Accounting For the Limited Success of #MeToo in the Popular Music and Stand-Up Comedy Industries

Abstract

Despite several high-profile cases and years of #MeToo activism, a lack of systemic change and consistent consequences for many alleged offenders has led journalists and fans to wonder when the popular music and stand-up comedy industries will truly have their ‘MeToo moment.’ In this article, we explain that this moment has already arrived, but has produced inconsistent results in these industries due to the unique cultural and structural obstacles they share, and which frustrate civil sphere actors’ attempts at civil repair. Our analysis draws on Jeffrey C. Alexander’s (2018, 2019) theory of societalization – the process by which institutional crises come to be seen as social problems that demand the intervention of civil sphere actors. We argue that where #MeToo and the popular music and stand-up comedy industries are concerned, the process of societalization has been (and will likely continue to be) ‘blocked’ or ‘stalled’ (Alexander, 2018, 2019). We suggest that the potential for societalization is reduced due to a combination of the arts sphere’s anti-civil values and weak institutionalization in the popular music and stand-up comedy industries.

Introduction

The #MeToo movement has been called a ‘watershed’ moment for gender-based violence, drawing attention to the ubiquity of sexual harassment and violence across workplaces in various institutional spheres. Particularly in the arts sphere, the movement has been credited with bringing about ‘a true reckoning’ (Arceneaux, 2018), due to prominent figures such as Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and R. Kelly facing legal consequences for various sex crimes (Arkin, 2021; Egan, 2019; Luo and Zhang, 2022). Despite these high-profile cases, there remains no consistency in how the arts sphere responds to allegations of sexual violence and harassment. This is particularly true in the stand-up comedy and popular music industries, where several high-profile artists accused of sexual misconduct have continued to operate at the top of their fields.

One of these artists is the rapper 6ix9ine (legal name Daniel Hernandez), who signed a $10m record deal in 2019 while in prison for firearms and racketeering charges (Coscarelli, 2020; Lee, 2020). This deal came despite 6ix9ine having previously pled guilty to felony charges of using a child for a sexual performance, and a separate allegation that he knowingly engaged in sex with another minor (Lockett and Haylock, 2019). He continued to reach new career heights even after admitting to domestic assault against the mother of his child, garnering his first number-one hit and generating over one billion views on YouTube in the four months after his release from prison (Coscarelli, 2020).

Similarly, stand-up comedian Louis C.K. (legal name Louis Székely), disgraced by allegations of sexual misconduct to which he later admitted in November of 2017, has already mounted a successful comeback. In 2018, C.K. returned to the stage at New York City’s Comedy Cellar (Amatulli, 2018). Shortly after this, he launched an international tour during which he performed several sold-out shows, generating recordings for new specials released through his website (Trepany, 2021; Wehniainen, 2022). In 2022, he was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, which was followed by another Grammy nomination in 2023 (Wehniainen, 2022).

The Louis C.K. and 6ix9ine cases are significant exceptions to the claims of a #MeToo ‘reckoning’ in the arts sphere and serve as examples of the inconsistent responses to allegations of sexually and emotionally abusive behavior by artists in the stand-up comedy and popular music industries. Such inconsistencies have led musicologists to wonder ‘why the mainstream music industry is still struggling to address #MeToo’ (Hogan, 2018), and many journalists to ask several variations of the question, ‘when will music have its #MeToo moment?’ (Abdurraqib, 2018; Al-Hlou et al., 2018; Arceneaux, 2018; Arkin, 2019; Lee, 2020; Murphy, 2019). The Hollywood Reporter has posed a similar inquiry about the stand-up comedy industry (Baum, 2021). These questions also inform our article, which identifies specific factors that limit the impact of #MeToo and contribute to a lack of consistent consequences for many alleged sex offenders in these sectors of the arts sphere.

Our analysis draws on Jeffrey C. Alexander’s (2018, 2019) theory of societalization – the process by which a crisis in a given institutional sphere comes to be seen as a social problem that demands the intervention of civil sphere actors. While others – including Alexander (2019) – have asserted #MeToo’s potential for full societalization across workplaces, we argue that where #MeToo’s interventions in the popular music and stand-up comedy industries are concerned, the process of societalization has been – and will likely continue to be – ’blocked’ or ‘stalled’ (Alexander, 2018, 2019). We suggest that a combination of atomization in weakly institutionalized cultural industries, inconsistent perceptions of the civil responsibility of arts workers, and unique cultural features of the arts sphere are likely to reduce the capacity for civil repair in these industries. By focusing on industry-specific responses, our analysis also helps provide a more nuanced model for thinking through the preconditions for the civil repair of institutional crises, one that accounts for sphere- and industry-specific factors.

The Arts Sphere and the Societalization of Social Problems

Jeffrey C. Alexander (2018, 2019) developed the concept of societalization from his theories of the civil sphere and civil repair (Alexander, 2006). Alexander (2006) conceives of the civil sphere as a discursive space with a distinct vocabulary in which different groups and members of society strive to convincingly advance their concerns about civil values of justice, democracy, and solidarity. The civil sphere can interact with, influence, and be influenced by other institutional spheres. When the civil sphere disciplines another institutional sphere to quash an intra-institutional crisis that undermines or contravenes civil values, the process is referred to as ‘civil repair’ (Alexander, 2006).

