Betrayal

Last week saw another of those detailed accounts of the sexual crimes of a much loved male artist This time it is Neil Gaiman writer and icon whose quotes on libraries and healing feminism and childhood waft throughour feeds like pristine snowflakes eliciting virtual uffs and ahsWhat is the right response to the revelations that a powerful man is a perv like unimportant ones and uses his wealth to silence his victims and others too Yoursquod have to be depraved to ask We are pained horrified sickened And of course betrayed Public shaming brings its share of trauma no matter who you are But there is no substantive loss of power for Gaiman We will move on to a new icon Same rapture different guyAccounts of celebrity sexual predators follow a format Methodically detailed crimes whose tone of forensic detachment gives them political significance setting them apart from tabloid salaciousness They are made to sound exceptional because the person they are about is exceptional and because they may be in a respectable magazine not Manohar Kahaniyan Someone will always be quoted as saying ldquoI knew he cheated but never imagined it could be nonconsensualrdquo Thatrsquos rightmdashbecause we have no proof from the last decades that powerful charismatic men are routinely nonconsensual Because who wouldnrsquot want to be with that iconic man naIt is not their artistry that makes these artists exceptional but the act of conversion where success anoints them as celebrities The essay on Gaiman talks about how comic book conventions he featured in have a particularly vulnerable fandom subsuming itself to a Papa icon But is this process limited to those fandomsThe relationship with these figures is continuously mediated by a fawning media culture mdashsocial media is an extension of it A whole cultural complex of ldquoquotesrdquo as if passages from the Bible exists to convert the celebrity into a cult figure gleaming with moral certitude We share those quotes to establish our membership in this moral cult Most ecstatically selfdeclared bell hooks fans a particular internet species have mostly read her quotes or perhaps the one bookmdashAll About LoveDocumentary films have long pedestalised the primarily male artist as seer An eroticism accrues around the bearded warrior who will lead us to moral purity Times change So such people could be news anchor standup comic podcaster influencer even a woman Equality Swoon A film may win a great prize acquiring a religious sheen of purity and honour Careful your responses will reveal if you are believer or nonbeliever both sides suspecting each other of some moral failing like envy or chamchagiriArt in itself is a private relationship which gives us many gifts It is bridge between our light and dark selves leading us to autonomous thought Its gift of multiple meanings and fluid edges gives us the possibility of a complex relationship with ourselves and others a liberation from old feelings and ideas also called politicsThe culture of consumption we inhabit insists we outsource this autonomous thinking to the celebrity artist and conduct an entirely public relationship in which our responses should conform to each othermdashidentical not myriad Like in a cult Later we question the art the artist but never our habits of pedestalisation The clamour of betrayal leaves the shape of power untouched And its actual victimsParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom