Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
I hadn’t been closely following the whole Harvey Weinstein story for the same reason I haven’t seen a movie in a theater in nearly a decade – I’m tired of Hollywood rehashing the same damn tired tales over and over. This particular story is so old it’s become a cliché, as Maureen Dowd alluded in a piece she wrote for the New York Times Sunday Review back on Oct. 14 by referencing part of Shirley Temple’s own autobiography.
“Nearly 80 years later, that aroma of perversion and maladroit du seigneur clings to Hollywood. Now we are inundated with grotesque tales of Harvey Weinstein pulling out his penis to show to appalled and frightened young women, enlisting the pimping help of agents and assistants to have actresses delivered to his hotel rooms, where he pestered the women to watch him shower or give him a massage or engage in intimate acts,” Dowd paraphrased more than twenty-years worth of Weinstein’s behavior more or less unremarkable behavior.
Therein lies the true rub for a media and public hearing this old tale told again, only now with a fresh cast of familiar names and faces – how, exactly, to respond to it.
This awfulness is, of course, nothing new. The phrase “casting couch” has long been part of the American English lexicon – having come from a time when movie studios often had their own on-site abortion clinics. Over the last thirty years, it has become abundantly clear that such brutish behavior by men in positions of power isn’t new and isn’t unique to the film industry. The confirmation hearing for Justice Clarence Thomas back in 1991 forever changed the nature of discourse between men and women in the workplace. Only a few years later and President Bill Clinton would show Americans what presidents do during government shutdowns – namely interns. And, so on.
Let me state here unequivocally the difference between Harvey enticing a young starlet into having sex with him in exchange for a movie role and Harvey raping her – the former is unseemly but business-as-usual, the latter is a violent crime that, if he has indeed committed it, he should be harshly punished for. So far, it appears as he’s mainly being accused of the former, and even then people don’t seem to have any idea as to what to do about it other than to complain, file lawsuits and to take settlements that come with non-disclosure agreements. These actions might serve to compensate individuals Weinstein mistreated, but does little to solve the bigger problem so many are complaining about. Other suggestions of course involve passing laws and bringing in more government oversight, because that’s as far as many people are capable of thinking about any given problem.
Brit Marling, a pretty blonde actress and one of Weinstein’s accusers complains that people like Weinstein have too much power – which is probably true in his specific case, but again doesn’t address the overall problem in any meaningful way.
“As she describes the ‘economics of consent,’ she says Weinstein is a gatekeeper that could give actresses livelihood, a sustainable career, and fame which is a way for ‘women to gain some semblance of power and voice inside a patriarchal world.’ She adds that Weinstein could also kill the career of an actress if they humiliated him,” Dino-Ray Ramos wrote for Deadline yesterday.
As of this writing, there was but one reply to that article, and, it’s a doozey.
“I have relatives who lived through communism and so-called socialism in Eastern Europe and they all told me horror stories about the daily struggle to survive. Trading anything of value was common, asking for favors of all kind the norm, because the resources were so limited. And gatekeepers existed, too, everywhere.
The ‘casting couch’ (= sexual favors) is not an invention of capitalism, Brit. It exists in all economic and political systems, because power and resources are never equally distributed,” someone called “Sarah” commented – and in so doing provided some of the best analysis of this whole sordid affair I’ve seen.
It used to be that making a motion picture was ruinously expensive because the resources needed to do so were relatively scarce. Celluloid film coated in silver salt is expensive – and you need hundreds of yards of the stuff, there’s a reason it’s called “footage” to this day. Today, those resources are abundant. Digital everything has replaced celluloid film – 0s and 1s are essentially limitless.
Add to this fact that the entertainment world is currently absolutely full of powerful and wealthy women and one has to wonder why there isn’t already a women-ran film studio and/or production company that brings in young talent and makes them rich and famous without first sexually exploiting them. That, Ms. Marling, is how you break the “patriarchy.”
Indeed, the same digital technology that has made filmmaking less expensive than it has ever been can be brought to bear upon the problem in other ways, as “Sarah,” pointed out.
“…you (Marling) don’t even try to offer any real-world ideas how to solve the ‘casting couch’ problem. What’s really needed to solve the current problem is a watchdog institution, where actors can inform in an anonymous way on serial abusers. We need a WikiLeaks for Hollywood,” Sarah concluded.
Such a transparent watchdog institution and the emergence of studios and production companies run by women are two market-driven ways of dealing with this problem that is as old as humankind itself. Trying to solve this problem with another problem that’s nearly as old as humankind – the state – will only serve to make everything worse while solving nothing.
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