The arts sphere is one such institutional sphere. Like other institutional spheres, it is relatively autonomous and defined by a distinct value set: in particular, it emphasizes aesthetic value, individual artistic genius, and freedom of expression. ¹ Nevertheless, the arts sphere is exposed to considerable pressure from the civil sphere, as its institutions have proven to be valuable fora for representing civil sphere values and the expansion of civil solidarity (Alexander, 2006, pers. Comm., 7 June 2022).

Unsurprisingly, the values of the arts sphere exert considerable influence over the cultural industries, in which various forms of art are produced and distributed. Rather than distinguishing between the fine arts and the cultural industries, we favor the definition provided by cultural industries scholar Mark Banks, in which he classifies a cultural industry as any in which the primary purpose of a commodity it produces is to function as ‘a carrier of meaning’ (Banks, 2007: 2, emphasis in original). Our interest lies primarily in distinguishing between cultural industries that are strongly or weakly institutionalized. We use the term ‘popular music industry’ to refer to the atomized sectors in which musicians operate as individuals or small groups, embodying their artistic brand and engaging in temporary, often informal performance contracts. In this sense, the popular music industry encompasses a staggering variety of genres, ranging from niche experimental music forms to more commercially successful ones: pop, rap, metal, and so on. We view the popular music industry in sharp contrast with more professionalized sectors of the music industry, such as symphony orchestras. The latter are complex organizations, with formalized employment environments and extensive administrative staff, and their conductors are increasingly held to professional standards similar to those of CEOs (Hunt et al., 2004). Orchestras also employ a mutable roster of musicians who function as interpreters rather than authors of the works they perform (McCormick, 2015), and can thus be hired or fired without noticeably altering the character or public brand of the orchestra.

‘Societalization’ (Alexander, 2018, 2019) refers to the multi-stage process of which civil repair is the central component. In the societalization process, institutional crises draw the attention of civil sphere actors, who see these scandals as threatening to society at large, and intervene in the name of bringing the errant institutional sphere back in line with civil sphere values. According to Alexander’s five-stage model of societalization, institutional strains are managed intra-institutionally by sphere elites (T1) before coming to the attention of the civil sphere. These strains draw civil sphere attention (T2) when civil sphere actors (journalists, in particular) treat the strain ‘as a dereliction of civil responsibility,’ and denounce the separation of the given institution from the civil sphere (Alexander, 2018: 1051). At the next stage (T3), the civil sphere launches civil repair efforts, in the form of sanctions and restructuring of the institutional sphere it is targeting. Eventually, the elite of the non-civil sphere contest continued civil sphere intervention (T4), after which point the separation of these spheres is re-established, returning to the ‘steady state’ that existed before civil sphere actors triggered the societalization process (T5) (Alexander, 2018: 1051).

To offer a demonstration of how Alexander (2018, 2019) explains the process of societalization, we can summarize one of his cases: the Catholic Church pedophilia scandal. This was an example of ‘fully enunciated’ societalization, in which the civil sphere had engaged with the religious sphere, engaged in acts of regulation, faced backlash, and eventually disengaged, marking a return to the steady state of relations between the spheres.

At T1, the institutional strain was managed within the Catholic Church – priests accused of sexual abuse were moved from parish to parish, but not prevented from working in their roles. The policy was one of containment, and the Church viewed the problem of child sexual abuse committed by priests as a fact of life, following from the flaws that the priests could not help but have as imperfect beings (Alexander, 2019). At T2, the scandal broke via the journalistic efforts of The Boston Globe, which aggregated survivor testimony and conducted an investigative report revealing that the Boston diocese’s Cardinal Law had both been aware of child sexual abuse by priests and involved in covering up these allegations. The Globe thus exposed a dereliction of civil standards of responsibility and transparency. It was this dereliction of civil responsibility that invited the outside intervention of the civil sphere, rather than the allegations of child sexual abuse themselves (Alexander, 2019). Civil sphere actors painted the intra-institutional operations of the Church as explicitly anti-civil, with the Church’s authority structure operating beyond the reach of laws enshrining civil values.

This set the stage for T3, in which civil sphere authorities engaged in material regulation of the Church. At this point, the Church was explicitly called upon to report abuse to the civil authorities, under threat of coercion from those same authorities if its officials proved to be incapable or recalcitrant in doing so (Alexander, 2019). Civil authorities stepped into this regulatory role eagerly, unsealing court documents that had previously helped to shield the Church from scrutiny, while the media narrative situated the lawyers prosecuting these cases as heroes of the civil sphere (Alexander, 2019). Grand juries were convened, Cardinal Law was deposed, and it was made clear that the ‘regulatory boundary that separates civil and religious spheres’ had shifted in the civil sphere’s favor (Alexander, 2019: 34). Catholic parishioners, incensed by the revelations of the Church hierarchy’s anti-civil dealings, amplified the call for reforms.

The Church defended itself, however, and was hostile towards these civil sphere interventions. At T4, this backlash took the form of numerous deflections (that these allegations were simply attacks by enemies of the Church) or attempts at painting its accusers as anti-civil themselves (i.e. by suggesting that accusers were motivated purely by material gain rather than civil values). Proposed reforms were watered down, and prosecutions frequently ended in relatively gentle plea bargains (Alexander, 2019).

Half a decade later, at T5, the spheres had returned to the steady state of relations. Civil sphere representatives were praised and elevated to hero status by the general public for the work they had done in exposing the anti-civil nature of the Church, while addressing allegations of sexual abuse had once again become an intra-institutional affair (Alexander, 2019). Unable to sustain a consistent pace and investment in intervention, but having succeeded in framing the issue in civil terms and temporarily mounting a regulatory incursion into the religious sphere, civil sphere actors ceded their roles in regulating the Church to members of the Church itself, including abuse survivors who now headed committees that addressed abuse allegations (Alexander, 2019).

