Last year, Amazon Studios chief Roy Price decided to cancel “Good Girls Revolt” barely a month after its debut. Set in 1969, the partially fact-based drama followed a group of women journalists fighting for equal opportunity and fending off inappropriate bosses in the workplace; one of the real-life figures it portrayed was Eleanor Holmes Norton, who helped write the first government regulations against sexual harassment.
On Tuesday, Price resigned from Amazon Studios amid his own sexual harassment scandal.
Even in the dizzying two-week period brought about by a devastating pair of reports in the New York Times and New Yorker alleging decades of sexual harassment and assault by Oscar-winning film producer Harvey Weinstein, it was a jaw-dropping event.
Price, who’d partnered with the Weinstein Co. on high-profile TV projects from Matthew Weiner and David O. Russell, fell even faster. It only took hours for Amazon to put him on a leave of absence after producer Isa Hackett went on the record with graphic details about Price’s behavior, and just days to fire him.
This particular cultural moment, which feels at times like a national consciousness-raising session, has actually been more than a year in the making. Weinstein and Price are just the latest in a series of titans, including Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and L.A. Reid, who have been brought down by allegations of sexual misconduct.
Harvey Weinstein, top left, Roy Price, Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes are among those who have been brought down by allegations of sexual misconduct.
(Richard Shotwell / Invision/AP; Andy Kropa / Invision/AP; Mary Altaffer / Associated Press )
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The nonstop sordid and horrifying stories told about Weinstein did, however, provoke a collective catharsis. At public events, women including Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Lawrence have now spoken of enduring harassment and/or assault, while on social media thousands of women, including Gabrielle Union, Lady Gaga and Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney joined the hashtag campaign #MeToo.
Meanwhile, men in the entertainment industry felt compelled to post statements denouncing Weinstein and supporting the women who have come forward. As the accusations increased, a few, like screenwriter Scott Rosenberg and director Quentin Tarantino, admitted they were part of the problem for staying silent when they knew Weinstein had mistreated women.
“For the legions of women who have worked in this field as advocates and professionals for decades and decades, it’s about time,” says Toni Van Pelt, president of the National Organization for Women. “What allows this to thrive is the culture of silence, men protecting men, that’s just so ingrained in this society.”
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Catharsis, however, is not the same as change.
As many have pointed out as the Weinstein scandal unspooled, an eerily similar scenario played out a year ago, when the Washington Post uncovered the now-infamous “Access Hollywood” tape of Donald Trump boasting about groping women. In the days following that exposé, a dozen women came forward to say that Trump had groped or forcibly kissed them. While the candidate dismissed the claims as “totally made up nonsense to steal the election,” Republican politicians scrambled to distance themselves from Trump, and there was semi-serious talk of replacing him on the ballot.
Donald Trump seen in 2005 with ‘Days of Our Lives’ actress Arianne Zucker and then-Access Hollywood host Billy Bush.
(The Washington Post / Getty Images )
A month later, Trump won the election with the support of 42% of women in the electorate — and 53% of white women.
Even so, Trump’s inauguration was a wake-up call. At the women’s marches in January, many participants carried signs that explicitly referenced Trump’s alleged mistreatment of women. Actress Ashley Judd, who would be one of the first major Hollywood stars to accuse Weinstein by name, read from a poem written by a 19-year-old: “Our … ain’t for grabbing.”
Within months, Fox News hosts Bill O’Reilly and Eric Bolling were out of their jobs. Smaller scandals rocked the indie film community, then came the Weinstein bombshell.
But there have been so many false alarms that it’s hard to tell a cultural shift from a news cycle. Many famous men have faced grave allegations of misconduct toward the opposite sex — Trump, Woody Allen, Charlie Sheen, Mel Gibson, R. Kelly, Bill Clinton — only to escape relatively unscathed as the conversation moved on.
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Indeed, over the past decade, endemic sexual abuse and harassment has been exposed in seemingly every corner of American life, including Silicon Valley, the military, the National Park Service, the Catholic Church, women’s gymnastics, college football and elite East Coast private schools. Not coincidentally, these are largely male-dominated, hierarchical institutions full of vulnerable people intimidated into silence — a lot like Hollywood.
“Each time one of these big cases came up, I always would think, well now things are going to change,” says Clara Bingham, whose books “Women on the Hill: Challenging the Culture of Congress” and “Class Action: The Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law” tracked growing awareness of the issue in the 1990s.
“Change comes in waves,” she adds. “This one may be a tsunami, but we’ll probably need a few more waves before the beach is wiped clean.”
Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit against Roger Ailes, filed in July 2016, was the tremor that set off the current tidal wave. Her legal action encouraged other women to come forward and ultimately brought about the professional demise of Ailes, a man once seen as untouchable. It also motivated journalists to pursue rumors that had plagued O’Reilly and Weinstein for years.
Journalist Gretchen Carlson at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit on Oct. 11.
(Paul Morigi / Getty Images for Fortune )
Carlson, a former Fox News host, says she was moved to take action “when I realized that my 26-year career of blood, sweat and tears and incredible hard work was going to come to an end at that particular establishment — and not because of my choice. I determined that if I didn’t speak up and do something, who would?”
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Revelations about sexual harassment have been enabled by women’s advancement in the workplace, Van Pelt says; greater economic security means less potential fallout for naming names. In Hollywood, she adds, “the women who have done this, by and large, who have made the headlines and brought it to the forefront, are women who are financially stable.”
The term “sexual harassment” was coined by sociologist Lin Farley in the mid-1970s, a time when women, emboldened by the feminist movement, were on the rise in the workplace and often faced hostile treatment from their male colleagues. The 1980 blockbuster “Nine to Five” followed three women as they exacted extra-legal revenge on their caddish boss. Six years later, the Supreme Court officially ruled in Meritor Savings Bank vs. Vinson that sexual harassment was a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
But it was law professor Anita Hill who in 1991 pushed the subject to the forefront of the national debate by accusing her former boss and Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of making crude comments and unwanted advances. Despite Hill’s riveting testimony, Thomas was confirmed by the Senate and also won in the court of popular opinion: 58% of Americans at the time said they believed Thomas while just 24% believed Hill, who’d been accused of suffering from “erotomania.” Yet the incident led to a surge in sexual harassment complaints and inspired what was then a record number of women elected to Congress in 1992.
Attorney Anita Hill in 2012 when she was the subject of the documentary “Anita.”
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times )
It was “the first big American a-ha on sexual harassment,” says Fran Sepler, who has provided harassment-prevention training to employers for nearly 30 years. Such programs have made a dent in more casual infringement — “people doing dumb, offensive things like commenting on people’s appearance,” she says — but resistance remains among the “immune superstars,” that is, men like Ailes and Weinstein.
“Training and education will never fix that,” she says. “It’s a culture thing. It’s a financial thing and it’s an embedded problem when the value of a poorly behaving employee is deemed so high it’s worth allowing them to do harm to others.”
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But, she adds, “Many companies are realizing that the actual cost of actually doing that are far greater than they imagined.”
The revelations about Weinstein have led to soul-searching — and some finger-pointing — in the entertainment community. Even before the scandal broke, the issue had clearly been on the minds of many women in the industry, as seen in “Good Girls Revolt” and recent story lines in women-led shows such as “Girls,” “One Mississippi” and “Great News.”
In an episode of Amazon’s “One Mississippi,” an influential producer masturbates in front of a woman during a business meeting. Following the dismissal of Price, Tig Notaro, the show’s co-creator, said in a statement that every member of her show’s all-female writing staff had experienced sexual harassment or assault, which “compelled us to try and shed just a little light on this epidemic.”
A similar scenario played out in the final season of HBO’s “Girls,” as Lena Dunham’s character Hannah confronted a prominent author (Matthew Rhys) accused of forcing himself on a young admirer. “I think it’s important to listen to the voices of women who’ve historically been pushed aside and silenced,” Hannah told him.
But even among sorrow and scandal, there is humor. Last week, NBC’s “Great News” offered a subversive gender-flipped take on the subject, with Tina Fey playing a predatory network executive who ogles and objectifies her employees in hopes of landing a multimillion-dollar exit settlement, like Ailes or O’Reilly.
“Maybe someday when you get to be in my position,” Fey’s character tells a female underling, “we’ll live in a world where a woman can be a creep and go home with a huge golden parachute.”
A late-night TV talk show host (Emma Thompson) faces falling ratings, personal crises and a blindingly white-male writers’ room in “Late Night,” co-starring and written by Mindy Kaling.
Elton John (Taron Egerton) lays down a track for his express train to super-stardom in “Rocketman.” The musical biopic co-stars Jamie Bell as lyricist Bernie Taupin.
Genie (Will Smith, right) explains the three-wishes thing to the title character (Mena Massoud) in Disney’s “Aladdin,” director Guy Ritchie’s live-action remake of the 1992 animated feature.
Unburdened by Batman and Superman, the DC Comics realm turns in a not-bad origin story buoyed by Zachary Levi as the superhero version of 15-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel).
