It’s December, and awards season is finally and fully upon us.
In the last few weeks, critics associations have begun to recognize the best performances and films of the year with a flurry of awards, fueling preliminary Oscar buzz and beginning endless speculations that will lead up to the day of the show.
While results have varied, one name in particular has garnered strong frontrunner status in the Best Actor race. Casey Affleck secured awards for “Manchester by the Sea” from multiple critics’ groups and has been the subject of various magazine profiles and rave reviews. At this point, he’s Hollywood’s golden boy, and it’s his race to lose.
Let’s rewind for a moment to another Hollywood golden boy, who began the year with similar coverage thanks to the debut of his film “The Birth of a Nation” at 2016’s Sundance Film Festival. Back then, actor/director Nate Parker seemed poised for Oscar gold as well, until his history of alleged sexual assault came to light.
When the news broke of Parker’s alleged rape of a female college student - and the student’s eventual suicide - he was booted from the frontrunner pedestal with astonishing speed.
Critics, audiences and Hollywood bigwigs boycotted the film and spoke out against him in droves. It seemed like a long-overdue reaction to the kind of person whose sins the entertainment industry tends to forgive and forget.
It seemed clear, thanks to Parker’s case, that the industry refused to separate the art from the artist any longer. They would no longer overlook similar crimes and mistreatment of women in favor of rewarding a talented male actor or director. Finally, it appeared, a precedent had been set.
Then, this fall, rumors began to spread about Casey Affleck’s past conduct with women. A cover story about the actor in Variety magazine mentioned briefly that he had a history of alleged sexual harassment. Other sites, like the Daily Beast, did extensive research into the claims and discovered that Affleck had been accused of sexual harassment against coworkers while on the set of his film “I’m Still Here.”
Complaints ranged from physical intimidation to verbal abuse to an incident where Affleck allegedly broke into a female cinematographer’s hotel room and snuck into her bed. (For more detailed information on the complaints filed against Affleck, the Daily Beast has published an in-depth account of the events.)
Both women ended up settling lawsuits against Affleck, and the entire incident had little-to-no public impact — until now.
It should be no surprise that members of the industry are hesitant to condemn Affleck for his alleged past abuse of women, considering the list of popular actors and directors in Hollywood with similar histories of suspected abuse and mistreatment.
Some of them are so well known that they have become punch lines, like Woody Allen and Sean Penn. Others fly far more under the radar, thanks to quietly handled issues of domestic abuse or accounts of general mistreatment: Michael Fassbender, Gary Oldman, Sean Bean and Nicolas Cage, to name a few.
Just look at Johnny Depp. In the span of a year, he went from being accused of violent domestic abuse to landing a huge role in the “Harry Potter” cinematic universe. Is this how Hollywood rewards men who are accused of violence toward women?
Yes it is.
That’s why the swift condemnation of Nate Parker was so surprising. Granted, being accused of rape is a far cry from domestic abuse or sexual misconduct on set, but where does Hollywood draw the line?
If Parker’s alleged victim hadn’t killed herself, or if he hadn’t publicly drawn so many parallels between his own life and his passion project, would Hollywood have overlooked his past? What made his crimes so very different from those of other successful men in the industry?
An obvious answer to that question would be to point to his race. Nate Parker is a black director who made a film about a violent black uprising in early American history. How much did his race play into the fact that he has been shunned by Hollywood? If Affleck wasn’t a famous white man, would his own case be playing out differently?
Parker’s career is, by all accounts, over. If Hollywood has decided that it is going to treat all alleged rapists and sexual predators in the same way, then Parker’s treatment was absolutely just.
But if Casey Affleck walks onto that stage in February and accepts his Oscar for Best Actor, despite general knowledge of the accusations against him, the entertainment industry will yet again have rewarded an alleged sexual predator with the highest honor they can give.
And the audiences and media who propel him to the top will be just as complicit as the voters who hand him the prize.
