I didn’t watch the 90th Academy Awards over the weekend. It wasn’t a particularly political choice; I have always found the ceremonies boring, so I stopped spending hours of my free time watching events like the Oscars. I don’t have a TV, so I had a better “watching” experience on social media through the commentary and photos of the people following.
I wasn’t completely uninterested in this year’s Oscars because I was very curious to see how different it’d be in the age of #TimesUp and #MeToo’s rise. It was only two years ago when I stood on stage with 50 other campus sexual assault survivors during Lady Gaga’s Oscars performance of the nominated original song, “Til It Happens to You.” I remember how the audience was struck by the number of survivors onstage, unapologetically showing to millions of viewers that, yes, we’ve been harmed, too.
Clearly, being a sexual assault survivor changed my life forever. It also completely transformed the way that I think about and understand sexual violence. Institutions of higher education have a sexual assault problem across the board; It isn’t just about the individuals who do harm, but also the schools that decide to protect assailants at the expense of their victims.
It’s a lesson that could easily translate to Hollywood and the media. Men like Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Matt Lauer were able to harm with impunity thanks, in large part, to the enabling by the people around them. Unfortunately, it appears that even the most prestigious media organizations are not quite ready to hold all abusers accountable.
The biggest example is from Kobe Bryant’s nomination for Best Animated Short Film, which turned out to be a confusing and infuriating development considering his own past history of committing rape back in 2003.
I wasn’t shy about my righteous anger. Some of my tweets made it into roundups on Entertainment Weekly and the India Times. I even took my rage to Facebook.
I later spoke with The Guardian about Kobe Bryant’s win and how it shows us that #MeToo and #TimesUp cannot be about individuals. Gendered violence is a systemic problem and it will not stop until we look at it as such.
Gaby Kirschner, a sports journalist who has also covered campus assaults, feels that Hollywood discredited the movements while showing inconsistencies in what types of behavior will be tolerated. “I was appalled when Kobe was even nominated — James Franco clearly lost out on his Best Actor nomination for The Disaster Artist because of [sexual misconduct] allegations, yet Kobe is being nominated and winning in spite of them? It completely discredits the movement, and makes it seem like as soon as enough time has gone by allegations just turn to dust in the wind. That’s a movement based on optics, not change.”
Rapists are the minority and need the help of the rest of us to let them keep harming. We help abusers by remaining silent (not speaking up doesn’t make one a neutral party), being complicit in their actions and actively supporting them. We have to stop giving abusers accolades to see real reduction in the rates of sexual violence in our society.
Institutions like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences need to stop trying to do the bare minimum. On their website, they claim to “recognize and uphold excellence in the motion picture arts and sciences, inspire imagination, and connect the world through the medium of motion pictures.” I believe that excellence is more than the quality of the artistic product alone; it’s about the people behind it. The Academy has its own standards of conduct stating, in part (emphasis mine):
Academy membership is a privilege offered to only a select few within the global community of filmmakers. In addition to achieving excellence in the field of motion picture arts and sciences, members must also behave ethically by upholding the Academy’s values of respect for human dignity, inclusion, and a supportive environment that fosters creativity. The Academy asks that members embrace their responsibility to affirm these principles and act when these principles are violated. There is no place in the Academy for people who abuse their status, power or influence in a manner that violates recognized standards of decency.
This makes sense when we consider how Harvey Weinstein was expelled from the Academy when the facts about his sexual violence were too obvious to ignore. However, it begs the question as to whether members deem receiving a nomination for an Oscar a privilege. If the Academy keeps rewarding abusers like Kobe Bryant, who publicly apologized for what he did, are they really following (and thus valuing) their principles?
We have to hold systems and organizations that make raping look like “no big deal” accountable. By making exceptions for predatory behavior, they also help maintain the status quo where 81 percent of women and 43 percent of men say they’ve been sexually assaulted and/or harassed.
We need to stop making it easy to get away with raping someone. Being a rapist who avoids claiming responsibility for their violence should be an objectively difficult thing. That’s why celebrating someone like Bryant—who used slut-shaming and ableism to get away with his abuse—is not the way to go. Most rapists are serial offenders who rack up victims over a period of time. I wonder how much it emboldens someone to keep harming if they avoid consequences and are given a prestigious award as if nothing happened?