Keep On Dancing, Chappell Roan

    I have a thing where, the moment I wake up, no matter what time it is, naturally or by alarm, the first thing in my mind is song lyrics. Today, the honor went to Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club". While I'm fashionably late on the discourse here, I do want to offer my two cents.

Some time ago Chappell Roan was lambasted for insinuating that the average artist does not have the time or energy to engage in socio-political discourse. I still go back and forth on whether or not the backlash was warranted; of course, some of it was way too far (as online campaigns always do), but some of the commentary was not only potentially justified, but worth discussing.

The question here is: what do celebrities owe society, if anything at all?

I think there's a baseline expectation that celebrities are at least aware of their platform and reach, at they very least, they shouldn't be oblivious or concerningly stupid. Chappell seems to be aware of this, especially after using her platform to both rightfully criticize the Harris Walz presidential campaign, and speak about artist protections at the Grammy's.

So it does raise an interesting point, how can someone who previously used their platform to make one political point absolve themselves from the responsibility of making all the political points? It sounds substantially more ridiculous when you pose the question like that. While I am not about to deny the hint of hypocrisy, I am going to challenge you to consider that it's not hypocritical at all.

The issue, in my opinion, lies in strawman arguments and whataboutisms used fast and loud. "If Chappell critiques the Presidential campaign, then she must be knowledgable on all of US politics", or "If Chappell critiques the war on Gaza, then she must be knowledgable on all military atrocities", or "If Chappell speaks up for artist exploitation at the Grammy's, then she must speak up about all exploitation".

It becomes increasingly ridiculous to consider the actual burden. 

When the average person claims to know about everything about historical politics from the fall of the Roman Empire to the history of Rwanda, they are in one of two camps:

A) They are a professional political historian

B) They are criminally full of shit and have wikipedia open

If they're of the former, then there's no issue. If they're the latter, they may largely skirt scrutinization on account of their opinion not actually carrying any weight.

Chappell Roan, however, and celebrities alike, have opinions that actually do carry weight. What she says is amplified, and she has a responsibility to not only be careful with what she says and how she says it, but what she actually says about the topic at hand. It becomes exponentially more important for Chappell to not talk out of her ass the way the average person may be able to get away with doing.

To put the importance of her words into perspective, people threatened to kill her over saying she didn't see how big artists could possibly have time to be well-read activists on all subjects. They threatened to kill her over her comments on the Harris campaign. They threatened to kill her over her comments on Gaza. They threatened to kill her.

At some point I'll talk about Celebrities as a manifestation of American Mythology and how they're effectively seen and treated as Gods (the heresy of it all, I know), but right now I'm focused on Chappell Roan.

So what should we expect from a white song writer from Missouri who found her identity in Hollywood of all places? Fucking nothing, to be honest. It's impressive that she has any opinions at all considering that background. Moreover, even if we expected profound theory, should it carry that much more weight than say, an actual historian?

She's a person who wrote songs and people liked her songs enough to buy those songs and make her rich so they could listen to more of those songs. Outside of that, she's [a white song writer from Missouri who found her identity in Hollywood of all places].

So, while I believe that we should not vilify her for not having an opinion on every minute detail of global politics (Dear Chappell, what do you think about the Church of Militant Elvis Party?), I do think, at the very least, she (and others in her position) has a responsibility to not sound dismissive about the prospect.

But even if she does sound dismissive, it's better than her being loud and wrong, and perpetuating potentially harmful and dangerous narratives predicated on information she doesn't fully understand, again, she's a regular person who make music gud.

I honestly don't give a fuck what Chief Keef thinks about Super PAC funding, but I'd rather he not say anything about them than regurgitate a bunch of talking points that got fed to him by click-bait headlines he saw scrolling social media (see: Brooklyn's (Haitian) Sheff G showing support for Donald Trump roughly a month before the Trump campaign would begin to blame Haitians for "eating the dogs" with impunity).

But therein lies the issue, in the current age of misinformation, any stance can be read as "talking points that got fed to someone by click-bait headlines that they don't understand" whether the stance is factually correct or incorrect. So the reality is, people (artists included) should either say nothing, ever about anything remotely important, or speak up about things they do understand on a thorough enough level to be confident in what they say. The danger of spreading misinformation is more consequential than the benefit of spreading the truth. 

So, while I wish Chappell wouldn't have been so tonally dismissive of the ordeal, especially after setting her own vocal precedent, I can't really fault her ultimately. And I certainly won't be condemning her for holding her tongue about what she doesn't understand any time soon.

I go back and forth on this matter a lot personally, I don’t know definitively what celebrities have a responsibility to talk about, sometimes I think it’s important that they have a stance, other times I think that the mere fact that anything they say outside of their art has value is inherently dangerous.

I'll have more to say about this in a wider context when I talk about the Mythological Nature of Celebrities in America in a few days, until then:

Siri, play "Pink Pony Club" by Chappell Roan.