Is There A Correct Way To Interview Someone With Allegations?
If so, Steve Appleford's profile of Ryan Adams is not it!
We’ve seen this a million times, yet we’re surprised at each occurrence. There was The Guardian’s profile of Moby after Natalie Portman accused him of being a creep; there was Billboard’s profile of Ben Hopkins of PWR BTTM who was accused of being a sexual predator; now there’s a profile of Ryan Adams years after accusations of sexual misconduct.
I have a lot of reactions to this. I mean, a similarity between these three articles is that they’re all written by white men. Identity politics are complicated and messy and all, but… this isn’t.
I tweeted that it’s not surprising to me that a white man wrote Ryan Adams’ profile, and I got shit for it (from white men). They asked me if I’d be happier if a woman or a person of color wrote it, and that’s a valid question. It raises the bigger question of if there is any correct way to interview someone with allegations.
Let’s think about this in terms of the Adams profile. The dek of the article reads: “Two years after a series of #MeToo allegations turned him into a pariah, the struggling singer is finally breaking his silence. But does anyone want to hear what he has to say?” What interests me about this is this idea that Adams is breaking his silence. Was he silent? I didn’t notice. Did someone ask him to break said silence? And then, why even ask if anyone wants to hear what he has to say—there’s tons of fans who still listen to his music and stand by him and will give a shit; this is known, it’s why this article is published.
With just those two sentences, I’ve come to some kind of conclusion. That conclusion comes from prior beliefs I’ve had — about the commodification of art, which seems to be the problem for most things. In my last newsletter, I discussed the problem with that, and I didn’t even really get into one of the worst things to be born from it: Trauma porn. The desperation publications have for a good story—and “good” by provoking a shocking and visceral reaction, so it has to be about something kind of fucked up, which leads to so many publications exploiting artists’ personal trauma.
LA Mag here is exploiting a lot of trauma here, like that of Adams’ victims. So why am I not surprised a white man wrote it? Because, I don’t know, I wrote in my second newsletter The Problem With Men In Power about the way men, especially white men, are naturally quicker to use people that they view as below themselves for capital. Men are raised to do this — to view people as a means to serve themselves. Plus, a man writing this makes it easier for him to excuse misogyny. And he does excuse misogyny, so clearly: “If there is misogyny in his lyrics, it’s just as easily found throughout the history of a chauvinistic music category…”
Is there a correct way to interview someone with allegations? Probably not, when the music journalism industry, and just the whole journalism industry, is so fundamentally flawed under capitalism. If this industry is driven by clicks and capital, there will continue to be articles just for the sake of clicks and capital.
And the LA Mag article is also very much exploiting Adams’ “trauma,” though it just benefits Adams because he’s hoping enough sympathy will lead to forgiveness (as if that’s how redemption works). Seriously, this piece is the best example of trauma porn because the entire thing is just Adams feeling sorry for himself: “I couldn’t sleep. Anxiety made me so sick. I couldn’t fix it. I was functional in that I kept my house OK, and my cats were OK. But I was not well” (reminds me of what my ex said when I confronted him about manipulation: “I didn’t sleep last night, do you know how bad I feel?” as if I am to blame for his shitty behavior by calling him out for it). When I read this article I feel like I’m being cornered by two men telling me to forgive someone because he never did anything wrong. So no, I’m not gonna ignore the fact that a man wrote it, because it’s just typical bro-protecting-bro bullshit.
When it mentions the leaked text message Adams sent that read, “I want my career back…I’m not interested in this healing crap,” it doesn’t go into that. It’s followed by this:
More than two years of purgatory later, Adams is still finding his way to some redemption and seeking a path toward restarting his canceled career. He’s attempting to make new music again, performing live-streaming concerts on Instagram almost nightly, reconnecting with fans worldwide as he performs entire albums, wanders his house alone, and talks up his cats.
So… it says he is “still finding his way to some redemption and seeking a path toward restarting his canceled career,” and then proceeds to not discuss the “redemption” part at all, just the restarting his music career part. And if he’s finding his way to redemption, then why is that period of his life described as a “purgatory”? It makes no sense. Redemption is not a punishment; it’s really the opposite, or at least it’s supposed to be.
The pity party is just exhausting and absolutely corny. When Appleford ends a section with: “‘Are you going to kill me in this thing?’ he asks, not for the first or last time,” he’s obviously trying to make Adams into some storybook protagonist. What’s more frustrating is when Adams says, “I wasn’t willfully trying to destroy anybody’s life,” although he’d already denied the accusations. The piece as a whole is dissonant and nonsensical. It doesn’t dig into anything except that Adams is sad he doesn’t have a career anymore. If anything, it just shows the way he doesn’t give a shit about the way his actions affect women. But Appleford is blind to it, just completely not self-aware because of his privilege.
That’s one of the reasons it matters that the interview was done by a white man. Its perspective is simply distorted by privilege.
The story, after trying really hard to discredit women’s accusations, ends with a paragraph that starts with: “Adams wants redemption through his music, and says he’s working hard at it.” Yet in the entire article there was no proof of this. The word “redemption” is used by Appleford incredibly lightly, but maybe he knows what he’s doing in that context. Maybe he knows that’s a buzz word and that, as long as it’s there, readers will buy it. However, like I asked before, why does Adams want redemption if he’s denying accusations? If he did nothing wrong?
Is there a correct way to interview someone with allegations? If there is, this isn’t it. I don’t know. Would I be happier if a woman interviewed him? I try to imagine a beneficial interview, but it’s hard if he’s denying accusations. I’d personally be interested in reading a piece where a woman asks him how he’s redeeming himself and how he’s trying to fix his interpersonal relationships with women and how he plans on not abusing his position of power again. However, the issues: 1. I don’t think Adams would want these questions; he clearly just wants to talk about himself, which is unsurprising because most manipulative men are narcissists, 2. I don’t think that’s what the music journalism industry is interested in. I think the industry wants to hear about how he’s not sleeping and he’s dying to make music (what’s stopping him, though?) and the accusations are false etc etc etc.
I’m just tired because I know men will be in the replies being like, “Well, women defended him, too!” That’s true, but Steve Appleford is a journalist and he’ll get away with this like the writer at The Guardian and the writer at Billboard did. And journalists who are men, especially white men, will continue doing whatever they can do gain social capital, continue writing stories instead of examining their toxic masculinity and misogynistic mindsets, continue having a platform while doing damage.
So many men have to grapple with their own idea of what accountability is. So why are they the ones writing about another person’s accountability?
If there is a correct way to interview someone with allegations, what is the goal of the interview? I believe it should be a real reckoning with abuse of power, uncovering the way the industry allows things like this to happen and what should be done about it. It should be with an artist who is actually in a redemption process, one that could help others to read about. There should be no guilting—of the artist, audience, victim, anyone. And the interviewer should not be someone who’s in a place of privilege.
What is the point of a profile that just discredits victims and victimizes Adams? People have been doing that for a while, anyway, we don’t need a whole fucking article of it.