Alexander has similarly analyzed the societalization of #MeToo, but limits his discussion of obstacles to societalization to those arising in the civil sphere. He identifies two: polarization, particularly between US Democrats and Republicans who treated the movement as a partisan one until prominent Democratic legislators were themselves faced with consequences for their sexual misconduct; and marginalization, whereby complainants were dismissed via misogynist cultural tropes about women and false allegations. Once these obstacles were overcome in civil sphere discourse, the ‘fully enunciated’ societalization of #MeToo across institutional spheres and industries should have followed (Alexander, 2019).

In speaking about societalization more generally, Alexander (2019: 24) acknowledges the need for ‘organizational capacities’ as a prerequisite for successful societalization. When discussing #MeToo in the workplace, though, he appears to assume that societalization will take place uniformly across industries as a result of this shift in civil sphere discourse. However, the continued successes of Louis C.K. and 6ix9ine, among others, demonstrate that #MeToo has not been able to impose standards that would create consistent outcomes for artists facing sexual misconduct allegations in the popular music and stand-up comedy industries. Instead, we see evidence that #MeToo’s societalization in these industries has dead-ended in journalists and scholars urging bottom-up regulation or calling on fans to avoid supporting artists accused of sexual misconduct (Abdurraqib, 2018; Arceneaux, 2018; Behr, 2018; Kornhaber, 2021; Smee, 2018). Echoes of this tendency are present in Alexander’s (2019: 108) own assessment of the C.K. case: he references a protest by two private citizens outside a C.K. stand-up performance, in which the protesters attempted to dissuade the much-larger paying audience from attending the show (Deb, 2018). While C.K. did face significant material consequences in the heavily professionalized television industry, we view this protest – held outside a comedy show a year after C.K.’s misconduct became widely known – as symptomatic of ‘blocked’ societalization in the weakly institutionalized stand-up comedy industry.

Per Alexander (2018: 1068–1069, 2019: 22), a societalization process that results in protesters being left in charge of bottom-up moral enforcement is a blocked one. In what follows, we argue that due to a combination of cultural and structural factors, #MeToo’s societalization of the stand-up comedy and music industries produces inconsistent results because these industries do not possess the organizational capacities necessary for the T2 and T3 stages of the process to take hold. Specifically, the arts sphere’s anti-civil values and weak institutionalization in the stand-up comedy and popular music industries prevent recognition of a dereliction of civil responsibility that requires outside intervention (T2), and places structural limitations on the capacity for civil repair of these industries (T3).

Sexual Violence and the Popular Music Industry

Research on the rates of sexual violence and harassment against women in the cultural industries is scant, making it difficult to get a sense of the scope of the problem. Most of the existing scholarship centers on sexual harassment, and finds high rates of prevalence throughout the arts sphere, including acting, modeling (Hennekam and Bennett, 2017; Liinamaa and Rogers, 2022), film production (Jones and Pringle, 2015), fashion, dance, theater, and media design (Hennekam and Bennett, 2017). While such data are lacking for popular music and stand-up comedy, decades of media reporting reveal these industries are similarly riddled with a gendered pattern of abuse, violence, discrimination, and harassment against women. A recent report by the Music Industry Research Association, for instance, found that women in the US music industry report experiencing high rates of discrimination and sexual harassment. Although they only make up about a third of musicians, 72% of female musicians reported having been discriminated against because of their sex, and 67% reported they had been victims of sexual harassment. These numbers are particularly stark when compared to figures of women in the general US population, who report discrimination and harassment at rates of 28% and 42%, respectively (Hale, 2018).

In 2019, an internal poll by the Musician’s Union revealed that despite high rates of victimization, 85% of the artists victimized did not report the incidents, for fear of not being listened to or believed (Savage, 2019). More than half of the surveyed musicians felt the culture of the music industry presented the greatest barrier to reporting abuse, including fear of the consequences to their career, as well as expectations that the complaints would not be handled properly by the industry (Savage, 2019). Such findings are hardly surprising, considering the dominance of men in the music industry (Strong and Rogers, 2016). The low rates of reporting also reflect the greater scholarship on sexual violence victimization across the cultural industries, which shows that disclosure is greatly impacted by fear of backlash, including not being believed, victim-blaming, and fear of losing one’s job and social standing (Benavides-Espinoza and Cunningham, 2010; Brunner and Dever, 2014; Fielden et al., 2010). In the popular music and stand-up comedy industries, where relationships between employers and employees can be particularly tenuous and work environments often are not professionalized, these risks are especially acute.

The intersection of these gender dynamics in the music industry with the concerns expressed via the #MeToo movement – wherein employers across institutional spheres came to construe men as anti-civil, and women as civil (Alexander, 2019: 94, 128) – means that the popular music industry should be prime terrain for #MeToo societalization to take hold. The industry cannot be construed as democratic, and is host to countless gendered abuses of power, sexual violence, and general misogyny, traits it shares with the stand-up comedy industry (Baum, 2021). Despite these anti-civil features and some high-profile cases of public disgrace, a persistent question in recent years has been why these industries have not yet had their ‘#MeToo moment.’ As we demonstrate later in this article, understanding the constraints on #MeToo’s impact in popular music and stand-up comedy requires us to detail the unique cultural and structural features of these cultural industries, and examine how these features limit the potential for civil repair.

