What Drove ‘P. Diddy’?

Reading the astonishing list of charges against “P. Diddy,” I suddenly sensed that everything clicked into place. I’m not the world’s greatest rap or hip-hop fan, but I know enough about it to judge that his output as an artist over three decades has been without the spark of the dynamism that brought these genres so much wealth and influence.That’s because he was probably never in it — or only very briefly, at the start — for the music; he was in it to be the supreme ringmaster in a three-ring circus of sex. That he succeeded to the grotesque lengths he did, or at least has been accused of, can be seen in the fact that so many famous names in music, cinema, sport, and politics are now shivering in their bespoke trainers at the idea of being linked to his notorious parties.It’s not just rap, but rock, which is driven by the desire of sex-starved boys to become sex-sated men. Pop stars are famous for it; usually nerdy outcasts at school, they discover that picking up a guitar or croaking into a microphone works wonders with women.Looking at that photograph of Mick Jagger sulking while Marianne Faithfull and Alain Delon — two of nature’s aristocrats, who would have been desired in any social milieu — flirt, I find it hard to believe that he would have been considered such a sexual trophy had he been a shelf-stacker.This impetus goes through high and low culture. “Writers write for fame, wealth, power, and the love of women,” is a quote often attributed to Sigmund Freud. “The 15-year-old girls I wanted when I was 15,” Leonard Cohen wrote in a poem, “I have them now.” He adds: “It is very pleasant,” concluding: “I advise you all to become rich and famous.”Hollywood was the apogee of this — so much that the casting couch was a joke and open secret. The movie industry of the 20th century was composed mainly of beautiful women seeking status and ugly men seeking sex; it made the men happy, the women not so much. Think of Marilyn Monroe, the ultimate sacrifice to showbiz sex, who once reportedly told her maid sadly “I’m not sure I do it properly.”People become movie stars because strangers — the audience — desire them. Yes, there are always a few plain ones around to make the star look even better, be they the Fat Friend or the Short Sidekick, but the majority of film actors are far more attractive than what Elizabeth Hurley called “civilians” but might better be described as “punters,” considering how much they pay to see this year’s girl — from Sharon Stone to Sidney Sweeney — wearing next to nothing.In the 2001 film “Swordfish,” the director Dominic Sena reportedly divulged that Halle Berry was paid a bonus of £500,000 on top of her $2.5 million pay-packet to take her top off — “$250,000 per breast!” as he somewhat ungallantly put it. Berry denied this; “If I were charging for them, it would be a lot more than $500,000.”Her attitude was admirably candid. She told CNN, “It was such gratuitous nudity, and some people have a problem with that. I knew it was gratuitous. I never made excuses for it.” For young actresses just starting out — from Maria Schneider in “Last Tango in Paris” to Lea Seydoux in “Blue Is the Warmest Colour” — and suffering sexual bullying from directors, the experience is far less rewarding.The open secret of how Hollywood was a sexual snake-pit from the get-go — and how much many film stars put it about, hence their leading the way in making multiple marriages and divorces socially acceptable — led to a strange paradox whereby they were both idolized and despised by the public. Yet would we behave differently if we had access to a limitless range of astonishingly attractive partners?I wonder. Come to that, would we turn down that extra £300,000 for a few seconds of semi-nudity? Unless we’ve been in the position where we’ve been asked — and refused — there’s something slightly comical about primly insisting that we wouldn’t.Hollywood has cleaned itself up somewhat since #MeToo and the unbridled nature of after-hours behavior has moved to other arenas of entertainment. Sportsmen are notoriously loose, but they need to be match-fit, so even the most hedonistic have to have discipline, to rap music, of course, where many of the leading players seemed to have entered the music profession not so much to live life as a party but as an orgy, and to politics, perhaps — “Showbusiness for ugly people” as one wag called it. The only difference this time being, no one wants to see the photographs.

What Drove ‘P. Diddy’?

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