Russell Brand, a Culture of Entitlement
The investigation and allegations of sexual assault, rape and emotional abuse by Russell Brand included accounts from women of his alleged dangerous behaviour towards them and others over a seven-year period. The investigation involved medical records, freedom of information requests and access to messages and emails. Watching the documentary and reading the details of the investigation was harrowing, but the worst is that it was not surprising to many people. The Channel 4 dispatches programme was titled “In plain sight”, multiple commentators and articles have referred to it as an “open secret” in the entertainment industry for years. Why then, was it allowed to continue and why was he continuously promoted to the high profile he enjoyed? No doubt legal maneuvering and non-disclosure agreements played an extensive role in this, but the investigation speaks to a wider culture across the industry, and indeed society, which permits women to be seen as sexual objects and facilitates their objectification by influential men.
Having consumed a considerable amount of the commentary around this investigation, my mind keeps returning to the accounts in the programme which illustrated so starkly an absolute lack of responsibility, accountability and quite frankly, disregard, towards the pervasive nature of violence against women and an industry’s duty of care to women. The investigation included publicly known behaviour which is not illegal, but certainly adds to the environment of risk and hostility towards women. One woman describes her time working on a show with him and essentially feeling like she was his pimp. He would point to women he found attractive in the audience and she was tasked with introducing them. Again, that is not illegal, but certainly not in the job description. What culture is this facilitating?
The accusations made by four women further illustrate a potential culture of permission or denial. Nadia explained how she was allegedly raped, she screamed repeatedly and when she went to leave Bran’s home in LA, found a group of his co-workers outside his door, one of whom has since apologised for hearing her scream, but doing nothing about it.
Alice, spoke of her time working on a new show where Brand was to be the host. Her and others expressed their concerns about his behaviour, but the response was a suggestion that no women be hired as part of the crew team. It was apparently suggested that women change their behaviour and lose out on their career opportunities, to enable the man they accused to remain in a position of power and opportunity.
The only named comedian to give testimony in the investigation was Daniel Sloss. He spoke of other comedians being told to remove jokes or references in their sets if they were connected to Russell Brand’s alleged crimes. He explained how he would be at social gatherings with producers and executives who discussed these allegations and complaints, yet these would be the same people offering Brand more opportunities in TV and film.
Beyond the statements from women, there was the behaviour which was known to the public, live on air on Radio 2. Before the “prank” call to Andrew Sachs which led to 4,700 complaints and Brand’s resignation, he repeatedly made sexualised and inappropriate comments on air about a female newsreader, including an interview with Jimmy Saville where he suggested offering her to him, naked. These shows were pre-recorded, but still aired. These shows aired, and he continued to be employed. This harassment of a woman was public, yet his profile increased. When it is read in this way, it beggars belief how far the industry and, indeed, wider society, enabled him.
Some have called this a “tipping point” or a “moment of change,” but I’m afraid I remain sceptical. We have said that about several investigations and allegations of this kind whether in media, in politics, in medicine, we refer to it as x-industry’s me-too moment – but how many moments do we need, how many more women have to share their traumatic experiences before we see institutional and societal change?
There’s always a statement from those connected which will refer to about internal investigations, the need for learning and improved policies. But often there is little to no delivery after the spotlight has moved – what remains missing is accountability. In the examples alleged by the women in this investigation, they told producers, they spoke to someone within the company, but no formal complaint was raised, no consequences ensued – policies only work if people with any ounce of power take leadership and responsibility for putting them into practice. Instead, those around Brand appeared to be so deeply attached to his success and profile, their allegiances potentially lay more in cloaking his behaviour and making him, essentially, invincible rather than taking their obligations to those they employed seriously. Feminist campaigners have been calling this out for generations, it is utterly shameful that it continues.
Much like the culture of permission he enjoyed in “mainstream media” he has curated a new enabling culture through his social media channels. A culture which is ready to defend him, blame this on a coordinated attack and victim blame the women who come forward with these allegations. They shout online in the comments sections demanding to know why these women did not come forward at the time; all the while illustrating exactly the hostile, misogynistic culture which forces women’s silence.