There is little research on how the cultural industries have responded to the #MeToo movement, or the movement’s success in effecting systemic change across different cultural industries. Most of this scholarship has centered on outlining changes resulting from #MeToo in the film industry, detailing some of the representational shifts taking place as more female writers and producers are included in the field (Luo and Zhang, 2022; Tally, 2021). Those writing on stand-up comedy have focused on the individual dimensions of an artist’s crimes, such as Egan’s (2019) work on Bill Cosby, or on the role of comedy in exposing or masking sexual misconduct among comedians (Oppliger and Mears, 2020), rather than identifying efforts by the industry to respond to sexual harassment and abuse.

Our article extends this small but growing body of scholarship on the consequences of the #MeToo movement by focusing on responses to sexual misconduct in the music and stand-up comedy spheres, identifying the particular cultural and structural features circumscribing the success of #MeToo in these industries. We maintain that the ‘#MeToo moment’ for music and stand-up comedy has already arrived, but has produced uneven results over the last five years because there is no cohesive structure or sense of civil responsibility for civil sphere actors to leverage for systemic change. In addressing the structural features of weakly institutionalized cultural industries, this article also broadens Alexander’s discussion of factors that lead to incomplete societalization, moving beyond discussions of cultural polarization or marginalization of the complainants to develop an understanding of the structural preconditions that are necessary for societalization to take hold in a given segment of an institutional sphere.

Methods

We chose to focus on responses to sexual violence and harassment as they appear in the popular music and stand-up comedy industries because of the structural and cultural similarities these industries share, which may explain why they have not led to the same consistency of response that #MeToo has produced in other sectors of the arts sphere. Popular music and stand-up comedy are industries that focus on the individual artist’s embodied performance of their work, unlike other heavily individualized industries, such as visual art and literature. Popular music and stand-up comedy also share distribution networks, from concert venues to record labels and streaming services, and garner awards and recognition from shared industry bodies, such as the Recording Academy, which presents its Grammy awards to popular musicians and stand-up comedians alike. Both industries also emphasize transitory working relationships, a high degree of autonomy for artists in terms of production and distribution of their work, and relatively low degrees of professionalization, particularly when compared to more strongly institutionalized cultural industries such as film and television.

Our analysis examines the careers of rapper 6ix9ine and stand-up comedian Louis C.K. as case studies for investigating the uneven outcomes of the #MeToo movement, although we also cite examples of other prominent artists who have met with similar career success following allegations of sexual misconduct. The cases of Louis C.K. and 6ix9ine were selected because each represents a noteworthy example of artists who have not only weathered #MeToo’s storm so far, but have also continued to meet with substantial success at the top of their fields after their sexual misconduct became widely known and discussed. Another shared similarity between these artists is that there is little room for debate over the veracity of the allegations made against them. Louis C.K. issued a public statement admitting to his sexual misconduct. 6ix9ine has admitted in whole or in part to all but one of the allegations against him in various interviews, and while he attempted to downplay his culpability in his child sexual abuse case, the relevant facts surrounding his conviction for the use of a child in a sexual performance are a matter of public record.

The value of studying these cases is not due to their generalizability – as noted, consequences for sexual misconduct in these industries have been inconsistent, but that does not mean that artists in these industries never face serious consequences, as the aforementioned case of R. Kelly demonstrates. Rather, their value comes from countering the narrative that #MeToo has the potential to impose and enforce standards for sanctioning artists across the popular music and stand-up comedy industries, which would be a central component of their successful societalization. This is in line with Yin’s (2014) case-study approach, which allows the researcher to examine instances of the same phenomenon to develop or test theory regarding the causes of similarities or differences among them, and is particularly well suited to exploring the inconsistent success of #MeToo in varying regions of the arts sphere. Investigating how and why two prominent artists in the stand-up comedy and popular music industries did not face long-term negative consequences for their sexually abusive behavior in the wake of #MeToo enables us to interrogate the broader narrative of the movement’s success and identify the common factors limiting institutional responses and civil repair in these two industries.

Our discussion of high-profile #MeToo cases and journalistic responses to various allegations is based on a review of articles from online news and entertainment media outlets, as well as two documentary films concerning the career trajectory of 6ix9ine. These included widely read publications such as Pitchfork, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York Post, NME, Vulture, Noisey, the Guardian, The Atlantic, and The Hollywood Reporter, among others. Articles were identified through a Google News search for stories covering each artist and allegations of sexual assault, as well as stories on #MeToo and stand-up comedy or music. Our final sample included 66 articles for Louis C.K., 29 articles for 6ix9ine, and 17 articles on sexism and abuse in the music and stand-up comedy industries more broadly, for a total of 112 articles from November 2017 to June 2023. We analyzed the content of these articles to track changes in the respective career trajectories of these artists between the T1 and T3 stages of the societalization process. These articles also allowed us to assess how other industry figures – as well as journalists and the broader public – both responded to the societalization process in these cases and contextualized the outcomes in terms of their respective cultural industries. This was particularly useful for highlighting the lack of an overarching structure that industry figures, journalists, and fans could identify as providing a path to fully enunciated societalization. In our discussion, we have generally elected to limit our citations to more recent articles which provide a cumulative overview of each case, allowing us to discuss the career trajectories of these artists from the exposure of their sexual misconduct to the present day.

