The Ethics of Being in the Audience
What is the responsibility of the audience member when an artist is ethically suspect?
As the new year is starting off, people are making their annual oft-broken New Year’s Resolutions. Losing weight, eating healthier, not spending so much money… But should we, filmgoers and television watchers and media consumers, perhaps try to make a resolution to reject art by artists who have been egregiously unethical?
Fair warning: I don’t really have an answer to this question. I don’t even have a deep philosophical treatise that this subject probably deserves. But I do have some thoughts and a lot of information about this, and I want others to start thinking about it, too. Because this subject has layers and is important for many reasons. As such, I’ll be passing along a lot of information… but I hope you stick with me.
See, 2016 was kind of a mixed bag when reacting as a nation to heinous sexual crimes. Brock Turner’s short 3 month imprisonment brought a lot of outrage. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s several admissions of sexual misconduct and the handful of accusations throughout the years were ultimately ignored by an electorate who decided 18 years after the impeachment of Bill Clinton that sexual misconduct was no big deal. But I’m not here to talk about politics or news. I’m here to talk about art. And the big story of 2016 was Nate Parker.
For those of you somehow unaware, Nate Parker has been a professional actor in film and television since 2004. This year, he directed, starred in, produced, and co-wrote a movie titled The Birth of a Nation, an open challenge to the incredibly racist KKK propaganda of 1915 of the same name filmed by D.W. Griffith. In this movie, Nate Parker, a black man, portrays Nat Turner, a slave who organized and led a bloody slave revolt in Virginia in 1831, which killed 55–65 white people and, in retaliation, more than 200 blacks, involved with the revolt or not, were slaughtered. In a 2016 which showed racial tensions are still very much alive, this film seemed like a sure thing. In fact, the film won the coveted Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize and broke the Sundance Film Festival record for a sales deal with Fox Searchlight buying worldwide distribution rights for $17.5 million. The response was crazy and positive and it was in early talks for an Academy Award nomination, and maybe win, for Best Picture.
Best Picture contenders aren’t always commercial successes, but the film didn’t even earn back the cost of the bid through the box office. With a wide release of 2,105 theaters, the film only garnered a total $15.86 million, barely twice its opening weekend take. Even in an anemic October, this was a piteous amount of money. Compare it to another film Nate Parker performed in that was considered to be a flop: Red Tails, a movie with a predominantly black cast about the Tuskegee Airmen, earned $50.36 million worldwide and $18.78 million its opening weekend. Or look at Academy Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave, which opened wide to only 1,144 theaters and still earned $6.67 million that opening weekend. Additionally, the film has been largely ignored by awards, getting no Golden Globe consideration and completely dying in Academy Award conversation.
So what happened?
In August 2016, Variety published a story about a woman who committed suicide in 2012. That woman was the plaintiff in a case against Nate Parker and his college roommate/The Birth of a Nation co-writer Jean Celestin. Specifically, it was a rape case. The case went to trial and Parker and Celestin were ultimately acquitted. Specifically, Parker was cleared of all charges. Celestin was found guilty, but upon a lengthy retrial process, his conviction was vacated due to illegal evidence. This story, where the trial and evidence were suspect, so soon after the Brock Turner conviction of 3 months with anger still burning over that failure of the justice system to punish a rapist and give justice to a victim, overwhelmed the conversation about The Birth of a Nation only about 2 months before it was to be released. The immediate reaction had Academy members even saying they would not go watch the film. The Academy screening, while reportedly a warm reception, was largely empty. I’ve been to a few of these screenings myself, and the only ones I’ve seen mostly empty have been for films that were out for months.
You could also point out reviews came back as decent but not amazing, the film didn’t really have any huge names in it, it was marketed looking artsy and not action-y which tends to get a lower draw… and all these are valid points. And, ultimately, white people largely did not show up to watch the movie. The largest audience seemed to be black women. There’s definitely more to discuss about the racial elements for prominently black cultural stories. But I know that I ultimately didn’t see it because of the accusations and the research I did into it. And I guarantee others were turned off by that as well.
But is that what we as audiences should be doing? Or should we attempt to separate art and artist?
