With the awards season approaching fast, Hollywood is under increased pressure to address its Harvey Weinstein sins. The movie mogul is alleged to have assaulted,
CULTUREvulture
McGowan recently admonished actress Meryl Streep and those who are choosing to
wear black at the upcoming Golden Globes Awards as a form of protest.
With the awards season approaching fast, Hollywood is under increased pressure to address its Harvey Weinstein sins. The movie mogul is alleged to have assaulted, sexually-harassed and bullied women for years, employing a network of intimidators to keep his secrets. From gag orders in contracts to spreading lies about “difficult” actresses in the press, to encouraging directors to blacklist women who resisted his advances, it’s clear that Weinstein’s years of tormenting women were only possible because the industry turned a blind eye.
The result is that people are starting to wonder who turned a blind eye and who exactly benefited the most from Weinstein’s reign of terror. Absurdly, that blame has turned to Meryl Streep.
The attacks first began when it was announced that some actresses plan on wearing all black to the Golden Globes in a silent protest against sexual harassment and assault. Rose McGowan, former Charmed star and one of Weinstein’s most vocal alleged victims, lashed out at the protest, calling out Streep directly in a since-deleted tweet: “Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster, are wearing black @goldenglobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa.”
McGowan blasted Meryl Streep on Twitter for what she perceived to be Streep’s complicity in Weinstein’s behaviour. Even though, McGowan later apologized for the Marchesa comment—an extra dig, since it’s the fashion line of Weinstein’s estranged wife, Georgina Chapman, she did not mention Streep. “The Marchesa line was beneath me and I’m sorry for that. Seeing that picture of Alyssa Milano with GC has ignited something in me that I can’t quite articulate. There is no map for this road I’m on, I will f*** up. Peace be with you, go with Goddess,” McGowan tweeted.
In response to McGowan’s now-deleted tweet, Streep issued a statement earlier this week to The Huffington Post: “It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the ’90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others. I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know.”
This is not all! Streep was further targeted by posters put up around Los Angeles depicting her as an enabler of Weinstein. “She knew,” the posters read, blurring out her eyes in a photo of her and Weinstein. A right-wing guerrilla artist named Sabo eventually took credit for the posters, claiming that they were revenge for her criticism of Donald Trump. Before he announced this, however, social media was already wondering: How much did Streep know?
In her statement, Streep points out that Weinstein was not a filmmaker but a producer and “primarily a marketer of films made by other people.” Streep continued with, “But not every actor, actress, and director who made films that HW distributed knew he abused women, or that he raped Rose in the ’90s, other women before and others after, until they told us.”
Streep’s comments ring true when she also insists that Weinstein “needed me much more than I needed him and he made sure I didn’t know.” Surely, with Streep already a Hollywood institution by the days of Miramax and The Weinstein Company, she wouldn’t be the kind of actress Weinstein could easily prey on.
McGowan’s attack is certainly unexpected and considering her voice has been dominant when it comes to the fight against sexual misconduct, this is a speed bump in the ongoing movement that encourages unity. Only time will tell how things turn out at the Golden Globes Awards, which will air live on NBC on the evening of Sunday, January 7, 2018.
