There’s an elephant in Ghomeshi’s podcast room
Former CBC star’s past looms large — and largely ignored — in his attempt at a comeback
Jian Ghomeshi has returned to the public eye without showing his face.
On Monday, with no advance notice, the former CBC star quietly launched The Ideation Project, which is described as “a creative adventure with the aim of taking a bigger picture view on newsworthy issues and culture.”
“It’s Monday, April 10, 2017,” narrates Ghomeshi at the start of his first video podcast, one that is fittingly titled “Exiles.” “This is The Ideation Project.” The atmospheric score and opening logo — a white line spinning in expanding concentric circles to create the illusion of burrowing — creates a vibe that lands somewhere between The Twilight Zone and a recruitment video for a New Age cult.
“What does it mean to truly feel like you belong somewhere?” asks Ghomeshi, as the silhouette of a young boy is filled in with grainy, black-and-white footage of street protests.
“Or, what if you don’t belong anywhere?”
The debut video is six minutes and 25 seconds of moody music he composed himself.
It is art-school images juxtaposed with flashing word graphics — “Intent, Discontent, Scapegoating, Xenophobia” — that amplify the spoken words.
The goal of this not-a-Q-essay-butkind-of-a-Q-essay is to meditate on identity from a safe distance, to seize upon a “bigger picture” view of what it means to belong within the context of global migration and the creeping demonization of newcomers.
It’s a pariah theme that clearly has personal resonance.
More than a year has passed since Ghomeshi was acquitted of sexual assault charges in a high-profile criminal case that by turns entranced and horrified the country. Long before the trial, Ghomeshi lost his job and his moral standing. He went to ground three years ago. Until Monday’s reincarnation, he all but vanished as a public figure. He mutated into a cautionary tale, a living ghost clanking around our memory.
Based on the early reaction, his re-entry to the media planet — or what we might call the Rehabilitation Project — will not be easy. It may even be impossible. “You should admit to your crimes, apologize and go away,” wrote one Twitter user in response to Ghomeshi’s link to the new podcast, echoing what quickly emerged as the consensus view on social media.
So what we have here is a perilous gap between a new creative message and the reputation of the messenger. Ghomeshi has to get on with his life and do something. But if that something is public, there are many who will loudly object, regardless of what that something is, as was plainly obvious on Monday.
Even though it’s riddled with rhetorical generalities (“What if we are becoming an entire world of exiles?”) and sociological rhymes in iambic pentameter, and is perhaps trying too hard to be broadly topical, the podcast is perfectly fine.
At least, it would be if anyone else were behind the mic.
But the problem for Ghomeshi is he can’t unpack from his suitcase of ideas until he ceases to be the baggage. His disembodied voice may be mellifluous, but it can’t drown out the raging subtext. He’s always had a nice touch with the language, but for now, at least, the only thing most listeners will hear is the deafening silence that comes from attempting to lunge into the future without acknowledging the past.
Instead of aiming for the “bigger picture,” it might have been wiser for Ghomeshi to tighten the focus in his debut and feed his own backstory into the ideation factory. This might not have altered the view of his detractors. But it would at least have allowed for a more honest run at redemption. The alternative, his chosen strategy, is to pick up as if nothing happened and hope a majority of potential consumers don’t care, don’t remember or are just eager to forgive and forget.
This does not seem like a prudent course of action.
“If we belong everywhere, we’re also just a step away from belonging nowhere,” says Ghomeshi in the podcast, punctuating this with a zeitgeist-yearning neologism — NØwherians — that has a line through the “o,” like it’s an extraterrestrial noun or new set of patio chairs from Ikea.
Who knows, maybe this first episode is supposed to be an extended metaphor on his fall from grace and his quest to escape back to the promised land, a meta musing with a slick new media framework that opens a door and leads away from the burned-out house. Maybe the “aspirational migration” he applies to refugees is code for his own dreams of returning home.
But if “asking questions and starting conversations” is the stated goal, Ghomeshi did himself no favours in Episode 1 by overlooking the obvious ones. vmenon@thestar.ca