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Thursday, November 09, 2017
An Expert on How the Entertainment Industry Can Evolve to Protect Against Sexual Harassment
jezebel.com: If it wasn’t clear already (it was), the weeks following the Weinstein revelations have proven beyond doubt that the entertainment industry has a sexual harassment problem, both in the high number of perpetrators and in the way that sexual harassment complaints are handled.
4 comments:
Emma Reichard
said...
This article had a lot of helpful advice for victims of harassment and assault. And that’s a really important conversation to have. But I do wish the article and podcast had more information on how to prevent this culturally. Because while reporting is important, we also have to stop harassment before it happens. And I think the best way to do that is to stop letting harassers into these industries. People have known for years, and been totally ok with it, and that has to stop. If there are whispers, those people shouldn’t get work. We need to make it so inexcusable that these people have no options. Who cares if longstanding careers are ruined? Those careers weren’t deserved in the first place. People will say without these people the entertainment industry wouldn’t be what it is. But this industry is clearly built on a rotten foundation. And if we need to burn it to the ground and start again, so be it.
I think this article brings a really interesting topic to the discussion of why all of this is just coming out now. I had always wondered what steps were in place for people when things like sexual harassment in the entertainment industry happened. Who do you tell? What can be done? Of course, In this business projects are short and the environment is always changing. I wondered who acted as the HR department in cases like these, I figured it had to be someone. It is sad to hear the these kind of structures were not provided or if so, weren't held up to a level in which they were useful or safe. It is especially surprising to me that people in this industry were not paying more attention to this topic in the first place. One would think that is a job where we recreate real feelings and real life, that this subject would be heavily supported with protection for everyone involved.
I’m so annoyed every time I see a statement that indicates sexual harassment is a Hollywood problem. It’s not. It’s something disgustingly rampant that happens EVERYWHERE in every workplace, in schools, in the streets, in households. However, the show business always stands out amongst the others because sexual harassments are almost engrained as the norm where everyone is complicit. I think in terms of workplace, it is extremely important that there is a protection mechanism around sexual harassment victims in place and the complaints are taken seriously with actually following-up investigations and consequences. And this seems tricky to apply to the show business. For example, who do you turn to when someone takes sexual advantage of you on a TV set? How effective and convenient to contact, like what Heldman offers in the broadcast, the bar association or the National Employment Lawyers Association? As more and more accusations bubble up to the surface, people in this entertainment industry should really start to think about how to establish an effective protection mechanism.
I was just talking to someone in the school of drama about how difficult reputation is in the arts industry because none of it is consistent. It is not like working in accounting or at a company where HR is a constant person or organization you can report to and there is no record that your next job gets sent to them. You are hired purely on reputation and what other people know of you, and HR or a person in charge of complaints or abuse is almost never preset on set or on stage and even in the case of a stage manager that person can't take legal action they can only tell the abused to seek legal action. I am curious moving forward if there will be a company that starts to become HR for all theater people or people who work in the arts industry. It would be a really interesting thing to see what would happen if there was a platform for people to voice their complaints about others that they worked with, and those complaints could have real legal action attached to them. I agree with Liz that as an industry and as a culture we need to call people out when we see harassment or are harassed but we also need a space for people to speak out successfully and make that a regular part of what we do.
4 comments:
This article had a lot of helpful advice for victims of harassment and assault. And that’s a really important conversation to have. But I do wish the article and podcast had more information on how to prevent this culturally. Because while reporting is important, we also have to stop harassment before it happens. And I think the best way to do that is to stop letting harassers into these industries. People have known for years, and been totally ok with it, and that has to stop. If there are whispers, those people shouldn’t get work. We need to make it so inexcusable that these people have no options. Who cares if longstanding careers are ruined? Those careers weren’t deserved in the first place. People will say without these people the entertainment industry wouldn’t be what it is. But this industry is clearly built on a rotten foundation. And if we need to burn it to the ground and start again, so be it.
I think this article brings a really interesting topic to the discussion of why all of this is just coming out now. I had always wondered what steps were in place for people when things like sexual harassment in the entertainment industry happened. Who do you tell? What can be done? Of course, In this business projects are short and the environment is always changing. I wondered who acted as the HR department in cases like these, I figured it had to be someone. It is sad to hear the these kind of structures were not provided or if so, weren't held up to a level in which they were useful or safe. It is especially surprising to me that people in this industry were not paying more attention to this topic in the first place. One would think that is a job where we recreate real feelings and real life, that this subject would be heavily supported with protection for everyone involved.
I’m so annoyed every time I see a statement that indicates sexual harassment is a Hollywood problem. It’s not. It’s something disgustingly rampant that happens EVERYWHERE in every workplace, in schools, in the streets, in households. However, the show business always stands out amongst the others because sexual harassments are almost engrained as the norm where everyone is complicit. I think in terms of workplace, it is extremely important that there is a protection mechanism around sexual harassment victims in place and the complaints are taken seriously with actually following-up investigations and consequences. And this seems tricky to apply to the show business. For example, who do you turn to when someone takes sexual advantage of you on a TV set? How effective and convenient to contact, like what Heldman offers in the broadcast, the bar association or the National Employment Lawyers Association? As more and more accusations bubble up to the surface, people in this entertainment industry should really start to think about how to establish an effective protection mechanism.
I was just talking to someone in the school of drama about how difficult reputation is in the arts industry because none of it is consistent. It is not like working in accounting or at a company where HR is a constant person or organization you can report to and there is no record that your next job gets sent to them. You are hired purely on reputation and what other people know of you, and HR or a person in charge of complaints or abuse is almost never preset on set or on stage and even in the case of a stage manager that person can't take legal action they can only tell the abused to seek legal action. I am curious moving forward if there will be a company that starts to become HR for all theater people or people who work in the arts industry. It would be a really interesting thing to see what would happen if there was a platform for people to voice their complaints about others that they worked with, and those complaints could have real legal action attached to them. I agree with Liz that as an industry and as a culture we need to call people out when we see harassment or are harassed but we also need a space for people to speak out successfully and make that a regular part of what we do.
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