Cultural Obstacles to the Societalization of Sexual Violence in the Arts Sphere

Role Ambiguity and the Artistic Persona

According to Alexander’s model, T2 in the societalization process entails the exposure of a dereliction of civil responsibility within the institution in crisis. One key aspect of the arts sphere that stands as a potential block to societalization in the cultural industries is that it does not assign a clear civil responsibility to arts workers. For Alexander (2018, 2019), public interest in institutional strain follows from the institutional elite’s failure to fulfill the civil responsibility associated with their position. Certainly, this civil responsibility includes basic standards of ethical organizational stewardship by those in leadership positions, but the members of the Catholic Church discussed in the example of fully-enunciated societalization provided earlier have clear civil roles – at least putatively – in terms of moral guidance. They are also supposed to obey sphere-specific codes of conduct that are meant to discourage the violation of their various responsibilities, and which are not reducible to universal, externally imposed standards of workplace conduct.

Arts workers occupy a far less clear position in terms of civil and moral responsibility. We may venerate artists for pursuing their artistic visions regardless of whether or not they align with civil values. There is no commonly held standard that disqualifies a ‘good’ artist from violating common norms of behavior (Archer and Matheson, 2019; Jay, 1992). This is due in part to how the role of the artist shifted in the 18th century, when patronage systems were replaced by the rise of the marketplace and art emerged as a distinct category, a realm apart from ethical and philosophical concerns. The artist was freed from the old responsibilities of upholding society’s dominant values (Jay, 1992; Vuyk, 2010). Alongside these changes came the construction of the artist as a genius, ‘a figure of unconstrained power, who produced art by breaking rather than following the rules’ (Jay, 1992: 17). This was a male genius, often working outside of traditional or ethical considerations, whose singular focus on artistic pursuits might make him indifferent to conventional human concerns (Burton, 2017; Jay, 1992). Jay (1992) calls this separation of the art and the artist from moral and political considerations ‘the aesthetic alibi.’

The aesthetic alibi muddies contemporary public discourse on artistic responsibility and the role of the artist in society. The relationships between artists and the public are defined by individual taste and affinity, rather than expectations of the artist’s social role and obligations, creating a diffusion of responsibility that frustrates efforts by the civil sphere to draw public attention to issues within the arts sphere (T2). Scholars and cultural critics have noted that Romantic-era conceptions of the artist as highly individualistic, rebellious, sexually voracious, suffering from mental illness, generally difficult (Battersby, 1989; Smith and Stoll, 2022; Strong and Rush, 2018), and even ‘all but owed’ sexual fulfillment for his genius (Burton, 2017; Kini, 2018) persist in our public discourse. This is, in part, why fans and audiences are not always surprised when allegations of abuse or other illegal behavior are made against their favorite musicians, actors, or comedians, and why such allegations do not necessarily affect their support of these artists. Sexual aggression has historically been useful for bolstering the image of men in popular music (Laver, 2011), and many artists in both popular music and stand-up comedy have performed dangerous, transgressive, and sometimes violent personas, either as proof of ‘authentic’ masculinity, or as deliberate provocations in the exploration of ‘dark’ subject matter (Shouse and Oppliger, 2020; Strong and Rush, 2018).

Immorality does not preclude artists from being ‘fitting recipients of admiration’ by the standards of the arts sphere (Archer and Matheson, 2019: 248). At the same time, honoring these artists may have the effect of condoning their behavior, suggesting that ‘artistic talents are more important than the immoral acts that have been performed’ (Archer and Matheson, 2019: 252–253). The arts sphere’s emphasis on the work of transgressive geniuses deserving of special treatment thus represents a sharp contrast with the universalizing and solidaristic discourses of the civil sphere.

This emphasis on transgressive genius also helps to explain why Louis C.K. was awarded a Grammy for Best Comedy Album in 2022. C.K. won in his category for the simple reason that he received more votes from the jurors than his competitors, making it apparent that a majority of those deemed qualified to assess the quality of comedy albums did not find his admitted history of sexual misconduct – or his joking about the public outcry surrounding it, on those same albums – disqualifying (Wehniainen, 2022). In response to public backlash regarding C.K’s win, Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. stated that the Academy’s role is not to decide ‘where we evaluate [an artist] to be on the scale of morality,’ and that ‘[i]f there’s someone that’s been nominated that we don’t necessarily agree with, we’re not going to remove a nomination’ (Wehniainen, 2022).

It is worth noting that while C.K. was invited to the Grammy ceremony (which he did not attend), Mason did leave room for what might be considered a workplace safety approach to determining whether or not to invite sexually violent artists to the Grammy ceremonies (Wehniainen, 2022). As a professionalized organization, the Recording Academy itself represents a formalized workplace. Thus, while its mandate does not require the organization to deny honors to artists accused of criminal or immoral acts, workplace sexual harassment legislation can take root and be enforced (however inconsistently) in the organization’s working spaces. As we will see in the next section, however, this degree of institutionalization is by no means a common feature of the workplaces in which stand-up comedians or popular musicians do the work that earns them their accolades.

The Artistic Persona in Stand-Up Comedy and Popular Music

The aesthetic alibi has particular power in industries that centralize production and embodied performance of artworks in an individual person, such as the popular music and stand-up comedy industries. The embodied performance of the artwork by the artist who created it sets these industries apart from most other mainstream forms of cultural production, such as visual art, television, film, theater, and other cultural industries where there is a gap between author and interpreter, between the artwork and the physical being of the artist, or where responsibility for the key aspects of creation and production is otherwise very diffuse and not immediately apparent to the audience. This gives the artist considerable autonomy in how they present themselves and navigate expectations of social responsibility in their workplaces.