In the investigation, there was a particular response received from one of the women when she approached someone to complain, a phrase which many women will have heard throughout their lives; “boys will be boys.” The first time I heard this was in high school, from someone who should have known better and done better. Every time such a phrase is used, every time a woman’s concerns about harassment or fear are dismissed, a culture of permission is enabled. This case is about one particular comedian, but its details reflect a wider, systemic problem. The time is long overdue for accountability and genuine change.
The contents of this story might affect readers who have experienced sexual violence. If you need support please contact Rape Crisis Scotland: https://www.rapecrisisscotland.org.uk/contact/
The creative industries seems to have a particular susceptibility to fostering spaces of abuse.
The most recent ‘shock-horror’/titillating revelations about Russell Brand in the mainstream media are hardly… well, shocking any longer. There have been decades of discussion about men leveraging the power that comes with their celebrity status to abuse and silence women; we express our moral outrage, then… nothing. The problem has less to do with Russell Brand’s well-documented narcissistic persona and behaviour, on which monstrosity much of the media coverage seems to be salaciously focusing, and more to do with the whole matrix of official and informal relations within which power is exercised in the culture industry and within our society generally, which our serial moral outrage leaves untouched.
The creative industries employ a disproportionate number of precarious freelancers, which circumstance creates huge imbalances of power between producers and crew within those industries. Those industries, in both their live and media forms, continue to be male dominated, which means those power imbalances within them are gendered. Is it any surprise that women continue to encounter sexually abusive behaviour and misogyny in the creative industries in particular with startling regularity?
One of the reasons that the creative industries are particularly toxic environments is that their toxicity is structural rather than incidental; its abusive interactions are baked into the ‘establishment’ or power structures of the industries themselves. For example, there’s an almost peculiar necessity in the creative industries to build personal relationships with producers to ensure future work and generally ‘get on’. This makes it simultaneously easier for those in power (mostly men) to engage in and obscure their sexually aggressive behaviour and misogyny, and harder for women to speak up against it.
The need for informal relationship-building in the creative industries also makes ‘banter’ a default form of interaction, and the problem with ‘banter’ is that it can normalise problematic behaviour and/or mask it with humour. ‘It’s just Russell being Russell; i.e. his cheeky wee comic self’ sort of thing. The constant testing of and pushing at boundaries in banter means that, when behaviour does cross the line and become abusive, the usual defence for that transgression is that ‘it was just a joke’. Men in all aspects of society widely use this defence to excuse the impact that their transgressive words and actions have on others.
As well as calling out such behaviours as Russell Brand is alleged to have exhibited as and when they occur, the creative industries need more structural reform to remove the imbalances of power that are baked into in them. They need to depend less on freelancing and informal relationship-building in their employment practices, and they need to redress the gender imbalance in its production processes.
I watched the Dispatches programme and that was essentially my take too. I don’t watch much comedy, reality shows or listen to radio, and the examples that did not lead to sacking were as disturbing as the one that did. The aggression in the lawyer’s letter was plain. Complicity is conspiracy in these cases, it seems, in a global terrorist project to keep women and girls subordinate. I don’t use the word ‘terrorism’ lightly, but it is the only term that fits, even if no bombs are going off and misogynist hate can often be more of a drip-by-drip torture. Again, we need to support, encourage and protect whistleblowers. And expose, challenge and bring justice to not only the main abusers but their many facilitators.
‘Terrorism’ is the appropriate word. Terrorism is maintaining people in a state of fear for political purposes. Misogynistic behaviour is clearly a form of terrorism insofar as its perpetrated to put women in their supposedly ‘rightful’ place in the esablishment through acts of macro- and microaggression.
I’m not so sure that there’s any ‘conspiracy’ behind this terrorism, though. It’s just something men do, either because its in their nature (which I also doubt) or because they’ve been assimilated or raised into a prevailing culture of misogyny (which I strongly suspect). This is what we mean when we say that misogyny is a structural rather than a merely moral problem in our society (and still less an ‘occult’ problem, pertaining to the agency of hidden actors), which requires structural changes to fix it rather than mere moral exhortation or individual witch-hunting.