{"id":8851,"date":"2009-10-03T01:54:57","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T08:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=8851"},"modified":"2009-10-03T01:54:57","modified_gmt":"2009-10-03T08:54:57","slug":"the-casting-couch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=8851","title":{"rendered":"The Casting Couch"},"content":{"rendered":"
I swear, at some point in the next few days, I will stop posting on Roman Polanski. But it shines so many interesting lights on so much of the sexism in our culture that it\u2019s impossible to ignore it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been musing for the past few days on just how it is that so many ostensibly liberal people can be so completely blinkered when it comes to the Polanski arrest. Outside of Anne Applebaum (who has\u00a0doubled down<\/a> on victim-bashing), the defenders of Polanski come from the entertainment community, specifically the film community. And those supporters are overwhelmingly liberal.<\/p>\n

Now, \u201cHollywood Liberal\u201d has gotten such overplay as to become clich\u00e9, but no doubt there\u2019s an element of truth to it, just as there\u2019s an element of truth to the idea that most bankers are conservative. It\u2019s not, as some on the right believe, a case of witch hunts and blackballing. Rather, it\u2019s that acting and the arts tend to attract people who are more inherently liberal. Hey, if you\u2019re by nature a conservative person, you\u2019re not going to chuck it all and move out to L.A. in the hopes you can get a gig as Corpse #2 on\u00a0Law and Order: CSI<\/em>, just as if you\u2019re by nature a free spirit, you\u2019re not going to become an accountant. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but the imbalance is an effect of people\u2019s political leanings.<\/p>\n

But while Hollywood is a generally liberal town, Hollywood is not a perfect liberal Utopia. As anyone who\u2019s studied media knows, Hollywood tends to be whiter than average, prettier than average, and thinner than average by a ludicrous degree. And it tends to sneer condescendingly at those who are not.<\/p>\n

But where Hollywood really falls short is in its treatment of women. Since its earliest days, most starlets have followed the predictable arc from sudden fame to total ruin. So rare is a female star who stays in the public eye for decades that the few who manage \u2014 Meryl Streep, Judi Dench, Susan Sarandon \u2014 are viewed as almost freakish.<\/p>\n

True, Hollywood treats many male stars as disposable, too. But you can name dozens of actors who\u2019ve had staying power \u2014 Matt Damon, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Sean Connery, Sean Penn, Jim\u00a0Carrey, Will Smith, Morgan Freeman, Tim Robbins\u2026we could name stars all day, but we won\u2019t, because it\u2019s pointless.<\/p>\n

Hollywood has different rules for men and women. It treats them differently. It regards them differently. And it recruits them differently.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that last one that is the reason Roman Polanski is getting such fervent defense from fellow artists. Because while Polanski\u2019s transgression is outrageous to most decent humans, it\u2019s really just a short distance away from the way Hollywood once expected its starlets to make their entrances \u2014 on their backs.<\/p>\n

The Casting Couch, like Hollywood Liberalism, is the stuff of clich\u00e9. But like Hollywood Liberalism, it has an element of truth to it. Oh, no doubt the practice is being slowly squeezed out, as trifling things like anti-harassment laws. But it\u2019s still alive and well. Megan Fox has stated that she\u2019s beenpropositioned more than once<\/a> while meeting with producers and directors about projects. And Michael Bay\u00a0had her wash his Ferrari<\/a> as part of her audition for\u00a0Transformers <\/em>\u2013 and filmed the whole thing, because he could.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s in this decade, with years of anti-harassment litigation on the books. It was worse in the 1970s. Quite a bit worse.<\/p>\n

Which is why Hollywood is, to a large degree, rallying around Polanski. Because his crime was of a piece with the culture of the town. It was expected<\/em> that a woman (or in this case, girl) trying to break into the business would give a famous director some incentives to hire her. It was assumed<\/em> that this was just a standard\u00a0quid pro quo<\/em>. Indeed, to this day Polanski defenders argue that his victim\u2019s mother understood this trade-off and set her daughter up for it, as if that excuses drugging and raping a 13-year-old. ((If you believe this, at best it would make the victim\u2019s mother an accessory. However, you\u2019d have to believe the victim\u2019s mother intentionally pimped her daughter out for a casting couch rendezvous, then took her daughter to the police to press rape charges within a few days \u2014 which seems like more than a stretch to me. None of this, incidentally, changes the fact that Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old; no matter how crappy a parent is, you don\u2019t get to rape their child.))<\/p>\n

Many \u2014 not all, but many \u2014 of Polanski\u2019s defenders defend him because all too many of them have been on one side of the casting couch or the other. Some have asked for favors, some have given favors, some have been on both sides of the deal. And for them, that fuels their support. Because the casting couch is an integral part of rape culture, a point at which a powerful person can force a weak person into sex. To paraphrase Whoopi Goldberg, it may not be rape-rape. But it\u2019s on the continuum.<\/p>\n

And that fuels the impassioned defense of Polanski. Because if Polanski is a criminal for using too much force on a 13-year-old, ((As Kira helpfully notes in comments at my site<\/a>, it should be obvious to anyone that “too much force” is equal to “any force.” But it should also be obvious that rape is bad, and a lot of Polanski supporters seem unable to get that, so I think I’d best footnote this.)) what does that say about every director who\u2019s talked a 19-year-old aspiring actress into similar acts, in the interests of her career? And what does it say about an actress who let herself be talked into it? After all, the need to deny one has been raped or assaulted is nearly as strong as the need to deny one is capable of assault.<\/p>\n

And so Polanski\u2019s crime is minimized, because it hits too close to home. Yes, he was guilty of excesses beyond those usually found in Hollywood, but they were differences of degree. He used force when others used coercion, he used drugs when others dangled carrots, he chose a 13-year-old as his target instead of a 20-year-old. His crime is worse. But it is of a kin with the daily transgressions that continue to drive Hollywood\u2019s attitude toward its female actors.<\/p>\n

Hollywood, for all its squishy liberalism, is in racial and gender politics a very conservative town. While most of America has accepted at least the basic concept that women and men are equals, ((I’m not arguing that women and men are in fact treated equally; they are not. But most Americans would agree with the statement, “Women and men should have equal rights.” The concept is generally accepted, at least in theory.)) that people of all races are equals, Hollywood has not even begun to wrestle with the idea. Instead, it tries to deny that it has a problem at all \u2014 and in its denial, ends up defending the indefensible.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I swear, at some point in the next few days, I will stop posting on Roman Polanski. But it shines so many interesting lights on so much of the sexism in our culture that it\u2019s impossible to ignore it. I\u2019ve … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism-sexism-etc","category-rape-intimate-violence-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}