pinkfloydpsw's Blog

I’ve done a little bit of guest lecturing, not as much as I intended to though, and I hold court regularly when anyone is too tired to flee or is maybe being nice and humouring my egotistical need to express everything I think about. Let’s halt there for a moment though, I’m not a preacher and I don’t think I’ve figured it all out, or that everyone should just stop and listen to me. My brother does that, it’s hard work to spend evenings listening to him on how everyone is always so wrong, and he always, every single time, knows much more. I suspect it’s an insecurity, a need for validation, a need to feel superior in some way, but I don’t think it necessary in his case because he is a smart guy. No, my thirst for a dialogue is born out of doubt, I actually already know what I think, and I think a lot of the time that my reasoning is pretty good, but I can’t consider what I think as a truth or correct without challenge, and I wish for you, or anyone really, to tell me where, how, and why, I may have got it all wrong.

These things we think we have figured out are personal conclusions concerning common knowledge items, absorbed through the lens of media, a published and read history, by anecdote, or through observation, they must be put to the forum to see what happens and to test their validity. I often ask myself (inspired by something Hitch said) “how do I know what I think I know, and who does it serve for me to believe that which I think I know?“, if I am in error. You never know, you may have got it spot on first time, likely not however, since one mind cannot see every angle, and without personal prejudice creeping in. You might be able to tell I like the works of both Socrates and Neitzsche, the former because he thought debate and questioning the best way to expose the often falsehood of the confident or prominent individual that occupied the role where others might suspect he/she ought to have had expertise, and the latter because he wished for each of us that we challenge the canons and dogmatisms concerning moral knowledge, or anything to do with a socially accepted truth if it was maybe built upon a shaky foundation (push it over).

So why the title, and why the opening remarks? Well, I’m going to speak on something that is tricky, contentious, divisive, emotive, and important. I wanted to set up what I intend to say with the first thought in your mind, as the reader, that I have no certainty in what I put forward, it is a Socratic speculation, as well as a Nietzschean attack on common, social, or mediated truth. That’s two introductions, let’s get on with it…

The subject is Harvey Weinstein and the nature of his actions, the question is is he entirely the bad guy? We know he is guilty, but how guilty, and of exactly what? I’m no expert but I’ve always believed some things very strongly, namely that we must recognise and respect the rights of persons not to be involved in any sexual act that they do not wish to be involved in. Sexual things are not merely physical acts, they’re intimate and of course psychological, so it’s not a simple matter to be overpowered as such in a purely physical manner. The harm will last in the mind of the victim in the case where you might violate the autonomy of the other person by way of bodily or mentally coercive actions. Weinstein had power and influence, the temptation to abuse his position I’m sure was overwhelming, I can’t imagine his life, I’ll not condone any of his actions, but I would say that initially my curiosity lead me in the direction of asking what any of us would do with such power under such circumstances? I hope that personally I would not abuse it, but can I be sure, can you? Anyone can read about the charges and the prosecution, and leap in their own mind, should they wish, to thinking that this guy was anything other than what he has been accused of, but that would be ludicrous, the man is definitely guilty as charged. What I want to know is how did he get to the point where he was confident he could get away with it, how did he get to thinking that what he was doing was ok, how did he become this guy, how did it take so long to catch him?

What of his victims, the Me Too we heard so much of in the late 10s, in what way might they be actually complicit (don’t rush to judge me, I’m going to make what I think is an arguable point) in what happened to them? Let’s contend that, in a sort of open-secret way, at least a small handful of these eighty or so victims (that’s just the known) knew of the reputation of Weinstein, and also knew that fame or success was what they ultimately wanted to achieve. Did any of them do the mental math of what role they could potentially play then in making their own bed to lay in, shortcutting the process, jumping the queue. Remember that the charges were sexual assaults of varying natures, and the defence was not that there had been no intimate sexual activity, but that it had all been consensual.

If Weinstein held the key to the gate of success, and they (young female actors) foreknew exactly what they had to do to get through that gate, I suppose then might we confidently speculate that at least some of them must have chosen to participate, using the one tool that they definitely had in their toolbox, their attractiveness, to gain what it was they most desired, a chance at success? Many would say that that is always and option, that attractive young women in modern times have great ‘soft’ power over men. That there’s always some form of exchange taking place between men and women with the ultimate transactional currency being sex or sexuality. If its taken against the express wishes of women then that’s clearly a crime, but if we were being honest might we doubt that ‘consent’ is often discussed at all? More likely it has been assumed to have been given due to preceding actions. The idea that ‘no means no’ is uncontroversial and unarguable, but its probably not that useful as a guide to those potentially misunderstanding the nuances of male/female sexual relationships. Again I’m not excusing things that happened, I’m just asking if Weinstein might have thought that there was an understanding on the part of those women that met him in apartments or well outside his office hours? If this was this case, and of course it may not be, might we further conclude that there was no crime committed in some cases? I think this would be too far to go, the problem being that if this action on their part was the only option, to sleep with or perform sexually for Weinstein, then there is definitely an identifiable structural wrong in place here and we cannot allow ourselves to diminish in any way the gravity of the situations that might then arise from such a condition. That’s true in any type of manipulative structural relationship, even some forms of marriage around the world.

