The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
The Weinstein chronicles and why sexism is always going to be the “last battle” left to fight
(Updated 10/15/2017)
Excerpt from Good Will Hunting starring Ben Affleck (as Chuckie) and Matt Damon (as Will):
Chuckie: Are they hookin’ you up with a job?
Will: Yeah, sit in a room and do long division for the next fifty years.
Chuckie: Probably make some nice bank, though.
Will: I’m gonna be a fuckin’ lab rat.
Chuckie: Better than this shit. It’s a way outta here.
Will: What do I want a way outta here for? I mean, I’m gonna fuckin’ live here the rest of my life. You know, we’ll be neighbors, you know, we’ll have little kids fuckin’ take ’em to little league together up at Foley field.
Chuckie: Look, you’re my best friend, so don’t take this the wrong way. In twenty years, if you’re still livin’ here, comin’ over to my house to watch the Patriots games, still workin’ construction, I’ll fuckin’ kill you. That’s not a threat. Now, that’s a fact. I’ll fuckin’ kill you.
Will: What the fuck are you talkin’ about?
Chuckie: Look, you got somethin’ that none of us —
Will: Oh, come on! Why is it always this, I mean, I fuckin’ owe it to myself to do this? Why if I don’t want to?
Chuckie: Alright. No. No no. Fuck you. You don’t owe it to yourself. You owe it to me. ’Cause tomorrow I’m gonna wake up and I’ll be fifty and I’ll still be doing this shit. And that’s all right, that’s fine. I mean, you’re sittin’ on a winning lottery ticket and you’re too much of a pussy to cash it in. And that’s bullshit `cause I’d do anything to fuckin’ have what you got! So would any of these fuckin’ guys. It’d be an insult to us if you’re still here in twenty years. Hanging around here is a fuckin’ waste of your time.
Will: You don’t know that.
Chuckie: I don’t?
Will: No. You don’t know that.
Chuckie: Oh, I don’t know that. Let me tell you what I do know. Every day I come by to pick you up. And we go out we have a few drinks, and a few laughs and it’s great. But you know what the best part of my day is? It’s for about ten seconds from when I pull up to the curb to when I get to your door. Because I think maybe I’ll get up there and I’ll knock on the door and you won’t be there. No goodbye, no see you later, no nothin’. Just left. I don’t know much, but I know that.
This past weekend some of my childhood friends were reminiscing and questioned me about my teen obsession with Ben Affleck. When I thought about it, the good looks weren’t the whole story — it was this scene. I knew him and Damon wrote the screenplay and I just felt, in my heart, that the depth of the character was who he was in real life. My AOL IM screename was RuAffleck. My password was some alphanumeric representation of his birthday.
Then, one day, I walked passed a shooting of the film The Town and felt no inclination to wait to see him. My obsession was over. And, in the larger scheme of things, I think it officially marked the end of my ability to be obsessed with any person or idea. It was last time I was so infatuated with something I didn’t critically analyze it. Infatuation inherently requires focusing on the things you like, and glorifying them in isolation of a whole — a whole that undoubtedly has faulty parts.
Today I woke up to:
On Twitter, a user wrote that Affleck “grabbed Hilarie Burton’s breasts on TRL once. Everyone forgot though.” Burton responded on Twitter, “I didn’t forget” and later thanked the user, saying “I was a kid.”
I had this lingering feeling that the cast of characters in his “love” life seemed like an expression of sexual dominance of different kinds of bodies — Paltrow, JLo, Garner. Did you know he suggested casting the naked girl from the Blurred Lines video in Gone Girl after watching it? And the Gossip Girl star in The Town when she was getting popular through her show? Anyone notice that in both of the films, which he directed, they mounted him in a very similar way, as if instructed? Maybe there are alternative explanations for all of these things, but now it seems my suspicions were right.
What is less ambiguous (and much more damning) than Affleck’s casting and relationship choices is his groping of Burton — and his consistent harassment of women on and off set. TV writers Statsky and Tendler talk about repeated groping at the Golden Globes. Footage of Affleck for the Canadian TV series Box Office will make you want to puke:
“They would like it better if you did the show topless, the station, wouldn’t they?” he says, appearing to hold Losique down on his lap as she squirms. “You usually show a lot more cleavage than this,” he adds. “What’s the story? Why are you covering it up today?”
“It’s Sunday morning,” Losique says, laughing.
“That never stopped you before from getting them titties out,” Affleck says, smirking. He pulls her in tighter and hugs her. “These breasts are very firm, suspiciously firm, I have to say.”
Losique has said she did not mind the interaction. Let that settle.
