Monday, April 4, 2011

Rihanna, Chris Brown and the Versailles Treaty

Apparently Rihanna has attempted to modify her order of protection against Chris Brown. Originally, the order had said that Brown could not be within l00 feet of her, but it turns out that this arrangement has had an adverse effect on Brown’s ability to forge ahead with his own career, in that he is unable to perform at events in which Rihanna is also appearing. You may recall that Brown beat his former girlfriend, but apparently she’s now allowing him to get a little closer again. The motto of this conflict seems to be that you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Rihanna has ended up receiving criticism for her humane attitude towards her former boyfriend. How would Clausewitz, famed for his statement that war "is a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means," have dealt with Rihanna’s problem? Would he have looked on Brown as a vanquished enemy who needed to be totally humiliated in order to prevent him from doing further harm? Such was the punishment meted out to Germany by the Versailles Treaty at the end of World War I. The strangulation of the German economy led to rampant inflation, stoking the fires of fascism that ignited Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch. Despite criticism from those who accuse Rihanna of taking an overly tolerant attitude about brutality towards women—particularly in the world of R&B and hip hop, where sexy videos often portray women as disposable objects—we might conclude that Rihanna is doing for the troubled Brown what the allies should have done for Germany in 1918. Had this more tolerant approach been taken, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenberg might not have been forced to accede to Hitler’s demands to be chancellor.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.