Reunited for a family wedding, former lovers played by Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem find themselves embroiled in a kidnapping in “Everybody Knows,” directed by Asghar Farhadi.
A tropical island boat captain (Matthew McConaughey) and his much-abused ex-wife (Anne Hathaway) enter a vortex of rough justice and fancy riddles in “Serenity.”
Capping the trilogy started with “Unbreakable” (2000) and the surprise hit “Split (2017), Shymalan’s treatise on superhero origin stories brings James McAvoy, Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson together for a plodding psych-hospital escape.
Washington D.C. power brokers Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) and Lynne Cheney have a date with destiny in Adam McKay’s “Vice,” co-starring Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld.
Nomainted for: Best Picture, Best Actor for Christian Bale, Best Supporting Actor for Sam Rockwell, Best Supporting Actress for Amy Adams, Best Director for Adam McKay, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Hair and Makeup,
(Matt Kennedy / AP)
13/20
Queen Anne’s (Olivia Colman) court wrestles with the question of how to finance a war with France. Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), the Duchess of Marlborough, uses her wits, her body and the queen’s bed to coerce Anne into raising taxes on the citizenry in order to keep the off-screen battle going. Then the unexpected arrival of her country cousin, Abigail (Emma Stone), a noblewoman fallen on hard times. A dab hand with medicinal herbs, Abigail quickly rises above servant status to become the queen’s new favorite. Game on!
Nomainted for: Best Picture, Best Actress for Olivia Colman, Best Supporting Actress for Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, Best Director for Yorgos Lanthimos, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design,
(Atsushi Nishijima / AP)
14/20
This image released by Fox Searchlight Films shows Olivia Colman in a scene from the film “The Favourite.” (Atsushi Nishijima/Fox Searchlight Films via AP) (Atsushi Nishijima / AP)
15/20
A high-powered ad agency executive (Tika Sumpter, right) takes in her ex-con sister (Tiffany Haddish, center) in “Nobody’s Fool.”
Risk-prone 13-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic, left) shares some of his angst with one of the local LA skateboarding idols, Ray (Na-Kel Smith), in writer-director Jonah Hill’s “Mid90s.”
An Atlanta teenager (Amandla Stenberg) deals with the death of her friend in “The Hate U Give,” director George Tillman Jr.’s fine adaptation of the best-selling young adult novel.
In “First Man,” Ryan Gosling reteams with “La La Land” director Damien Chazelle to relay the story of astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon.
Dax (Lil Rel Howery) gave up playing basketball after getting a crucial buzzer-beater whapped out of the sky by his nemesis, Mookie (Nick Kroll). Now Dax coaches Harlem street ball and has sunk his life savings into the Rucker Classic tournament. Uncle Drew (Kyrie Irving) holds the key to Dax’s redemption.
“Ye” isn’t so much a musical statement as a 23-minute, seven-track therapy session. Read the review
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
2/21
The new album embraces her individuality more explicitly than ever, both more autobiographical and more politically and socially direct than anything she’d recorded previously. It’s a rawer, less elaborate work than its predecessors, yet still hugely ambitious. Read the review
(Jean-Baptiste Lacroix, AFP/Getty Images)
3/21
On her seventh studio album, “Golden Hour” (MCA Nashville), the singer-songwriter doesn’t get hung up on genre. She’s made a style-hopping pop album that infuses her songs with a relaxed spaciousness while muting, but not ignoring, her country roots. Read the review
(John Konstantaras / Chicago Tribune)
4/21
After years of small, carefully articulated recordings and one-man shows, Moses Sumney has finally released his long-gestating debut album, “Aromanticism” (Jagjaguwar), and it’s as resistant to instant categorization as his earlier work. The self-produced album is strikingly, starkly intimate — it sounds like the loneliest place on Earth, wherever that might me (an island, a cave, someplace in the listener’s head). Read the full review.
(Jagjaguwar / handout)
5/21
“American Dream” is a breakup album of sorts but not in the traditional sense. This is about breakups with youth, the past, and the heroes and villains that populated it. It underlines the notion of breaking up as just a step away from letting go — of friends, family, relevance. Read the review.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
6/21
Chuck Berry‘s surprise announcement last October that he would release his final studio album this year was made all the more poignant by his death March 18 at age 90.
“Chuck” (Dualtone/Decca) very much sounds like a career capstone, a thank-you to the people who mattered most to him — from his wife of 68 years, Themetta “Toddy” Suggs to the fan in the second row at one of his concerts.