Stand-up comedians often present their ‘dark sides,’ both as a source of humor and to cultivate audience perceptions of their authenticity, which are key to their success (Shouse and Oppliger, 2020). Many successful stand-up comedians of the past 60 years have developed a form of dark comedy that emphasizes honest expression at any cost, and which is often indifferent to social change (Shouse and Oppliger, 2020). Comedians working in this tradition may opine on social issues, but are less inclined towards prescribing particular solutions to them. Louis C.K. frequently discussed sexual violence and his own ‘creepiness,’ even going so far as to depict a semi-fictionalized version of himself attempting to sexually assault a friend and fellow comic on his sitcom, Louie. C.K. received considerable praise for his ability to be self-deprecatingly honest about his harmful sexual impulses, even though these observations were presented without solutions. Simultaneously, his perceived ‘authenticity’ worked to shield him from consequences for his abusive behavior for a long time (Reilly, 2019).

6ix9ine also traded on sexual transgressions in cultivating his public image, though for him, this involved documenting his participation in the actual sexual abuse of a minor. 6ix9ine posted videos of this abuse to Instagram at the time that he was attempting to build his following. He subsequently pleaded guilty to the use of a child in a sexual performance (Lockett and Haylock, 2019). This did not appear to slow 6ix9ine’s career, however, and he saw considerable success even after a second allegation of sexual assault against a minor was leveled against him in 2018, and his admission of domestic assault against a former partner in 2020 (Coscarelli, 2020; Lockett and Haylock, 2019). It was not until 6ix9ine violated his image as a transgressive artist by ‘turning snitch’ in relation to a series of gang-related crimes in which he was involved that he generated significant negative attention from fellow artists and audiences, though career consequences from this were also minimal and short-lived (Coscarelli, 2020). Nevertheless, even after generating backlash for collaborating with the state, 6ix9ine released an album in 2020 that debuted at number four on the Billboard Top 100, with its lead single debuting at number three, and the second single debuting at the top of the chart – his first number-one hit (Billboard, n.d.; Coscarelli, 2020). The album’s success was not limited to the United States; it also charted and appeared on top sales lists in several other countries across the western world (Billboard, n.d.).

An artist who fails in our assessment of their authenticity can be seen as duplicitous, but this is different from institutional duplicity because members of the general public develop conceptions of celebrities based on their public personas, rather than out of a sense that their roles require closely following a particular set of social responsibilities. This is particularly true concerning gendered violence, where sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and racism continue to devalue women’s lives and victimization, and are generally seen as a personal problem rather than a structural issue. Louis C.K. may have sexually harassed numerous female comedians and harmed their careers, but he also provided cultural commentary around sexual consent and gender politics through his artistic output (Hess, 2017). 6ix9ine may have engaged in sexual abuse and domestic violence, but he also convincingly portrayed the role of the transgressive artist and provided collaborative opportunities for other artists in his milieu, who were only too happy to work with him (Coscarelli, 2020; Lockett and Haylock, 2019). Through the aesthetic alibi, the contributions of these artists can be presented as greater than the cost of the gendered abuse and mistreatment they have doled out to others along the way.

Even in instances where there is a perceived violation of civil responsibility by artists, the possibility of transformative civil repair is blocked by the institutionalization of cultural views and attitudes about artists. As previously stated, notions of artistic genius and expression in modernity have contributed to highly individualistic and atomized cultural industries that seek to protect and promote the artist and his brand at all costs. Industries like popular music and stand-up comedy are characterized by low barriers to entry, individualism, and a lack of overarching organizations that could enforce civil repair. Thus, while an established tradition of activism against sexual violence in the popular music industry existed even before the mainstreaming of #MeToo (Noisey Staff, 2016; Worden, 2017), as we explain in the next section, the structural preconditions for full societalization in these industries still cannot be met.

Weakly Institutionalized Cultural Industries

Atomization

The distinct structural features of the stand-up comedy and popular music industries present significant and probably insurmountable obstacles to societalization. At the T3 stage of societalization, agents of the civil sphere must apply pressure on the institutional elite of a given sphere in a process of material regulation (Alexander, 2018, 2019). However, there are serious impediments to gaining this leverage in weakly institutionalized cultural industries. Both popular music and stand-up comedy have relatively low barriers to entry, including minimal production overhead costs and easy access to production, performance spaces, and distribution networks. Contracts are often informal, verbal, and extremely temporary – limited to as little as a few minutes, in the case of many stand-up performances (Butler and Stoyanova-Russell, 2018). Potential employers and workplaces are abundant, rather than being limited to a ‘small group of powerful institutional actors who shape the dominant logics in the field’ (Butler and Stoyanova-Russell, 2018: 1673). The workplaces in these industries may thus differ substantially from more centralized cultural industries such as film and television, which often have greater degrees of managerial control over creators and produce an output representative of a large collaborative apparatus (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2013). These organizations may have boards, executive committees, higher degrees of trade union representation, and human resources departments (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2013).

