Timed to coincide perfectly with Lily Allen’s recent comments about the #MeToo movement in her interview with The New Statesman, it would appear that the days of the hashtag #FreeKesha (something of the original #MeToo) have never really left us as the latest plot point in her ongoing legal battle with Dr. Luke proves that the music industry simply isn’t ready to own up to the abuse, disparity and gender injustice in the same way as the film industry has been forced to. Granted, Harvey Weinstein (courtroom sketch inspiration extraordinaire) did rape and abuse so many women on a consistent basis that he was bound to be immune to the statute of limitations law eventually based on frequency of crime alone.
As Allen remarked, however, “[Sexual abuse] just doesn’t seem to be [taken] that serious. Nobody’s changing. Everybody’s going, ‘This has happened to me, this is really awful,’ [but] what’s happening as a result? Like, oh there’s some public shaming going on, ‘Oh no, oh my god, you’ve been outed on Twitter.’ That doesn’t change any of what’s happened.” And for Kesha, who had managed to at least release last year’s Rainbow, her third studio album in a career that has spanned seven years, this is constantly apparent. From the first stages of her legal proceedings against her longtime producer (who executed the age-old formula of plucking her up while she was young and naive enough to not consider the Svengali rapist angle), Kesha was already at a deficit thanks to the statue of limitations law making her sexual assault “claims” irrelevant as both reported instances occurred in 2005 and 2008. Kesha didn’t find the courage or strength to stand up to her tormentor until 2014. In point of fact, Kesha has been given very little credit as the primary domino to make them all fall in other entertainment mediums, instead facing roadblock after roadblock in achieving true freedom from her oppressor.
As stated in her countersuit, “You can get a divorce from an abusive spouse. You can dissolve a partnership if the relationship becomes irreconcilable. The same opportunity–to be liberated from the physical, emotional, and financial bondage of a destructive relationship–should be available to a recording artist.” But it is not, and perhaps it might not be anytime soon, what with musicians, particularly female ones, treated like so much disposable labor when they can’t deliver sales, a hit single and a viable foothold in pop culture that will ensure longevity. And yes, this is, without fail, only applicable to female musicians. In the prime of their youth, however, they are all to valuable as the moldable clay playthings of “executives” like Dr. Luke and his accursed label, Kemosabe.
Lily Allen, also well-aware of the impossible enforcement of any sense of consequence for lecherous and capitalizing men–most especially in music, where men have always dominated and puppeteered (at least in film, you had the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis secretly manipulating it all during the infancy of the endeavor)–added, “There isn’t an HR place to go to because everyone’s self-employed. You can’t go to the record company, nobody there’s looking after you. Management’s not looking after you. You’re all on your own… People feel like they can get away with certain things because there is lots of alcohol around and alcohol can be blamed, rather than individuals. On both sides I think women can feel, ‘Oh I can’t absolve myself of responsibility because I drank.’”
And maybe that is how Kesha felt for a time before coming to terms with the very glaring reality that she had been abused in every way possible and had diluted herself into thinking both 1) it was part of the job–the tradeoff for success and 2) that she had somehow been responsible for invoking the behavior. If she hadn’t acted so carelessly and cavalierly because of the party and drug atmosphere, maybe none of it would’ve happened. But of course, it is this environment that makes so many females the easy prey that men of this nature seek out. If it wasn’t Kesha, it would’ve been someone else. It isn’t about fault, so much as wrong place, wrong time.
And it’s this circumstance of being a victim of “fortune” that Kesha has continued to deal with in the latest development of her legal struggles, which have been decided primarily by New York Supreme Court Justice Shirley Kornreich (it always feels traitorous when a woman is trying to be taken seriously by men and therefore spurns another woman). As dictated by Kornreich and New York First’s Department, Kesha’s “counterclaim seeking declaratory relief terminating the agreements on the ground of impossibility and impracticability of performance was speculative, contradicted by her own allegations that she had continued performing under the agreements and, as to at least one of the agreements, the impossibility was not produced by an unanticipated event that could not have been foreseen or guarded against.”
Basically, they’re saying Kesha’s insistence that continuing to work with Dr. Luke in a professional capacity would cause too much emotional damage is all phony baloney, girl who cried wolf bullshit. Because women are always whining about men, aren’t they? When they’d all just as easily receive one into their orifice if the opportunity was of value–isn’t that right?
What’s more, with this traumatic news coming just before Kesha begins another tour in support of Rainbow on June 6 (unfortunately a co-headlining one with Macklemore called The Adventures of Kesha and Macklemore), we are left to wonder if Kornreich is putting her claims of “impracticability of performance” to the test. As if to say, “See, you’re still functioning just fine, you’re obviously that damaged.”
And as the case moves on at this seemingly endless rate, it is now solely Dr. Luke’s lawsuit against Kesha for defamation of character that will be considered. Maybe Harvey Weinstein ought to have been a music producer instead.
