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2018
Bad Bunny, Good Scapegoat: How 'El Conejo Malo' Is Stirring a Bad Bunny, Good Scapegoat: How 'El Conejo Malo' Is Stirring a
'Moral Panic' in Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico 'Moral Panic' in Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico
Yarimar Bonilla
CUNY Hunter College
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Bad Bunny, Good Scapegoat: How 'El
Conejo Malo' Is Stirring a 'Moral
Panic' in Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico
(Op-Ed)
Burak Cingi/Redferns
Bad Bunny performs live on stage at O2 Forum Kentish Town on Aug. 4, 2018 in London, England.
The most popular artist to come out of Puerto Rico in the past few years may
be 24-year-old global sensation Bad Bunny. But even as he tops charts and
sells out shows around the world, back home, heʼs found himself at the center
of heated debates.
First, he became the subject of controversy when Ricardo Rosselló, governor
of Puerto Rico, turned to social media to ask him to add an additional local
show after his first two concerts sold out in a matter of hours, “on behalf of the
people of Puerto Rico." Local residents felt it was unseemly for the governor to
be tweeting about rap concerts during the complicated process of post-
hurricane recovery and debt restructuring. The singer himself said there were
much greater issues the governor should be focusing on, such as the massive
closing of schools being carried out in the name of austerity.
Controversy broke out once again when a "frustrated schoolteacher" aired her
anger in a Facebook post: "How is it that I, as a teacher with years of formal
education, barely manage to pay my bills, while you earn millions by rhyming
obscene words?" she asked. "Will the time come when no one wants to learn
and theyʼll only want to write indecent lyrics? Will denigrating women be their
biggest accomplishment, and will our schools close??? Oh wait, thatʼs already
happening!!!” she posted.
Why would a schoolteacher lash out at Bad Bunny but not rail against the
current executive director of Puerto Ricoʼs fiscal control board, former Ukranian
minister of finance Natalie Jaresko, who makes $625,000 per year? Why, if
she is worried about the closing of schools and the future of education, does
she not send her message to Puerto Ricoʼs secretary of education,
Philadelphia native Julia Keleher? After all, as Bad Bunny pointed out in his
reply to the teacherʼs post, he is not the secretary of education.
Why, I wondered, is Bad Bunny the target of so much criticism and the
imagined root of so many social problems?
Read More
Bad Bunny: How a Latin Trap Artist Is Changing the
World of Pop
It seems to me that the fury around him has become what sociologists call a
"moral panic”: a symbolic debate that embodies the problems of society and
through which the public channels its concerns and re-establishes social
norms. The main characteristics of a moral panic are: 1) disproportionate fear
of a perceived public threat; 2) media representations of the perceived threat
that draw on common stereotypes which are easily recognized by an audience
that is already used to reproducing such discourses; and 3) the use of the
moral panic to reinforce social norms or justify policies that intensify
hierarchies of race, class and gender. In the Bad Bunny debates, we can see
each of these aspects at play.
But who is Bad Bunny? Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio is the son of a retired
teacher and a truck driver who began singing in church choir as a kid. Benito
studied communications at UPR-Arecibo while working part-time as a packer
in a supermarket. From an early age, he showed interest in music and made his
own songs, which he shared on SoundCloud.
This background reveals quite a bit: This supposed symbol of violence and
criminality is not a child of the criminal underworld, but rather the product of a
stable and supportive middle-class family. As such, his songs do not represent
chronicles, but rather fantasies of the underclass. This is very common within
many popular music genres, in which exaggeration reigns among young
people seeking to represent themselves as heroic protagonists of what is in
reality a banal and stifling day-to-day existence. Perhaps this is why Bad
Bunny so deeply stirs the fears of the Puerto Rican middle class: He clearly
reflects their fantasies and their prejudices.
Some say Bad Bunny's lyrics are misogynistic and violent. Undoubtedly his
songs often fall into some of the more trite scripts of popular music: sex, drugs,
money, fame. But they are not actual chronicles of violence; instead they use
metaphors of violence to talk about other usual themes of popular music: love,
indifference, betrayal and spite. For example, in the song "Soy Peor," Bad
Bunny declares that he has been betrayed and swears that he will not fall in
love again. The only violence to which he alludes is when he says that out of
spite, "compré una forty y a cupido se la vacié” ("I bought a gun and shot up
Cupid"). The video features a man with a hood over his head tucked in the
trunk of a car; later it is revealed that this is Bad Bunny himself, a hostage of
his own feelings. As with many Latin trap singers, what characterizes most Bad
Bunny songs is not really violence, but unrequited love, heartbreak and other
themes common in emo rap.
