In the past couple of days this piece has changed. It’s thanks to the care and perseverance of some of those who have gone through hell and have come out of it phenomenal women — as Maya Angelou would have said and how they told me the errors of my ways. The knee jerk reaction I had to the barrage of attacks on Twitter because of this interview has subsided and behind it, I found the dose of understanding I needed to put myself in the women’s shoes. But pardon me if I still won’t call us victims.
In the words of the divine Diana Ross’ song “Stop! In the name of love... Think it over.” I’ve tried to be silent about the recent rediscovery that OMG!-Hollywood-has-a-casting-couch-problem being thrown around mass media and the cacophony of these “dialogues between the deaf where no one is willing to put out the fire,” as Italian journalist Malcom Pagani called it in a recent Vanity Fair Italia article. But as a woman and writer, I no longer can. I mean, you mess with Benjamin Braddock, Dorothy Michaels and Raymond Babbitt, you mess with my whole cinematic identity — and I’m not ready to give that up.
I believe it should be our personal responsibility as lovers of cinema and the arts to diffuse and disarm the media bombs that are exploding around us every day, destroying the lives and careers of beloved actors, highest paid comedians, filmmakers and Oscar-winning producers. Lets take a collective big breath in, then out. Do it with me.
I feel for the victims of sexual abuse and rape, but we are at a crossroads now and need to come up with a new definition of just who those victims are — just as who are the abusers — and it should be done in courts not in the media. As Italian journalist Deborah Dirani recently pointed out on HuffPost Italia, by creating this sandstorm of puritanism around every single sexual innuendo that has ever been perceived by a woman, we are “diminishing the gravity of a hideous crime, which thousands of women around the world become the victims of every day... [Thus] the true victims, those who have been pinned to the ground by the body of a man who forced them to have sexual intercourse, are once again insulted and humiliated.” Lets call rape what it is, when it is that (and the occasions aren’t missing, with more than half the rapes in the U.S. perpetrated by friends and relatives on women) but lets not get carried away in this modern day witch hunt conducted within the headlines of well known newspapers and magazines which progressively look like the latest edition of The National Enquirer. I mean, could it all be a possible smoke screen to hide something much bigger, and much more important than a few hands on knees, and bums? Have you watched ‘Wag the Dog’? If not, you should. Incidentally, it stars one of the actors in question.
About a week ago, I started getting trolled on Twitter for an interview that had been published weeks before the words “sexual abuse” became the easiest way to sell papers, a piece which was rediscovered by an American actress who claims to have been harassed by its subject. Before going to interview him, I had done enough research to know — from this guy’s own writing and his films — that he was no angel. But I also knew that as human beings we live most of our lives in shades of grey, and Hollywood types would be no different. I went to meet him prepared accordingly. And that interview from Venice remains a favorite. Not just because the filmmaker behaved in a way that made me feel immediately at ease in his presence, but because it’s the one piece in existence today that describes him as a human being, in the midst of this sea of Salem-like, monster accusations. Would I write a different kind of piece today, if I knew then what I know now? Probably, but what’s done is done. That was yesterday, today is a new dawn.
Most of those who objected with it — someone actually emailed the HuffPost for the piece to be taken down (see above) in violation of my First Amendment rights of course! — thought it was published after the revelations and when pushed by yours truly, actually admitted that I was not allowed to have a different opinion in this case. Because, it turns out, I should be like everyone else, incensed and outraged at the mere idea that a woman could be molested after following a filmmaker who promised her a role up to his hotel room. As in this incident, no one stopped to question the logistics, that’s what scares me. Could we learn from the horrific experiences of other victims? And while we are at it, could we also teach a lesson to the parents of a 14-year old boy who left him in a strange man’s bedroom past midnight? Those are the questions we need to ask, so that those victims, who have suffered enough, can actually become a life lesson, instead of having to relive their agony.
Lets take another deep breath. And realize that we don’t have to live every second of our lives as participants on a bad reality show — enraged, illogical and loud. We voted one of those as our leader, but we don’t all have to act like that.
My main problem is with women classifying other women as victims. It falls into a familiar narrative that again, attempts to make us seem weak, irresponsible, fragile-minded and up for grabs. Literally, by anyone at any time. It’s what the movies and video games today try to do again and again, make of us objects to be rescued and made better by men and those subliminal messages are leaking out into our reality.
But they don’t have to. We aren’t weak. Women are strong, wonderful, complex beings, in possession of two of the most powerful tools in this world — female intuition and the ability to decide our own fate, by simply saying “NO” at the right moment. And if that no isn’t respected, in the Western hemisphere we can call the right authorities and help get the pervert off the street, thus protecting the next generation of women who could be assaulted after us. If something doesn’t seem right to you, it probably isn’t. Follow your instincts, I’ve been taught that all my life and the only bad experiences I’ve had were the times I didn’t. Instincts are the angels on a woman’s path.
Pardon me for calling it like I see it, but not drinking the Kool-Aid runs in my DNA. Hans Rothe, my grandfather, was forced out of Germany in the mid-1930s because Hitler didn’t like his ideas. His translations of William Shakespeare’s work into German were enough “to guarantee him a one-way ticket to a concentration camp” according to the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps. He didn’t agree with the Nazis and he was pretty vocal about it. Five years ago, when a relative had a serious accident, I checked her out of two NYC hospitals, against medical advice, because doctors were not addressing her issues — instead trying to place her on a medical merry-go-round for the remainder of her life. Parades of doctors came into her room to tell me I was wrong, tried to bully me into buying their expert opinion, and I didn’t believe them. She is now back to 99% of who she was before the accident, and all because I doubted those doctors. So pardon me if I don’t buy everything I read on Twitter or Medium.
My job as a film journalist has also become immensely more difficult now, because I can’t imagine ever enjoying again the luxury of spending time alone with a male filmmaker, actor or producer. And trust me, as a woman writer my life and work were difficult enough before this whole mess! Everything I do has to be three times better than what my male colleagues are writing. Not to mention that apparently, it seems I’m now meant to research the sexual history of all the subjects I interview? Perhaps before walking into a room, interview subject and I both covered in full body armor, filmed all around by secret cameras so as to provide proof of good behavior, I should also ask for a blood test... So much for helping other women.
After all, I believe we do still possess a thing called free will, as an actress we adore seems to prove with her tweet above. Of course men can try but we don’t have to go along with it. We can say “NO”. It’s easy, take one more breath in, purse your lips and blow out, “no”.
I’ll end with the words of a wise male friend, a streetwise explanation on the power of personal responsibility when our own safety is concerned: “Yes, it's a crime for me to get bludgeoned to death in a Sao Paolo favela, but why in the hell did I walk into one at 2 a.m. wearing my Rolex and suit pocket bulging with a big wallet?”