The New Yorker Radio Hour - Will the Harvey Weinstein Scandal Change America?

Episode Date: November 17, 2017

The allegations against Harvey Weinstein have opened the floodgates for women in other industries and walks of life to go public with claims of sexual misconduct—and to be heard instead of dismissed. Ronan Farrow, who broke the Weinstein story for The New Yorker, shares his perspective on the fallout with the staff writer Alexandra Schwartz. And David Remnick talks with the feminist thinker bell hooks, who sees the roots of male violence in patriarchal culture and the way that boys are raised into it. If we don’t understand the male psyche and how we deform it, hooks argues, we will never solve the problem. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

They didn't break that, but they have pretty good access to those people. She's subconsciously mocked that lineage. So that's happening? It seems like an incredible story here on many fronts. From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

We're experiencing right now something that's got to be almost unprecedented in American society, across the nation in entertainment, in media, broadcasting, technology, the workplace everywhere, even in politics, more and more every day, we see powerful men being accused of sexual harassment and worse, and they're being held to account for it. Women are speaking up, and they're being believed. In this wave of allegations, some of the most shocking charges were published here at the New Yorker about a group of women who talked about their experiences at the hands of the film

producer Harvey Weinstein. Reporting in the magazine recounts behavior by Weinstein that went far beyond harassment. It went straight to outright rape. Those were the accusations and they're denied by Harvey Weinstein. Ronan Farrer wrote those extraordinary pieces for the New Yorker and he joined me in the studio along with Alexandra Schwartz, who's been covering the effects of the Weinstein scandal in our society. Ronan, I'd like to start with you, and the issue I'd like to begin with is why, in your experience, women don't bring these charges forward to it and are silent for so long. And then what happened? Why has this moment happened when the New York Times and the New Yorker were finally able to get women to talk about, in this instance, Harvey Weinstein? And then, obviously, this has had a kind of gate opening effect. This has been a major theme in our reporting, right?

Trying to convey the nuances of why it is so hard for sexual assault survivors to speak. And particularly in cases like this where they're going up against this massive PR apparatus. And it's a panoply of reasons. It's personal reasons to do with the often paralyzing effect of this kind of trauma on an individual level. You know, the women we've interviewed talk at length about the career fears as well. Some of these concerns are pragmatic. It's a whole range. And I think one of the things that has been an awakening associated with this entire moment is people understanding in a way they didn't before just how hard it is to speak. Well, what happened when you began your reporting?

When you went and you probably started hearing about three, four women in the beginning. Obviously, there are many more to come. And when you approach these women, what kind of resistance did you get or did you get immediate acceptance? What was the process? Well, you know, a good example is actually the way in which people wavered. This wasn't always linear. Rose McGowan went on the record, told her story in agonizing detail, very painfully. But she then entered a, you know, legal confrontation with Harvey Weinstein and became fearful and for a time wavered, you know. And then after that, she was voluble and talking once again. In another case, Annabella Sciora, the actress lied to me initially, you know, said, nothing happened, nothing happened. And it was only seven months later, you know, after our initial piece ran, that she called me and broke down and said, actually, here's what happened. And it turned out that story checked out. Did she describe to you why initially she decided not to talk at all, why she lied to you in the beginning?

She did. Annabella was one of the people to talk about this fear that I think so many survivors of sexual assault have of being branded of this being the one thing they're known for for the rest of their lives. It is. It's, you know, an on-off switch for our society. If you come forward with this kind of an allegation, you are always a survivor with a capital S. That's your first paragraph in your obituary, as it were. Yeah, I think that's the fear. And, you know, perhaps we're coming to a point in this conversation where it overshadows one less,

but I think that's still a very legitimate concern. But, you know, she also talked about the specific fears here of this robust PR machine, a person who was very powerful and very litigious. and as we've chronicled in our reporting, also a really unthinkable before I reported on this machine of private investigators and people operating undercover going after these women. Annabella Shura was one of the many women who received a call that she found suspicious from a journalist who turned out to be linked to this whole thing.

