175. SUING MADONNA - The Ethics of Honouring Stage Times
Two fans of Madonna are suing her for going on stage too late. While advertised to start at 8:30pm, the Brooklyn show didn’t start until 10:30pm. This left at least two New Yorkers accusing the pop star, the Barclays Center venue, and promoter, Live Nation, of “unconscionable, unfair, and/or deceptive trade practices” and “a wanton exercise in false advertising”. Instead of leaving the venue at around 11pm as planned, they found themselves not leaving until 1am. It was a week-night. They had to get up early the next day for work but, “confronted with limited public transportation, limited ride-sharing, and/or increased public and private transportation costs” after being “left stranded in the middle of the night” this proved unacceptably difficult. As well as affecting their work the next day, it is argued that the late ending impacted their ability to “take care of their family responsibilities”.
So is Madonna’s late start really “unconscionable, unfair, and/or deceptive”? In philosophical terms: are such late start times, different from those advertised, genuinely immoral?
They are certainly irritating. But then, frankly, so is any mid-week gig. My favourite band could be playing just one mile down the road from me and start at exactly the advertised time and it would still have an impact on work and family responsibilities if it takes place Monday to Friday. In my own profession of teaching, weekday evenings usually involve lesson planning, marking, tutoring, the occasional parents’ evening or twilight session…and I don’t have kids of my own to worry about as part of my “family responsibilities” on top of all that. To make it to work on time each day I’m up at 6am. That means going to bed any later than 11pm is a killer. Because I know there are those who have later starts than I do, or whose job ends once they clock off in the evening, a week-night show of any form always feels unfair to me. But that doesn’t make it immoral. It’s just part of the logistics of a complicated world where there is not uniformity in lifestyles and only limited venue space for a revolving carousel of global performers. (A weekend gig - perfect for me - would feel just as unfair to the fan who works Saturdays and Sundays).
That said - occasionally, for the right reasons, I might juggle things around and make sacrifices if I feel the event is worth being tired the next day for. A week-night concert might force me to stay up later than 11pm, regardless of the next morning’s alarm, if the pros of seeing the show outweigh the cons. So what if I’m tired the next day if it was totally worth it? If my favourite band is playing two hours away and it’s my only chance to see them - the start and end times simply won’t come into it. I’ll be there.
At least most of the time.
And here’s where Madonna has, perhaps, acted unreasonably. Because I can’t make such a decision rationally if I don’t have all the information. I might decide a slightly late night is worth it if I know a show ends at 11pm and decide getting home at midnight is do-able, given the circumstances. But if you had told me the show wouldn’t end until 1am and I wouldn’t be back home in my bed until 2am, that suddenly becomes a different proposition. I still might choose to accept the later proposition (I have done so several times!), but acknowledging it is a different choice feels like it requires me to have all the information in order to consciously make it and not simply be forced into making it against my will.
Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative comes to mind. The one about not treating people as means to an end, but only as ends in themselves. Kant’s reasoning is because using another rational autonomous being for your own ends denies them the ability to use their own rational autonomy - something no rational and autonomous being could ever will for themselves and therefore something which would be a contradiction in the will. In layman’s terms: Kant has no problem with a rational and autonomous person choosing to help another person achieve their ends (say in the mutually agreed contract of employment, or offering to help a friend move house in full knowledge of the laborious demands of the task ahead) but he objects to situations where the helper has been denied to right to rationally refuse. If the promoters of Madonna’s concert had advertised the show openly, with a flexible and unclear start-time “anywhere between 8:30pm and 11pm”, at which point a two hour concert would begin, then at least her fans could decide open-eyed to agree to the possibility of a very late night. But they did not, so the fans (rational, autonomous agents one and all) were left being used for Madonna’s ends (making money from their ticket purchases, and only getting on stage when she felt like it) without their rational consent.
Perhaps.
In Madonna’s defence, we don’t ever have complete information when weighing up our options and making decisions. We usually only have best case or most likely scenarios because, as we are making decisions based on a future that hasn’t yet happened we are always limited only to inference and guesswork rather than guaranteed facts. I think, for example, of the work-night I decided it was worth staying up to visit with friends only in the country for twenty-four hours. We’d have dinner, catch up, and we’d leave around 10:30 to be home by midnight. Not a huge blow to the night’s sleep, and totally worth it. At least that was the plan. In reality, the conversation flowed and suddenly it was half twelve in the morning and we still hadn’t left for our long journey home! Or there was the time that a week-night event in London that seemed perfectly do-able on paper resulted in our not getting back home to the Midlands until 3am because a car crash on the M40 closed the motorway for several hours, leaving us unexpectedly stranded as we travelled home. “The best laid plans of mice and men…” and all that.
I think such examples differ from the Madonna case in some important ways. In the car crash example, it is clear that we had no choice in the matter. We can all be victims of unexpected circumstance. I cannot sue a venue or performer if I miss their show because of traffic delays out of anyone’s control. Nor can I sue them if I get unexpectedly sick the day of the performance and cannot make it to the venue. Such things are just unfortunate, but nobody’s fault, morally speaking. And in the example of staying up late with friends, there remains an element of autonomy that was in play the whole time. I was aware of the time, even if only vaguely. I knew we were chatting long past our self-imposed end-point, but consciously chose to stay because enjoying this rare moment with friends seemed more worthwhile to me than being home “on time”. I could have left at any point to get back “on schedule”, but chose not to.