The elasticity of weakly institutionalized cultural industries and the nebulousness of the relationships they overarch represent significant structural obstacles to civil repair because there is no central authority on which civil sphere actors can apply pressure. While central, sphere-specific authority figures are readily identifiable in cases of Church pedophilia (Alexander, 2018, 2019), they do not exist in the same sense in the cultural industries (Becker, 2008). In short, if one wants to have a career in the arts, there are any number of places to go and people to work for, albeit at the cost of precarity for the overwhelming majority of practitioners (Butler and Stoyanova-Russell, 2018). For those who are already well-established, however, these sporadic and temporary working arrangements can still provide an income and opportunities for self-promotion. Comedy club promoters, interviewed in Vulture about whether they would still book Louis C.K., were quick to point out that whether or not they would book C.K. themselves, the market would allow his career to survive, as he can always find somewhere else to work and has high revenue potential (Reilly, 2019). By contrast, if you want to be a Catholic priest, there is only one game in town: you have to work for the Catholic Church, a fact that allows civil sphere actors to target the Church’s elites and force top-down regulation of those beholden to its institutional structure and value system (Alexander, 2018, 2019). The degree of potential autonomy afforded to artists in these industries means they can operate beyond the bounds of regulation and indulge the development of their artistic personas on their terms, giving the artistic alibi greater salience than it has in other cultural industries.

For both Louis C.K. and 6ix9ine, the ability to autonomously produce and distribute their art has granted them tremendous benefits. In C.K.’s case, self-distribution of streaming specials, films, and other merchandise via his website provided him not only with income as he lost Netflix contracts, but also allowed him to maintain a significant cultural presence. The films and specials which Netflix refused to distribute have since appeared here, as have the specials that would result in his 2022 Grammy Award win and 2023 Grammy Award nomination (Wehniainen, 2022).

For 6ix9ine, whose career began on online platforms that had already proven themselves valuable for artists looking to reach wide audiences without needing legacy distribution networks for music, access to SoundCloud and Instagram was sufficient to build the large and loyal fanbase that helped him find mainstream attention (Lockett and Haylock, 2019). While he has since signed a multi-million-dollar record deal (Lockett and Haylock, 2019), 6ix9ine had already demonstrated the ability to generate considerable attention through his activity on social media and streaming platforms, and can easily leverage those platforms to promote and distribute any upcoming work (Coscarelli, 2020). Artists such as himself and C.K. are afforded an additional measure of relative impunity by the ease with which contemporary technology allows them to reach audiences and generate income, particularly once they have already gained a wider audience through legacy forms of media distribution.

The Artist as a Brand

The rise of the marketplace in the 18th century also contributed to the commodification of art and its institutional creation as an industry. The patronage systems were replaced by more market-based means of assessing and distinguishing art, based on bourgeois tastes and connoisseurship. Networks of evaluation, preservation, and trade were set up around the cultural industries (Inglis and Hughson, 2005; Willis, 2005). Artists, too, were commodified: material success in these new contexts required an artist not only to distinguish himself through his talent, but also to establish himself as a unique and marketable brand (Willis, 2005). This laid the groundwork for cultural industries that prize individual artists as institutions unto themselves, rather than an overarching organizational structure upon which civil sphere actors can apply pressure for civil repair.

As atomized actors engaged in individual self-expression and incentivized to distinguish themselves from their competitors, popular musicians and stand-up comedians cannot be counted on to adopt civil sphere principles such as equality and ‘we-ness,’ as these are heavily disincentivized and run counter to established traditions of assessing aesthetic value in terms of individual talents and uniqueness of vision (Becker, 2008). The need for competition and distinction between artists further means popular musicians and stand-up comedians as a collegial grouping lack ‘corporate character’ (Goffman, 1959: 166). Collegial groupings that share a corporate character may suffer collective exposure to public shame as a result of the bad behavior of individual members (Goffman, 1959: 165–166). Examples include the outcomes of the Church pedophilia scandal on public perceptions of Catholic priests, or the effects of police violence on public perceptions of law enforcement officers. Both of these groups have immediately recognizable uniforms, codes of conduct, and rigid hierarchies that denote their status as more or less interchangeable members of an organization. Conversely, a lack of corporate character in the music and stand-up comedy industries ensures that critiques of one do not become critiques of all (Goffman, 1959: 166). Without the readily apparent affiliation certain colleague groupings share due to the clearly defined similarities between members, there may be reduced pressure on a group to attempt to regulate each other’s behavior (Goffman, 1959).

Moreover, artists are the most valued players in the cultural industries, a fact that generally means industry workers will prioritize the artist’s protection over the well-being of fans or colleagues. Public relations teams and lawyers work for the artist, protecting them from the media and the public. The past century has seen an explosion in subfields and professions aimed at protecting the reputation, status, and ongoing economic success of artists. These roles exist in media, journalism, public relations and promotional occupations, management, agenting, and entertainment law, among others (Ciszek, 2020; Gamson, 1994). Publicists and lawyers have proven particularly effective at preventing journalists from reporting on scandals involving celebrity artists and may leverage professional connections in the journalistic field to stop stories from being published (Ciszek, 2020; Fitch, 2017). Managers may even intercede with survivors directly to prevent them from discussing their experiences publicly, as did Louis C.K.’s former manager, Dave Becky (O’Connor, 2017). Taken together, these efforts can frustrate journalistic efforts from even exposing an issue (T2), a necessary step in bringing a crisis to light and prompting an intervention by civil sphere actors (T3).

Fragmentation

Even when journalists can bring an institutional issue such as sexual violence in the popular music and stand-up comedy industries to the public’s attention, civil repair efforts are frustrated by fragmented responses from institutional players in these spheres. For instance, when music journalists addressed 6ix9ine’s 2015 child sexual abuse case, some musicians criticized or distanced themselves from him (Lockett and Haylock, 2019). This backlash was limited, however, and even after a second similar allegation was made against 6ix9ine in April 2018, career consequences were minimal and fleeting. Three months after this second allegation was made public, 6ix9ine released what was then his most successful single, a collaboration with the more-established artist Nicki Minaj (Lockett and Haylock, 2019). This single reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 charts (Lockett and Haylock, 2019). As discussed earlier, 6ix9ine’s successes would continue with the release of his 2020 album TattleTales, which featured another collaboration with Minaj, among other prominent artists (Coscarelli, 2020).

