A few days after Sunday Times and Channel 4 published allegations of rape and sexual assault against Russell Brand (Brand vehemently denies) and a meme began to circulate on social media. It showed a still from the 2008 film. Forgetting Sarah Marshall with the film’s three stars – Brand, Jonah Hill and Mila Kunis – standing together at a beach bar. The caption read: “This photo hasn’t aged well in 2023.”
Perhaps that’s an understatement. Earlier this summer, Hill was accused of sending a series of controlling and emotionally abusive messages to his then-girlfriend, surfer and model Sarah Brady, banning her from posting swimsuit photos of herself, maintaining friendships with men, surfing with men and modeling. All in all. Two weeks ago, Kunis and her husband Ashton Kutcher apologized after sending a letter of support to Danny Masterson, their former co-star. It’s That ’70s Show, before his rape trial. Masterson was subsequently sent to prison for a minimum of 30 years. Then last week, Brand was accused of allegedly assaulting four women between 2006 and 2013.
Whenever allegations of abuse by historians make the news (and they are almost always historical in nature when they do make the news), people are quick to raise two caveats in defense of the accused. First is “nuance”: what are the details of the story? Which accusers are we talking about and what might be their motives? They were paid? Do they want to become famous? The second question is whether the intended behavior can be “of its time.” Often this sentence is aimed at ending the conversation (“that was a different time”) rather than clarifying nuances or even contextualizing the behavior. (Like in 2017, when Harvey Weinstein defended himself: “That was the culture back then.”) To be clear: Violating someone’s bodily boundaries against their consent has always been wrong. But there are certain cultural conditions that help make offensive behavior publicly acceptable. Brand, like Kutcher, Kunis and Hill, is a “product of its time” in every sense of the word. And the arguments against it reveal a unique ugliness of the 2000s.
Let’s consider the 2000s for a moment. It was the War on Terror, the financial crisis, the birth of social media, and perhaps the period that paved the way for the current wave of populism. Culturally it was chaos. On the screens we saw crude comedies (such as Very bad, starring Hill); unforgettable rom-coms (like Friends with Benefitsstarring Kunis): early reality shows (like punk, hosted by Kutcher; or Big Brother’s Little Brotherleading Brand) and Disney blockbusters (e.g. Pirates of the Caribbeanstarring Johnny Depp). Fashion-wise, we went from normcore and Y2K to boho and settled on indie raunchiness. An eclectic mix, but if there’s one thing this era should be remembered for by everyone, it’s that it was perhaps the most misogynistic period in recent history.
Russell Brand’s heyday—the mid-aughts—was a particularly low point. At every turn, men were encouraged to act out caricatures of joie de vivre, ignorant man-children drinking pints and making sarcastic insults, while women were portrayed as nagging housewives (see: Family man; Hangover) or manic pixie dream accessories (see: New girl, 500 days of Summer.) Meanwhile, women were subjected to endless attention and encouraged to do the same to themselves: paparazzi photos without makeup, upskirt shots, the size zero trend, endless magazine articles on “how to please your man,” “fighting cellulite.” or buying “flattering” clothes that fit the parameters of the patriarchal lens. This was the time of UniLad and LadBible, which have since been rebranded as anode meme platforms but launched themselves as deliberately sexist 2000s blogs. (LadBible provided a list of tragic “commandments”, including “covet your neighbors’ breasts” and “you will strike and throw yourself if your woman refuses to make you a sandwich in the morning.” The mainstream press was not happy about this. and better: in 2007 Christopher Hitchens published an article in Vanity Fairwithout his usual irony, entitled “Why Women Aren’t Funny.” This caused a flurry of public outrage from male journalists. Was this ignorant patriarchy itself a prison? Yes, does that justify it? No. And whether you were a #unilad rugby player, an indie singer, an obnoxiously curvy Camden, or a bookish “good guy” – you didn’t call yourself a feminist.
The brand rose to prominence in the mid-2000s when the indie sellout was in full swing. Everything about him—from his aesthetics to his sense of humor, his sexual proclivities, and his high, performative use of language—fit the cultural template of the period. His much-romanticized Camden venue was teeming with vomit-stained male singers who sang lyrics like “she’s a whore and you never fucking liked her” and were hailed as artistic geniuses. Their female colleagues were considered unstable. “Amy Winehouse – her last name is starting to sound like a description of her liver,” Brand joked in 2007. Brand’s originality and charm were enhanced by an environment that lacked these things. Riding the wave of the zeitgeist, he happily created the image of a foolish, noble truth-teller who was both above the bigotry of the establishment but also in many ways embodied the boyish ideals of the mainstream. His rise from comedian to public intellectual (though still reviled by some at the time) is not surprising in retrospect. In 2015, the magazine named him the fourth most influential thinker in the world.
Through the grainy flashback footage, it’s tempting to look at the 2000s and feel like a distant time. (Since then, among other social and political upheavals, we’ve had the MeToo movement, and identifying as a feminist is now not only relevant, but popular.) But it’s also becoming fashionable to say that the 2000s are “coming back.” From the return of Y2K and the indie sleaze aesthetic to the popularity of misogynistic figures like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate, who incidentally have rushed to Brand’s defense in recent days, for many, 2023 doesn’t look or feel a million miles away. since 2003. The truth is that the 2000s are here to stay. For a short period of time—during the MeToo era—they felt stifled. But one look at the Internet shows how much repressed misogyny is waiting to surface.
Today, evidence of our desire to rehabilitate powerful men is everywhere. Be it the mysterious career comeback of Johnny Depp, the domestic abuser currently filming a new film. Jeanne du Barryand amassed a cult-like Gen Z fan base after his libel cases (he fought two cases, winning one and losing one) – or comments under videos about Brand that criticize the “establishment”, people are always trying to find ways to defend men for alleged wrongdoings in towards women. This isn’t just an alt-right problem. The number of Andrew Tate videos that go through the algorithm and are recommended to me is some indication of the prevalence of this kind of thinking.
As I write this article, Channel 4 has cut ties with Brand, the BBC has removed some of its content, YouTube has suspended money-making from its channel and the police are “investigating a report” relating to this allegation. The brand may be deplatformed; and he could withstand the weight of our legal system. But sooner or later there is a high probability that he will be exonerated, whatever the outcome of the current charges. Until the effects of the deep-rooted sexism of the 2000s are fully addressed and overcome, people will continue to open doors for misogynists and quietly or publicly support them. This is a problem not only because it validates and perpetuates abusive behavior, but also because it ultimately deters good women from speaking up. Quote Forget Sarah Marshall: “If you get bitten by a shark, you won’t stop surfing, will you?” Answer: “Probably yes.”