The West-Sheen Test

Race and the rights of celebrities

There are several variations of a festive card that says “I love you like Kanye West loves Kanye West” available for purchase online at fine Etsy retailers. There are even mugs and shirts. As of this writing, we at Overture cannot confirm the existence of an “I love you like Charlie Sheen loves Charlie Sheen” card. Please don’t be quick to blame your would-be-Hallmarks. They must have their reasons. But aren’t West and Sheen from the same branch of American entertainment’s finest?

They throw tantrums at the frequency expected of petulant five-year-olds. While West grabs the mic from Taylor Swift at the MTV awards, Sheen pulls a knife on his dentist. Sheen declares he has tiger blood; West calls himself a god. And then there are the Twitter rants. The listicle material is endless; the celebrity ego is palpable. And if the egomania is self-love, it is extreme. One might even wager that the two have silently agreed to a contest in which they attempt to spark more media outrage than the other.

Hollywood’s top pop psychologists don’t have a firsthand look at under-the-table celebrity compacts. But to make things easier for the general public, perpetually baffled by the hubris plastered across tabloid front pages, they’ve been kind enough to psychoanalyze both West and Sheen.

Kanye’s wild behavior is attributed to an attention-seeking and narcissistic personality, while Sheen’s is attributed to a mood disorder. Dr. Deborah Serani reminds us,

“we need to be mindful that Mr. Sheen is a human being first, and should not be used as an object for mocking, moral outrage or stigma.”

Dr. Rachel Kitson likens Kanye to a Facebook app: “he uses random words or catchphrases of words he’s spooled together, typically a mix of highbrow and lowbrow, and assumes that there is meaning to be had.”

But he’s a human being first, right?

From King Kong to King Kunta

Not necessarily. Popular depictions of black men in American media tend towards the gorilla branch of the primate family, what we might know as King Kong portrayals. These dehumanize black people by enforcing stereotypes of savagery, equating them with a subhuman species:

“they see a black man with a white woman at the top floor, they gon’ come to kill King Kong — ” -Kanye West, “Black Skinhead”

Obviously, we cut Charlie a little more slack. We interview his family about his behavior. We worry about his well-being, sending prayers and making armchair prescriptions on his behalf. Sheen marrying into the Kardashian family and living in a penthouse would be innocuous, obnoxious at worst. For a black man, however, to love himself, is incongruent enough to make an entertaining card. For him to even make his way to the penthouse and take in his own hands the symbols of success that white celebrities enjoy severely threatens the status quo.

The media considers Kanye an amusing Facebook app or an ape dressed in Margiela, while Kanye considers himself a god. Yet there must certainly be something human to him as well, the way Charlie is a complicated man with a complicated background. Why oversimplify? Well, as 15 million Trump supporters will tell you, people abandon caution, tact and delicacy when confronted with the intimidating, uncomfortable issue of race.

We’re Not Against Rap, But We’re Against Those Thugs

While we vilify crack era drug dealers, we romanticize the Al Capones of Prohibition and our 21st century Walter Whites. White drug dealers get the benefit of the doubt; black drug dealers possess a severe moral failing. Biggie understood this phenomenon:

“People look at you like you’s the user, sellin’ drugs to all the losers […] but they don’t know about your stress-filled days / baby’s on the way, mad bills to pay — ”

Hip-hop probably does portray crime, violence, and indulgent bacchanalia more than other popular genres of music, but I’ll be damned if country music isn’t also preoccupied with young people riding around in their beloved automobiles, toting guns, drinking water of the fire persuasion and having an tubthumping good time. Nonetheless, in taking the stance that hip-hop promotes violence with its no-good rabblerouser noise, one would be wise to watch the finger that points. When Ice Cube raps about killing police, is he the sole instigator of anti-police violence? Or is one handful of rhymes a symptom of a broader system that sanctions police brutality against young black Americans?

It is more cognitively efficient to attribute people’s behaviors to their personalities than to search for external influences. Social psychologists call this pattern the fundamental attribution error. We tend to reach for salient, immediate explanations — usually that others are at fault for their own mistakes and possess some dispositional flaw. To hell with social context. By contrast, we judge ourselves too charitably, excusing missteps (ethical or otherwise) to environmental factors. Think about West as narcissist and Sheen as poor troubled misunderstood actor: the former diagnoses a character flaw, while the latter suggests external cause and provides grounds for pardon and sympathy. And when fundamental attribution error applies to entire groups of people, we call it “ultimate attribution error,” which is the key to understanding systemic prejudice.

Dr. Calvin O. Butts famously declared, “we’re not against rap, but we’re against those thugs.” But he misunderstood that those “thugs” rap because their socioeconomic conditions don’t afford them access to high-culture forms of personal expression. (Ask Rahm Emmanuel what he thinks about funding a violin and weekly music lessons for every student in inner-city Chicago.)

Undoubtedly, the cultural scale is tipped against black prosperity. Hip-hop simply reflects that broad American truth. When Jay-Z, Oprah and Will Smith do triumph over the odds, we call them celebrities. We read about them in the tabloids. We gaze at exclusive paparazzi snaps of their outfits. Sometimes they look fly in those outfits. Black people can be celebrities too.

But as far as they stand in the spotlight, do they have it much better? At this plateau, do they, as celebrities rather than as black Americans, have any right to how they are portrayed in the media?

Neither West nor Sheen is godly, or pure, or good. Perhaps both are predisposed to pull socially unacceptable stunts, or perhaps both are human, flawed and simply positioned in the spotlight such that their flaws are always underscored. Have you ever pissed behind a dumpster during a 2 a.m. stumble home? I would be mortified if every instance of my public urination were picked up, magnified and scrutinized by the media. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be too.

This may well be what the life unglamorous looks like for celebrities. And somewhere between flawed celebrity behavior and the general public’s outrage, someone is playing up Kanye’s missteps more than Charlie’s. We’re far from yesterday’s minstrel shows — but not that far.

You Have the Right to Remain Blinded in the Spotlight

What would we expect of a black man in a position of celebrity similar to Charlie Sheen’s? How would Kanye act such that we wouldn’t make mocking him a sport? Would he keep his mouth shut, or proclaim “George Bush loves black people?” What satisfies the public?

Is this related to why the American public exalts MLK, while Malcolm X gets an 8th grade textbook footnote? Is a black American not allowed to be angry?

Twenty years ago, social psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson proposed that the risk of confirming negative racial stereotypes hindered black students’ test performance. This is stereotype threat. Once a stereotype is set, the stereotyped group is bound by its parameters, without escape.

Because stereotypes are so ingrained in culture, all actions of a stereotyped group occur a posteriori. And because stereotypes about black males are so pervasive, Kanye, Malcolm, and others play into and reinforce the savage brute stereotype when they are angry, even with perfectly legitimate cause. Conversely, if they act calmly, their behavior is flagged as reaction to the stereotype — conscious, calculated and even insincere attempts to defy the image.

This shapes the lose-lose: let’s call it a stereotype trap. Stereotype robs a group of agency beyond the purview of the often negative expectations set for them. By simple merit of existing after the formation of a stereotype, people of groups absent vast power can only behave bound by stereotypical parameters.

Imagine, for a second, that Malcolm X tries to tone down his angry rhetoric because the King Kong portrayal tints his image and threatens his credibility with the public.

Now he’s just pandering; he’s selling out, losing his edge.

If he tones down his anger to appease a white public, and an event worth being angry about happens, the media will needle him for equivocating or for lacking fortitude.

See, they can’t even hold their own community together!

It’s an odious game of monkey (King Kong) in the middle. Any budge in consistency is reason enough to discredit Malcolm.

Systemic racism is at its most effortless here: it’s set-and-forget. You don’t need an active KKK, or any active prejudice — the stereotype informs the reactive rhetoric of the media and the public such that complacent status quo maintenance alone corners black Americans. What they’re stereotyped for is the very behavior they cannot perform, because the ground is already staked out (colonized, even?) by that stereotype. What they’re expected to do is exactly what they’re precluded from doing, with or without agency.

The stereotype trap holds for women and other minorities. Over a century ago, Sigmund Freud offered the virgin-whore dichotomy (or, Madonna-whore complex): if a woman abstains from sex, she’s called a prude. If she exercises sexual agency, she’s branded a whore or a slut. We shame women for sexual freedoms that men already enjoy.

Michael J. Fox and Gary Busey also illustrate the application of a double standard. Fox has Parkinson’s; Busey sustained permanent brain damage following a motorcycle accident. Though we don’t joke about Fox’s condition, we do poke fun at Busey. The contrast here highlights our intuitions about mental illness: perhaps few people make fun of Fox because Parkinson’s doesn’t affect his mind, whereas mental instability is punishable not as a medical flaw, but a personal one.

As for West, he is now a father and a family man. Yet, we still make fun of him; even among his fans, it’s become common to hear “I respect him as an artist, but I don’t like him as a person” as if we’ve actually met the guy and are great judges of his character. It’s not wrong that we find West funny. (“Sometimes I get emotional over fonts” will forever be hilarious.) But when media coverage grants sexual agency to men but not women, lampoons Busey but not Fox, or seeks explanation for Sheen’s behavior but only scratches the surface for West, it represents larger systemic agents that treat two demographics unequally. We come to a more comprehensive understanding of societal values when we recognize these trends.