But, Alex, one of the particularities of this story is that it happened with show business. and in show business you have a man of late middle age who's basically having one attractive woman after another come in front of him and he's choosing who shall live and who shall die, who shall get work, who shall not. So placed in this almost parody-like position of power and sexual power. But as we know, this is just this is one instance of many, many, many, many fields and this kind of activity has been going on forever.

Is it good that this is broken through with a show business moment, or is there a negative side to that, do you think? Well, I actually think in some ways it's crucial that it broke through in this kind of field because this is the first example I can really think of where famous women have come forward as a group and said, this happened to me, this was a problem for me, rather than women becoming famous because they came forward. with a sexual harassment or assault claim.

I mean, you can think of other cases like the Anita Hill case where that was the first time I think much of America thought about the concept of workplace sexual harassment, but nobody knew who Anita Hill was before the Clarence Thomas hearings. Nobody knew. That's what she became known for. In this case, we're dealing with actresses who the public knows. And I also think that the public has a really intimate relationship with Hollywood stars. You see them, you know, for much of your own life.

You feel close to them in a certain way. That's what acting is. And I think it was huge to have that level of public figure be able to come forward. Do both of you, do you think that fame makes an accuser more credible or in the court of public opinion? Is that somehow transferable then to the rest of society? I think it can cut both ways, you know. People can be more skeptical of Hollywood. It can be unrelatable in some ways.

But it is true that anyone in a position of authority and influence, that, That serves as a signaling mechanism when they come forward. Even I would say within that Hollywood community, one of the comments that has stuck with me in this is Annabella Sciora said in a very small voice. She was in a dark place at that time. You know, I looked at these other women, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mira Sorvino, and I thought they're so beautiful, they're so poised, they come from great families. It could have never happened to them. Yeah, I think that I think that's one of the reasons why the ball got rolling to the degree that it has, because you could look at women. who are extremely accomplished and say, oh, if this is a problem, I think that's part of what

Me Too has been about. If this was a problem for someone like her, then, wow, it's not just about me personally. I mean, the level of impact goes so far beyond Hollywood and so far beyond, honestly, any particular industry. I mean, many of these stories are personal. They have to do with family relationships. They have to do with friends or romantic relationships. It's not just in these very, you know, public or workplace situations. Who's to be believed automatically in these cases? I read something the other day that I think gets at it really well. There's a phrase believe women.

Believe women doesn't just mean automatically believe women, the man's word, has no weight. I think it's meant as a corrective to what is often the situation, which is often a sense of not believing women as a default. If you were reminded to believe women as a default, it may help to correct so many of these situations. You wrote a terrific essay about the Louis C.K. incident. And I've read you for a while now happily, but I've never heard or seen you write more with a sense of with rage. I think I can call it that, no? Yeah, I think so. Fury and rage. I felt betrayed.

I think other people have felt this way by Louis, specifically. Why? Why? I thought he was someone and I, and he may still be someone who in some part of his brain gets it. I was just looking at a joke of his that I linked to in my piece. That's a great joke. And he says, you know, men are the number one threat to women.

What's the number one, what's the number one cause of death for men? It's heart disease. It's your own heart saying, you know, I can't go on anymore. But for women, you have to be totally insane to go on a date with a man and our species depends on it. You know, I think he describes it. is being imagined if someone said to a man, oh, you want to go out with like a half bull, half lion or something like that. And so jokes like that, I think, from someone like Louie,

who's so smart really made me feel like, yeah, he totally gets it and he's able to dissect this whole poison power system from a man's perspective. That is very impressive and rare. And so it feels, you know, it feels so disappointing. I have to tell you a lot of men that I know, younger and my age and older two, in this moment, have, even though they know themselves to be innocent of anything grotesque or anything on a par of what's what we've been discussing, is suddenly sort of doing a sort through their romantic history of what jokes that I tell in, you know, 1998 in the workplace or my breakup with so-and-so was that it's a sorting through of conscience. that I hear about all the time. And the flip side of this, Alex, I wonder what the conversation among women

or women you know, not just the office, just your friends, and how that's changed from today from six weeks ago. I think there's shock. I think it's kind of amazement and shock. But surely this is not the first time anybody's thought about this or spoken of it.

What changed? No, no. The amazement in shock is the idea that that men are thinking about this. This has not been something that men have had to think about as a group or clearly individually. And I think it is good that men are, as you say, are asking themselves, what did I do? Did I do anything?

