Booty Calls, Rage, and Racialized/sexualized Subjects: Tmz's Coverage of Rihanna and Chris Brown Page: 35
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white stereotypical victimhood and the natural character of black relationship violence again to
the surface on TMZ and attempt to heal the rift by reconstructing these stereotypes' relevance.
The story of Brown and Rihanna on TMZ marks a moment of rupture from the
established narrative of domestic violence victims and perpetrators and constitutes a threat to
established racial and sexual myths. Examining TMZ's coverage of this event requires a base of
knowledge about the history of domestic violence narratives and black subjects and the case's
implications for race and gender. One of these implications is displayed in the ways in which
TMZ navigates the tension between maintaining the inevitability of this event while
simultaneously insisting that it should be news (a contradiction never explored in the coverage).
In a way, this story could not have been any other story, but its uniqueness is a result of the
audience's acute awareness of a set of cultural ideas that silently inform vast swaths of the public.
In short, the shock aspect of this story is largely attributable to its existence as a news artifact. By
publishing a detailed account of the events of February 8, by concerning itself with Brown and
Rihanna as subjects embroiled in domestic violence, TMZ is enacting a double-pronged process.
They report the event as scandal, but they at times maintain its very ordinariness through the use
of rhetorical prodding; or, in other words TMZ employs a constant qualification of any reference
to the event as news through continued naturalization of black bodies and violence.
The "how" this is accomplished is a bit more difficult to explain. The process of
maintaining stereotypes about race and domestic abuse would be difficult to rigorously enact in a
social climate where being a racist or abuser is not generally acceptable. As a result, TMZ
nowhere publishes anything that openly confesses to its decided ambivalence about the entire
ordeal experienced by Rihanna and Brown. There is no article where TMZ admits to
begrudgingly covering the story simply because Rihanna and Brown are celebrities. The35
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Sabino, Lauren. Booty Calls, Rage, and Racialized/sexualized Subjects: Tmz's Coverage of Rihanna and Chris Brown, thesis, August 2011; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc177250/m1/40/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .