Harvey Weinstein and the Networks of Power
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/oct/13/harvey-weinstein-allegations-hollywood-enablers
What is so striking about this article is how the language and terms that it employs correspond so strongly to what we have studied about popularity being a network phenomenon and how new behaviors diffuse through a network. What was it that enabled Weinstein to carry out decades of predatory behavior? The article pulls no punches. It was a ‘pack of hyenas’ – “colleagues and associates who set up meetings under false pretences and teams of lawyers and publicists who suppressed complaints.”
Part of Weinstein’s power comes from his experience and time in the industry. Weinstein and his brother set up the film production company Miramax and led it from 1979 to 2005. They later split from Miramax in September 2005 and founded the Weinstein Company. The article explains how his influence in the industry is “Midas-like” – “He turned pitches into films and marketed the hell out of them, wooing the media and Academy Award voters with charm, bluster and guile.” He could turn quirky low-budget films into major hits. “He is the gatekeeper to getting projects made, getting your face on screen, to you getting an Oscar.” His power can be intuitively explained if we think in terms of popularity being a network phenomenon. As we have learned, generally speaking, nodes which arrive earlier invariably become more and more popular due to the “rich-get-richer” phenomenon, where the nodes that arrive later have to form links to previous nodes or the nodes that previous nodes themselves link to. In Hollywood, the nodes are the directors, producers, and prominent actors and actresses. So many of these personalities describe their success as being borne from the luck of being discovered and getting taken under the wing of someone already in the industry. Quentin Tarantino got his start making his indie cult classic films only because of Weinstein’s patronage. Dan Harmon, who visited Cornell just two days ago, described how it wasn’t so much about being able to break out on his own. It was just writing script after script and offering it to anyone who would read it until someone decided to take a chance on you. In the entertainment industry, the barriers to entry are deceptively low – the reality seems to be that one must find a person of influence to be one’s ‘patron’ before one can break into the industry.
So it goes for filmmaking and Harvey Weinstein. He is the man who knows how the gears turn, who knows the people who keep the entire edifice of Hollywood ticking, and who knows how to get what he wants done. Simply by being one of the early titans of the industry, he has become popular/powerful and the “rich-get-richer” model has only ensured an accumulation of power such that any up-and-coming actress in the industry will invariably be brought before him for his approval. “Why do agents send women actors to predators?” asks French actor Florence Darel. The answer is that agents recognize that their client’s success (and by extension, their own success) is dependent on Weinstein’s approval. This is how popularity and power work.
What’s also interesting is how the tables have turned against Weinstein. Apparently, many were aware of his infidelities – it was an “open secret” in Hollywood and even joked about at times (to Weinstein’s chagrin.) But in the article’s own terms, “after the New York Times published accounts of harassment and assault, [it prompted] a cascade of other reports.” It is worth noting that there were multiple reports of sexual assault and harassment even before the New York Times expose. There had been legal cases where individual settlements were arranged to hush things up. And in the case of Italian model Ambra Gutierrez, who cooperated with the police to bring Weinstein’s misdemeanors to light, the tabloids began publishing negative stories about her, painting her as an opportunist. That a tabloid would discredit the accuser rather than the person being accused hints that someone (*cough*) is pulling the strings to ensure that Gutierrez receives negative publicity and is discredited.
But I bring up this example to highlight the key difference between then and now. Then, it was one person pursuing charges. Now, it is an entire New York Times article detailing three decades of sexual harassment and settlements to actresses and female production assistants, temps, and other employees. In Chapter 19, we learn about the mechanics of collective action and what the conditions for a social movement to take place were. One obstacle to collective action is that one does not have perfect knowledge about whether others or not will follow suit and agitate for action. In a protest, if a huge multitude of people participate, the government is weakened and change is possible. If only a small number do, the government can target each one of them and punish them accordingly. The goal of a repressive government would be to limit communication and coordination between people, such that this huge multitude of people can never come together. Similarly, in Weinstein’s case, he limited information about his sexual misdeeds and punished those who alluded to his misbehavior in any way (see Courtney Love.) In effect, this makes each individual victim afraid to speak out, even if they were powerful (e.g. Angelina Jolie) because they believed that Weinstein could control the tides of power and public opinion and turn it against them. What the New York Times article did was that it sent a signal to each victim and let them know that there were many others in the same position who would be willing to stand beside them. This reduced their individual risk and allowed them to speak out against Weinstein, thus triggering the cascade of reports.
There are some who wonder if this condemnation of Weinstein will be short-lived or if a significant change has been effected in the Hollywood community. Empirically, it seems that this change will stick. The change has been dubbed the “Weinstein effect”, where other powerful media personalities, such as Kevin Spacey and Louis C. K., are being brought to justice. The larger community is now removing shows and films featuring these personalities, and to borrow another term from sociology, it seems that the Hollywood community has reached a tipping point such that it is only rational for everyone else in the community to condemn such behavior. We can also think about it in terms of diffusion of ideas through a network, where many of those who were part of the institutions that enabled Weinstein have now adopted the ‘new’ idea/position that such predatory behavior must be actively guarded against and explicitly condemned. This is progress, and if the past few decades are anything to go by, this progress is here to stay.