What should we say about David Bowie and Lori Maddox?

[zoogs]

A fascinating, charged, and nuanced article:

Jezebel: What should we say about David Bowie and Lori Maddox?

A passage towards the end that I found particularly engaging:

You can understand that the way she consented to the loss of her virginity could have been the way women have consented throughout history under implicit duress and formative coercion, and yet as wholeheartedly as we could understand.

There are no precise enough words or satisfying enough conclusions to fully account for her story, or any like it. It's easy to see what Bowie represents here: a sexual norm that has always appallingly favored men, and the abuse that stems from and surpasses even that. It is easy to denounce the part Bowie played in this, even with any number of purportedly mitigating factors: the political context, Maddox's story, the fact that he lived with generosity and openness, the less generous fact that his synapses were perpetually blitzed with cocaine. It is less easy to turn over what Maddox evinces in this narrative, from the late 1970s to her account of it now which is that women have developed the vastly unfair, nonetheless remarkable, and still essential ability to find pleasure and freedom in a system that oppresses them.

A really well-written and thoughtful piece. It had me going through more of what the author (Jia Tolentino)'s work. A lot of very good reading there.

 

[knapplc]

I'll say the same thing I said about Bill Cosby - crap!

You want to like these guys, because they've given you hours of entertainment, a distraction from the daily grind. Cosby was "America's Dad" throughout the 1980s. I listened to his comedy LPs as a kid, over & over & over when there was nothing to do in the fastness of winter. Here's Cosby's take on calling a play in Street Football:

"Now, listen to this, now. Uh, Arnie, go down, uh, ten steps and cut left behind the black Chevy. Filbert, you run down to my house and wait in the living room. Cosby, you go down to 3rd Street, catch the "J" bus. Have him open the doors at 19th Street. I'll fake it to you."

They always have one fat kid they never throw it to, says, "What about me?"

He says, "You go long."

That's hilarious and classic and I don't want to forget that I enjoyed it so much. "Buck-buck number one, coming in!" "We checked these guys out - they had rocks in their pockets."

But there's a seedy, dirty quality to remembering those things now. The accusations are too numerous and too detailed and come from too many credible women to ignore.

This thing with Bowie. It's stomach-churning. The woman says she wasn't raped, she maintains to this day it was a great thing. But consent being consent and her age being what it was... where do you go with that?

It sucks being a fan, of just about anything anymore. Nothing is worthy of fandom, and all fandom can be tarnished by stuff like this.

 

[Landlord]

It sucks being a fan, of just about anything anymore. Nothing is worthy of fandom, and all fandom can be tarnished by stuff like this.

It's the downside of our unhealthy infatuation with celebrity. Essentially everyone I know has at least one famous person that they care way more about the happenings and life of than their good friends, for no good reason. We make such a high pedestal for celebrities to be juggernaut role models and idols in our lives and then we don't know what to do with ourselves when some of them turn out to be fairly rotten.

I think it's totally possible, and not even that hard, to appreciate the good things and confront the bad. I'll always love David Bowie's music and respect the art itself and his ability to create it. I'll also always remember him as a flawed, shade of grey man with some ugliness. Same with Cosby, same with Brett Favre, same with anyone really.