I’m sure we’ve all heard about what happened between Rihanna and Chris Brown almost a year ago; just this month however Rihanna “broke her silence for the first time” in a 20/20 interview with Diane Sawyer. It was quite an interesting interview to watch; Rihanna details what happened, why she went back to him, left him again, etc… I highly recommend viewing it if you haven’t already.
I thought this correlated well with the silent protest and speak out during WAC week (sorry I didn’t post it earlier L ). Rihanna definitely endured attack after attack during the last year, and was finally able to come out and set the record straight. What I found extremely interesting was a clip shown during the interview of Chris Brown speaking to a late night talk show host with the headline “Chris Brown breaks his silence.” I think that this has a very interesting dynamic to it … Chris Brown was silent because he was embarrassed? In the wrong? Didn’t want to say anything wrong to jeopardize his career? WHAT?! He in no way suffered in silence to the extent of Rihanna.
Another interesting point to make is how many people thought that “she must have done something” to make Chris Brown hurt her like that. People continually questioned what exactly it was that she did. This just shows how played down domestic violence is; that it wouldn’t exist if she didn’t do something! This really really really astounds me. Even Diane Sawyer perpetuated this idea when she said “so many people said she always seemed like the least likely person to be in this situation where that would happen, that she always seemed strong…” Rihanna stopped Diane right there and announced: “I am strong; this happened to me, I didn’t cause this, I didn’t do it. This happened to me, and it can happen to anyone…” Rihanna has it right! Just because she was in this situation does not mean she isn’t strong; In fact, Rihanna is beyond strong for speaking out.
*Just a side note: I was listening to a weekend countdown on the radio last week (I’m not sure who the host was) and Chris Brown’s new single made it onto the countdown. The host said something to the like of “well, the way to make people like you again is to make a hit song.” So now, apparently, one good song is enough to alleviate all of the wrongs associated with domestic violence. Whoa.
You can watch the interview at abc.com, the interview with Rihanna starts at about 13 minutes.
http://abc.go.com/watch/2020/166626/240777/rihanna-speaks-out#sl-0