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All the World’s a Stage: Jussie Smollett and the Performance of Victimhood by Arsalan Haq
In the last few decades, an ethical turn has come to define our present moment in which violence, in all its ugly forms, is taken to trial by the very voices it aims to suppress. In the American context, grassroots movements such as Black Lives Matter and Me Too have spotlighted the cultures of aggression and institutional violence, as well as the systemic erasure and silencing of victims from all across the marginal spectrum—Women, persons of color, queer and trans folk, the undocumented and so on. With voices of the marginalized and persecuted finally taking center stage, a new kind of academic and popular interest has shaped around the categories of victimhood and vulnerability. And although even a cursory look at history books will confirm the existence of victims across time, there is something unique about the modern victim. The visibility and recognition afforded by present-day media channels have recast “victim” as a category. Not only has there been a shift in attitude toward victims from one of suspicion to immediate sympathy, there is also a shift in their status. Because of its various mediatizations, representations, and narrative twists, victimhood, I argue, has indeed risen from the trenches but bearing traces of social distinction, occupying a moral high ground that is simultaneously precious and precarious. Focusing on the alleged hate crime hoax perpetrated by television celebrity Jussie Smollett, I endeavor to read the complexities and inversions that victimhood has so recently and rapidly undergone, and the percolating risk of it devolving from a socio-cultural practice to a staged performance.
On January 29th, 2019 Jussie Smollett reported a hate crime. He was walking back to his Chicago apartment at two in the morning when two men in ski masks jumped him. They hurled racial and homophobic slurs, and declared America “MAGA country” before hitting Smollett and wrapping a noose around his neck. America was horrified. News of the incident sparked a firestorm, with support pouring in from celebrities, politicians and fans alike. In a since-deleted tweet, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the attack “an affront to our humanity.” Cory Booker dubbed ita “modern-day lynching.” Pressure mounted on Chicago police who assigned at least a dozen detectives on the case. On February 1st, Smollett issued a statement, thank
ing his supporters, and insisting the events were “100 percent factual.” The next day he even gave a sold-out concert in West Hollywood, channeling the persona of a survivor, triumphant and unbroken, claiming “he couldn’t let his attackers win.” Still, there were some on social media who remained on the fence; Smollett’s story had all the ingredients of a sensational drama similar to Empire, the musical soap he stars in on Fox. By mid-February two suspects—brothers of Nigerian origin—were in custody. They divulged new information that led Chicago police to doubt Smollett’s original account. On February 20th, Smollett was charged with filing a false police report. Frustrated with constant media speculation, the Chicago police chief sternly and unequivocally condemned Smollett, confirming that there was substantial evidence against the actor for staging a phony racist and anti-gay attack. The country was horrified once again. Support for Smollett was hastily revoked. Democratic 2020 hopefuls declined to comment. Rapper Cardi B even blamed him for single-handedly ruining Black History Month. The whole stunt, as The Daily Show host Trevor Noah determined, “screwed over everyone,” including the gay community, black community, Trump supporters and Democratic candidates.
In early March, in what appeared to be the final act of this curious case, Smollett was indicted on sixteen separate counts. But on March 26th, in an astonishing reversal of events, all felony charges against the actor were abruptly dropped and his record expunged, with vague explanations. According to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, the decision came after examining facts, and while Smollett was not exactly exonerated, he was not considered a threat to public safety either. Smollett, who has maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal, hailed the dismissal of charges as a victory and vindication. However, Chicago Police and the city’s mayor at the time, Rahm Emanuel, suspected foul play. “Where is the accountability in the system?” Emanuel asked. “You cannot have, because of a person’s position, one set of rules apply to them and one set of rules apply to everybody else.” For the former mayor of Chicago, Smollett’s celebrity status played a key role in brokering his easy release. The bizarre conclusion to this messy drama left many scratching their heads, especially since the State’s Attorney’s Office claimed they found nothing wrong with the police investigation. The question, however, still looms: Did Smollett orchestrate the attack, and if so, what did he hope to gain in its wake? The police investigation that had led to earlier charges pointed to salary disputes; Smollett was apparently dissatisfied with earning $65,000 per episode. But this is not what interests me. Nor am I interested in who will bear the brunt of the alleged hoax. I wish to focus on Smollett the actor, and dissect his actions, if they really were fake, as a performance, a performance that employed the rhetoric and experience of victimhood in the age of trauma to attain heightened visibility far superior than the one his celebrity bestows.
In their book The Empire of Trauma, anthropologists Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman suggest that trauma and victimhood have become embedded in our everyday language where these terms have acquired a kind of popular status—what’s new is not the experience of victimhood or trauma, but rather, the currency and weight these terminologies enjoy. Contemporary western culture, they note, is dominated by the “trauma paradigm” where the social, political and institutional attitude toward trauma and abuse victims has evolved. Before, the experience of victims was put under severe scrutiny and their trauma viewed as a suspect condition. Today, trauma, as wounds in the individual or collective psyche, generates sympathy for the victim and merits some form of compensation. By highlighting vulnerability, Fassin and Rechtman suggest, trauma and victimhood narratives reveal our common embodied humanity, and equal susceptibility to suffering; such narratives, in short, legitimize the victim. This legitimacy, however, is contingent on social visibility and recognition of the victim’s experience which complicates matters. Sociologist Gabe Mythen reflects that “Being or becoming a victim is not a neat or absolute journey.
Acquiring the status of victim involves being party to a range of interactions and processes, including identification, labelling and recognition.”
There is consensus among theorists that the recognition of vulnerability undergirds the identity of victims. Vulnerability, as an exposure to physical or psychic trauma, is a condition that can be, paradoxically, both disempowering and empowering. It is disempowering in an ontological sense because it divests humans of autonomy; the susceptible self is a construct of constrictive forces—social, sexual, cultural and political. It can be further disempowering or perhaps even detrimental if the victim, despite baring all injuries, is not granted visibility and, as a result, denied their humanity. Judith Butler explains this squarely in In Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. She writes: “A vulnerability must be perceived and recognized in order to come into play in an ethical encounter, and there is no guarantee that this will happen. Not only is there always a possibility that a vulnerability will not be recognized and that it will be constituted as the “unrecognizable,” but when a vulnerability is recognized, that recognition has the power to change the meaning and structure of vulnerability itself.” For Butler the vision of humans as vulnerable is predicated on their being seen and acknowledged. Therefore, the empowerment of victims is only possible if their suffering is socially recognized. For, as Butler proposes, to ask for recognition is to “solicit a becoming, to instigate a transformation,” which in the case of victims is marked by a desire to secure a newly empowered self. Once cemented in public consciousness through what Butler calls “norms of recognition,” the victim’s identity is affirmed and they can truly begin healing by moving toward empowerment, justice and change. Butler rightly points out that the human and vulnerability are intertwined in a way that is mediated by regulatory norms in society, and therefore always mired in discourses of power. In other words, not all victims get equal visibility. And since visibility is never symmetrical, it exposes a tense connection between recognition, vulnerability and power, thus disrupting the understanding of victimhood as a wholly marginal position, for to be recognized is the highest form of privilege.
It is not surprising that mainstream and social media outlets have done as much damage as good in bringing attention to victimhood. Viewed as noble and irreproachable, the victim identity, argue sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, has contributed to an upsurge in victimhood culture. They explain that “A culture of victimhood is one characterized by concern with status and sensitivity to slight combined with a heavy reliance on third parties. People are intolerant of insults, even if unintentional, and react by bringing them to the attention of authorities or to the public at large. Domination is the main form of deviance, and victimization a way of attracting sympathy, so rather than emphasize either their strength or inner worth, the aggrieved emphasize their oppression and social marginalization.” Campbell and Manning further suggest that victimhood has become trendy and competitive in Western cultures especially on college campuses and social media where individuals readily publicize grievances to appeal for support and recognition. Many have criticized the sociologists for demonizing the term victim and charging it with negative connotations. But although unsparing in their claims, Campbell and Manning appear to be calling for a reexamination of the category of victim as an unerring, moral absolute which, in the light of the Jussie Smollett affair, merits rethinking. The increased visibility of victims is not what’s troubling; rather, it is the rise in the misappropriation of victimhood as an identity marker to gain social and political recognition that can be problematic.
