Dear Gossips,
At this point, it’s looking like Casey Affleck, alleged sexual harasser, will win the Oscar for Best Actor for his terrific performance in Manchester By The Sea. It’s not necessarily that he shouldn’t. But, as Duana and I discussed on the Show Your Work podcast a few weeks ago, can we at least talk about it? I’ve repeatedly linked to the Mashable article from September about Casey’s sexual harassment lawsuit. It didn’t make much of an impact. In November, just before US Thanksgiving, Amy Zimmerman wrote about the case and the disturbing accusations against Casey for The Daily Beast. Barely anyone noticed.
Early this week, Anne Helen Petersen wrote a piece called Here’s What Separates Casey Affleck From Nate Parker. Answer: privilege. AHP, as usual, delivers great work. After her article was posted, Nico Lang wrote at Salon about how Saturday Night Live normalised Casey Affleck, a year after giving Donald Trump the stage. And then Matthew Belloni wrote about Casey and Mel Gibson and Hollywood’s Sliding Scale of Moral Punishment for The Hollywood Reporter. And yesterday The New Yorker posted a piece about The Thorny Ethics of the Oscars by Michael Schulman. Also yesterday, a piece in The Huffington Post about the media wanting to “quash Casey Affleck’s Oscar chances” and that it’s too late. It is too late but I’m not sure “quashing” is the point. The point is to have the conversation. All the conversations. The conversations about how women are treated in the workplace but also the conversations about why some conversations happen (Nate Parker) and some don’t (Casey Affleck) and how this deliberate selectiveness helps few but has the potential to hurt so many.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