Louis C.K. faced similarly inconsistent responses from comedy clubs, media platforms, and the entertainment industry following his acknowledgment of the veracity of the allegations against him. While he lost his television and streaming contracts, comedy clubs like The Comedy Cellar allowed him to perform less than 10 months after he issued a statement admitting to the allegations against him (Amatulli, 2018). It was not long after this that C.K. started mounting sold-out shows on lengthy tours, during which he joked about his sexual misconduct and its consequences (Trepany, 2021). These tours also gave rise to the aforementioned specials distributed through C.K.’s website, for which he would win Best Comedy Album at the 2022 Grammys and earn a nomination in the same category in 2023 (Trepany, 2021; Wehniainen, 2022).

In the popular music industry, when an artist’s behavior aligns with a ‘bad boy’ image they have crafted, or with stereotypical expectations of the genre (e.g. hip-hop as violent and dangerous), radio stations, record labels, and music streaming services may see abusive behavior as par for the course – or at least unsurprising. At other times, it appears that the race of the artist might make it easier for institutional players to censure them (Strong and Rush, 2018). Spotify, for example, removed two Black artists – R. Kelly and XXXTentacion – from their curated playlists in 2018, though their music is still generally available on the platform. Even post-conviction, R. Kelly’s monthly listenership on Spotify sits at over five million (Arkin, 2021), and in February of 2022, XXXTentacion’s ‘?’ became the most-streamed album in the history of the platform (Grant, 2022). Clearly, remaining on the platform while being removed from curated playlists is not necessarily devastating for artists on Spotify, but even in the context of this questionably effective gesture, it is worth noting that Ryan Adams and a plethora of other white artists with histories of credible allegations of intimate partner violence and sexual violence did not face similar ‘punishment’ (Coscarelli, 2018; Strong and Rush, 2018).

Such fragmented responses highlight the fundamental looseness of the structures that form these cultural industries. Thus, while journalists and musicologists continue to ask whether music will have its ‘#MeToo moment’ (Abdurraqib, 2018; Arceneaux, 2018), we believe both the music and stand-up comedy industries have already met with their #MeToo moments, and that the inconsistent results of these meetings stem from the aforementioned issues of atomization and a lack of clear civil responsibility for artists, rather than a lack of attention or moral concern. The moral ground is well prepared for civil sphere intervention, but there is no overarching structure in which such an intervention can take root.

Conclusion

When discussing obstacles to the successful societalization of social problems, Alexander (2019) has focused on polarization between and marginalization of discursive actors within the civil sphere. These are clearly important factors to account for when considering societalization, but they also overlook the structural preconditions for civil repair. In his analysis of #MeToo, Alexander (2019: 97–99) points out that legislation on workplace sexual harassment already existed, having come into being as a result of earlier societalization efforts by civil rights advocates. Once the marginalization of complainants and the polarization between different ideological factions in the civil sphere had been overcome, civil repair was relatively straightforward: the framework for dealing with cases of workplace sexual violence already existed. Civil sphere actors could simply compel elite actors in other institutional spheres to tweak and make use of the tools already available to them (Alexander, 2019: 97–99).

This process of civil repair requires institutional authority and a cohesive workplace structure to impose – not just recommend or demand – standards. The incomplete societalization of #MeToo in popular music and stand-up comedy cannot be reduced to a problem of polarization or marginalization in the civil sphere. These industries cannot be brought under the control of a central authority and generally lack clearly bounded workplaces in which something like sexual harassment legislation can be cohesively applied. As our cases demonstrate, even when the artists leave no question about their guilt in instances of sexual misconduct, abuse of minors, and domestic assault, they may remain prominent players in their industries, meeting with continued success. It appears that Louis C.K. will continue to operate at or near the pinnacle of his field. As we have discussed, his comeback has continued with sold-out shows on major tours, a 2022 Grammy Award win and 2023 nomination for comedy specials addressing the backlash he faced, and the release of new material through his website (Trepany, 2021; Wehniainen, 2022). Similarly, 6ix9ine’s career reached new heights even after the general public and other artists had been made aware of his conviction for a sex crime and a second allegation of sex with a minor (Coscarelli, 2020; Lockett and Haylock, 2019). Like C.K., he has demonstrated the capacity to maintain an extremely large fan base through online platforms (Coscarelli, 2020).

In many ways, the arts sphere is animated by a particularly anti-civil spirit. This is especially true in weakly institutionalized industries that emphasize the embodied creator’s individual genius, allow for a high degree of individual autonomy, and have low barriers to entry, production, and distribution. Popular music and stand-up comedy possess these characteristics, and advances in online technologies for self-promotion and self-distribution of work further reinforce such individualistic tendencies. The 6ix9ine and Louis C.K. cases show that even in the wake of #MeToo, careers for artists facing sexual misconduct allegations can be developed or sustained through online platforms. In this context, while the moral and discursive ground is well prepared for #MeToo societalization, our analysis suggests that a fully enunciated process of societalization will continue to be frustrated in industries that are fragmented and allow considerable autonomy for individual cultural producers, as there is no way to consistently enforce civil repair.