My guess is that up until two weeks ago, the name of Harvey Weinstein meant little if anything to most people, including readers of this magazine.
My own knowledge was rudimentary, at best. As a consumer of newspapers and lifelong insomniac with a television set, I was aware that he was a very successful and well-publicized “independent” film producer, particularly adept at campaigning for, and winning, Oscar nominations and trophies. But as my long-suffering wife can attest, contemporary cinema is not a passion of mine, and the list of Harvey Weinstein movies I have failed to see (Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love, The Crying Game, Good Will Hunting, The Lord of the Rings, etc.) is considerably longer than the single Weinstein film (The English Patient) I am confident I once saw—well, most of it, anyway—on cable.
It didn’t help that Weinstein was almost as well known for his (predictably left-wing) political activism and generous financial support for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry, and other Democratic luminaries, or that he seemed to be a ubiquitous presence at the various show-business rituals—awards ceremonies, late-night talk shows—I tend to avoid. Since he was usually described in the media with the customary euphemisms reserved for bullying and obnoxiousness (“brash,” “persistent,” “outspoken”), I assumed Weinstein’s outward appearance—slovenly, habitually unshaven, corpulent—reflected an inner self I could only imagine.
Still, I was surprised, if not necessarily shocked, by details of his sexual aggressiveness and compulsive boorishness in the New York Times and New Yorker exposés. Surprised, that is, in the way that I am always surprised when mayors are indicted for bribery schemes: How could they have failed to guess, when pocketing the money, that someone would talk? It is now an article of faith that Everybody Knew, for years if not decades, about Harvey Weinstein’s repellent habits and practices. But of course not “everybody” pays attention to the world he inhabits or much cares about it; and like most people, I am well down the list of the well-informed when it comes to celebrity gossip.
I say this not as an excuse after the fact, or for absolution, but to emphasize that the entertainment world—like sports, politics, science, journalism, high finance, academia, Silicon Valley—is a self-contained realm, a bubble in current parlance, that tends to exaggerate its own significance. But it does explain to some degree why Harvey Weinstein has since been transmuted into all movie moguls, or all males wielding power, or all men. We tend to see, in this lurid instance, what we want to see.
To be sure, even by show-business standards, Weinstein’s long history of sexual predation and assault seems to have been exceptional. But was it? The casting couch is an age-old concept in the theater, and the lecherous producer has been a stock character since the invention of film. And just as the private lives of public figures tend to be mysterious, we conceal or reveal their truth for innumerable reasons. This has tragic, and sometimes comic, consequences.
In “Champion,” the 1916 story by Ring Lardner, for example, the cruel malevolence of a popular boxer is protected because, as an editor explains, “it wouldn’t get us anything but abuse to print it. The people don’t want to see him knocked. He’s champion.” In James Thurber’s “The Greatest Man in the World” (1931), a young aviator who has flown nonstop around the globe is found not to be a self-effacing youth who loves his mother—in fact, they detest one another—but a profane delinquent and petty criminal interested only in the money and fame. The ostensible hero is called to an emergency meeting of prominent citizens, including the president of the United States, in a hotel room, where he is ultimately shoved out the window to spare the public from disillusion.
In that sense, the Harvey Weinstein saga is surprising not because he behaved as he did—human nature has not changed much in history, and cruelty often pays off—but because the people around him, whether friends, business partners, admirers, benefici-aries, even victims, largely conspired to share his secrets for a very long time but not broadcast them outside the bubble. The reactions of the actresses and studio employees who were subject to his gross, sometimes violent, assaults are understandable: Who among us has not failed to stand up against wrongdoing or used silence as a self-preservative? Yet the great and good among us, who must surely have heard the Weinstein rumors and anecdotes, have much to explain.
The fact that there is an explicit political angle to this episode—Weinstein seems to have subsisted and prospered almost exclusively among liberals—is reflected with particular tone-deafness in his memorable statement in response to the Times story, in which he sought to deflect attention from the subject at hand to his disdain for Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association. This has given conservatives, myself included, some reason to gloat. But of course, hypocrisy knows no partisan bounds. The revelations about Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly at Fox News are not forgotten, and in the midst of the Weinstein explosion, a pro-life congressman was compelled to resign his seat because he had advised his mistress to get an abortion. To the stereotype of the sinning clergyman may now be added the filmmaker-sexual predator honored for his feminist opinions.
Which is why, even amid Harvey Weinstein’s disgrace and ignominy, I am not persuaded that much will change. Presumably, Weinstein’s professional life is over—it seems already to have subsided, which may explain the timing—and he might find himself in legal jeopardy. But while certain details of his fall from grace are more farcical than serious—expulsion from the ludicrous Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, cancellation of the Weinstein Books imprint at the Hachette Group—and numerous small fry are likely to lose their jobs, the culture that nourished him will surely adapt, to some degree, but won’t mutate.
In Hollywood, or anywhere for that matter, all the instincts and human reflexes, all the ingredients of reward and ambition, that made him possible remain intact. Passions will cool, another earthquake will occur, a movie version will be made—and Harvey Weinstein, like Bill Cosby or Anthony Weiner, will dissolve into the twilight.
Philip Terzian is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.