What should I've done differently? What could I've done differently? I'm not in any way advocating for a mass paranoia or a mass – I guess I am advocating for mass reckoning, but not for a sense of personal fear and did I do something? and did I screw something up? But these are questions. It cannot just be on women to police this whole situation or to ask what is appropriate, what is inappropriate. It has to be everyone. And so I think just the sense that we may not be in it alone is profound. We also live in a particular political moment where the President of the United States is Donald Trump, who's been accused by, you know, I think upwards of 20 women of some form of harassment, assault even by his ex-wife. What influence do you think, Ronan, that has on this moment and on this story? Certainly it comes up in my conversations with women bringing forward allegations, you know,

that there is a feeling of being fed up, you know, to be a woman in America right now. I mean, I'll let you comment on this, Alex. I can only imagine is an extraordinarily frustrating experience seeing those allegations swirl around and have so little effect. Yeah, I think the main issue with the Trump allegations to me, I don't really think that it was a belief problem. I think that it was a caring problem. And that was pretty devastating. In the Roy Moore case, the Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions, says,

I have no reason to doubt these young women. Is that some kind of turning point? Because I have to tell you, in fairness, I'm not sure I would have heard those words from Jeff Sessions a year ago. Although the way that you just framed that does convey that we are still working from the starting point. of not believing women coming forward with allegations like this. I mean, yes, that is a step that is unexpected for me too, but... The Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House said the same thing.

I'm happy to hear it. I completely agree with Ronan. It is not enough, but I am happy to hear it. It is a relief that we can, I mean, you know, that we can establish a fact and have the fact be seen as what a fact is, a neutral truth. One of the patterns of this drama has been the pattern of accusation, then the doubling and the tripling of accusations, and then comes the apologies. What do you make of the apologies that you've heard from this range of men, whether it's Louis C.K. Well, we haven't really heard from Harvey Weinstein on this. Well, I think the first thing that is essential in any case is a sense of acknowledgement. We got that from Louis. He said, I acknowledge that I did these things. What did that mean? I acknowledge it. These things happened. Well, I think it meant that we could stop the whole debate that he said, she said debate, so to speak.

But the women said that you didn't apologize. Well, he didn't apologize. He acknowledged but did not apologize. I found that interesting. I found that interesting. It was pretty frustrating. Louie is not the worst offender on this list at all. But yes, people have pointed out that his statement made much of the admiration that these women must have had. him and how he had betrayed their admiration. That was not really the key issue. And also pointed to him asking for permission without addressing the crucial question of whether he got that permission, which did feel like a lacuna to me. Yeah.

In his movie, which now, since it was pulled by the distributor, very few people will get to see, but I was one of those people. I saw it in a press screening last month. What did you make of the movie? I found it very bad. I found it very bad. I think I led in my review with... Like brown paper bag afterwards, bad, or...

Yeah, I mean, the first comment in my notebook was they should have barf bags with this movie. So it was pretty bad. If you want a case study of the total objectification of women for no purpose, I think this was a pretty good one. But there's a line in the movie where Louis says, I'm sorry women. And the E.D. Falco character who plays his manager says, you mean like all women? You're just apologizing to all of us? And then he said, yeah, yeah, I'm apologizing.

Or Louis character, I should say. I'm apologizing to all women. That doesn't work. And what is very complicated about these situations is that kind of blanket apology, whether it comes from a famous figure who has now been outed, or whether it comes from, you know, a person writing on social media in response to the Me Too campaign. There have been various hashtags that men have used, hashtag, it was me. or hashtag, I did that as a way of trying to, I think, trying in a positive sense to take accountability,

but apology and redress doesn't really work that way. You know, you look at the really large number and growing number of people who have been accused. Let's put Harvey Weinstein off to the sign because his offenses seem, for the most part, much greater, or the accusations of his offense have seemed much greater than, say, somebody like Louis C.K. Is there in your mind for some of the others any sense of reconciliation, a proper apology, return to their roles in society, whether it's in show business or journalism or whatever they happen to do, or is that a concern of the third order? Yeah, I think it is conceivable that there is a future for them for sure. I don't think we need to live in a society in which, you know, you are exiled for life and that is that, no matter what the level of your offense. There is a big range.

