Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
Ronan Farrow, Jodi Kantor, and Megan Twohey deserve our deepest gratitude. While they make it clear that they are not the story, it requires a certain guileless audacity to jump into unknown dangers where “angels fear to tread”. Much like Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, Catch and Kill is a peerless example of investigative journalism into strange realities that we believe exist only in fiction.
Lord Acton famously said, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power absolutely”. It seems that some men in great power held those powers absolutely. Not in ostentatious displays of power, but a covert power under a facade of dignity maintained by conspiring intellectuals, corporate malfeasance, and relentless espionage. Bystanders who calculated the economic benefits of their continued muteness also share the blame.
The victims in Catch and Kill are mainly Hollywood starlets, invariably young women. Our society valorizes the sacrifice of the angels. So imposes purity as a precondition for its sympathy. It ignores that our fragilities are distributed in myriad ways: we suffer, we doubt, we reject, we accept, we blame, we surrender, we agitate, we participate, we endure, we drown, we wander, we escape, we resign, we quit — we have so many imperfect reactions to the same indignity. This is precisely what the machinery of power seeks — the humanness of its victims and their inescapable doubts.
Beginning with Rose McGowan, many many brave ladies (unfortunately, countless to name) finally broke loose, to tell their story with courage by going through the arduous process. They shed light and are making the world better.
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Eventually, this issue is not just about few men in Hollywood, as thuggery of power pervades across cultures and countries. For example, similar concerns have been raised in Bollywood and other Indian film industries, and have been promptly ignored and shutdown.
Catch and Kill is a parable: it shows the damage of the monsters fed by calamitous indifference.
It is hard to look at Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer in the same way as before the book. It is hard to imagine now how admired they were and how wrong our impressions were. I viewed NBC leadership with distaste — the Quiz Show scandal only betrayed trust, this violated bodies and souls. I admit that I can’t watch the Bill Cosby show any longer, and can’t look at all Picassos without self-doubt. The name Miramax (named after Weinstein’s parents) sends a shudder down my spine.
How do we any longer consume the works related to those fallen monsters? Should we? Hannah Gadsby’s standup show Nannette ponders this hard question.
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It is an old fashioned view, but Character is truly Destiny. Even more so than ever before.
At the expense of sounding political, I say that we should expect morality and courage from our leaders because we know these positions corrupt even the best among us. Our high expectations define the guardrails and an open process can drive small acts of courage. Because, there is a right and a wrong, even when imperfections abound.
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Notes (Related Books)
Bad Blood by John Carreyrou.
Good and Mad: Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger by Rebecca Traister
She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (To be read).