There is but another factor underlying the perverse allure in playing victim, and that takes us back to the origin of the word itself. The Oxford dictionary defines victim as “a person who suffers severely in body or property through cruel or oppressive treatment,” or as someone “who is reduced or destined to suffer under some oppressive or destructive agency.” Curiously, another definition, with its root in the Latin word victima, links victim to sacred rituals: “a living creature offered as some sacrifice”
to a deity. In cultic offerings of this nature, sacrifice is not only a sign of devotion but means to achieve spiritual and moral ascension. Religious literature, particularly of Abrahamic faiths, recognizes worship or service to a sacred power as the most common type of sacrifice. It is a gesture of submission where the sacrificer is the sacrifice. The sacrificer is thus able to distinguish him or herself from others, for they have entered divine kinship, embodying a sort of prophetic status. This particular valence of victim as sacrificer and sacrifice, their heroic willingness to surrender, suffer and survive, is exploited by victim players through the fabrication and performance of victimhood. The myth of sacrifice generates drama which, as psychoanalyst de Vries notes, draws people to victims like moths to a flame. The victim player is thus able wield influence, and acquires a distinctive position of visibility as well as virtue.
Already steeped in celebrity culture, with an expansive reach on social media, Jussie Smollett’s motivations cannot plainly be about money. As a black, gay man, he had the role of a lifetime on the television show Empire: Jamal Lyon, an out, black, gay musician whose defiant stand against his father, trials with discrimination, and eventual rise to professional success earned Smollett acclaim and applause. Smollett’s character Jamal was a studied deconstruction of black masculinity, a rare sight on television, and garnered significant visibility for the actor. Perhaps it was virtue that was missing from the equation? Perhaps Smollett detected how his character was worshiped as a promised deliverer, a sacrificer, among legions of black and gay fans, something he wished to fully and capably replicate in his off-screen life? John McWhorter, a political commentator writing for The Atlantic, argues that being a successful actor and singer probably did not appeal to Smollett for he “has come of age in an era when nothing he could have done or said would have made him look more interesting than being attacked on the basis of his color and sexual orientation.” McWhorter is sharp in his observations, suggesting that if the attack was phony, it represents Smollett performing the eschatological role of victim as a persecuted prophet, a picture of morality. His performance anchors itself on the historic plight of gays and African Americans even though stardom shields him from the day to day struggle of the marginalized. Through a staged attack, Smollett hoped to bridge this gap and socially pass as victim by tapping into Trump era anxieties, presenting himself as a target of bigotry and hate despite his celebrity status. As a member of the gay and black community, and as a celebrity, he was able to exaggerate and manipulate the narrative of victimhood to fashion a heroic legend of self. “I fought the fuck back,” Jussie Smollett told his fans in West Hollywood. They cheered his bravery. “I am the gay Tupac,” he followed. Tupac Shakur, arguably the most influential hip hop artist, is considered a prophet by his followers, a symbol of resistance whose message resonated with millions way before the social media ecosystem was invented. By invoking Tupac, Jussie Smollett once again scaffolded his victim-as-divinized identity, borrowing from the life and struggle of a revered other to give credence to his performance.
But Smollett’s case of tailoring an identity built on the actual suffering of others in not the first of its kind. Former NAACP chapter president Rachel Dolezal, a white female, pretended to be black and forged stories of racist discrimination to achieve social and professional visibility. Once outed, Dolezal explained her blackness as “real,” founded on a close affinity with black culture, and foremost, black struggle. Dolezal’s whiteness occluded her from justifying her actions, but for Smollett, laying claim on the oppressed black and gay identity was much simpler since he belongs to those categories. Then all he had to do was perpetuate an already existing narrative. Through an intricate webbing of race, sexuality, politics and violence, Smollett fashioned the ultimate victim, spinning a tale that became easy fodder for media outlets. Media unwittingly helped fix Smollett’s performed role into a permanent identity, portraying an image of the enlightened victim and progressive hero, primed to usher in a new era of “woke” activism.
Hoax or not, the Smollett episode has undoubtedly sown a number of doubts. It has jeopardized the credibility of actual and legitimate cases of racist and homophobic abuse by exploiting the progressive Left’s default mode of believing victims. It has also highlighted biases in media coverage, with conservatives seizing the opportunity to call out liberal media and liberals on their pretense of facts-centered reporting and reasoning. What the case has ultimately revealed is our haste in judgment and taking sides. The question, then, is how do we do right by victims without being skeptical or falling prey to scams like Smollett’s? It is not that we shouldn’t believe at all; rather, we shouldn’t start out believing in everything that floods our newsfeed, for media, as Marshall McLuhan alerted us back in the sixties, doesn’t only report but structures our beliefs.