The Madonna example is different because it is a combination of both things. The element out of the fans’ control - the unexpected car crash - was Madonna herself choosing not to come to the stage until 10:30pm. But one could argue that the fans themselves allowed her to do it by staying. They could have left at any moment. They would have been disappointed, sure, but they did not have to stay and still got their money’s worth. They still saw a full Madonna show, albeit one later and longer than they had anticipated when they left the house. If they really didn’t want to stay, they could have left and condemned the late pop star to stepping foot on stage into an empty arena.
Money here, however, makes the so-called ‘autonomy’ element different than in the staying late with friends example. When I chose to stay late and continue chatting with my international friends, it was a genuinely free and non-coercive choice. When a fan ‘chooses’ to stay late to see the full Madonna concert rather than leaving at the time they needed to they are not really making a choice. Tickets to a show like Madonna could cost anywhere from $100 to $1000. If you have paid out a considerable amount of money and the ‘choice’ is either pay the money for nothing, or be late home but get what you paid for, then there is a sense in which you are pressured to ‘choose’ the latter. Or else, why did you even come out? Why did you pay for the babysitter and the parking and the expensive merchandise if you weren’t going to get the main thing all this had been justified around? it might be the sunk costs fallacy, but the cognitive pressure is real: to pay hundreds of dollars for a thing and just walk away from actually getting the thing you paid for seems perverse.
So fans waiting for Madonna to take the stage weren’t really ‘choosing’ to stay late, they were, in reasoning terms, held financially hostage to do so. It was far more like the car crash scenario, where the road is simply closed and police lights tell you there is no other option but to wait for a lane to open again. Only, crucially, the ‘car crash’ here was no accident. It was Madonna making a (rational, autonomous) choice not to honour the advertised start-time. It was a choice to create a delay which was, arguably, utterly contemptuous of the rational autonomy of her fans. Therefore it is a choice for which she is, morally, to blame.
The same situation would be very different if the venue or promoter had made a public announcement once it became clear Madonna would not be taking to the stage at the advertised time: “our apologies but the advertised performer is not able to fulfil her obligations until 10:30pm. The show will not end until 1am now. Those of you who need to leave and will miss the performance are entitled to a full refund.” That simple act would transform the scenario into one of legitimate choice for those affected. Do they stay or do they go? Although there will still be some element of financial pressure coercing a choice (a refund on the ticket is not necessarily going to refund that babysitter, parking and merchandise) it at least allows agency to those fans who would not have made the choice to attend such a late-night show on a work-night to rethink their decision with full information.
But, as far as I am aware, no such announcement was made.
So I think, at least on a Kantian reading of the situation, the fans seem to have a legitimate argument for moral wrongdoing by Madonna. Now…if we could only get cinemas to start advertising the actual start-times of movies instead of the time the pre-movie commercials begin, we would really be getting somewhere with the entertainment business’ “unconscionable, unfair, and/or deceptive trade practices” that are “a wanton exercise in false advertising”.
A final caveat, however, might be this: Madonna has been sued for this very same thing before.
Returning to the car crash example - the first time it happens, it is a genuine “act of God” that couldn’t be avoided. But we’ve all had experience with those certain roads where accidents are fairly common. The M6 motorway, for example, is one I used to travel regularly to visit my grandmother in Bury from here in Birmingham, and every single time - either on the way up or on the way back down - there would be traffic jams. The motorway’s uselessness became a known quantity (a reason there is an expensive M6 toll road running parallel to it) and when deciding whether or not to use it to get to Manchester, my past experience with the dependably undependable road became part of my reasoning.
A fan of Madonna, arguably, would know that she has past form in missing her promised stage-times. That it is common for her to show such contempt for her audiences.
This prior knowledge transforms the whole situation: as Descartes reminds us “it is the part of prudence not to place absolute confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived”. Madonna has historically shown that her word cannot be trusted on matters of stage-time. Therefore part of the reasoning when purchasing a ticket to her show must include the fact that the stage-times are not dependable. That you buy a ticket at your peril.
You can always choose not to buy one.
And the more fans leave Madonna’s concerts disappointed, the more, perhaps, they will choose not to see her again.
But the record of past form is simply an alternative version of the public message the venue could have made: “we say 8:30pm but who knows? Madonna moves in mysterious ways, and in her own time-zone”. Buyer beware.
Perhaps Madonna isn’t culpable after all. If you become a fan of an artist selfish enough to repeatedly and characteristically act this way to their fans, and still knowingly choose to support them anyway by buying a ticket to a concert anyway, then maybe you are the one morally suspect for endorsing such an artist, and their behaviour, in the first place? If you still drive on the M6 despite everything you know, don’t be surprised by the traffic jams.
Author: DaN McKee (he/him)
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