The Shooting Season

We seem to be going through two omnipresent trends, or news cycles as they are now called. The first is the deaths of much-loved artists, and the second historical sex abuse allegations against celebrities. Fats Domino is the most recent of the first; Dustin Hoffman the latest of the last. Of course, there is nothing we can do about the deaths, other than acknowledge the variable depth of sadness that ensues. For example, and meaning no disrespect to Mr Domino, I am less saddened by his death (at his age) than I am of Tom Petty’s. I still feel the rawness of the loss of three of my heroes: Alan Rickman, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Roy Orbison. Hoffman’s could have been prevented (perhaps), but not the others nor indeed most other deaths. They are what they are.

But what of the sexual allegations? And here I know I am treading on thin ice. Are the allegations not, perhaps, perchance, just slightly, just teeny-weeny, just a smidgen, getting out of hand? Of course, I am not saying that what is being alleged didn’t happen and I am certainly not condoning it, but I can’t help thinking that the sudden rush of them is something akin to the duck shooting season. Everybody, it seems, is fair game. And there is another thing:  earlier allegations—some proven in court, others yet to be—against Rolf Harris, Jimmy Saville and Bill Cosby point to vile and monstrous behaviour, with long-term traumatic effect on some of the victims. But this latest round of allegations against Kevin Spacey and Dustin Hoffman seem trivial by comparison. Not only are the alleged abuses decades old, they are, as acts, minor relative to those of, particularly, Saville. However, my main question relates to timing. Why now? Why choose to now evoke events that happened decades ago? Yes, I know there is the Me Too movement and Weinstein is still not in jail. But I can’t help thinking that the sheer flood of stars saying, “Me Too” is almost as if they don’t want to be left out of the club. Again, I am not saying it didn’t happen to them, but I find it slightly disquieting and disconcerting that some seem to be wearing it as a badge of honour.

What is to be achieved by these continuing revelations of historical abuse? Is it cathartic? If it is, why couldn’t they have been brought to the fore years ago? What worries me most, though, is that they divert attention from what may be happening now. It was the same with the Roman Catholic Church scandals—all those awful allegations about what happened years ago; yet, as far as I know, there was no serious investigation into whether such practices permeate the Church today.

So, what I would like to feel would be more helpful in dealing with the sexual abuse issue is for the media to move on from reporting historical events, which—like death—are what they are, and focus on investigating and bringing to the fore what is happening now. They have gone some way in doing that with Weinstein, but I assume there are others out there. Go after them. Stop them.  Dealing with Spacey and Hoffman is retrograde—literally and figuratively.