Ahead of his tour in September, activist group Collective Shout have launched a campaign and petition to deny Tyler The Creator access to Australia. Similar controversy was stirred up for his debut tour down under in 2013 and ended up with him not being granted a visa for NZ. Yes – Tyler’s music is foul-mouthed, frequently gross and talks about murder, rape and underage sex, but it’s also playful, tongue-in-cheek, ludicrous – and just in case it wasn’t obvious, he’s mentioned in every interview he’s ever done his music is entirely fiction.
In a statement posted to the Collective Shout website, the group say Tyler’s music “propagates discriminatory ideas about women and other groups, and represent a danger to a segment of the Australian community on the potential basis of incitement to acts of hatred” and urge concerned readers to write to Immigration Minister Peter Dutton to deny Tyler access to Australia – they cite the following lyrics as proof that Tyler is promoting violence against women:
“Raquel treat me like my father like a fuckin’ stranger / She still don’t know I made Sarah to strangle her / Not put her in danger and chop her up in the back of a Wrangler / All because she said no to homecoming.”
Tyler the Creators’ music is supposed to be stirring; it’s supposed to be gross-in-your face violence that points to the ridiculousness of crime, misogyny and homophobia – I mean chopping up a girl because she said no to being your date to homecoming is laughable and absurd and that’s the entire point.
Banning Tyler for rapping about violence and murder is like campaigning against Game of Thrones for it’s rape scenes, or Law and Order for it’s abuse scenes, or banning Bret Easton Ellis, the writer of American Psycho from the country (note: he was in town promoting his new book Imperial Bedrooms which featured incest, rape, drugs and murder during Tyler the Creator’s debut tour – and it’s a great read).
We can’t possibly ban every performer or entertainer that mentions violence – simply because they are referencing a part of our society we don’t like – there is a definite difference between artists that hold these terrible parts of humanity up to the light for us to see what they are, and those that actively seek to normalise misogyny and violence in music (looking at you, Robin Thicke and Chris Brown, yet they are both played on mainstream radio).
The figures that Collective Shout mention in their petition are appalling – that here in Australia two women are killed each week by an intimate partner and police respond to domestic violence calls every ten minutes. What we should be up in arms about is influential people who try to enforce gender stereotypes, actually deny women rights, and cut funding to charities and groups that prevent domestic violence or offer support for victims of it – I don’t know where we could find someone like that.
