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What We Lose When We Give Awards to Men Like Casey Affleck
By endlessly forgiving abusive men, we tell women that the abuse they suffer is less important than some guy's right to get his point of view across.
White men in entertainment can get away with anything. That one, soul-deadening lesson has been drilled into women's heads recently. We saw reality TV star Donald Trump caught, on tape, sexually harassing a female colleague and giggling about "grabbing [women] by the pussy"—and we saw America elect him president a few weeks later. We found out that Bernardo Bertolucci and Marlon Brando had assaulted actress Maria Schneider on film to create a rape scene in Last Tango in Paris—and we also found out that, prior to her death, Schneider had been talking about this for years. We saw the image rehabilitation of Mel Gibson, who was similarly caught on tape telling his ex-girlfriend that "you look like a fucking pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of n—— it will be your fault," shortly before threatening to kill her and rape her himself. At the Academy Awards, the 61-year-old Gibson sat in the front row, racking up awards for Hacksaw Ridge and merrily chortling along at jokes about O.J. Simpson. And Casey Affleck took home the prize for Best Actor.
Affleck, for those who are unaware, stands accused of sexually terrorizing female colleagues on the set of his 2010 mockumentary I'm Still Here; this allegedly included everything from referring to women as "cows" to insisting that one employee, Amanda White, share his hotel room, then deluging her with abusive text messages when she refused. Another woman, Magdalene Gorka, says she woke up in a private hotel room to find Affleck "curled up next to her in the bed wearing only his underwear and a T-shirt," according to her complaint. When Gorka managed to get Affleck out of her room, he allegedly rallied crew members to harass and bully her until she quit the project.
Affleck's Best Actor win isn't the most upsetting item on this list; for one thing, an Oscar doesn't come with nuclear launch codes. But it is grim confirmation of an all-too-common pattern. An Oscar provides an invaluable career boost; Affleck will probably get more roles, better roles, and more name recognition as the result of the award. As he becomes increasingly successful, he will become increasingly untouchable; meaning, if the allegations are true, that the women he's victimized will have less and less chance to be heard. That's not just damaging to the individuals involved here, but to all women who find themselves victimized by powerful men.
Those predictions may seem bleak, but they're drawn from a long history of institutional approval of the artistic production of troubled men. Just look at Roman Polanski. No one doubts that Polanski raped a 13-year-old girl—he admitted to it not only in his guilty plea, but also in an infamous interview in which he called her his "victim"—but no one in the Academy seemed to believe it should pose much of an obstacle to his filmmaking career. When he won the Oscar for Best Director for his 2003 film The Pianist, the announcement of the award was met with a standing ovation, including from (say it ain't so) Meryl Streep. A beaming Harrison Ford accepted the award for Polanski, who could not attend the ceremony, due to, you know, being a convicted child rapist.
White men in entertainment can get away with anything. That one, soul-deadening lesson has been drilled into women's heads recently. We saw reality TV star Donald Trump caught, on tape, sexually harassing a female colleague and giggling about "grabbing [women] by the pussy"—and we saw America elect him president a few weeks later. We found out that Bernardo Bertolucci and Marlon Brando had assaulted actress Maria Schneider on film to create a rape scene in Last Tango in Paris—and we also found out that, prior to her death, Schneider had been talking about this for years. We saw the image rehabilitation of Mel Gibson, who was similarly caught on tape telling his ex-girlfriend that "you look like a fucking pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of n—— it will be your fault," shortly before threatening to kill her and rape her himself. At the Academy Awards, the 61-year-old Gibson sat in the front row, racking up awards for Hacksaw Ridge and merrily chortling along at jokes about O.J. Simpson. And Casey Affleck took home the prize for Best Actor.
Affleck, for those who are unaware, stands accused of sexually terrorizing female colleagues on the set of his 2010 mockumentary I'm Still Here; this allegedly included everything from referring to women as "cows" to insisting that one employee, Amanda White, share his hotel room, then deluging her with abusive text messages when she refused. Another woman, Magdalene Gorka, says she woke up in a private hotel room to find Affleck "curled up next to her in the bed wearing only his underwear and a T-shirt," according to her complaint. When Gorka managed to get Affleck out of her room, he allegedly rallied crew members to harass and bully her until she quit the project.
Affleck's Best Actor win isn't the most upsetting item on this list; for one thing, an Oscar doesn't come with nuclear launch codes. But it is grim confirmation of an all-too-common pattern. An Oscar provides an invaluable career boost; Affleck will probably get more roles, better roles, and more name recognition as the result of the award. As he becomes increasingly successful, he will become increasingly untouchable; meaning, if the allegations are true, that the women he's victimized will have less and less chance to be heard. That's not just damaging to the individuals involved here, but to all women who find themselves victimized by powerful men.
Those predictions may seem bleak, but they're drawn from a long history of institutional approval of the artistic production of troubled men. Just look at Roman Polanski. No one doubts that Polanski raped a 13-year-old girl—he admitted to it not only in his guilty plea, but also in an infamous interview in which he called her his "victim"—but no one in the Academy seemed to believe it should pose much of an obstacle to his filmmaking career. When he won the Oscar for Best Director for his 2003 film The Pianist, the announcement of the award was met with a standing ovation, including from (say it ain't so) Meryl Streep. A beaming Harrison Ford accepted the award for Polanski, who could not attend the ceremony, due to, you know, being a convicted child rapist.
http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a43408/casey-affleck-oscar-win/
23 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
but then who said americans can't be hypocritical and sexist, a lot of people voted for one. Why should LaLawood actors and actresses be any different.
I find out they are assholes, I don't support them with my $$$ and tell people about them.
There is legally nothing more to be said - now. 
I don't know if this was a calculated boys club effort. Or if right wing attacks on Feminism has created a large segment of American Male pigs, or if he is really that talented.
Where was Cumberbatch when we needed him? Playing another superhero in the age of "Pussy Grabbing". 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brie-larson-casey-affleck-best-actor-oscars_us_58b40546e4b060480e09a7e4
