We’re nearing a full week since the numerous, unending, and appalling allegations of sexual assault and rape against The Weinstein Company chief Harvey Weinstein first came to light. However, what’s becoming clear isn’t just the disheartening and long history of Weinstein’s predatory behavior, but that he is just one man in an industry that has been silently complicit in undermining and assaulting women for decades. No one has put this better than Manohla Dargis in The New York Times, who writes:
It is the perverse, insistent, matter-of-factness of male sexual predation and assault — of men’s power over women — that haunts the revelations about Mr. Weinstein. This banality of abuse also haunts the American movie industry. Women helped build the industry, but it has long been a male-dominated enterprise that systematically treats women — as a class — as inferior to men. It is an industry with a history of sexually exploiting younger female performers and stamping expiration dates on older ones. It is an industry that consistently denies female directors employment and contemptuously treats the female audience as a niche, a problem, an afterthought.
Last night on “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,” the comedian largely echoed those sentiments. Following a pretty terrific take down of Weinstein, Bee puts the rest of Hollywood on alert — there’s more where Weinstein came from, and he’s just the beginning.
