It’s the feminist fan’s eternal conundrum: can I support art made by abusers of women? (For any value of support: consuming it to begin with, paying to consume it, or—gulp—enjoying it.)
The incredibly sad truth of the matter is that switching off art by abusers can feel like switching off art entirely. It’s not just a matter of changing the station when “Yeah 3X” comes on, it means not listening to The Beatles and James Brown. It’s not just a matter of not watching Chinatown or Annie Hall; you have to decide if it is OK to watch 12 Years a Slave because it features Michael Fassbender, whose ex-girlfriend took out a restraining order on him after he broke her nose. Maybe that’s OK because he’s not the “author” of the film. But, well, supporting it supports his career (he got his first Oscar nom out of it), so, well… was my ticket for the best movie of the year, that’s also a landmark achievement for black filmmakers and actors, and moreover a powerful condemnation of systems of oppression intersecting with rape culture, now a betrayal of feminism and human dignity?
Everyone has to make these personal negotiations themselves. Maybe you can choose to tolerate work featuring actors who beat women, but not work “by” them. So watching Sean Penn in Milk is OK, but you must not watch The Crossing Guard and his other directorial efforts. Maybe you will only shun the work of sexual abusers, or maybe only sexual abusers of children, like Roman Polanski and Woody Allen.
A relatively easy approach is to lean heavily on the word “allegedly.” Other key vocab words: “rumor” and “gossip.” Ignore the myriad failures of the legal system in bringing abusers to justice, ignore that celebrity often compounds those failures, and remind everyone that these artists have “never been formally charged with/convicted of” their crimes. This is very nearly a free pass! [Speaking of free pass: let’s apply a blanket “alleged” to everything in this piece! Don’t sue me!]
I truly respect people who refuse to consume art by abusers, and I hope I can be forgiven for being too much of a pop culture completist to take that hard-line stance. Again, I think this is a choice everyone has to make for themselves, and I think the only wrong answer is the one that Hollywood appears to cling to: sweep the sins of its darling “geniuses” under a rug, so we can enjoy their work without internal conflict. (That is, if those sins were not against Hollywood itself, for that is UNFORGIVABLE!)
So: I watch Woody Allen’s movies, and I like a lot of them (although I feel compelled to clarify, when I wrote that I wanted “the next Woody Allen” to be a woman, I certainly did not mean a woman who is a sexual predator). I watched Blue Jasmine this week, even with Woody Allen’s sexual abuse of children in his family freshly in mind after the controversy surrounding his Golden Globes lifetime achievement award.
In Cate Blanchett’s Best Actress acceptance speech at the SAG Awards last week, she thanked Woody Allen for creating “role after role after role” for women. This praise of Woody Allen as a great giver to women left a bad taste in a lot of feminist mouths. But he has written many great female characters, even the elusive meaty roles for women over 40, like Blanchett. I watched Blue Jasmine because I didn’t want to miss out on a new iconic female character and one of the most-praised female performances of the year.
And maybe it was my feminist guilt seeping in, but I was disappointed with Blue Jasmine. It’s a solid film, and sort of the polar opposite of To Rome With Love on the “effort expended by Woody Allen as filmmaker” scale. But the cracks still show: the class commentary central to the film can be cartoonish, the Ruth Madoff character analogy feels a bit dated (at least coming from guy who makes a movie every seven months or so), and the pivotal moment in the third act is a chance encounter on the street, which is somewhere on page one of “Hacky Screenwriting for Lazies.”
Jasmine, not only from Allen’s writing but also from Blanchett’s performance, is a captivating character. But she never transcends “character” for me. I took particular issue with the jumbled mental illness cliches cobbled together: Nervous breakdown! Talks to herself! Medication “cocktails”! Excessive intake of actual cocktails! Electroconvulsive therapy! Delusions of grandeur! Relying on the kindness of strangers!
I am a mentally ill person myself, and I saw nothing recognizable in Jasmine. Silver Linings Playbook caught some flack last year (including from me!) for being a little too lighthearted and breezy on the subject of mental illness, but I found the characters in that film PROFOUNDLY relatable. One of the things Silver Linings Playbook did right was craft mentally ill characters not solely defined by their illness. Jasmine’s only other characteristics are being selfish and mean and generally unpleasant, all too easy to conflate with her illness itself.
This hodgepodge characterization makes Blanchett’s acting seem more awards-bait-y than it actually is. She is fantastic in the film, especially because she manages to win some small amount of sympathy from the audience despite her character’s thorough terribleness. Sally Hawkins is also great as Ginger, Jasmine’s semi-estranged adopted sister, and I appreciated that she had her own storyline instead of existing merely as Jasmine’s grounded foil.
Blue Jasmine is the kind of movie I would normally say “is worth seeing” even though I didn’t personally like it very much. Multiply that lukewarm semi-endorsement by the sum of your personal “comfort with consuming art by abusers” coefficient and your awards-season completist factor to determine if you should give it two hours of your time.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa.
I find it very hard not to be a hypocrite when it comes to issues like this. I’m tossing up whether to see 12 Years a Slave because on one hand it has Michael Fassbender in it, whom I refuse to support, but on the other it looks like a good film that’s a strong vehicle for people of colour. When I mentioned this dilemma to a colleague, they scoffed at my justification. I won’t actively listen to Chris Brown, but some of his earlier songs (before he beat Rihanna) are on my iPod and I legitimately like “Turn Up the Music” despite my best efforts. I really like Midnight in Paris, but I won’t pay to see any of Allen’s films; if I’m curious, I’ll borrow them from the library or stream them online. And perhaps the biggest contradiction is my love for rap music, especially 2pac, who was charged with rape and did jail time. Granted, I got into this kind of music when I was in my early teens and wasn’t aware of this nor did I pick up on the perceived misogyny in the lyrics. So I can definitely relate to your predicament and I just try to stay true to my convictions. It’s hard out here for a feminist…
I didn’t know about the Fassbender issue until after I saw the film, but I cannot say that I regret having seen it. It was such an incredibly powerful experience. From an actin standpoint, Fassbender did an excellent job, but that isn’t really what the Academy Awards are about. He probably shouldn’t win, not because his performance wasn’t good, but because he is an abuser. The Oscars are all about politics and promoting the movie industry, so these sorts of things need to be considered.
I wish I could say that I have some moral conundrum when approaching films, tv shows, actors, etc. But I honestly don’t. Maybe that makes me a bad person, depending on how you view this subject, but I’ve never been the one to care about my outwardly appeal.
The truth is, I support good stories. That’s just how I personally view it. Who the director is as a person isn’t any of my concern. Same with actors. Good stories should be supported. So should good people. And I’m sorry to break it to social justice warriors, but there is more than one person in films. You may not go see a film because some actor is a terrible person, but what about the other one hundred good people that worked on that same film? You won’t support them?
It’s not simple. That’s why I don’t concern myself with their personal lives. I support good films and that is all.
To be honest I don’t know. I guess I believe that the most troubled of us create the best art and you never will know the whole story regardless of what is in the news. Take the art for the art. If you don’t want to have your money support them then wait until it is in the library. I could go on and on…but I will refrain.