It’s no secret that America loves watching a famous woman implode. In the last ten years, celebrity and entertainment journalists have brought eager audiences a bald Britney Spears, reeling from a failed marriage; the descent of Disney-idol Lindsay Lohan into the throes of addiction; the slow and intimately covered death of Amy Winehouse; and Amanda Bynes’ fight with bipolar disorder, struggles repurposed as gaffes and faux pas.
Coverage of all of these women has subsided as of late, however. Britney is reclaiming her career and image with a new album and a residency in Vegas. Tabloids have given up on the possibility of a Lindsay-Lohan-redemption-arc, and so have set her personal life aside as something to mock in the infrequent reviews of her sporadic film output. Amy Winehouse is dead. Amanda Bynes isn’t considered a big enough star for her personal struggles to garner all that much attention. In their place is Azealia Banks, who, over the last five years, has become bloggers’ and music writers’ favorite font of celebrity drama, when Kim Kardashian isn’t remotely detonating Taylor Swift’s image via Snapchat.
And Banks has had her fair share of public struggles, to the point that it’s almost a universally held belief that her so-called volatility on social media and her tendency to find herself the punchline of an ugly half-decade running joke will be her legacy much more so than any of her fantastic musical output.
Just this weekend, Banks―who had recently receded from social media after a particularly public spat on Twitter led to the deactivation of her account―re-entered the public eye after being bounced from a dinner party hosted by Russell Crowe that she had been attending with Wu Tang mastermind RZA. Over the past few days various accounts of who did and said what have come out, with TMZ recently chasing Banks down to hear her side of events.
I will not go into the details and accusations here. If you are interested, they are easy to find. However, I am hoping you won’t. In fact, that strikes at the core of what I think should be our takeaway from this latest incident. What is that? Well, to paraphrase a relatively infamous viral video: Leave Azealia Banks alone. Leave her alone. Stop it. This is getting absurd and cruel. Just leave her alone.
Because I do think that Banks has reached a point where her public profile overshadows her artistic output. And while that’s truly unfortunate given her talent, I do not think that’s the central tragedy of current situation. At its core, I think the thrill we get from watching Azealia Banks and writing about Azealia Banks and reading whatever new snarkily written takedown of Azealia Banks is currently making the rounds, demonstrates a fundamental lack of empathy.
Now some would argue that Banks is the wrong person around whom to build this case, and it’s easy to understand why some people feel that way. In particular, Banks has been defined by her abusive use of social media, her tendency for homophobic language, her willingness to go after, not just celebrities, but random people who happen to have spoken ill of her. That her most recent incident on social media ended with her attacking Zayn Malik and being told off by 14-year-old Skai Jackson of Disney Channel fame might give you an idea of the lack of goodwill that currently exists for her. Her most recent appearance in the news was met, not with outrage, but with a sort of cold bemusement: affected disinterest mixed with a sort of sadistic glee at being able to go in on her once again.
And I want to make it clear that I am not wholesale defending Azealia Banks’ actions or comments. She has often been hateful, and her temper has resulted in a number of unsympathetic physical confrontations. She spit on an elderly couple on an airplane. I get it. She’s not the most lovable defendant, and we love to turn on an imperfect victim. But I also don’t think that our continually bringing up her faults as an excuse for indulging the tendency to ridicule her is at all reasonable. Back in May, Skai Jackson called her out. Did the entire internet need to as well?
Since Azealia Banks’ “antics” have been less sympathetic than those of Spears or Lohan, the media and people as a whole feel less compelled to show any sort of tact when addressing her. Furthermore, over and over again detractors argue that she has put herself in the spotlight, and so the negative attention is simply her just desserts, as if it were impossible to just ignore the fracas.
Because Azealia Banks is a potentially mentally ill woman of color she represents the absolute perfect target for white bloggers. She is described in ways that paint her as a basket case, and an animal, while critics act as though it is their journalistic duty to drag her back into the frame to endure yet another round of self-righteous punishment in the digital town square. These articles and blog posts that pile one on top of the other are unnecessary. They exist solely because Azealia Banks is the ideal figure for us to hate, one who we can bend to fit any number of ingrained prejudices and stereotypes, and one who has made enough mistakes that we can justify our cruelty and fixation if anyone happens to call us out.
So, I say, again: leave Azealia Banks alone. As someone who has suffered from mental illness, and who has acted impulsively and temperamentally in ways that I often came to regret, I can tell you that public shaming will not make her less likely to mess up. Rather, through attention and increasingly mean-spirited language, we only make it harder for her to live her life, and potentially get the help she needs.
I think people know this, too. I think that nearly everyone is aware that we could simply let Azealia Banks fade into the background for a while. I also think we are absolutely addicted to the ability to take out our ingrained racism and misogyny on an imperfect victim, one whose failings obscure the root of what we’re doing.
There have been plenty of “tortured” artists who suffered psychologically and acted unpleasantly, who find themselves at the receiving end of quite a bit of praise. Jimmy Page raped an underage girl and then hid her in his house until their relationship was no longer illegal, but, you know, rock & roll, and whatnot. Norman Mailer stabbed his wife, but society paints his volatility as something exciting and admirable: the natural, virile result of nobly wrestling with genius. My own favorite author, the late David Foster Wallace, once considered hiring an ex-con to kill the husband of writer Mary Karr, with whom he was infatuated. But that is not what people talk about when they talk about Wallace. Yeah, Robert Shaw drank so much on the set of Jaws that he blacked out during takes, but if Lindsey Lohan shows up to set late one more time her career is over.
The reason for this is simple: the archetype of the hedonistic or “tortured artist” (one of the few ways culture feels comfortable expressing something like empathy towards the mentally ill) is reserved for white men. Remaining in the realm of literature for a moment, there is perhaps no better example of this than Sylvia Plath, whose depression, which led her to the same end that we uncomfortably lionize in writers like Hemingway, is often used as a punchline. Hemingway was a brilliant man fighting against his demons to make great art. Plath was a basket case who stuck her head in an oven. She also wrote The Bell Jar.
So where Russell Crowe can have a reputation of getting drunk and getting into brawls that the media treats as an almost charming manly quirk (do you remember when, in 2005, Crowe attacked a hotel clerk with the lobby telephone, and the New York Times attributed it to his “bad-boy image” in the lede? Or when he attacked his own body guard in 2004? Or in 2002 when he attacked the owner of the New Zealand rugby team in a bathroom? Or when he verbally attacked TV executive Malcolm Gerrie backstage at the BAFTAs for cutting off his speech that same year? Or when he headbutted his costar in the musical “Blood Brothers” in 1988? But I’m sure Banks was the cause of the weekend altercation and Crowe was just a peach) Banks lashing out as a result of potential mental illness, or the way the media treats her, or the oppressive and constant presence of misogynoir will always be spoken of as the temper tantrums of a mean spirited nut. To put it as bluntly as possible: we crown Norman Mailer, a flawed and tortured genius; we label Azealia Banks as a crazy bitch.
And our crude relationship with Azealia Banks―not as just an artist and celebrity, but as a black woman who is an artist and celebrity―is visible even among her defenders. Because the most positive thing you’ll hear about Azealia Banks in any given write-up is what a shame it is to see such a talented artist devolve into the Charybdis of Twitter. Which is absurd and gross in and of itself.
What is happening to Azealia Banks is heartbreaking and tragic, but not because she is talented. What is happening to Azealia Banks is heartbreaking and tragic because she is a person who is clearly in pain, who is struggling and suffering, and clearly does not know how best to cope with it all. And misogynoir is at the root of this as well. Because as Banks herself has pointed out in any number of the fantastic and insightful interviews she’s given, American (white) media is thrilled to circle around black Americans and soak up the thrill of their art and culture, but when the going gets tough, when the art dries up, they have no intention of sticking around.
One can see this best in an interview Banks did for Hot 97 back in 2014. She speaks about the pressure put on her as a black woman, especially in the wake of artists like Iggy Azealia, who swoop in to steal and appropriate, and who can get away with a mediocre product, while Banks and other black women are held to a standard of near perfection. She talks about what it’s like to see what she’s worked her whole life on, fought her record company for, snatched out from under her. If you don’t think watching your identity being ripped away from you, xeroxed and resold might take a serious toll, I’m surprised you stuck with me for this long.
Leave Azealia Banks alone. She has paid her dues. She is constantly paying them. You don’t need to come in to extract your own personal cut. Show Banks the empathy that greeted Kid Cudi when he spoke out about his need to go into rehab for depression, and do not ask yourself whether she deserves it. Because there’s a difference between holding someone accountable and waiting for blood in the water. There’s a difference between criticizing a flaw and tearing a person apart. Azealia Banks has hurt a lot of people, but none of these articles from TMZ and Perez Hilton are looking to get to the heart of that. They’re simply looking to get that pound of flesh we demand from women of color, and claim they’re just collecting recompense.
Are you tired of Azealia Banks? Leave her alone. Are you exhausted from reading about Azealia Banks? Leave her alone. Are you sick of writing clickbait pieces about Azealia Banks? Leave her alone. You don’t need to forgive her or excuse everything she’s ever said. Simply, let her heal. Let her be. Stop with this “’crazy black woman’ expelled from classy white man’s dinner party” nonsense. Stop reposting. Stop commenting. Stop perpetuating the idea that this woman’s implosion is just her own fault, and for your entertainment. Neither is the case. Both have long gone rotten.