Affleck has been further accused of knowing about Weinstein’s behavior on set and not acting to do anything about it.
Damon hasn’t escaped the Weinstein controversy either, accused of squashing a New York Times story on Weinstein in 2004. He denies having any knowledge of what Lombardo, a procurer of women for Weinstein, was doing. He denies having any idea about the harassment and assaults. So far, no one in Hollywood seems to be challenging this fact. But, you have to wonder, if you had an inkling of what the story was about why would you make the call for Weinstein at all? It is hard to believe such a capable person, both intellectually and emotionally, never noticed — if not with Weinstein, then with Affleck (a life long friend and colleague). How long should we condone avoidance and turning a blind eye? Isn’t this the crux of why violence and discrimination to persist?
So Weinstein is a rapist, Ben Affleck is a molestor and hypocrite, and Matt Damon is an indirect abettor. All chauvinistic pigs, right?
My head hurts.
Affleck founded the Eastern Congo Initiative (ECI) to invest in and work with people from the Eastern Congo. He’s made atleast 10 trips to the DRC and studied the situation their closely to look for grassroot-led solutions to the problems people face. He apparently wrote the scene in Good Will Hunting that I loved so much. He got some really smart, talented, and seemingly empowered women to be his significant other.
Damon founded an organization Water.org that increases access to safe drinking water and sanitation through affordable financing. He has been married to his wife for 10 years, and I’ve never heard of anything bad happening there. My boyfriend told me a story about how Matt Damon bought him a cup of coffee when he accidentally cut him in line at Starbucks in NYC. Multiple people report running into him and being struck by how down-to-earth he is.
I felt similarly confused and distraught in India a couple of years ago when I found out that the editor-in-chief of an amazing activist magazine, Tehelka, was accused of assaulting his daughter’s friend in an elevator. He was found guilty in court last month. The editor-in-chief of a magazine that spoke truth to power raped a minor.
I felt the same way when I heard about rape allegations against the Director of Birth of a Nation, a film about America’s dark racist past…or not so past.
I felt the same way when I found out the jovial father from my early childhood show The Cosby Show was a serial rapist . (I know he was not convicted, but if you really don’t believe it see this. )
Again and again — men who seem genuinely thoughtful, caring, intelligent, talented, egalitarian and socially aware all with one HUGE moral and ethical blindspot: women…sex.
And that is why sexism will always be the last battle left to fight.
No matter how socially aware and thoughtful a man is, if they need to feel powerful then a woman or child will be “the object” they choose to dominate and sex (however forced and violent) will usually be the mechanism.
With all these examples some of you have to be asking yourselves — is there an evolutionary and biological component we are missing? For the sake of science, I’ve considered it — again and again. It is true that hormones and sexual urges are incredibly powerful, and they do have an evolutionary basis. Ignoring this reality makes societies around the world dysfunctional in all sorts of ways. I think if we treated it primarily as a simple biological need our sexual habits and lives would be a lot more healthy and happy. Our relationships would be a lot more balanced and fair. But that does not explain what is going on here.
When it comes to outright, unconsensual objectification and violation we need to remember that humans are distinguished from other animals because of their highly developed cerebral cortex. Some humans have structural and chemical defects that make them clear sociopaths. But, for most of us, our brains give us the ability to control not just our actions, but the nature of our impulses through our beliefs and emotions. Humans, such as the figures described here, have the intelligence and capacity for empathy necessary to treat women respectfully, always.
Why aren’t they?
There is a deep insecurity, thirst for power and entitlement to instant gratification that we continue to promote and condone.
We repeatedly refuse to stare it in the eye.
And, I think part of the reason we do this is that the bad we see is so hard to reconcile with the good. Our brains and our hearts just cannot handle it.
Before you think you’re not part of the problem, look at yourself and your relationships. I’m having a fleeting recollection of an ex who loved the fairly intelligent, but gross, Howard Stern. The image that springs to mind when I write that name is a naked women giggling in studio while sitting on a stool as Stern sits behind a glass booth and watches her have different liquids spilled over her every time she cannot answer a question. That ex was a respectful, loving, and socially aware legal student. He was extremely loyal by all traditional societal measures. Yet the radio show remained an outlet for him. I think that’s grounds for therapy — real, intense, holistic therapy.
Jennifer Garner describes Affleck in a a 2016 Vanity Fair interview as:
Sometimes, when confronting your partner does not lead to change, removing yourself from the situation is the only option. But, if you’re more of a Damon (not so much of a perpetrator, but a bit too loyal to colleagues and friends), be honest about the repercussions of what you are protecting. Otherwise, one day, you may have a tough time looking in the mirror.
