This past week the LAPD leaked photos of Rihanna taken a short time after she was beaten up by Chris Brown. The rumor after the Grammys and before the picture was leaked was that Rihanna had two large bumps on either side of her head which looked like "devil's horns" and that she was strangled to unconsciousness and then left by Chris Brown. While it has not been verified that she was strangled to unconsciousness, the leaked photo shows both the bumps mentioned in the rumer and signifigant bruising around Rihanna's neck. What Chris Brown did was horrible, and I was deeply disturbed by it. I know that domestic violence occurs everyday all over the world, but it was startling to see a face that I know so well be so damaged.
I also happened to have been a fan of Chris Brown, up until a few weeks ago. Now I'm struggling with how to feel towards him. The way this situation relates to Sociolgy is that he and his family were abused by his step-father. He has talked about this openly in the past.
We know from theories about socialization and modeling in Social Psychology that children learn what is modeled for them. What a child is exposed to before eight years old permanantly alters his or her personality. Children of abusers are likely to marry or date abusers or become abusers themselves.
How much should I let this fact affect my opinion of Chris Brown? It doesn't lessen my disgust at what he did, or my sympathy for Rihanna.
I guess I think that at the end of the day, its up to each individual to decide who he or she wants to be. We are all equipped to develop a second nature. I am very hesitant to medicalize rage and violence. They are much like other human actions that we blame on biology, which are actually caused by a lack of self control.
One can only justify his or her actions for so long. Chris Brown is a 19 year old man, and no matter what abuse he experienced as a child, I hold him fully responsible for his actions. There is nothing to blame but his lack of self-control.
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2 comments:
Agreed! Given that, like you said, violent behavior is under one's own deliberate control and not, for instance, under the remote control of one's step-father, it make's no sense to excuse Chris's attack by reference to his past beatings. If anything, it shows that he must have known exactly what a terrible thing he was doing, having himself been the victim of such violence.
What he got from his childhood experience, besides pain and emotional trauma, was knowledge. The knowledge that superior size and strength give a man power over women and children, and that such power can be used to frighten, coerce, and intimidate them when the man is too drunk, high, emotional, or stupid to be reasonable.
This blog needs an educational disclaimer...today I was busted using information gathered by reading this blog in a conversation with the blog's author. I sugguest, "Warning, you might learn if you read Weberian not Bavarian. If you do not want to learn please navigate away...unless you are illiterate, then you may remain on this page and continue faking."
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