Goodbye to Russell Brand

Sadly, the time has arrived when Russell Brand and I must part company. Rather than leave matters in the air - my rewrite of Parklife  and  Welcome to the Terrordome did go buck-wild on his ass, somewhat - I'd like to draw a conclusion that reflects not a dislike for Randy Brandy, but my more ambivalent feelings.

Having reached the end of Booky Wook 2 - which concludes with Russ in the arms of Katy Perry as the entire narrative suggested it would - my feelings have not changed about his attitude towards women. The final sequence, in which Russell attempts a threesome with two women he calls 'Curious' and 'Dusty' (the latter designation somewhat racist, in my humble opinion) affirms his commitment to objectification, and renews my concern that his current political posturing is founded on a type of egotism and sexism that is all too common in left wing politics.

In recent days, Brand has scored two palpable hits: a promise to give away his future earnings, and taking on the mockery of his statements by recording a version of Parklife. And despite the chorus of disapproval he has received - mainly on the grounds of hypocrisy - his political positions are valid and an important intervention in a media culture that has not challenged the lazy greed of the political classes. I want Brand to become what he thinks he is: a gadfly on the buttocks of representative democracy.

My hypocrisy is equally bad: I understand Brand's compulsive need for intimacy, and I am sure that I have used obnoxious language to make a satirical point. But I think the last thing that anarchism needs a big man shouting about his sexual conquests. 

I have struggled with how I would term Brand's behaviour. He is

clearly a sexist, since he gives less agency and identity to most of the women in his autobiography than to the men. I consider misogynist a powerful term, and only appropriate when it describes a system that encourages the marginalisation of women. Benny Hill, for example is sexist: the Catholic Church's exclusion of women from the priesthood is misogyny. 

I have made mistakes myself: I once accused a play of expressing supremacy. It was pointed out that the word is cognate with 'supremacist' and implies fascist sympathies. I didn't mean to say that - far from it - but the slippage of language's meaning insists that I can't defend my use of the word, because it was open to interpretation...

I am sorry I wrote that. 

So I don't want to call Brand a misogynist. But his description of his behaviour at the Edinburgh Fringe reads like a deliberate cultivation of an environment wherein women were reduced to a commodity. 

Obviously, I don't believe Booky Wook 2 is a true story - it's a myth about an entity called Russell and has a determined narrative arc of the hero's journey (it's like a celebrity mash-up version of The Odyssey), and I doubt many individual women have come to harm due to his antics. The hatred he inspires in The Daily Mail would have ensured a few more kiss-and-tell stories. They demonstrated that the spirit of investigative journalism still survives in the speed with which they attacked the 'feminist t-shirt' campaign. 

Anyway, I've had enough of him now. I'm sure Revolution will be in plenty of second-hand shops after Christmas, and then I shall look at his plan for changing humanity. But I need a break from the yabber, the occasional good line, the potential he suggests that he is far from fulfilling. He's like most performance art: a work in progress. 

Here's a video clip that sums him up for me. Kicks off with some zingers before descending into rambling. 

Not like me at all, then.

Rusty Water Brand and Me (part 4)

This is where it will end up, Russ.

Recently, I have been developing a critical persona called Mad Cyril. He was devised with the help of dramaturg Elliot Roberts and burst onto the scene with a review of a burlesque show called The Illicit Thrill. Mad Cyril is vulgar, violent and frequently spices up his reviews with cheeky comments about women. He is a mask behind which I can mouth obscenities, and is supposedly a parody of an unreconstructed male who calls a spade a spade...

I realised that is exactly what he doesn't do: he never uses racist language, but is more than happy to fling about disrespectful terms for women. Obviously, I use the Frankie Boyle defence - Cyril is mocking those people who talk like this, and puncturing the pretension of those who believe that changing the way people speak will change their underlying belief system (which might work but has nasty 1984 associations). I don't think it is okay to describe women as sorts, oceans or whatever other word I can find on Urban Dictionary. But I do think it is funny, apparently.

And back to the Big Brand. Assuming that the personality presented in Booky Wook 2 is not the real Russ, he takes the Mad Cyril sexism... a little bit too far. The book is full of tales of sexual conquests, allusions to sexual conquests, descriptions of women as an amalgam of body parts and, most jarringly, what appears to be an excusing of 'rape culture.' Early on, he claims that his philandering has an evolutionary function (as does his post-coital despair, apparently) - an appeal to biological certainty that is far from undisputed. 

There's a part of me that wants to say that his promiscuity is morally neutral, that his agenda of sex as a fun pursuit, a bit like a quick game of Scrabble, if people played Scrabble in public toilets or round the back of a skip... but I can't. Brand has convinced me that I need to disapprove of his conduct, and mock him for what is clearly a neurotic compulsion to pretend he has done all sorts, like that boy at school who boasted that he'd done it with his supermodel girlfriend he met on holiday.

There's something acceptable about young people trying out their sexual identity, but cheeky Brandy is hitting his forties and still acting like a sixth former away from his family for the first time. This leads to a relentless commodification of nearly every women he meets, except his mum and make-up lady. 

