Hooray for our side: another privileged old white guy chopped down, career in tatters. Hear us roar! Speak truth to power! In this case the malfeasant was film critic David Edelstein, who made a stupid, quickly deleted, misfired “joke” on his private Facebook page, regarding the death of Last Tango in Paris director Bernardo Bertolucci. Posted Edelstein: “Even grief is better with butter,” accompanied by a still of Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando from the film – yes, the infamous and now controversial anal rape scene.
Edelstein had been doing movie reviews for the last 16 years on the National Public Radio syndicated show Fresh Air, hosted by the much revered Terry Gross. He’s also the chief film critic for New York magazine and appears on the CBS Sunday Morning show. He’s what you might call “an influencer”, and his 2,091 Facebook friends include many well-known feminists. One of them apparently took a screenshot of the post and circulated it or, as another of his Facebook friends put it, “narced to the universe”. (Disclosure: I’m among those friends, though have taken no screenshots.)
What was Edelstein thinking? You can hear him straining and failing to find the joke, a condition that afflicts many who spend too much time on social media and get addicted to those endorphin-boosting likes. You need another fix and “edgy humor” is a good way of maximizing your response rate – as technology critics have lately informed us, Facebook’s algorithms favor posts that produce the most “emotional engagement”, positive or negative.
In this case, actress Martha Plimpton, herself an occasional NPR host (on the New York affiliate WNYC) and in receipt of the screenshot, quickly tweeted it to her 196,000 followers along with the demand: “Fire him. Immediately.” Which happened the next day: Fresh Air and NPR announced that they were cutting ties with Edelstein because the post had been “offensive and unacceptable, especially given Maria Schneider’s experience during the filming of Last Tango in Paris”.
The backstory: in a 2006 interview Schneider said that the filming of the scene had left her feeling humiliated and “a little raped”. The rape itself was in the script, but the butter wasn’t; Bertolucci and Brando had manipulated her by springing it on her to get a more spontaneous performance, or that was their line. (There seems to have been confusion in the social media response to Edelstein’s firing about whether Schneider was actually raped; she wasn’t.) The butter reappears in a later scene where Schneider’s character Jeanne uses it to anally penetrate Brando’s character. Jeanne also tricks him into getting an electric shock and later shoots him. At the time the film was regarded as a masterpiece; Bertolucci and Brando were both nominated for Academy Awards.
These are, of course, different times. Very different! In fact, it’s not an overstatement to say we’re in the midst of a cultural revolution, prompted, of course by #MeToo, along with the fact that more women are in positions of cultural and institutional power, or certainly cultural influence – vestigial patriarchal elements are being weeded out and replaced with new values. Sexual scumminess is one of those elements, though arguments remain about what is and isn’t scummy.
One part of me cheers – bring the clueless fuckers down, let heads roll. Men: stop being gross! Another part of me wonders about the expansion of employers’ power over workers’ leisure time, among other qualms. So let’s briefly pause and examine some of the tacit assumptions and values that Edelstein’s firing brings to light, especially regarding conditions of employment and inadvertent offense-causing.
As I read it, the first unstated rule would be that there’s nothing inadvertent about inadvertent offense: jokes and flubs will be treated as diagnostic instruments, like those personality tests sometimes administered to prospective employees, and revelatory of the true character of the flubber. Corollary: a clear soul will be required to remain employed.
The second unstated rule is that causing offense is a permanent mark against you, however apologetic you might be. One flub and you’re out. An unthinking social media post will outweigh a 16-year track record. Corollary: there’s no “off the clock” – it’s company time all the time.
A third unstated rule is that men need to prove and re-prove that they understand rape is bad, and take it seriously, not unlike signing a loyalty oath to demonstrate you’re not a communist. Failure to keep re-proving it implicates you in crimes against women. Edelstein was clearly insensitive about rape – well, not rape per se, but Schneider’s account of feeling a little raped. He said he was unaware of Schneider’s interview, but that was either not believed or didn’t matter. Corollary: men are not to be believed, they will say anything.
It was once argued, among a certain style of feminist, that when women came to power the world would be a more humane place because women’s style of rule would be different than men’s – more peaceable, more fair and collaborative, perhaps even a more moral style of power. To some extent this may prove to be true: certainly there will be less transactional sex in post-patriarchal times; likely less groping and leering. But will there be a more humane treatment of the workforce?