Let us contend that Weinstein, a long time successful producer in the film industry, is a quite unattractive specimen of a man even in his younger days, now he is middle aged and balding, overweight, married, and not very likely a potential sexual partner to many of these young attractive actresses in question (can I still call them that?); he may not have started out entirely like this description, but he is by the end of his story. So, ugly overweight Weinstein finds himself getting accustomed to the fact that he has a power, maybe he sought it, and maybe it happened to become apparent when he was sought out because of it. What I am saying is that in the early instances there may have been a series of events that came to let him know that this power was available to him, like let’s say he hears from an older colleague about the “casting couch” way things get done in the industry, or he is approached by an aspiring actress (still not sure of the term) for the very fact that he may represent the quick path to success, and pleasing him might open a door or two. The first speculation does not in any way let him off the hook, the second may in some small way…Bear with me..

If the casting couch is a thing and has been a thing for a long time, that does not make it a moral or acceptable thing to participate in or take advantage of, though we must recognise that the temptation for a fat, balding, middle aged man with problematic skin, and likely in the midst of a midlife crisis, may be very much stronger than for others in his position who happen to be young and vibrant. Still no excuse though, because the temptation of having something that you have never had, power over women in this case, is likely lesser than the temptation of repeating something that you have had, and really enjoyed (bit of amateur psychology there, I may be wrong). I base this speculation on the symptoms of addiction, the next cigarette, or bet, or hit, is likely to be much more compelling than the first smoke, or gamble, or drug; addiction to a thing is only discovered after the consumption of that thing, nobody is a gambling addict before their first wager, they are only in potential so (an assumption on my part maybe).

If the case is that Weinstein got used to being powerful and influential after he was approached and maybe used as a stepping stone a few times maybe, then we must take into account the influence this may have had on him. Here we have, as aforementioned, a fat, middle-aged, balding, wildly unattractive in normal terms, man, who would not have been the likely lover of these beautiful young actresses (hmm?) under any other circumstances than because of what he could do for their careers. You might then, with this in mind, consider the pressure he has faced, and ask yourself how you might have reacted if you were in the same circumstance? It is easy to think that in his position (keep the afore described in mind as I don’t think I need repeat it) you would definitely have reacted differently, and that may be easy because you have never been in his position. We, us powerless people, have no idea how we might cope with the option of becoming powerful, and history is full of tales of well intentioned persons who fell from their moral position when they gained power. But we’re not going to use history though, we’re going to use something that used history better than I can….

Let’s take a story we all know very well (and if you don’t then how weird are you?), the book or TV series Game of Thrones, and let’s consider two of the main characters in it, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. Jon never seeks or wants power, he is reluctant, his morals never waver from his initial goal of the emancipation from tyranny for all the peoples of the realm, he wants to be led by a moral leader but he will reluctantly be that leader if he is forced to be, and importantly he is also willing to relinquish his power in the face of a better manifestation of power that he can align with and be a tool of. We might call him an idealist, the moral exemplar of the story, he ends as he begins, uncorrupted and incorruptible. Daenerys begins humbly as the sister of an aspiring tyrant that will make any bargain to gain power at all costs, not to use it benevolently, just because he thinks he deserves it by birth. She is used early in the story as a bargain by her brother to this end. She realises her power when it manifests itself and sets out on a moral quest to gain power so as to emancipate the peoples of the realm, on the way making moral decisions based on her power, overturning structure and tradition as she goes. We, the audience, support her throughout all this because we believe in her as a force for good. As her power increases we notice that her confidence, her boldness, and her brutality also increases until the point where we lose belief and see her as a tyrant too. She gains the final victory that she sought, the prize she ended up lusting for, but at a cost so great to the peoples she professed to be liberating that she is killed by Jon Snow so as to prevent further examples of her method of emancipation being made manifest in the future. Now George RR Martin is no dummy, he may have stolen most if not all of his stories from myths and histories that already existed throughout Europe and the East, and he may be at a stretch a bit guilty of racism in his casting (Brutal swarthy skinned men or horseback, a slave army that is black, pseudo-civilised white people vying for power etc), but this thread of how power corrupts is woven brilliantly into the entire story. The coup that Martin pulls off is that he manages to make it a bunch of women that are corrupted by power in this story, I think it would have been boring and sameish if it had been the male characters.

Could any one of us men be Weinstein, how would our resolve hold in the face of this pressure, how moral could we be? It is true that there is no redemption and no excusing what has happened because somewhere in the back of a person’s mind they must know when what they are doing is just morally wrong, yet the lengths we see people go to to justify a thing that they feel compelled by an inner, subconscious, will to do, are immense. I assume – American presidents that call themselves Christians (in a modern re-interpretation of the gospels) can sleep well in their beds after carpet bombing a foreign country knowing that they must have killed many innocent non-combatants while targeting a small amount of their enemy and know also that their purpose was not to liberate the peoples of that land but to gain advantage for their country over it, Harold Shipman must have known that he was murdering people, Blair must have known there was not enough evidence of WMDs to justify the Iraq war on those terms alone (there may have been other reasons but we didn’t get sold those).

To do something once may be an error of judgement, to do it frequently and repetitively is reason enough to believe that you are either addicted to doing it, or you think it is an ok thing to do. Nothing I have said here is an attempt to alleviate the guilt of Weinstein or accuse any of his victims of any wrong. It is merely a question on how, given certain possible conditions, and knowing how humans are, could his actions potentially be understood so as to prevent the same from happening again? If we become aware of, and understand fully, the potential for corruption in any possible form or configuration of society, might we then build power dynamics that prevent the corruption of them? Is Weinstein’s case one that we might learn from, learn not to put A with B in C way and then expect X to happen, when we should really know, because of our experiences, that Y is more likely to happen, or will we carry on as normal and crazily expect Jon to be the outcome rather than Daenerys?

This wasn’t an easy one, I hope it made some sense…

Paul S Wilson