He does apologise for the worst of his antics - but insists on telling how randy he is, how wonderful it is to have an orgasm, how he always gives the ladies a special feeling... 

I am assuming none of these sexual encounters happened. I know he is building up to his revelation when he falls in love with Katy Perry (they have had a kiss so far), and his clumsy sense of dramatic tension is precisely the aesthetic that would encourage him to play up the bad side to make his good side look better...

But, like Mad Cyril, it's funny how it is okay when it is women...

Rusty Sheriff's Badge Brand and Me (part 3)

I need to push on with my meditation on Russell Brand. It's likely that I am going to become so frustrated by the rampant egotism of Booky Wook 2 that it is going to end up back at the British Art Foundation shop, returned to its home like an orphan who looked all cute when I first adopted him, but rapidly turned into a shit-machine and a bawling brat.

It's not just the constant bragging about all them birds what he pumped (Sachsgate is turned into a story about that one time he had group sessions with all of a burlesque dance troupe), it's the inability to structure even the most amusing anecdote without assurances that it is well funny. For every odd zinger - and ol' Russ can slip these in with the agility of David Gower flipping the ball to the boundary past the slips - there's a mangled repetition of some story that got him a laugh in the men's room. Brand doesn't so much polish a turd, he sprinkles diamonds into elephant shit and hopes someone will mistake it for a necklace.

Apparently picking up shit. I know how that feels.

Recounting the MTV awards (or the VMAs - I have no patience to go back and check), he almost tells a brilliant joke, that combines Foucault's critique of the Victorian cult of chastity and the marketing of the Jonas Brothers as virgins. Had he pulled it off, I reckon that could have been my favourite joke of all time: it mocks the Disney empire and has a message from my favourite post-modern thinker. Yet he frames it, deconstructs it, stamps the joy from the humour until it reads as if he is just showing off his wide range of references (which I am impressed by).

That's the feeling I get from Booky Wook 2: disappointment at a missed opportunity. Fair enough: he dedicated it to Katy Perry, and he probably feels the same about his marriage to her.

However, the real reason I keep reading and writing is not to fish out the magic moments but to engage in an evaluation of the subtext of Brand's anecdotes, and to dive into the sea of his subconscious and to discover the secret subterranean passage that leads to the loch of my own performed identity.

It is time to talk about sexism.

Me and Rusty Rockets (part1)

When I see Russell Brand, I see myself. Admittedly, it is a more handsome me with more hair, a higher sex drive and a big load of cash - me with most of the bad bits removed. 

The first time I saw him doing his thing - he was on Big Brother's Whatever They Called It - and I was blown away by his speculative use of language, wobbling on his spindly legs while his sentences spanned the gap between cock-er-nee parody and academic precision. When he started banging on about being on the town with Dean Gaffney, I was convinced he was an ironic take on celebrity culture. He had slipped under the radar, and was mocking the absurdity of human fascination with the chancers who flopped into public consciousness and stayed there, unsure of what to do with the attention.

Because there was no way that anyone would be boasting about a lad's night out with Robbie off Eastenders...

2014
Brand might have a sense of humour, but I reckon that 'being famous' is the antidote to 'getting irony.' I half-follow that news thing he does (The Trews, a portmanteau word that recalls his ability to mash up language in an intriguing manner, only to come up with bollocks), ponder whether the hate spat on him by journalists is a turf war or an ideological battle (the right to express uninformed opinion is usually the prerogative of big name journalists who have been so important in reducing the newspaper industry from an investigative adjunct to democracy into a snivelling lap-top of the military-industrial complex).

Brand's political stance is the news, this month. He's been lumbering about the internet lately, having gotten around to reading No Logo a decade late, and having realised that, like, capitalism is a bad thing. He added a reasonable distrust of democracy to spice up his cold dish of chic radicalism - then hammed it up until he resembled a revolutionary thinker in the same way that Donald Sinden resembled an African that time he did Othello. 

Rather like Eminem and Peaches, Brandy-Wrandy was aware that

his public persona was an ironic act at some point (in My Booky-Wooky 2, he talks about giving birth to the character. I think he compares it to a big fart, or something). And just like them, as he gained attention, he seemed to forget the irony, the theatricality and become convinced of his genius. And, exactly like them, became as creatively relevant as a dog-shit eating contest.

I read like a hater, so you know I'm gonna hate but... I am quietly

Dead eyes. Look at them. 

compromised. I think Brand has a flair for language - just so long as he doesn't expect it to read well. His banter, his chat, combined with his frame, his outfits, the wild glare that hasn't managed to leave his system after he went straight edge: they lend his monologues a charm, a wit, a veneer of intelligence. But, as his books and various articles in The Guardian make clear, he is a terrible writer. Rather than shouting PARKLIFE after every sentence when I read his football column, I want to shout WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

'Well, Viley-Wiley, it's simple, weally weally. The content may range across topics, from Occupying the places where the military-industrial-media-illuminati lizards gather in their ritual demonic rites to wrong the working man and the student who has read Marx for Beginners, but that's just the context. It's all about little old me, and my winky.'

'Just like your bloggy-oggy posty-wosties.'

Yeah. When I see Russ B, I see myself, only successful. 

Thank God I am a failure.