The #MeToo movement intended to give a voice to the silenced, and one of the more literal ways it is now attempting to do so is through the stage and screen. There’s a highly anticipated offering on the Fox News boss Roger Ailes, written by Charles Randolph and directed by Jay Roach. John Malkovich will play the disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein in the David Mamet play Bitter Wheat, and Harvey, another play about him, was directed and performed by Steven Berkoff. Ryan Murphy is in talks for a #MeToo-themed anthology series called Consent. The stories that were scaremongered, bribed and blackmailed out of the public domain are finally being told – and almost entirely by men.
There is a churning sense of irony in the fact that a campaign created to amplify women’s voices is instead amplifying the voices of men. The silencing, albeit in a different, less obvious form, continues. This, in my mind at least, is not to say that men cannot write accurately, or empathetically, about sexual assault and power dynamics. It is also not to suggest that there aren’t male victims who have been part of the #MeToo movement also, as in those allegedly abused by Kevin Spacey and Bryan Singer (though it is worth noting that it is the stories of abuse against women specifically that directors are choosing to tell). Weinstein, Spacey and Singer deny all claims against them. It doesn’t bode well for women in the film industry if, even in instances where they are the mobilisers of a movement, it is men who still dominate its narrative.
It is galling, given that women are not at the forefront when writing about almost anything. When female directors in Hollywood are being overlooked to document the Hollywood abuse scandal that almost entirely affected women, it is time for the industry to take a serious look at itself. Tarana Burke – the black civil rights activist who founded the #MeToo movement a decade before it went viral – was initially sidelined by rich white women with relative power as Hollywood stars co-opted the campaign without credit. These women are now being sidelined by rich white men with relative power, who seek to tell women’s stories without their input. It’s an ongoing exercise in erasure.
This year, not a single woman was nominated in the best director category at the Oscars. In the awards’ 91-year history, only one woman – Kathryn Bigelow – has won in it. Whether men writing about the scandal remains an issue in and of itself remains debatable, but one thing is certain: it is indicative of a much wider problem. The immediate issue isn’t necessarily that men are telling these stories – it’s that they are the only ones permitted to.
