Last week, the Empathic Rationalist was compelled to
point out Hollywood’s hypocrisy when it swims in violence while preaching about
love. But truly, you can’t even begin to
talk about hypocrisy in Tinseltown without touching on the one other vice that “sells”
even better than gore. And I’m not
talking about drugs or rock ‘n roll.
Our topic today reminds me of the old saw about the
celebrated ethics professor who is caught cheating on his wife. “Being an ethics expert means that I have to
know a lot about ethics,” he responds. “It
doesn’t mean I have to be an ethical man.”
To be sure, Hollywood knows a lot about
romance. It gives us star-crossed
romances, fairy-tale romances, and romances where the hot guy falls in love
with the single mom’s kid and only later falls in love with the single mom. It gives us single-gender romances,
inter-generational romances, and inter-racial romances. It
gives us visions of life-long romances -- like the old couple holding hands on
the Titanic knowing that they’re about to die, but at least they’re about to
die together. You name it, if there’s a way to show two
people falling in love, being in love, or tragically falling out of love,
Hollywood has done it. And the rest of
us lap it up like Pavlov’s dogs.
Then we read about the “stars” and their personal
lives. Love gurus they’re not. If you’ve been in that town for decades and
you’re only on marriage number two, that alone should qualify you for a star on
Hollywood Boulevard. But rushing in and
out of love affairs is the least of Hollywood’s problems. The far
more profound issue is that many of these people seem incapable of loving in
the first place. And this stems from an
attitude where they treat members of the opposite sex more as bodies than as minds. When you combine that pervasive malady with a
hierarchical power structure, you create a sub-culture that is as ugly as ugly
gets. There’s the real irony: the environment known for producing the most “beautiful”
of people may actually be producing the ugliest.
This week, the award for Manifest Ugliness in Tinseltown
doesn’t go to a narcissistic star but rather a studio executive. While his face might not have been as
recognizable as the leading men and women he promoted, Harvey Weinstein had a
name known to anyone who has paid even a scintilla of attention to films. Literally
every movie goer would have been familiar with his work. Weinstein produced, among other flicks, Gangs
of New York, Pulp Fiction, and Shakespeare in Love (for which he won an
Oscar). Literally dozens of Academy
Award winners have thanked him personally during their acceptance
speeches. He is, by most accounts, one
of the most successful movie producers who ever lived.
Two weeks ago, Harvey Weinstein seemed to be on top
of the world. Today, he has become a
punching bag. “I
have a brother that’s indefensible and crazy,” said Weinstein’s brother Bob,
who served with Harvey as a co-founder of Weinstein, Inc. “I want him to get the justice that he
deserves.” Bob Weinstein went on to
claim that brother Harvey was a “bully,” “arrogant” and “treated people like
s—t all the time.”
In the past fortnight, one woman after
another has made accusations against Weinstein, some of which involve horrible
criminal acts. The Empathic Rationalist
is a law-free zone, and I will not comment about the specific allegations or
their merit. What I will point out is
how striking it is that for years, Weinstein’s reputation was apparently well
known in Hollywood but only in Hollywood. Despite the fact that he associated with
legions of liberal politicians and movie stars, many of whom are surely
feminists, nobody saw fit to blow the whistle.
What should we make of all this?
First, let’s not allow Hollywood to minimize
the problem by pretending it’s not pervasive.
To suggest that Hollywood’s “casting couch” problem is merely a Weinstein
problem is like saying that the performance enhancing drug problem in sports is
merely a “(Mark) McGuire” problem. From
everything I’ve heard, PEDs in sports are exceedingly common, and it is
precisely because that scourge is so common that sports leagues would rather address
it on the margins than attempt to eliminate it root and branch. Similarly, the problem of expecting women
actresses to “perform” if they hope to get parts in films is hardly one that
begins and ends with Weinstein.
We’ve already seen the entertainment
industry whiff when Bill Cosby’s antics were exposed. He became the story, not the sexual abuse of
young women. We now have an opportunity
to face the same challenge. Do we want
to make this story about Weinstein? Or
about Hollywood? You know my vote.
Second, once we’ve recognized that
this is not merely a Weinstein problem but a Hollywood problem, our work is
hardly finished. The next task is to
identify what the problem is. Is it confined
to situations where men take advantage of hierarchical power structures to take
advantage of women sexually? Or should
we be talking about drawing a broader line and addressing issues of sexual
objectification? In other words, do men
cross the line (a) only if they misuse a hierarchical power relationship to
advance sexual goals, (b) whenever they make clearly unwanted sexual advances
to a woman regardless of whether they have some sort of societal position of
power over the woman, (c) whenever they address a woman primarily as a sexual
object rather than as a human being with dignity and intelligence, or (d) whenever
they find themselves even thinking sexually about a woman with whom they are not
involved romantically?
I’d rather not attempt to answer this
question for any of my readers. I simply
wanted to raise it. Personally, I don’t
find myself at the most Victorian side of the continuum, but nor do I tolerate
the opposite end either. Clearly, this is
a question that each of us must confront for ourselves as individuals, and if
we as a society are smart, we’ll use the Weinstein moment as an opportunity to
ask this question publicly and start a dialogue.
Finally, can we please recognize that
honest-to-God whistleblowers are among our society’s greatest heroes? They know that as soon as they blow that
whistle, they’ll become targeted by an entire apparatus of defense lawyers and
publicists. If they have ever done anything
the least bit wrong – and who hasn’t? – their past foibles will be exposed, and
the media will shy away from giving them the respect they deserve. After all, our media likes to present stories
in simple good-versus-evil terms in which our heroes can be depicted as perfect
angels; by contrast, whistleblowers tend to be regular people, with warts and
all.
Our society has created all sorts of
ways for powerful folks to get away with misconduct. When they finally get caught, it’s typically
because some principled soul steps up and, like a dog with a bone, just won’t
let go. Can we please show respect to
those people? And can we please not
allow the whistleblower’s imperfections to get in the way of our respect? Courageous, principled people are few and
far between; we shouldn’t demand that they also attain saintly status before we
give them a tip of the hat.
In conclusion, I realize that this is
an inherently complex topic, one that is worthy of book-length, not blog-post,
treatment. But I am writing about this
topic in my blog because it is imperative that we all consider the relevant
issues before this opportunity passes.
As a husband and a father of two daughters, I cannot sit back and watch
women treated as they have been in Hollywood and in so much of our society and
simply pretend that this is the human condition. This is the 21st century. We can do better.
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