I mean, one thing that's been quite extraordinary to see now is how big the range of misbehavior is, but also the fact that things that are not even remotely close to the Harvey Weinstein level can be taken seriously as well. And should be. And should be. for someone like Louis, I can see him making work in the future. I certainly don't care about it right now. I don't care what his artistic future is going to look like. And he himself said in his acknowledgement statement, it's his time to listen. That's true.

And if he finds a way to make amends, and most importantly, I think to empower other voices, other artists, other comedians, women, whoever, from this moment, I think that would be to the good. Alex, as we live through this moment and you're thinking about it, What are you also hoping for? What do you hope for the future here? What's the best outcome that you can imagine? You know, I think growing up, I was really taught if something is wrong, you can speak up and say it. If something happens to you, if something happens to a friend, whatever it is.

And then later you find out, oh, well, that's not necessarily true. I would like that to be true. I would like that to be true for my generation. And I would like that to be true for the women in the generation after me, for the girls not yet born. I just want it to become true. That's a high goal, I know, but that's what I feel. Alex Schwartz, Ronan Farrow. Thank you.

Thanks. Thanks. You can find all of our coverage of the Harvey Weinstein allegations and their fallout at New YorkerRadio.org. In a minute, I'll talk with a feminist icon who's been considering the roots of harassment and violence for a very long time. Bell Hooks joins me in a moment. Stick around.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remner. Nick. I spoke earlier in the program with the reporter Ronan Farrow about Harvey Weinstein and about the wave of allegations of sexual harassment and much worse against so many powerful men. And I've got to admit that the problem is much more pervasive and brutal than I ever understood, which has been a very sad and painful thing to realize on a personal level and on a political level. And as men are talking about this problem, one of the names, one of the writers that we keep hearing about is the feminist thinker Bell Hooks.

Bell Hooks has been thinking about the roots of male aggression for a very long time, and she addressed it directly in a book called The Will to Change, Men, Masculinity, and Love. It was a somewhat controversial book at the time, among other feminists in particular, because rather than excoriating the worst behavior of men individually, she looks at masculinity as a whole, as a kind of regime that oppresses everybody, including men. So when you look at the Louis C.K. incident, for example, or series of incidents, what does it suggest to you in the broader sense in terms of our, the way we live? You've written about men and masculinity and patriarchy and all the rest. What does it suggest to you that we're not talking about quite yet? Well, you set the key word, David. In all of this, I've read a ton of stuff and hardly anybody has used the word patriarchy. Because in part, we want to act like this,

is individual male psychopathology, and not like, this is normal. And I went back to my 2004 book, The Will to Change Men and Masculinity. And it's so much about how we raise males to believe that violence is how you get what you want and that you have a right to violence. You talk in that very book, in The Will to Change, you talk in the book about being a child and noticing the differences in how you and your brother were raised, starting at a very young age.

Can you talk about some of those differences in order to, in a sense, begin a discussion of what patriarchy is and how it traps men and shapes us? Well, I mean, my father, who was a very violent, very patriarchal man, he was in the all-black interiors. tree in World War II. He was a boxer. He was a basketball player. He was all of these things that we associate with masculinity. And in fact, really had a lot of disdain for my brother because actually my brother was a much softer, warmer human being. And my father looked down on that. He felt that was not masculine. But when you're reading, about and watching the news in the last few weeks, how does this all relate to the creation of patriarchy? How are these manifestations of patriarchy? Somebody, the Louis C.K. incident

with various editors all around the country behaving in this way in newsrooms, not just Harvey Weinstein. Well, what I would say about all of these men is that if we could research their childhoods, we would probably find that they have been the victims of some kind of trauma and probably some kinds of sexually related trauma. I think many, many, many males are abused as children in ways that we cannot talk about. Well, one of the reasons that you got criticized for that book sometimes was that it seemed too sympathetic to men in some cases, isn't that the case? Absolutely.

