Did Harvey Weinstein count on Hollywood's complicit silence?
It was a scandal and not only in Hollywood, the #Metoo movement spread throughout the world. Film producer Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of two of the five sex crime charges he faced. From the hand of Filmin, ‘The Assistant’ arrives in Spain, a film that narrates the long list of abuses by the producer reported by the complainants.
The scandal shakes the United States, but this is a story about the sexism of certain powerful men like Harvey Weinstein and the complicity of his environment that goes beyond Hollywood. By Lars-Olav Beier and Thomas Hüetlin / Photos: Getty Images and Cordon Press
Producer Harvey Weinstein, a 120-pound self-centered narcissist, was a powerful man. And he liked to make the true meaning of this term clear, especially to women who were "his kind of him" about him.
The scene was almost always the same. His seductive repertoire seemed to be limited to pleas alternated with threats: if you don't get into the game, you can start to forget about your career. He attracted women - most of them young actresses - to his suite or his office under any pretext and then forced them to give him massages, or masturbated in front of them, or touched their breasts and was surprised that they they will not find it as natural as he is. According to his lawyer, everything always happened with the consent of both parties. In at least three cases, the accusations are of rape. Weinstein has personally denied these allegations.
"If nothing happened," a Weinstein in a bathrobe would have said to one of his victims, an alarmed French actress who had fallen for the usual trick of visiting her hotel room.
The Italian actress Asia Argento, then only 21 years old, would have been forced to practice oral sex. Sitting on her bed, her dress torn and her makeup smeared, the girl stammered, "I'm not a whore." He laughed: "That phrase is for stamping on a T-shirt."
Gwyneth Paltrow admits that she bullied her during the early years. “I was still a child. I had a contract, she was petrified "
It is details like these that make the case have such an impact. But what has turned a sex scandal into a topic of political debate is the timing between the coming to light of the past of a dirty old man from the movies and the present of another dirty old man in the White House.
Harvey Weinstein's attorney describes her client as "an old dinosaur who has to adapt to the new times." But is Weinstein's behavior really a behavior typical of a past already out of date? Why has the reaction to this scandal been such a general surprise? In reality, it is still a structural problem that affects hundreds of thousands of women. The only difference is that today attacks and abuses often end up coming to light.
Silent for a long time
However, it has taken a long time to get to the moment we are living. The first reports about Weinstein's behavior appeared in the New York Times after years of rumors. Many of the victims were silent for decades. Finally, it was women like the actress Ashley Judd, among others, who broke down that wall built from threats, shame and out-of-court agreements.
The New Yorker magazine jumped on the case with new accounts of frightened victims who finally mustered the courage to come to light. All of these women describe the abyss of guilt they peered into; They say that everyone in the sector was aware of what was happening, that it had to be, and they speak of a Hollywood in which sex and sexism have been and continue to be part of the business model.
When big stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie joined in the accusations and reported that Harvey Weinstein had harassed them in their early years, it became clear that the same thing is happening in the movie industry as everywhere else, only in a big way. . "I was still a child," said Gwyneth Paltrow. I had a contract, I was petrified.
"I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, so I decided not to work with him again and warn other women that the same thing could happen to them," said Angelina Jolie. This behavior towards women is unacceptable, in all areas and in all countries.
A bold pimp
For cultural America, the Weinstein case is especially painful because the one who has just been brought out of the cave is one of their own, a leading figure from the liberal and progressive half of the country, a supporter and donor to the Democrats. And this at a time when other older gentlemen fall at an almost weekly rate for their lustful abuses; there are examples of communication dinosaurs like Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly or the legend of the television comedy Bill Cosby. Weinstein also serves as proof that the darker side of the country is not only lurking behind the figure of Donald Trump.
At the 2013 Oscars, the host joked about the producer's fame: “Congratulations to the nominees, now you won't have to pretend you're attracted to Weinstein.
Weinstein became great in the years of Bill Clinton, a man who, for different reasons, was also involved in a sex scandal, his notorious affair with Monica Lewinsky.
In those years Weinstein transformed the film industry. He and his producer, Miramax, were synonymous with a different, daring cinema. It was he who made Sex, Lies and Videotapes, an auteur film, into the 1989 smash hit, laying the first stone in his building of fame. Quentin Tarantino's Pulp fiction, produced by Weinstein, grossed more than $ 200 million worldwide, 25 times more than it cost.
Nobody cared that Weinstein behaved like the eternal neighborhood pimp. Over the years, the films produced by Weinstein have accumulated more than 300 Oscar nominations. They did not succeed so often because they were exceptional, but because Weinstein took his films as a personal matter, because he deployed public relations campaigns thought as if they were military campaigns, in which he only counted the victory and the destruction of all enemies.
During the 2013 Oscars, host Seth MacFarlane even made a joke about Weinstein's behavior. After reading the names of the five nominees for the Oscar for best supporting actress, MacFarlane said, "Congratulations ladies, now none of you will have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein." It is this conscious not wanting to know what makes the case so symptomatic.
Power and sex, in Hollywood and beyond
Certain men who occupy positions of relevance, points out the psychologist Joris Lammers, have enormous confidence in themselves, which at the same time is a key aspect to display a great sexual appetite. The "no" for them is not an acceptable answer. And with power increases their sense of being irresistible. Something that, according to Lammers, can also be applied to women. If there were more women in positions of power, they would have sexual affairs as often as men, he adds.
On the other hand, sex has been and is a kind of bargaining chip. “There are abuses, certainly,” says actor agent Heike-Melba Fendel, “but there are also women who do anything to become famous. And that they gladly assume it as part of the game.
Fendel defends that things have changed. “The producers today are rather technocrats or workaholics inseparable from their bottle of mineral water. Excesses as an intrinsic component of the film industry are no longer in force. That was part of that culture of machismo wrapped in cigar smoke that no longer exists.
Although it is true that the dinosaurs of show business have gone down in history, it is clear that the abuses have not done so and neither has the link between power and sex.
Silicon Valley is one of the new centers of power, and it is dominated by men. This summer, entrepreneur Cheryl Yeoh decided to publicize the abuses she suffered at the hands of investor Dave McClure, 51, whose company offers financing for tech companies. Shortly after, a score of women in the sector denounced in The New York Times that they had been victims of sexual harassment by investors whom they had approached to request financing for their companies.
Money, power and megalomania form a toxic combination, both in Hollywood and in Silicon Valley. And the only antidote is to publicize the abuses. Lucia Evans, one of the women who has accused Weinstein of rape, says: "I kept what happened to me in the corner of my brain and closed the door." Her life continued. But she occasionally saw Weinstein down the street in New York. They looked at each other. "I keep having nightmares about him," she admits.
