jezebel.com: Hollywood is built on a graveyard of indiscretions that either went unreported or ignored. This was never more clear to me than when researching the notorious Hollywood producer Jon Peters, who has been sued several times for sexual harassment and who’s credited as a producer on Bradley Cooper’s 2018 remake of A Star is Born
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It is sad and disgusting that many powerful people in Hollywood's history (and history in general) will be remembered as great people when they have wrecked so many lives with sexual harassment and abuse. I am glad that the Me Too movement has started to tip the scales against abusers, but it is a couple thousand years too late. It is too late for the thousands who have been denied justice by the American criminal justice system in past decades, and it is too late for the millions who go unremembered but who have had their careers or lives ruined around the world for too many years. Articles like this one are important, but they are also very disappointing because they force us to look upon the terrible things that have happened in our industry and outside of it. It is painful, but it is necessary to acknowledge the past: for instance, I had no idea about the accusations against Eddie Murphy. I have loved Eddie Murphy movies since I was little, and I'm sad to now see those movies in a different light.
It is very disheartening to live in a world where although we are aware of the harassment that prevails around us, we still do not take any action against such acts either because we are aloof, we are scared to be involved in someone else's matter or because we are just not interested enough to want to help people who need help.
It gets worse when it prevails in an industry which essentially is responsible for communicating and presenting to the audiences the kind of world we live in. Hollywood is largely responsible for showcasing the goods and wrongs that prevail around them.
Sexual harassment is disgusting and something that should be met with the strictest punishment. Yet it is present in the world around us in large arenas and numbers that are too big to fathom.
Despite the severity of such acts, people and the industry biggies are not able to help the victims because they are concerned about how it will affect them; people forget to think about the victim. And that is the thing that needs to change. Victims should be helped and people should be ready to do that.
It is sad that most actors (both men and women) that have gone on to be successful or have had their careers cut short have either been victims of or tried their very best to avoid sexual harassment. This is a trend in the industry and the repercussions that the perpetrators have to face are not that grave. The perpetrators have gone on with their careers and continued to harass more women in the industry. Victims have to think twice to report sexual assaults because they face more consequences than the people who did it to them. This very sad and heart breaking. In this era of #MeToo, it is refreshing to see the boldness it has given to men and women in the industry to come out and tell their stories. It is also nice to see perpetrators being exposed and shown for what they are but at the same time, I fear the consequences are still not enough and I really hope that the act of retaliation doesn't become more subtle.
This article certainly sets the scene for our current world with its' opening line, "Hollywood is built on a graveyard of indiscretions that either went unreported or ignored." Reading these accounts of allegations and the way these individuals were able to avoid any sort of repercussions is just maddening. The article claims that the writers have "gone back and looked at some high-profile entertainment-industry sexual harassment allegations of the ’80s and ’90s, when they were less common," which in sad and certain fact doesn't mean that the harassment and abuse wasn't happening--it probably was just never reported or broadcast to mainstream media. Whisper networks have been around forever, and I can bet that a lot of these people had warnings throughout the industry that were passed on quietly and discreetly as best they could. The only difference between then and now is that we have built a movement that allows for people to come out of the shadows. It clearly isn't enough, and already the media is beginning to show fatigue of these stories. Social media, for all of its problems, has created a world where things can go viral. People having badly can have their dirty laundry broadcast to millions of people with a simple click, something that clearly would have helped those being abused in the past.
I am just getting burned out on all these issues that keep coming up. Let me first just say it is wrong and horrible that these things have been allowed to happen and that they have been happening for so long. there are and have been a lot of bad people in our industry and there will always be those that try and take advantage of others in this world. my bigger question becomes when are we actually going to start doing something about it or are we now just going to constantly know that its happening and nothing is ever going to happen. legal matters must be taken up and the issues have to be forced in order for change to occur and for it to have any real lasting impact on the industry as a whole. otherwise, everything that we are going through today is just a waist and is simply going through the motions.
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