www.themeparkinsider.com: Three women posted over the weekend to a Halloween Horror Nights fan group on Facebook that they were quitting their jobs as scare actors at Universal Orlando's annual Halloween event due to ongoing harassment from guests.
"I'm leaving due to the physical sexual and verbal assault that I experience every single night," one wrote.
3 comments:
This article talks about a situation that was clearly all at fault of the visitors at the park. I am very impressed to hear about all of the things the park is doing to help keep its workers safe. It would be a totally different story if those women were left to deal with those kinds of situations on their own, but its good that the park had several safety plans in place, even if they can't catch all the guests who harass. I Support the women's decision to leave their jobs because they should not have been expected to deal with such things and if they felt scared to get close to any guest to take picture, that's not healthy. People are people, and under the influence of alcohol or not, there is really no way of predicting who will give you trouble but I am most impressed that the women didn't have to go through the situation alone and had the protection of the park. I once had a very similar job and the thing that made me feel most safe was the constant visits from supervisors and park police.
It's really interesting the cognitive dissonance that occurs when actors put on a character in places like Disney World or in this instance, at Halloween Horror Nights. Guests forget that there's actually a human being with feelings and morals behind the character that they depict. In addition to that, often times if the actor does say something about crossing boundaries, they must do so in character (which is a real catch-22 because guests can interpret that as "being in character"). I feel horrible that these women were degraded and felt so incredibly dehumanized that they were compelled to quit their job. Sexual harassment in any situation is NEVER okay and it becomes much more difficult to deal with during events where alcohol or drugs may be involved. It's great that the theme park did intervene and respond to the female employees complaints but it's really never enough.
It's staggering what people will do in a theme park setting that they might not do anywhere else. For some reason, costumes and themed entertainment can make people do things they would otherwise never do. Because the person is playing a character, it's so much easier to forget or ignore the fact that they're a real human being. This, of course, is no excuse for this kind of behavior. This isn't the first time I've heard about problems with this show in particular-- apparently a few years ago they had issues with unruly behavior and had to stop the shows. I think one of the other reasons why sexual harassment in this kind of setting is still such an issue is that there is so much person-to-person interaction between the characters and park guests compared to any other job. When part of your job is to give hugs and let people take pictures with you, it is probably very scary and frustrating when these incidences of harassment start to be an issue because it threatens your ability to do your job without feeling comfortable yourself.
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