No doubt many will see the evolution of gendered management styles from “Give me a blow job or I’ll fire you” to “Don’t tell a joke I don’t like or I’ll fire you” as preferable. Personally, I think they’re both encroachments. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
[ed. Richard Pryor must be rolling in his grave. See also: It's the year that celebrities were held to account. Are we outraged too easily? (The Guardian)]
Edelstein had been doing movie reviews for the last 16 years on the National Public Radio syndicated show Fresh Air, hosted by the much revered Terry Gross. He’s also the chief film critic for New York magazine and appears on the CBS Sunday Morning show. He’s what you might call “an influencer”, and his 2,091 Facebook friends include many well-known feminists. One of them apparently took a screenshot of the post and circulated it or, as another of his Facebook friends put it, “narced to the universe”. (Disclosure: I’m among those friends, though have taken no screenshots.)
What was Edelstein thinking? You can hear him straining and failing to find the joke, a condition that afflicts many who spend too much time on social media and get addicted to those endorphin-boosting likes. You need another fix and “edgy humor” is a good way of maximizing your response rate – as technology critics have lately informed us, Facebook’s algorithms favor posts that produce the most “emotional engagement”, positive or negative.In this case, actress Martha Plimpton, herself an occasional NPR host (on the New York affiliate WNYC) and in receipt of the screenshot, quickly tweeted it to her 196,000 followers along with the demand: “Fire him. Immediately.” Which happened the next day: Fresh Air and NPR announced that they were cutting ties with Edelstein because the post had been “offensive and unacceptable, especially given Maria Schneider’s experience during the filming of Last Tango in Paris”.
The backstory: in a 2006 interview Schneider said that the filming of the scene had left her feeling humiliated and “a little raped”. The rape itself was in the script, but the butter wasn’t; Bertolucci and Brando had manipulated her by springing it on her to get a more spontaneous performance, or that was their line. (There seems to have been confusion in the social media response to Edelstein’s firing about whether Schneider was actually raped; she wasn’t.) The butter reappears in a later scene where Schneider’s character Jeanne uses it to anally penetrate Brando’s character. Jeanne also tricks him into getting an electric shock and later shoots him. At the time the film was regarded as a masterpiece; Bertolucci and Brando were both nominated for Academy Awards.
These are, of course, different times. Very different! In fact, it’s not an overstatement to say we’re in the midst of a cultural revolution, prompted, of course by #MeToo, along with the fact that more women are in positions of cultural and institutional power, or certainly cultural influence – vestigial patriarchal elements are being weeded out and replaced with new values. Sexual scumminess is one of those elements, though arguments remain about what is and isn’t scummy.
One part of me cheers – bring the clueless fuckers down, let heads roll. Men: stop being gross! Another part of me wonders about the expansion of employers’ power over workers’ leisure time, among other qualms. So let’s briefly pause and examine some of the tacit assumptions and values that Edelstein’s firing brings to light, especially regarding conditions of employment and inadvertent offense-causing.
As I read it, the first unstated rule would be that there’s nothing inadvertent about inadvertent offense: jokes and flubs will be treated as diagnostic instruments, like those personality tests sometimes administered to prospective employees, and revelatory of the true character of the flubber. Corollary: a clear soul will be required to remain employed.
The second unstated rule is that causing offense is a permanent mark against you, however apologetic you might be. One flub and you’re out. An unthinking social media post will outweigh a 16-year track record. Corollary: there’s no “off the clock” – it’s company time all the time.
A third unstated rule is that men need to prove and re-prove that they understand rape is bad, and take it seriously, not unlike signing a loyalty oath to demonstrate you’re not a communist. Failure to keep re-proving it implicates you in crimes against women. Edelstein was clearly insensitive about rape – well, not rape per se, but Schneider’s account of feeling a little raped. He said he was unaware of Schneider’s interview, but that was either not believed or didn’t matter. Corollary: men are not to be believed, they will say anything.
It was once argued, among a certain style of feminist, that when women came to power the world would be a more humane place because women’s style of rule would be different than men’s – more peaceable, more fair and collaborative, perhaps even a more moral style of power. To some extent this may prove to be true: certainly there will be less transactional sex in post-patriarchal times; likely less groping and leering. But will there be a more humane treatment of the workforce?
No doubt many will see the evolution of gendered management styles from “Give me a blow job or I’ll fire you” to “Don’t tell a joke I don’t like or I’ll fire you” as preferable. Personally, I think they’re both encroachments. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
by Laura Kipnis, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images[ed. Richard Pryor must be rolling in his grave. See also: It's the year that celebrities were held to account. Are we outraged too easily? (The Guardian)]