I want to point out, I’ve also never seen a Roman Polanski or Woody Allen film either. Originally, it was simply my upbringing not giving me much cultural exposure (I still haven’t seen The Godfather, for example). But, as I grew up, I learned Roman Polanski, auteur behind Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby, 100% definitely raped a 13-year-old girl. In 2014, an old sex abuse scandal involving Woody Allen reopened when his accuser, former adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow, wrote an open letter to The New York Times about Allen abusing her as a child. After reviewing the case, which is tumultuous and has a lot of emotion from a lot of people close to the people involved on both sides, I came to the conclusion I agreed with Dylan. At this point, I decided to intentionally avoid watching films by Polanski or Allen. Like Parker in The Birth of a Nation, these men are heavily tied to their works, often writing, producing, and even acting in the films.
Now, I certainly don’t judge anyone for watching these movies, or even problematic films where criminals are directly profiting from the sale of the film, like with The Wolf of Wall Street. But that instance, to me, is a slightly different discussion, because Hollywood 100% definitely has a problem with sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape. Perhaps it has been improving in recent years… but that doesn’t seem to be a risk that should be taken. 2016 was also the year former child actor Corey Feldman opened up about pedophilia in Hollywood. It’d be nice to say that was then, this is now… but do we really know that? Because while Nate Parker has seen some immediate backlash over his accusations, Woody Allen has seen 9 Academy Award nominations with one win since his 1992–1993 scandal first arose, including one in 1993. And Roman Polanski, since his 1977 rape, has been nominated for three Academy Awards with one win for The Pianist in 2003. He even received a standing ovation at the Oscars that year. People who have been suspected of or have definitely committed heinous sexual crimes have not been rejected by Hollywood. It remains to be seen if Nate Parker will see his career suffer more, and as he is black (it’s impossible to deny after this past year that racist elements don’t exist) and was not already established as a director and writer, that seems quite likely.
Corey Feldman isn’t the only story you might not have heard about this year. One film stepping up to take The Birth of a Nation’s original spot in the Academy Award discussion for Best Picture and Best Actor is the other hit out of Sundance, Manchester by the Sea, starring Casey Affleck. Affleck is only the lead for the film, as opposed to the previous examples where the morally suspect persons play multiple roles for their films. However, he has some serious accusations of sexual harassment that should probably be getting more attention… especially by films that look to hire him. You can read more about this and the apparent hypocrisy between Affleck and Parker’s cases and how Hollywood is handling them over at ThinkProgress, where Jessica Goldstein has written a far more in-depth article about these two cases of 2016.
Since Hollywood is clearly not great at morally policing itself, and it only really speaks the language of money (I mean, they’re STILL making DC Comics and Transformers movies in spite of everything), perhaps a 2017 resolution to consider is encouraging a rejection of art made by morally disturbing people. Clearly, that is a subjective idea, based on individual interpretations of morality, and even in the cases I talk about, there is an element of doubt for many of them. After all, rape and sexual assault cases are notoriously terribly handled, terribly argued in court, evidence is difficult to procure (or is just not procured at all)… But maybe we should be doing better as an audience to listen to victims and/or refuse to support artists of moral turpitude. Maybe the idea of appreciating the art separate of the artist is simpler when the artist is not still alive and earning money and fame and letting other unscrupulous types know, “I succeeded in spite of it, maybe you can too!”
Yes. I’m aware that this is the same sort of argument uber-conservatives use to boycott products that are, say, pro-LGBT (moral perversion, according to them). However, despite your politics, I feel the majority of decent people can agree rape and sexual assault are bad. For me, this is simply something to think about in this coming year. People need to be more aware of the stories and make the decisions themselves. As The Daily Beast’s article on Casey Affleck says, “The balance of public opinion shifts toward guilt, or, at the very least, suspicion.” That balance, however, won’t start shifting unless we as a people remain informed. And these cases in the entertainment industry of rape and sexual abuse and harassment will not go away without a change. Without a push. I may only be one consumer, but I will continue to stop giving my time or money to the artists and organizations that support the artists of moral turpitude. I hope you too will consider whether or not you have a moral obligation as a member of an audience. Because I get the feeling this will continue being a problem for a while.
