandoned her in a car on the side of the road on the night before their scheduled televised performance at the Grammy Awards. The online media quickly and extensively covered the event. They rushed to capitalize on a potential scandal between two young, beautiful, black, and famous pop stars. This sensationalist coverage inadvertently created an almost unprecedented opportunity for a broad-based, prolonged, and well-archived discussion about domestic violence. (3) As a regular reader of celebrity and political blogs, I followed these discussions with special attention to the actions discussants believed Chris Brown should take to account for his apparent involvement in the violence. However, in the ongoing online commentary and debate about the relationship between Brown and Rihanna, the focus stubbornly remains on Rihanna. Specifically, discussions seemed fixated on the theme of Rihanna's accountability. What had she done to provoke Brown that night? What is she teaching girls about staying in abusive relationships? Why isn't she prosecuting her abusive boyfriend? How could she collaborate with a rapper known for explicitly misogynistic lyrics? What kind of treatment does she expect when she admits to enjoying BDSM (erotic bondage and discipline)? Feminist, political, black, and mainstream celebrity blogs demanded that Rihanna account for "her role" in what happened, "her responsibility" to young women, and "her respect" for herself as a black woman and survivor of domestic violence. As Rihanna's choices came under the evaluative glare of the public and paparazzi, accountability for the survivor, not the abuser, was much more compelling to online investigators. I suspect that offline sources mirrored that focus. The following reflection concentrates on how the online arena of blogs and YouTube interpreted Rihanna's experience of violence, her persona, and her choices, as well as how an online community of invested spectators imagined and pursued the project of accountability. …