Corruption and Abuse in the Film Industry
The news of Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassments has hit like a bombshell in the film industry and it is still in headline news, with new victims coming out every day with their own experiences of harassment. Thus, this has given the platform to a wider number of people to come out and say what they've been wanting to say for a long time, but couldn't.
The problem in the film industry is that the executives see almost seen as god - they have the power to make or break careers, and it can almost be all up to their whim.
So, when executives use this extremely high rank to abuse their power, and thereby abuse and take advantage of people that are hopeful for roles in the film industry, they can pretty much do whatever their sick and abusive mind wants. This becomes problematic for the victims, as they themselves are newcomers to the industry, and if they have a “meeting” scheduled with acclaimed and Oscar-winning producer Harvey Weinstein then they will be hopeful and eager to go to it, thinking it would lead to opportunities for them that they otherwise wouldn't be able to get. Sadly, as has been proven in the papers since the big news came out, said “meetings” turn out to be not much more than opportunities for powerful executives such as Weinstein to blackmail, prey and abuse on the hopeful newcomers that they're meeting.
But Hollywood has another problem, and that's that everyone knew about such behaviour, as Weinstein himself has been doing such acts for over 30 years, and there have been many other influential males that have abused their power in order to get some sort of illicit favours, but yet despite this predatory behaviour towards mostly women being a well-known occurrence within the industry, no one ever has really come out and made these allegations public - this includes famous male actors and directors too, such Ryan Gosling and Quentin Tarantino, people that after working for decades in the industry must know that these things happen in it, and yet such people too become part of the problem when they choose to not do absolutely anything about it; that's when the predatory behaviour just carries on, and on.
Let's now hope that due to some very courageous women having come forward and put the abuses that they've suffered, and by whom, in public, that the film and media industry now as a whole will start to change for the better, and people of power will think twice or thrice before ever choosing to abuse their power and thereby abuse other people again.
