Moguls and starlets: 100 years of Hollywood’s corrosive, systemic system
Web Publication: The Guardian, by Pamela Hutchinson
For the past couple weeks I’ve sat back and watched the flurry of ‘revelations’ regarding Harvey Weinstein. Is it a revelation if everyone already knew it? That’s one of the points that Hutchinson makes in her article on the affair. I think this is the go-to article to understand what took place and what may very well continue to take place in carnivorous Hollywood. If there is any shortcoming in the article, it is that it could continue in to ask more hard questions of everyone involved. I prefer this historical view to the flurry of me-to pile on. Those breathless testimonials don’t do justice to the element of complicity that doubtless existed in some of those cases. There you go, I said it. This is not to excuse the behavior of Weinstein and many others that will ultimately continue to skate under the radar. Their pattern of power abuse, with its blunt, goonish, even gross perversion of sexual sensibility seems so strange to anyone with an ounce of sophistication toward the true female aura.
I ran across a factoid in another article pointing out one simple fact. Weinstein is 65 year old. While powerful pervs don’t have a retirement age, it occurred to me that there are other related dynamics at work here. This is a guy that had an overwhelming cover provided by an entire industry and significant cooperation from the left. Weinstein could have continued to be protected but others chose for it to not be so. That same cooperation by the way continues to protect Bill, and will continue to do so even after his departure. No so for Harvey. Harvey is expendable to whatever up and coming brigade would love to have his seized perquisites, albeit re-contextualized for Gen X or even some Millennials waiting in the wings.
This issue is now being called the death of Hollywood, a real revolution for women in the biz. Short term, yes, long term, not so sure. The part goes to the highest bidder. There are exceptions for some establishment actresses that took their lumps back in the day, but we live in he age where maximum victimhood is extoled, but also, where far more up and coming starlets and stars have no qualms with compromise on the road to fame. Demand has never been higher for the rare limited supply of stardom.