No shortage of fresh meat for wolves like Weinstein
AFTER Channel 4’s two-part documentary about Kevin Spacey, there can’t be much more to know about the disgraced actor’s modus operandi while preying on perfectly chiselled young men with stars in their eyes. But there is more yet to understand about grooming, the trauma of sexual abuse as well as the cesspit that is the entertainment industry, where ruthlessly ambitious young people are ripe for exploitation and big stars like Spacey are frequently courted purely because of their power to open doors.
The documentary featured 10 alleged Spacey victims – one a US Marine, another an ex-boxer, both great strapping bruisers who could flatten the puny actor with one hand when he came onto them. Except that they didn’t.
Like Harvey Weinstein’s female victims, and indeed most victims of sexual harassment, they simply froze in disbelief and fear as their charming companion put the moves on them with an oily grin, and then excoriated themselves for having put themselves in such a vulnerable position.
Victim-blaming is harshly censured today because it can appear to let predators off the hook by holding victims partly responsible for their abuse. Highlighting a victim’s supposed recklessness also allows the rest of us believe that such horrific things could never happen to us.
BUT the testimony of Spacey’s victims over five decades, coupled with the female witnesses of the MeToo movement, shows that victim-blaming is a pointless sport because no one is tougher on victims than victims themselves.
Victims don’t need critics, however well-intentioned, telling them that once they suspected Spacey or Weinstein had designs on them sexually, they shouldn’t have met up with him again. There are voices in their heads telling them that on a continual loop, just as there’s another insistent voice asking what they did to make Spacey think they were interested when the answer is nothing at all, that simply being in the great man’s orbit was enough.
It is rare for men to recount their abuse in public; rarer still to see that their reaction of stupefied anguish, laced with guilt and shame, is the same as women’s. On the scale of abuse, Spacey’s was comparatively mild. He was a groper and a creepy sex pest. Rape and extreme violence, which make women fear for their lives, was not his style.
Yet for all that, the psychological trauma he caused was evident, particularly for those who were utterly star-struck by him and flattered by his attention. Some admitted hoping the Oscar winner could give them a break career-wise.
Faustian bargains like trading sex for favours were also a factor in MeToo among Hollywood hopefuls. Marilyn Monroe called Hollywood ‘an overcrowded brothel’ where starlets frequently won their roles on the casting couch rather than in auditions. ‘You can’t sleep your way into being a star, though. It takes much, much more. But it helps. A lot of actresses get their first chance that way. Most of the men are such horrors, they deserve all they can get out of them,’ she said.
THAT the wolves of Hollywood, gay or straight, survive – along with their depraved culture where everyone is on the make – is not surprising. Every week an army of wannabes wash up in the city of dreams, grimly adamant about doing whatever it takes to get ahead in the Hollywood game. All doing their bit to ensure that, for good or ill, the show goes on in Tinseltown.