After the Hollywood sex scandal: How the bombshell allegations will affect the 2018 Oscars
Weinstein’s cannot be the public downfall that sets all other alleged abusers free. An environment cannot grow in which allegations are brushed aside due to some deluded belief that the problem has been dealt with and we’ve all moved on
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Your support makes all the difference.We want to enter 2018 with hope. We want it to blossom within us. This year has seen long-embedded scars finally revealed in full. It began with Harvey Weinstein, with nearly 100 women coming forward with allegations against the Hollywood producer. From there, the #MeToo movement grew: Kevin Spacey, Brett Ratner and many other prominent figures faced their own accusers.
A flood of pain numbing in its expansiveness, yet also bearing the sensation of a breath finally being let out. Sexual abuse and harassment has thrived for decades, centuries, millennia. It’s everywhere, it’s insidious, and it looms like a constant shadow. But this outpouring of rage, pain, and trauma has served in the desire for one thing: change. Hollywood needs to change. The world needs to change.
Inevitably, the film industry will look to the Oscars on 4 March as the herald of that change. As the biggest event of the year, it’s the ultimate platform on which to set a new standard about how the industry conducts itself, and in how allegations of sexual harassment and abuse should be dealt with by its members.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which runs the Oscars, has already made its first moves: Harvey Weinstein has been expelled from its ranks, and Academy CEO Dawn Hudson e-mailed members to notify them that a new code of conduct is currently being finalised.
All the right moves, but there remains a hollow feeling. These are opening, cursory moves for any institution, and there’s a palpable feeling this could be the limit of their actions. That the Academy will pat itself on the back, exclaim they’ve scourged themselves of the disease, and call it a problem solved.
What happens to Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby or Mel Gibson – all accused of sexual or domestic assault? Woody Allen may not be an Academy member, but his work has been consistently praised at the Oscars despite allegations of child molestation.
Weinstein’s cannot be the public downfall that sets all other alleged abusers free. An environment cannot grow in which allegations are brushed aside due to some deluded belief that the problem has been dealt with and we’ve all moved on.
Casey Affleck last year faced allegations of sexual harassment from two former co-workers, yet still climbed the Academy stage to accept the award for Best Actor for Manchester by the Sea. Brie Larson was given the duty of handing him his award; a woman who, earlier in the evening, had run to hug every single sexual assault survivor who took to the stage during Lady Gaga’s performance of “Til It Happens To You”, nominated for Best Original Song from campus sexual assault documentary The Hunting Ground.
Her reaction made headlines. She didn’t clap for him, and her discomfort seemed obvious to many. Larson, who has long been an outspoken advocate for sexual assault survivors, seemed to speak for so many in her actions. She stood for women everywhere, year after year, who are forced to stand by and applaud men with these kinds of allegations against them, as they’re elevated to some of the most prominent, adulated platforms in the world – from the Oscars stage to the US presidency. With so, so many individuals facing harassment and abuse in Hollywood, the message they hear in these moments is loud and clear: your experiences don’t matter, your pain doesn’t matter.
By Academy traditions, Affleck is set to take the stage once more to present this year’s Best Actress with her award. Can the Academy honestly, in this changed atmosphere, welcome Affleck with such open arms? And what steps do they take? Ban him, decline him an invite, or merely highly suggest he has a sudden change of plans that makes him unable to attend? Affleck’s treatment at the 2018 Oscars will be the first true litmus test of the Academy’s commitment to change.
And beyond? Taking definitive action in the face of allegations of this nature is a necessary step, but it’s also only the beginning. If sexual harassment in Hollywood is to end for good, the scales of power finally need to be balanced. Of the top 100 grossing films in 2016, for example, women accounted for only 14 per cent of all directors, writers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers.
The industry needs an open, diverse, and supportive structure and, in part, that means female executives, female directors, and a general increase in women in positions of decisive power. Only then can the oppressive atmosphere that both allows this behaviour and silences its victims finally be vanquished.
The Academy has a role to play here too, though it’s not always so clearly defined. Its awards work both as a reflection of Hollywood’s tastes and values, and as a shaper of them, in dictating trends which studios will then so voraciously chase after.
In continually rewarding alleged abusers, the Academy helps to bolster their careers and ensure them further work. By ignoring diverse projects, it discards their creators and denies them the spotlight needed for further opportunities. To note, Kathryn Bigelow is the only female director ever to have won the Oscar. Could Greta Gerwig, with Lady Bird’s positive buzz, help to change that miserable statistic?
There will be no easy answers, no clear paths. Neither should we expect this to be the case. When a problem is this deeply woven into the very fabric of society, ridding of it can feel like the most herculean of tasks, like trying to escape from the very bottom of the ocean.
But there’s one hurdle we can overcome first: the conversation itself, the un-silencing of women. Listen to women when they’re in the boardroom. When they’re on set. When they’re offering ideas, making art, raising their concerns. Let’s start talking. Then we figure out the answers together.