Celebrity Domestic Violence

By Garrett Brachbill & Jack Eggmann

Two years ago, a now infamous video emerged of then Ravens’ running back Ray Rice dragging his partner’s limp unconscious body out of an elevator. He received a lot of public backlash from this but the NFL did not really give him much punishment at all. They claimed to have never seen the non-leaked video of Rice knocking his partner unconscious and only gave him a 2 game suspension. In the grand scheme of things it was only a slap on the wrist for Rice. It was later discovered that the NFL actually did see this video and tried to cover it up to protect a high profile player. It was only after a video emerged of Rice punching his wife in the face that the NFL suspended him indefinitely. This move was seen more as a way to protect their own public image and avoid backlash than it was seen as a way to protect people being abused though.  That revealed the values of the NFL right there.  It revealed that they value keeping their entertainment factor as high as possible even if it means protecting severe domestic abusers. It will step into help a situation only when it has benefit for the league itself. Things like this apply to our culture as a whole too. We value entertainment over the right thing actually being done. If a person helps our football team win, we can forget about the awful things they have done in their personal life.  This is true for Ezekiel Elliott too, running back for the Dallas Cowboys. He has had some issues with domestic violence this year, but the NFL won’t investigate until after the season is over because he is the leader in the rookie of the year race right now and could be a future face of the league. As long as he drives up ratings, the NFL sees no reason to step in and suspend him for his horrible off the field actions. And the thing is, us as viewers encourage this by continuing to watch in larger amounts when star players who might just happen to be bad people are on the field. We forgive these people because they are so fun and exciting to watch play.

This happens in other areas of pop culture too. Most people have completely forgotten that Dr. Dre beat up interviewer Dee Barnes in 1990 for interviewing friend turned rival Ice Cube. The Chronic went on to become one of the most successful albums of all time just a couple years later and his headphones and music still sell like crazy today. Sure, that was over 25 years ago and people can change. But even in the direct aftermath of that incident in the early 90’s he didn't even really see a lot of backlash. As long as he continued to make awesome beats, we could turn our heads to incidents like this.

The point is that we are willing to forgive celebrities when they do pretty horrible things as long they continue to entertain us. In fact, some may still idolize celebrities despite some of the awful things they’ve done. It especially says a lot about how our culture views women in situations like these, considering a lot of these celebrities were discussed had beat up a woman. We are willing to brush aside the victim’s feelings and we just hope that it doesn’t stop the abuser from entertaining us a lot of the time. This isn’t to say that we can’t enjoy watching the NFL on Sundays or listening to music by Dr. Dre ever. Not everyone in the NFL is a bad person and people like Dr. Dre could definitely be changed people. But we need to remember as a culture to support victims over abusers even when those abusers may help lead our team to a championship in the future. If we continue to ignore issues like domestic abuse for the sake of protecting celebrities, people in abusive relationships will continue to get hurt without any repercussions seen for their abuser’s actions.