Even the song "Chambea," the one most associated with violence and
glorification of weapons, is deceptive. The video begins with an introduction
by Ric Flair, former star of American wrestling -- the genre par excellence of
exaggeration and parody. In the video not a single weapon is shown. Instead
one sees a group of friends vaping and playing Nintendo. As one listens
carefully to the lyrics it becomes clear that the theme of the song is not
violence, but the fake bravado of those who pretend to shoot, but have no
bullets. It is true that the video shows stacks of money and women dancing
suggestively, but it also features Bad Bunny dancing around with pink glasses
and a flowered suit, while waving around a wrestling belt. It seems that what is
celebrated here is not so much the violence but the spectacle and
performative guapería so emblematic of American wrestling, and of Latin
American lucha libre.
Some say that his lyrics are lewd and represent women as mere sex objects.
However, it could be argued that his music is extremely "sex-positive," in that
the emphasis is not exclusively on male pleasure but also on female
satisfaction. In "Diles," he tells his lady that when anyone asks why sheʼs with
him, she should say it's because he knows her favorite paths to satisfaction.
The truth is that in the end Bad Bunnyʼs songs are no more scandalous than
certain classic ballads, that narrate infidelity, and female sexuality. Indeed,
many old boleros have significantly more violent lyrics, particularly in regards
to domestic violence, but since they donʼt use obscene language or trouble
traditional gender roles, they are considered “poetic.”
In addition, although he certainly has videos in which women dance around in
bikinis, he also has others, like "Dime si te acuerdas," which features a couple
of senior citizens who reunite with nostalgia in a retirement home. Throughout
his videos Bad Bunny himself flaunts a traditionally queer aesthetic with
painted nails, flamboyant glasses, pastel colors, short shorts, and other style
choices that trouble traditional paradigms of masculinity. Although he has not
identified as anything but heterosexual, many queer-identified youth find in his
look a certain solidarity with their own transgressions of traditional gender
scripts. This might also be feeding into the larger moral panic that surrounds
him.
One of Bad Bunnyʼs most recent hits, "Estamos Bien," has caused a stir for
different reasons. Some argue that the songʼs assertion of everything being
“OK” conceals the troubles of Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico behind a facade of
happiness and positivity. But the fact is that when Bad Bunny performed the
song on The Tonight Show, he directly reproached Donald Trump for
minimizing and denying the post-hurricane death count. It is only after
addressing the president that he then says, "But you know what? Estamos
Bien. [Weʼre good.]" In this moment "Estamos Bien" is not an anthem of
escapism, but of perseverance. It is part of the soundtrack of a people
powered recovery where thousands have raised their own roofs, fed their own
communities, and searched for ways to survive and persevere in the face of
institutional abandonment.
Bad Bunny: Estamos Bien (TV Debut)
Given all this we must thus ask: Who benefits from the moral panics
surrounding Bad Bunny? And who is at greatest risk of greatest harm?
Certainly, while distracted with the idea of Bad Bunnyʼs negative influence on
young people, it is easy to forget about the closing schools, the shrinking
university system, and the lack of opportunities available for recent college
graduates on the island. When fretting over the violence of urban music we
steal attention from the fact that we still donʼt know the names or exact
number of the thousands killed by government failure in the wake of the
hurricane. And when we preoccupy ourselves debating the culture of
misogyny evident in musical lyrics, we fail to address the fact that every
eight days a woman is murdered in Puerto Rico, that gender violence has
increased since Hurricane Maria, and that sexual abuse haunts the biography
of even the highest of public officials in both Puerto Rico and the United
States.
Moral panics over musical genres promote the idea that social problems can
ultimately be explained and dealt with at the level of cultural production and
consumption, rather than by addressing larger structural issues. But it is the
structural and infrastructural violence being experienced by Puerto Ricans
before and after Maria which should be the real scandal and major
preoccupation of a concerned public, rather than the lyrics of a 24-year-old
who sings about being okay while dancing around in pink glasses.
A Spanish-language version of this guest post originally ran in El Nuevo Dia.