I Gotta Testify

So how do we tip the scale back in the right direction?

Consider the Bechdel-Wallace test. The test benchmarks the presence of women in film and provides a rough indicator of cinematic gender discrepancies. To pass the Bechdel-Wallace test, a film must: a) have at least two women in it, b) who talk to each other, c) about something besides a man. This year, a mere 60% passed.

Similarly, a West-Sheen test would provide a metric of racial disparities in media portrayal and public perceptions of celebrities. Perhaps, a pair of celebrities — one black and one white, must be exalted or lambasted equally, given similar accomplishments or transgressions. We don’t need to establish a definitive test; as with Bechdel-Wallace, we just need to define, scrutinize and refine our parameters.

So what requirements comprise a working West-Sheen test? Is it that celebrities of color are allowed a humanity (self-love, ego, anger) beyond that of King Kong, the subhuman villain? Or that the media can only castigate Kanye Wests for their faults as much as they do Charlie Sheens for faults of similar severity?

Another black-white pair of celebrities, such as Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus, provide a validation case for racial disparities in media portrayal.

Arguably, Nicki claims the best verse on one of the best hip-hop albums of all time. But we know her for her pink wig and thick ass and her beef with Miley, not her lyrical prowess. We don’t know Minaj as a talented artist, but as another trashy pop star.

Nicki’s being linked to Miley restricts our perception of her to Miley’s range. If Miley is two-dimensional, Nicki cannot be three-dimensional. We regard Nicki and Miley similarly, giving the appearance of egalitarianism. Yet, we cannot see Nicki exceeding the boundaries set by her white counterpart, even when acclaim and respect are deserved.

We might be content with Cyrus receiving an equal amount of negative press as Minaj. In this case, we would accept that the former is only as trashy as the latter, and for similar reasons. Yet, we see don’t these as equivalent: Miley speaks plainly to Disney child stars’ tendency to fall from grace — nothing new here (it’s not beyond reason that Miley more mess than talent), while the latter tells of a cultural tendency to diminish the strengths of women because narratives of pettiness and hoe-dom sell better stories.

So it’s not enough that black celebrities are treated “just as well” as white celebrities of similar stature. Black celebrities can accomplish more than their white counterparts at times — but for some reason we overlook these cases.

And then there’s the broader question: what even are the rights conferred upon celebrity? Do celebrities have any more rights in media portrayal than, say, politicians? Or refugees and immigrants?

Winning

But what does fairness for celebrities look like? How do we envision a media climate where Kanye can win? Charlie Sheen wins — at the least he bounces back from each scandal and proceeds with his life mostly undisturbed.

We continue to apply double standards. Few black celebrities aside from Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Oprah, Will Smith and Denzel Washington have won status on par with Leonardo DiCaprio, Taylor Swift or George Clooney without equivocating. Even when Nicki Minaj does put in her 10,000 hours of work, she only gets to be the stupid hoe.

When we limit the scope of black excellence to domains that prevent uncomfortable, explicit discussions of race, we bleach our discourse of nuance. We don’t allow Martin, Malcolm, Kanye or Nicki to be flawed, as all humans are. We turn the rich culture of hip-hop into a mob of “thugs” who rhyme, without family values, without community, without good old fashioned fun.

Beyond double standards, it’s evident that media portrayals flatten the humanity of celebrities. We don’t even celebrate them, necessarily — we just scrutinize them behind the glass. MLK Jr., exalted far beyond Malcolm X, is remembered for having a dream, and not for his critiques of capitalism and the Vietnam War, nor for his support of the labor movement. When these other facets of his character are brought up, it is not uncommon for their significance to be shot down with a but he cheated on his wife! Moral absolutism enters the picture.

It’s easy to forget that those who inspire and entertain us from afar are people too. With their omnipresent faces and lives so public they seem like more glorious versions of our own, celebrities appear outside the realm of mundane human error. It may not be easy, and certainly not comfortable, to engage with difficult reasons for the way content skews against particular groups of people — especially when prejudices appear in celebrity environments. We don’t want the idyllic American lifestyle we see in the Kardashians or Taylor Swift tarnished by some nebulous social force, much less one we’d like to think doesn’t exist anymore. Certainly bias is bigger than the media, which is just one facet of our society. But if we as consumers don’t deserve media content free of bias, we should at least expect that the media will afford black celebrities the same humanity the rest of us have.