Sir the Baptist, aka William James Stokes, is the son of a preacher, and his major label debut, “Saint or Sinner” (Atlantic), has one foot on the street and the other in a church. Read the review.
(Alyssa Pointer/Chicago Tribune )
8/21
So is there really something about Harry? The 10 songs edge toward ‘70s revivalism rather than 2017 hip-hop-EDM-urban-contemporary stylishness, a move presaged by One Direction tracks such as “Four” and “Fireproof.” Producer Jeff Bhasker specializes in freshening up retro-leaning sounds with artists such as Kanye West, Jay-Z and Mark Ronson-Bruno Mars (“Uptown Funk”). In addition, Bhasker co-wrote nine of the 10 songs with Styles, along with a small team of hired guns. Read the full review.
(Columbia Records / AP)
9/21
The title song from “Deliverance” is Grade-A late-period Prince, 3-plus-minutes of piano-organ interplay and sanctified backing vocals that impart an anthemic gospel feel. Read the review
(Bertrand Guay, AFP/Getty Images)
10/21
The self-released “Drogas Light,” Lupe Fiasco’s first album since severing ties with Atlantic, brought hope that it might rekindle the spark and freshness of his 2006 debut, “Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor.” Instead, it falters beneath its own cynicism. Read the full review.
(Kevin Winter / Getty Images)
11/21
“Nothing Feels Natural” doesn’t come off like a new band’s first statement. It sounds fully formed and wickedly confident, the work of four people who had to get a few things off their chest. Read the review.
( The Washington Post/Getty Images)
12/21
“Black America Again” (ARTium/Def Jam) arrives as a one of the year’s most potent protest albums. The album sags midway through with a handful of lightweight love songs, but finishes with some of its most emotionally resounding tracks: the “Glory”-like plea for redemption “Rain” with Legend, the celebration of family that is “Little Chicago Boy,” and the staggering “Letter to the Free.” Read the review.
(Nuccio DiNuzzo / Chicago Tribune)
13/21
Warpaint’s unerring feel for gauzy hooks and slinky arrangements germinated over a decade and flourished on the quartet’s excellent 2014 self-titled album. But the band has always nudged its arrangements onto the dance floor — subtly on record, more overtly on stage — and “Heads Up” (Rough Trade) gives the group’s inner disco ball a few extra spins. Read the review.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
14/21
Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he’s really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave’s songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, “Skeleton Tree”, his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. Read the full review.
(Carl Court / Getty-AFP)
15/21
On “Here” (Merge), the band’s first album in six years and 10th overall, the front line of Norman Blake, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley once again trades songs (four each) and lead vocals, over sturdily constructed pop-rock arrangements. But the band has taken some subtle evolutionary turns to where it’s now a faint shadow of its “Bandwagonesque” incarnation. Read the review.
(Ross Gilmore / Redferns via Getty Images)
16/21
Now “Schmilco” (dBpm Records) arrives, a product of the same recording sessions that produced “Star Wars” but a much different album. Though it’s ostensibly quieter and less jarring than its predecessor, it presents its own radical take on the song-based, folk and country-tinged side of the band. Read the full review.
(Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune)
17/21
“Blonde” is a critique of materialism with Frank Ocean employing two distinct voices, like characters in a play, a recurring theme throughout the album and perhaps its finest sonic achievement. A party spirals out of control, the music rich but low key, a melange of organ and hovering synthesizers. Ocean uses distorting devices on his voice to add emotional texture and to enhance and sharpen the characters he briefly embodies. The upshot: They’re all little slices of Ocean’s personality with a role to play and they each sound distinct. Read the full review.
(Jordan Strauss / AP)
18/21
On their new album, “Existentialism,” the Mekons turn their audience and the recording space into accomplices for the band’s high-wire act. Read the full review.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
19/21
“Lemonade” is more than just a play for pop supremacy. It’s the work of an artist who is trying to get to know herself better, for better or worse, and letting the listeners/viewers in on the sometimes brutal self-interrogation. Read the full review.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)
20/21
In contrast, “Junk” (Mute”), M83’s seventh studio album, sounds chintzy — a bubble-gum snyth-pop album that indulges Gonzalez’s love of decades-old TV soundtracks, hair-metal guitar solos and kitschy pop songs. Read the full review.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
21/21
Kendrick Lamar’s “Untitled, Unmastered” is presented as an unfinished work, though it rarely sounds like one. Read the review.
Meredith Blake is an entertainment reporter for the Los Angeles Times based out of New York City, where she primarily covers television. A native of Bethlehem, Pa., she graduated from Georgetown University and holds a master’s degree from New York University.
