This week Chris Brown had his visa application to tour in Australia formally denied on “character grounds”. He was due to perform across the country as part of his One Hell of a Nite world tour, but on Friday September 25, he was issued a formal notice saying that he was unlikely to be given a visa due to his past record of domestic violence. Despite touring Australia twice - in 2011 and 2012 - he now has 28 days to present a case as to why he should be granted a visa, after which a final decision will be made. Representatives for Chris Brown remain hopeful that he will be allowed to enter but, all things considered, it doesn’t look good. The UK barred him in 2010 and the government of New Zealand has indicated he won’t be allowed there, either.
Now, let me get one thing straight: I don’t care much for Chris Brown. The man can dance like a future robo-Prince, I’ll give him that, and the fact that he is one of the few self-made pop stars in the business shouldn’t be underestimated. Mostly, though, I think his music is trite and he seems to be one of those artists that survives on the second-hand greatness of tracks he just happens to feature on. But even that smidgen of credibility rapidly falls by the wayside when I think about the state of Rihanna’s face after he beat the shit out of her in 2009. Is it easier for me to reject him as a human being because I don’t particularly like his music? Probably. Could I put my hand up and say the same about N.W.A given their collected history of violence against women? Honestly, no. We can condemn an artist's behaviour, but our opinion of a person doesn’t necessarily always line up with our opinion of their creative output. And this is where things get messy.
The decision to initially reject Brown’s visa came after an Australian advocacy group called GetUp created an online petition demanding for him to be banned from entering the country. The petition states: "If we stand by and do nothing while [Chris Brown] performs around the country (even if we don't have the faintest interest in Brown's career or pop music in general) we are implicitly sending the message that if you brutally beat a woman, in a short amount of time you will be forgiven, or even celebrated."
Totally reasonable. From Dr. Dre to Dr. Luke, violence against women is often brushed aside or else utterly under the carpet, particularly when the accused is a man in a position of fame, power, and/or influence. So there is definitely something to be said for taking gradual steps, making examples out of people as we work towards a culture where we don’t, actually, slam a man for beating up a woman one minute and then turn around and give him a Grammy. But when all it takes is an online petition with a few thousand signatures for an artist to be blacklisted (in this case, just over 14,000 - which, to put that into perspective, is almost 100,000 less than the petition to stop Kanye West headlining Glastonbury), you have to wonder how fair the vetting system is. When a country’s immigration policy is informed by even a small group of lobbyists and there is no blanket procedure that makes sure all artists are considered on the same grounds when it comes to their “character”, then it feels a bit like some artists are being given an ethical pull over and pat down while others are allowed to go about their very similar business. Doesn't this set a naive precedent for the way we decide who is acceptable and who we simply don’t like the look of? Especially when the red flags against an artist are being raised not by actual policy making, but from the opinions of people who just never liked them to begin with.
Chris Brown isn’t the first example of an artist having had their visa application denied for reasons pertaining to violence against women. As we all know, in July this year Tyler, The Creator had his Australian visa application rejected following a two year campaign by the feminist group Collective Shout, who had been pushing to ban Tyler from performing on the grounds that his lyrics promote violence and misogyny against women. (The group also lobbied for Snoop Dogg’s visa to be revoked in 2014 on the grounds that his lyrics “glorified violence against women”, although in that instance they were unsuccessful.) A month later, Tyler was banned from playing in the UK for a period ranging from 3-5 years, under the pretense that his music “fosters hatred with views that seek to provoke others to terrorist acts” and “encourages violence and intolerance of homosexuality.” This made Tyler, The Creator the first ever musician to be banned from the UK because of his lyrics.
Both GetUp and Collective Shout have based their campaigns on denying visas to touring celebrities with a history of domestic violence, or whose lyrics can be read as inciting misogyny. In their view, it’s a way of sending a message that violence against women will not be tolerated in Australia, which would be completely reasonable if it weren’t for the fact that all their campaigns seem to be concerned primarily with the alleged misogyny of rap and R&B.
