russell brand makes me sick

I am hoping that in class tomorrow the only thing I am supposed to have gleaned from Russell Brand’s piece on the syllabus is what not to say and how not to act.

I was sick of this article by the time I finished the very first sentence, which reads: “when I was asked to edit an issue of The New Statesman I said yes because it was a beautiful woman asking me.” He repeats this again in the interview we were asked to watch, implying that the only way he can be motivated to be politically engaged is with the promise of sex. If you are reading this you may be thinking: well that isn’t exactly fair, we all do weird and elaborate things for sex sometimes. You’re right, and if this were the only place in which his misogyny appeared, I may have let it slide. (Just kidding.)

Brand predicts that we may accuse him of being slightly hypocritical when he writes, “I should qualify my right to even pontificate on such a topic […] How dare I, from my velvet chaise lounge, in my Hollywood home like Kubla Khan, drag my limbs from my harem to moan about the system?” This is a question I asked myself as well. Brand goes on to describe how exactly he benefits from the current capitalist climate when he writes that it is a system that has “posited me on a lilo (British word meaning: A type of inflatable mattress which is used as a bed or for floating on water, according to Google) made of thighs in an ocean filled with honey and foie gras’d my Essex arse with undue praise and money.” He is a hypocrite, but he wants us to know that he’s aware of that fact. Capitalism has given him so much. He has wealth, he has women, he has good food and he has a shinning reputation. For all his “activism,” and his talk of the dangers of capitalism, which according to him is, “convenient for the tiny, greedy, myopic sliver of the population that those outmoded ideas serve,” he has, in one sentence, equated women with wealth and goods. In Brand’s revolutionary vision there is no more class disparity but women are still a commodity.

Without a hint of irony, with a confessional but unapologetic tone Brand writes, “Like most of the superficially decent things I do in life, my motivation was to impress women more than to aid the suffering.” (Shortly after he refers to his “inner womaniser”) Here he is obviously trying to illustrate his transition from childish and selfish to Altruistic and Thoughtful by showing us how he Used to Be, before he learned of the severity of poverty. This occurs in the following paragraphs when he visits Africa and must refer to it as Armageddon. (Failing, of course, to acknowledge the obviously colonialist implications of the trip itself and the rhetoric he employs when writing about it.) Brand likely included that passage to demonstrate to his reader that he is introspective, malleable, capable of change and most of all, relatable. That may be true but there is nothing I can feel upon reading this apart from revolted.

To be clear, there are many things he says that I agree with. No large shift will occur if we rely on our current system. Up until this past October I had also never voted for similar reasons. I voted last year due to what I considered to be very special circumstances (read: Stephen Harper.) I don’t think that the government, or corporations want to support or even accommodate low-income peoples and families and this is a problem as equally pressing as sexism and misogyny. Yes, we have a responsibility to our planet which we are completely neglecting. That said, I have no desire to listen to or be in dialogue with Russell Brand. It seems to me that living in his particular vision would mean that there would be equal distribution of wealth and that each would have according to his need, but my need to be seen as more than the way I am presenting and to be treated as more than simply an object would remain unmet.

No thank you.