An Education in Allyship – Gray Holland
Under all the terrible news that constantly permeates the political and social spheres of the world currently, there has been a small gem in the last week or so that some may have missed.
This small gem is unfortunately not without some rather distressing back story however, as it concerns the allegations of sexual assault made against Dustin Hoffman, of The Graduate fame.
One of these such allegations comes from writer Anna Graham Hunter, who says that when she was working as an intern on the TV movie Death of A Salesman (1985), when she was just 17, Hoffman, now aged 80, made sexual advances towards her, openly talked about sex to her and in front of her, ‘grabbed her ass’ on numerous occasions, and made incredibly lewd comments to her in public.
This all seems pretty terrible, but sadly not unusual given the last couple months of revelations about Hollywood’s seedy ‘open secret’.
However, thanks to British comedian living in the US, John Oliver, of Last Week Tonight, who was hosting a panel in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the release of Hoffman’s film Wag the Dog, this awful news has a bright side.
John Oliver, a white man, with all the privilege that accompanies that position, chose to use his platform to rightly demand accountability from Hoffman. Inori Roy says, in an article for The Star, ‘In confronting a prominent celebrity about his history of sexual violence at a time when many men have remained conveniently quiet on the subject, he took a risk that would have gotten anyone less popular (or privileged) in a hell of a lot more trouble.’
Despite booing from the audience and Hoffman’s rolodex of excuses (unsurprisingly including the Hollywood Excuse Panic Button), Oliver did not retreat or hold back, choosing instead to put himself in the deeply uncomfortable position of defender. At one point Hoffman, seemingly incredulous asked Oliver if he really believed what Graham Hunter had written, and Oliver shot back ‘I believe what she wrote, yes. Because there’s no point in her lying.’ This prompted a voice from the audience to call ‘Thank you for believing in women.’
John Oliver is doing the bare minimum in my opinion, in demanding accountability from Hoffman. It is the end of 2017, and this is still an issue. Hoffman and others like him will continue to hide behind their privilege, as powerful white men, who have the ability and power to throw suspicion onto their victims, and by using his own privilege to undermine Hoffman on this panel, John Oliver has proved himself an ally of the #MeToo movement and to victims of sexual assault everywhere. For far too long the burden of confrontation had lain with the survivors of assault, who are disproportionately women. Famous and powerful men simply tweeting to say they feel bad for women, or writing a song or a speech is not good enough. Oliver has shown the men of Hollywood and the media as a whole, the correct way to be an ally in this fight, and now it is up to them to respond and make real change happen.
I’d really like to end on a happy note, and to some extent I will, by telling you to go and watch Last Week Tonight for some adept satirical and political comedy, and to go and watch the video of the panel online to watch Hoffman squirm. But to some extent, I cannot end this happily because I, and hopefully you, know that one man cannot change this endemic pattern of abusers covering up, excusing and getting away with abuse, so we can only hope that Hollywood pays attention, but then we look at Woody Allen, and we can see that the lesson wasn’t learnt then, so how much has changed, and is it enough?
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