Eminem performed a stadium tour of Australia in 2014, Black Sabbath will tour in 2016 even though Ozzy Osbourne was arrested for domestic violence in 1989; Motley Crue took their farewell tour to the country despite frontman Vince Neil being arrested for domestic violence twice and penning lyrics about a school girl giving him a blow job in the back of a car; death metal band Cannibal Corpse (whose songs include “Entrails Ripped From A Virgin’s Cun”t and “Stripped, Raped and Strangled”) regularly tour Australia, Fleetwood Mac are currently touring there even though Carol Ann Harris, singer/guitarist Lindsey Buckingham’s girlfriend of 8 years, published a memoir in 2009 which, among other things, included allegations of domestic abuse while she was with him; and The Decemberists - whose “A Cautionary Song” is a three-minute sea shanty about a single mother who prostitutes herself to a gang of sailors to make money to feed her kids - will appear at Byron Bay Bluesfest early next year. Not one of these lobby groups seem too bothered about any of them, though.
When Australian music site Tone Deaf questioned Collective Shout about the inconsistency of its campaigns, Coralie Alison said, “There are many additional campaigns that we could run if we had more resources.” Similarly, when asked why there was little said about Maroon 5’s video for “Animals” (labelled a “stalker’s fantasy”) in comparison to their aggressive action against Kanye West’s “monstrous woman hating video”, Alison claimed they “didn’t have capacity to run a campaign at the time”.
Speaking to the Guardian about the decision to reject Chris Brown’s visa, newly appointed women's minister, Michaelia Cash said, “People need to understand if you are going to commit domestic violence and then you want to travel around the world, there are going to be countries that say to you, ‘You cannot come in because you are not of the character we expect in Australia’.”
Cooke goes on to say that the “high-profile example” of Brown having his visa denied was a “good sign of the times changing”. But is it, really? When you look at the artists that have been denied entry, the only thing it’s a sign of is cherry picking on behalf of lobbyists and knee-jerking on behalf of the immigration department that is inconsistent at best and racist at worst. Feminists should be deeply uncomfortable with using a country’s immigration department to send their message. Especially when the wording of the petition: “No, Chris Brown. You're Not Welcome In Australia”, bears a disconcerting resemblance to the rhetoric used by the Australian Border Force in response to the Syrian refugee crisis: “No Way. You Will Not Make Australia Home”. And, instead, the level of controversy and media dialogue generated from Tyler and Chris Brown feuds like these can end up overshadowing what good work the Australian government is actually doing, like the suite of measures worth $100m to tackle sexual and domestic violence that were recently announced.
Still from Maroon 5's "Animals"
The same double standards can be seen in sports, too. Floyd Mayweather - who has pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges at least three separate times - was prevented from entering Australia this year because of his convictions. And yet, Greg Bird - a player for Australian rugby team Gold Coast Titans - was found guilty of assaulting his girlfriend by smashing a glass in her face and is now back in the NRL; South Sydney captain Greg Inglis was charged with assaulting his wife Sally Robinson but escaped conviction (and later appeared on the front page of the Courier-Mail with the headline “RESPECT” after Queensland won the State of Origin series), and The Sharks’ Ben Barba allegedly struck his partner so hard that bloodied photographs of her appeared in the Daily Telegraph in 2013 and he is now enjoying a career with another prominent team. I could go on, but the point is that when it comes to domestic violence and violence against women you won’t make progress by enforcing a system of selection based on hypocrisy and racism; making examples out of hip-hop and R&B artists while rock bands, indie groups and native sports celebrities go largely unchecked.
Chris Brown’s abuse of Rihanna remains terrible, as does the music industry’s passive attitude towards his crimes ever since, but if Australian lobby groups want to send a message that their country will not tolerate abusers then it must be a consistent one, rather than simply hurling bans at any artist they don’t personally like the idea of, citing incidents from as long as six years ago as support.
You can’t alter the fabric of an entire country by turning famous musicians into trophy stories. The problem of misogyny and violence against women does not start or end at border control, and any attempts to solve them shouldn’t be directed by someone’s personal taste in music. The problem is, and always will be, internal. And that’s true of anywhere, not just Australia. If you’re going to tackle the enduring legacy of violence against women then you need to do it through education, policy making, and by addressing what’s going on in your own backyard before pointing fingers in someone else’s, centering the focus of the entire problem around them. Big PR stunt “victories” like Tyler, The Creator and now probably Chris Brown are counter-productive. They make people feel like progress is being made, when actually nothing has been achieved, other than the spoiled evenings of a few thousand Chris Brown fans and an angry tour manager.
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