Written by Laurence Boag Matthews; edited by Charlotte Lewis
TW: Sexual abuse and assault
This weekend, actor and comedian, Russell Brand was publicly accused of rape, sexual assault, and abuse in a newspaper article and television special produced by Channel 4’s Dispatches, The Times, and The Sunday Times. The five women in the film, and article, have accused Brand of various offences spanning the entirety of his career as a public figure. The investigation repeatedly returns to Brand’s manipulation of the women he allegedly harmed. From clips of him making sexual jokes and physical advances upon his colleagues on film; to the alleged victim referred to as Nadia’s account of his switch from appearing to be ‘glazed over’ as he raped her, before wildly swinging into becoming extremely apologetic after he was finished. The documentary paints a picture of a man who has repeatedly been able to construct narratives around himself with the help of powerful institutions. Establishments that protect him from the consequences of his actions and his ability to fail on multiple occasions likely gave him greater access to power in the entertainment industry.
The accusations made gestures towards a broader culture upheld by the organisations within which Brand was employed. His former PA, Helen Berger, talks extensively of his ‘narcissism’, his tendency to only wear underwear in her presence, and his preference for, and access to, women picked from his audiences and staff of the shows from which he was often the star presenter. Whilst we begin to uncover how Brand, as an individual, may have been able to wield the apparatus of power for his gain, we can also gain insight into the much larger system of institutional and cultural norms that protect figures like Brand and silence their victims.
The creation of spaces where Brand was allowed unrestricted access to female colleagues and audience members being granted what is described as ‘an environment of permission’ is a recurring theme in the investigation. A member of the crew from Big Brother’s Big Mouth discusses the ‘atmosphere of women being dispensable, women being used for sex, that you can pick them up at work like out of a menu’, these ‘harmful attitudes [...] can snowball into things that are more serious’. Towards the end of the programme, ‘Alice’, recalls a meeting in 2014, years on from her experience with Brand, during which he was touted as the main choice as presenter for a new television show. Despite concerns about his predatory behaviour being raised at this point, it was suggested that they ‘would take the female staff off the crew’ as a solution. The only male comedian to speak to the investigation on record, Daniel Sloss, suggests that female comedians ‘have set up online groups that they use to warn each other of comedians and others working in the comedy industry whom they have had unpleasant experiences with’, and that he has known Brand as having had a predatory reputation in these circles for ‘many, many years’. These accounts indicate that despite Brand’s alleged behaviour being an ‘open secret’, there was far more room to construct a space around Brand specifically engineered to protect and uplift him, as opposed to removing him from consideration for the job.
Brand’s turn towards cultivating an image as a ‘wellness guru’ ultimately concerned with matters of the ‘spiritual’, alongside conspiracy theory content in recent years, serves as yet another pivot towards creating a narrative to protect himself from the repercussions of his actions. Brand has been distancing himself from the ‘mainstream media’ - in which he participated and profited for the majority of his career. In anticipation of the documentary and article, Brand released a YouTube video in which he announced: ‘it feels to me like there's a serious and concerted agenda to control these kind of spaces and these kind of voices’, ‘these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct, apparently, in what seems to me to be a coordinated attack’. Brand’s wielding of such language indicates his attempt to sully the narrative yet again and to rally his disciples behind him. He was able to hide his supposed misbehaviour in plain sight under the guise of ‘controversial humour’ and a reputation as a ‘sex addict’ - during this period Brand won The Sun’s ‘shagger of the Year’ award three years running. This narrative functions similarly to his new ‘wellness guru’ persona. Although under a new guise, we can observe that he operates under the same principles and motives today as he has throughout his career: his true motivations are thinly veiled to protect and promote his self-interest at all costs; which repeatedly has come at the cost of the women with whom he should never have been able to have access in the ways he did.
In the aftermath of the accusations, it is almost surreal to watch as his supporters repeat back the same arguments we have heard time and time again in reaction to allegations such as these. The question of Brand’s behaviour being an ‘open secret’ has drawn the ire of those who want to profess his innocence, as well as the disappointed but unsurprised reaction from many of us who have witnessed allegations such as these surface in the past only for no material changes in the entertainment industry to be made. So many decisions had to have been made along the way to allow Brand to allegedly commit the crimes and to then shield him from the consequences of his actions. It shouldn’t require over a year's worth of work by two mainstream media outlets to bring a long-standing open secret about such a well-known figure to the attention of the public. Victims shouldn’t have to endure their abuser evading justice and in fact, thriving in the public eye for over ten years before they face any scrutiny of their actions. This investigation brings up many questions about the entertainment industry, centrally that major changes need to be made in the way we treat survivors of sexual assault and abuse, as well as a radical overhaul in the way powerful men can operate completely unchecked despite widespread knowledge within the industry of their abuses of power.
Sources:
- Russell Brand: In Plain Sight: Dispatches, 16/09/2023, <https://www.channel4.com/programmes/russell-brand-in-plain-sight-dispatches/on-demand/75795-001>
- Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace, Paul Morgan-Bentley, ‘Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse’, The Times, 16/09/2023, <https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russell-brand-rape-sexual-assault-abuse-allegations-investigation-v5hxdlmb6>
- Niamh Lynch, ‘Russell Brand denies 'serious criminal allegations' he claims are being made against him’, Sky News, 16/09/2023, <https://news.sky.com/story/russell-brand-denies-serious-criminal-allegations-he-claims-are-being-made-against-him-12962257>
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