Meryl Streep isn’t convinced that the current conversation about sexual harassment in Hollywood will lead to an immediate cultural shift.
“I see it leading straight to a backlash,” she said during a panel discussion at The Washington Post offices Thursday. She’s not entirely pessimistic, though. Eventually, she says, change will come; it just might take some time.
“I don’t think we move in an easy trajectory towards an enlightened future,” she said. “We’re gonna hit the wall on this one soon.”
It’s somewhat odd that Streep sees herself as a feminist champion of powerful women in the face of an army of male sexual abusers, given that she has vehemently supported and failed to disavow one of the biggest abusers of them all – pedophile Roman Polanski.
Polanski admitting to drugging and raping a 13 year-old girl in 1977. German actress Renate Langer accused Polanksi of raping her twice when she was 15. Another woman called Robin M. accused the director of sexually assaulting her when she was 16. Actress Charlotte Lewis also said Polanski sexually abused her when she 16.
On top of these accusations, Polanksi has now been “accused of sexually abusing a string of women and children,” seven in total, bringing the total number of claims against him to 11. – via infowars.com
Streep was in the District for Thursday night’s premiere of “The Post” and was joined at the panel by the film’s director, Steven Spielberg, and actors Tom Hanks, Bob Odenkirk and Bradley Whitford. The film touches on issues of sexism that feel particularly relevant in the post-Weinstein landscape. WaPo.com
Spielberg called the recent accusations against powerful people a “tsunami of truth” that’s led men to look within themselves and ask difficult questions, such as, “Is there a code of conduct in our lexicon of values?”
One positive aspect, according to Streep, is that men seem to be more aware of what women have been going through. She compared the status quo to learning a language, explaining that women have always had to speak in a way that men understood, though men didn’t have to do the same for women.
It was a strong public statement from Hollywood’s most successful female star that sexual harassment from rich, powerful men was unacceptable.
At the Golden Globes in January 2017, Streep said of Trump: ‘This instinct to humiliate, when it’s modelled by someone in the public platform, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission to other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.’
A month later, she attacked the now President again: ‘Evil prospers when good men do nothing…ain’t that the truth.’
Yes, it is, Meryl.
But it thus beggars the question: why, then, did you give a standing ovation to Roman Polanski, when you KNEW every single sordid little detail of how he had raped a child?
Why, when asked about him at a press conference, did you say: ‘Roman Polanski? I’m very sorry that he’s in jail.’
Why have you never said a public word of criticism about a man who used his powerful position to bully and sexually abuse a young girl? This despite three more women alleging he assaulted them: British actress Charlotte Lewis claimed Polanski forced himself on her just after her 16th birthday in 1983. Another woman identified only as Robin claimed she was ‘sexually victimised’ by Polanski in 1973 when she was 16. And only this week, a German woman claimed that Polanski raped her too in 1972 when she was 15.
The truth is that Harvey Weinstein was able to get away with what he did for so long because Hollywood, led by two-faced Ms Streep, doesn’t really give a damn about powerful men abusing young women.
That’s why they cheer Polanski and still finance and star in his movies.
Dispatches from the Asylum 