She Said is a good film. But has it helped Brittany Higgins? Higgins is the Liberal staffer who was raped in her workplace in parliament in Canberra. She Said, the film, is not about individuals, it is about sexual harassment in the workplace, something that Brittany Higgins fell victim to. Why is that? The Commonwealth Public Sector Union (CPSU) and Media entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) cover at least some of the workers in the parliamentary building. Many of the members of parliament are themselves union members. I wonder if the two journos who exposed Harvey Weinstein are now on strike against their employer, the New York Times, that has refused to pay their reporters a living wage in one of the most expensive cities in the world?
Even though the story is about an employer (Weinstein) taking advantage of young women, at no point in the film is there a single mention of unions being involved or any evidence of workers being organised. Neither the film industry unions nor the industrially active NY Times union get a mention in the film. Why? The film portrays the reporters as being totally supported by their employer and senior management at the New York Times. Is this a symptom of the United States or is it a blind spot in the movie? Hollywood sweeps all such considerations aside.
Two New York Times reporters, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, backed by their editors follow up allegations of sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein of women in the workplace at Miramax. The Board of the company, its lawyers and accountants are portrayed as being very sleazy. Over a period of three decades, Weistein is a well-known sexual predator of young women but police, media and film industry execs all turn a blind eye to his criminal conduct. It is little wonder that breaking the story helped launch the Me Too movement. It demonstrates the cultural hegemony that Hollywood holds over the world when the lives of 82 women that Weinstein sexually assaulted are destroyed in the interests of the patriarchy that runs Hollywood.
The film is intense from the outset and leaves you both disgusted and emotionally exhausted. She Said played near empty at our local Coorparoo cinema [admittedly we saw it at a matinee on half-price Monday for tight arses]. She Said is reminiscent of two films that played to previous generations, Spotlight about the catholic church’s abuse of children and All the President’s Men about Nixon’s attempt to cover up robbery at Democratic Party headquaters. All three films feature investigative reporters and suggest that journalism can indeed change the world.
In All the President’s Men, Woodward and Bernstein scored a string of scoops demonstrating a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage by the White House Nixon cruised toward reelection in the fall of 1972, despite setting up a secret fund that paid for a campaign to gather information on the Democrats.
There are scenes in She Said that could have been borrowed from Watergate however the similarity really ends there because this is about exposing an employer. Spotlight is a closer parallel. The investigative reporters in both stories believe initially believe they are looking at only a few sexual assaults: 8 – 12 in the case of She Said when the real number was 82 assaults by Weinstein; and in the case of Spotlight, the arrest of F.r. John Geoghan for child molestation when priests around the world were involved. Both films involved sexual misconduct in the workplace, Weinstein in the film industry and catholic priests in schools and the church. Both are presented as moral tales where the breaches expose the hypocrisy of society turning a blind eye to sexual assaults on young people when the exploitation of women in film and the exploitation of the innocent by the church are both rife.
Spotlight won an Oscar for best film, I wonder if She Said will do the same?
The film comes out after the expose in the Press, the book of the same name and crucially, the Me Too movement. There is some criticism of the Me Too movement on social media about its affect on individual women challenging sexual assault in the workplace namely Brittany Higgins in the Australian parliament. The critique runs like this:
To the extent that the “Me Too” movement has encouraged women to report their assaults to the police, it is a contributing factor in the problem and not a solution … the “Me Too” movement, that Wilkinson and Fitzsimmons (publicists for Higgins) ensured that Brittney Higgins symbolized, urges women to be brave and report their rapes to the police. “Me Too” leads survivors to psychological slaughter by police, defense lawyers and the media, just as Lisa Wilkinson led Brittney Higgins to her present distress … Wilkinson repeatedly spoke about Brittney Higgins from her own media platforms including her acceptance speech for a Logie for reporting the case … Peter Dutton was correct, despite the backlash, when he said the rape allegations were a “he said/she said” situation. There is no evidence Brittney Higgins was raped by Bruce Lehrmann except Brittney Higgins’s own word. For any other rape survivor the matter would never have gone to court and would probably not get past the first contact with police. It was the media and political pressure that forced the police to lay charges against Bruce Lehrmann.
https://www.facebook.com/john.tracey.31/posts/pfbid02D2ooXKhshsiFjF4dwyBq88BCLjdcZVNziCmMFYCYyyrV57PUVoqtyGXbNF7LzJ8bl
I challenged this view stating: “Perhaps the legal system needs to put more emphasis on what ‘she said’ rather than on what ‘he said’? Without a political movement how are you going to achieve that?” To which I received the following rebuttal:
“Ian Curr, Do you support lowering the criminal standard of proof in sexual assault cases? I think the legal system cannot put more emphasis on what she said so those who believe what she said must look beyond the legal system for ways to respond, on a personal and a political level.” – John Tracey
My response: I do not support the lowering of the standard of proof below beyond reasonable doubt.
John Tracey argues that: “There are three key elements of the criminal justice system designed to prevent innocent people from being convicted – a) the presumption of innocence, b) the criminal standard of proof of beyond reasonable doubt and c) The defendant’s right to cross examine evidence.”
But Tracey has left out the most important of all, the jury system.
In the case of Brittany Higgins, the prosecution was taken out of the hands of a jury by both the judge, initially, and then by the DPP under political pressure from the police to pull the case.
I do not think that what she said should be counterposed as a threat to the one of principles of a fair trial, that of ‘beyond reasonable doubt‘. Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape and is currently serving 23 years in jail.
Without political movements like Me Too and films like She Said, how is society going to learn of its shortcomings?
Ian Curr
13 Dec 2022