Harvey Weinstein maintains that all of his relationships were consensual. Not for a minute do we believe him, but say for the sake of argument that he is right: everything was consensual. Does that make him any less depraved? Is that a defense? Should we feel relieved if everything he did was consensual? Consent, of course, is necessary, but is it exclusive?
Harvey Weinstein has become the symbol of depravity not only because he is guilty. His guilt indicts only one person. Himself. Why all the national attention if we’re talking only about one man and his misdeeds, however influential that man may be and however egregious those misdeeds were? On the other hand, if Harvey Weinstein were innocent —if everything he did was consensual — he indicts not just one man but an entire culture, for whom consent is the totality of right and wrong. And that, the guardians of our loose culture insist, must not be said.
Follow the logic: If the Harvey Weinstein way of doing things is wrong only because it was not consensual, this means that any two people remain perfectly decent in this culture even if they do anything they want, any time, with anyone, regardless of marital status, regardless of length of relationship, regardless of depth of relationship, just so long as it is consensual. If the Harvey Weinstein way of doing things is wrong only because it was not consensual, then The World According to Harvey Weinstein becomes The World of No Standards, The World of the Death of Morality. The World of Harvey Weinstein becomes The World of American Culture, The World of Everyman.
Here we have one salient reason why Harvey Weinstein has elicited such widespread opprobrium. By implication, he condemns far more than one person, far more than himself. He condemns countless others, for if Harvey Weinstein is guilty as charged, then a culture is off the hook. It is innocent. What a thin line, then, between his innocence and a culture’s guilt. The culture defines itself as over against Harvey Weinstein, Mr. Non-Consensual.
His acid critics and righteous condemners reveal a culture in which not only he finds himself, but, apparently, so do countless others for whom anything is perfectly decent, not depraved, just so long as it is consensual.
Needless to say, there are other segments of the culture who do not subscribe to The World of No Standards. These include the women who have now come forth not only against Harvey Weinstein but against many other “Protected Class” males, those in similar positions of power who have acted as atrociously as Harvey Weinstein.
The fortitude of these women, we hope, puts an end both to the abominable behavior and to the complicity of the legal system, which demands of these abused women that they either shame themselves by pressing criminal charges or, should they receive a settlement, suffer in silence. How doubly despicable — not only to be violated, but to be either legally required to go on display or legally forbidden to talk about the abuse.
The way the culture has regarded the Harvey Weinstein case is not the way many of us regard the gun issue. In light of mass shootings of innocents in this country, we condemn the shooter. We also ask broader questions: What is wrong with our culture? What is wrong with our gun laws? Why do these shootings happen in this country, but not in others? We do not rest once we have rightly condemned the killer. We ask bigger questions, beyond the configuration of an individual psyche, and we want bigger answers.
Harvey Weinstein, besides revealing an individual, ugly psyche, raises bigger questions about a network of media obsessed with entertainers, about an entertainment culture obsessed with success even to the point of complicity by failing to expose a predator, about a legal culture that silences moral outrage for money, about a political culture that happily takes donations from the Protected Class predators, about a worship of celebrity that elevates hubris above decency, about a disfiguration of celebrity that turns on its own when its image is threatened.
The scandal of Harvey Weinstein is immeasurably bigger than one single person, and that’s saying a lot, given the dimensions of Harvey Weinstein’s decadence. The larger scandal is the obsessive focus on one individual to the exclusion of the “standards” of the culture that that individual reflects, even if in exaggerated form. The downfall of Harvey Weinstein is a convenient way to dodge the bigger questions that this sordid episode raises.
Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News
