My Weekend Crush

When systems are fucked up, like the whole entertainment industry has been for too long about sexual assault and the crimes of its powerful “genius” men, drastic actions are needed. So I commend the continued bravery and determination of Adèle Haenel for removing herself from the problem area, so to speak. The French actress of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and “Water Lilies” fame announced this week she was retiring from the film industry because of her country’s “general complacency” about “sexual aggressors.”

The actress famously stormed off with some very choice and appropriate expletives in early 2020 after Roman Polanski won best director at the César Awards (France’s Oscars). And she was the first to speak up as part of France’s #MeToo Movement about abuse that started when she was 12 (TWELVE) on movie sets.

Sometimes it feels like getting older is just the gradual realization that the systems and institutions we have come to see as essential in our lives are fundamentally broken, and broken in ways that almost always favor the already powerful, the already rich, the already privileged. As much as I love the movies and filmmaking as an art, I know real human monsters can lurk within the system (and, really, all systems — ugh, am I starting to sound tinfoil hatty? I’m mostly sane, I promise.) Again, just because someone’s art is great, doesn’t make them a great or particularly good or even tolerable person.

What we can control, what we can do each one of us, is decide what we want to consume. Do we want to keep watching the works of the Roman Polanskis and the Gérard Depardieus and the Woody Allens of this world? (And, yes, to go back to an earlier point – the J.K. Rowlings of the world, too. Because while she’s not a sexual abuser like those men, her ongoing anti-trans rhetoric makes life immeasurably harder, more dangerous and less livable for trans and queer people of the world. And that should not be accepted in our society, just as we should not accept homophobes or rapists or racists or gross old men who marry their adopted daughters – and yet).

Or do we agree as a society to remove these sexual predators, the actual problem areas, and hold them accountable so that talented women and like Adèle and countless others can continue in the craft they love. Seems like a simple decision to me, but then I’m just a gal ranting about systems on a beautiful Friday morning. Vice la résistance, Adèle. Happy weekend, all.