… is an article in The Atlantic about Harvey Weinstein.
These are … problems of power and status that manifest as a violent disregard for others — a failure to acknowledge the autonomy of women or a problem accepting it and a compulsion to revoke it by force. So it feels especially jarring to hear that same person professing a lack of agency in these acts.
Whether you refuse to let women out of the house unless they cover every inch of their body with a black sheet, or refuse to let women transact business with you unless they take off their clothes and go down on you — whether it’s All clothes off! or King-sized sheet on! — it’s quite the same thing: The violent revocation of women’s autonomy.
The only thing that differentiates American from French culture in these matters is that when Dominique Strauss-Kahn (an uncannily identical twin to Harvey Weinstein) was himself finally outed, bigshot philosophers defended him.
[Bernard-Henri] Lévy says … that the man he calls a friend of 20 years, “bears no resemblance to this monster, this caveman, this insatiable and malevolent beast now being described nearly everywhere. Charming, seductive, yes, certainly; a friend to women and, first of all, to his own woman, naturally, but this brutal and violent individual, this wild animal, this primate, obviously no, it’s absurd.”
BHL is a smart guy, but he seems unable to grasp that you can be an articulate, enlightened economist, or a sensitive maker of art films, and a primate.
October 12th, 2017 at 9:18AM
BHL is a cartoon of a french philosopher, well suited only to fitting in with the stereotypes that populate Charlie Rose’s head.
A symptom of France’s degeneration along with their ridiculous new president…
October 12th, 2017 at 9:54AM
Until someone acknowledges that a tiny cabal of men control the media, little will change. And those guys aren’t just the notorious ones found in Hollywood, casting themselves on top of hapless young women. Wall Street finances the bulk of studio production, so it becomes a tightly wound nexus of corruption. The money men aren’t known for restraint or respect of women, as well.
Harvey didn’t own a studio because of his massive talent or intellect, primarily because he didn’t have any of the two, nor needed any of the two. He got there because he was a good ‘ol boy, plugged into the system….
October 12th, 2017 at 9:11PM
I was watching a movie on tv the other day that was entertaining enough, and whose name popped up in the credits at the end as executive producer? Steven Mnuchin. Barf.