I mean, I still think that if we really want patriarchs, to change, we are in trouble if we turn our backs on men and not really want to examine why are men so violent. John Bradshaw used to say that the primary form of child abuse is really shaming. And I think that if we look at all of these men and their behavior, it's such shaming behavior. So I think of what you're saying, and please correct me if I'm wrong, because it's essential here. that rather than looking at this as a series of cases and outliers and marveling at the great number of them, we need to think of it in systemic terms. That this is the way we all are.

So how do we not live like this any longer? Well, one, we've got to be willing to challenge the way we parent. I mean, one of the things that I say to people, patriarchy has no gender. Just because a boy is being raised by a mother doesn't mean that that mother isn't patriarchal in her mindset that the mother isn't telling that, boy, you need to be a man. You know, you need to be a better man than your loser dad. And I can remember when dozens of mainly white feminist women were very concerned because they were having boys. And how will we raise these boys to be different? And after a while, you know, oh, my son wants a gun.

I just can't keep it from him because all the other kids have guns. I mean, that's the interesting transition that we made away from caring about the masculinity of boys. I mean, they didn't want to see a correlation between what we take into ourselves about masculinity and how it's acted out. Bill, what is the next step then? You talked about parenting, obviously, as essential to shifting away from standard patriarchal relations and assumptions and understandings. What about on the political level?

Well, I think parenting is political. I mean, think about how many thousands of children are being dealt with violently in our society every day. I don't think, you know, I feel almost like I can't really be heard in emphasizing that this has to begin on the level of family. Why do you say it can't be heard? Because I don't think people want to acknowledge, I mean, you know, initially, when all of this stuff started with Harvey and other people, I kept thinking, I wouldn't be surprised if all of these men were not the victims of child sexual abuse. I mean, think about the movie spotlight. Think about how much more common the abuse of boys is than people want to believe,

and that it impacts how they deal in the world. Bill, a final question is that most of what you suggest. A lot of what you suggest has to do with the psychological interplay between family members. This is not something that is easy to rectify. It's not something that can be changed very easily with a spending program or a new form of pedagogy in the schools. What's to be done? Well, first of all, I think that all of the work that's being done on emotional intelligence is focusing on how closed off men are. And of course, we now have a government of closed off men. And so I think that we need, I personally, I'm a big fan of therapy, the men that I respect the most who have changed, whether they're gay, straight, trans, have been men. who engage therapy so they can grow emotionally so that they can be in touch with what they feel,

so that can feel. I think these men that we're talking about are not men who feel. And I have been a Louis C.K. fan in terms of his comedy, but I think you can see him as a harsh kind of unfeeling man in the way he constructs his comedy. Did you feel the same way about Bill Cosby when you were listening to his comedy? Hey to Cosby from Jump. He was too good to be true. Bell Hooks, thank you very much. Okay. Bye. Bell Hooks is the author of The Will to Change, Men, Masculinity, and Love, along with dozens of other books of poetry and theory and children's fiction as well. Now, last year I had the pleasure of speaking on stage with one of the artists I admire most in music, Bruce Springsteen. One of the things we talked about was his very difficult relationship with

his father, a true patriarch of the old school. Bruce's memoir, born to run, had just come out and I asked him to read a passage from him. Okay, here we go. Unfortunately, my dad's desire to engage with me always came after the nightly religious ritual of the sacred six-pack. It was one beer after another in the pitch dark of our kitchen. It was always then that he wanted to see me. It was always the saying a few moments of feigned parental concern for my well-being followed by the real deal to hostility and raw anger toward his son the only other man in the house it was a shame he loved me but he couldn't stand me he felt we competed for my mother's affections we did he also saw in me too much of his real self my pop was built like a bull always in

work clothes he was strong physically formidable Toward the end of his life, he fought back from death many times. Inside, however, beyond his rage, he harbored a gentleness, a timidity, shyness, and a dreamy insecurity. These are all the things that I wore on the outside. And reflections of these qualities in his boy repelled him. Made him angry. It was soft.

He hated soft. Of course, he'd been brought up soft, a mama's boy just like me. On the New Yorker Radio Hour next week, my conversation with Bruce Springsteen, you're absolutely welcome. I'm David Remnick. Thank you for joining me this week. I hope you enjoyed this show. Have a great Thanksgiving. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.