The casting couch  – a tool of power

The American writer Joyce Carol Oates published in 2000 the extensive novel Blonde, which according to the author is a fictional biography of Marylin Monroe.

In fact, Oates did a historical and psychological autopsy in which she tells how the system of the big Hollywood studios works, the prevailing machismo in the first half of the 20th century, and the role of a traumatized and abused Norma Jean Baker, who became would become the immortal Marylin.

In the movie Blonde, by director Andrew Dominik, released  September 28 on Netflix, Cuban actress Ana de Armas plays the role of her life. The film sticks strictly to Oates’s novel, exploring and exposing the world of perversions, sexual transactions, and deep loneliness that haunted Marylin Monroe.

The manufactured sensuality that accompanied the actress came loaded with a high price: the famous casting couch (selection sofa), which was the price that women had to pay to get to the big screen. The film has no qualms about showing Marylin’s relationship with United States President John F. Kennedy, a link from which the writer Oates states that Marylin became pregnant, being forced to interrupt the pregnancy and that this plot possibly led to her murder. This is all supposed to be a fictional story. Surely, next year, when the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, Netflix will program a movie or miniseries that will exalt the virtues of the president.

On the same platform, there is another movie that perfectly complements Blonde. This is Bombshell, from 2019, directed by Jay Roach and starring Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie. The film is not derived from a novel, but from one of the great scandals of American television. When the casting couch was expected to have disappeared, the #MeToo movement revealed the kind of sexual abuse and harassment that prevails in the audiovisual industry. The protagonists of this story are the presenters of the Fox News cable television network, who had been victims of sexual harassment by Roger Ailes, the chain’s boss.

The drama takes place during the 2016 US presidential election when Fox News anchors Megyn Kelly (Theron), Gretchen Carlson (Kidman), and Kaylan Pospisil (Robbie), the latter an anchor who was described as a fictional character.

The film shows the obstacles that professional women face to stand out in high-profile roles. At the same time, the vow of silence that they must take in the face of abuse is clear, since the contract with Fox News had a confidentiality clause and the network’s responsibility in case of misconduct by its employees was eliminated. The company had shielded itself against this type of lawsuit, like the vast majority of large American companies, forcing harassed women to initiate an expensive arbitration process.

The journalist Gretchen Carlson is considered the pioneer of the #MeToo movement since her legal strategy was to sue her stalker Roger Ailes, and not the television network, which shook the world of American conservative television. Megyn Kelly and other presenters joined these complaints.

In the outcome of this plot fell Ailes, who had to pay compensation of 20 million dollars to Carlson, and the television network publicly apologized. At the same time, the network’s most popular presenter, Bill O’Reilly, also had to resign due to accusations of sexual harassment. The Fox network ended up paying 50 million dollars to the other affected presenters. Ailes and O’Reilly paid $65 million in severance pay to professional women.  Fox News, journalist Kelly was at NBC from 2017 to 2019, and now she maintains a strong presence in digital media. On her side, Carlson wrote her story and it became a bestseller. She occasionally works on television and maintains a very active schedule of conferences and motivational talks for women.

Outside of any movies, liberal-leaning host and interviewer, Charlie Rose was fired from the more liberal-than-Fox networks CBS and PBS over internal allegations of sexual harassment in newspaper articles in The Washington Post. In a similar scandal, the man who voted for Rose, Leslie Roy Moonves, CBS’s top news executive, also had to resign from his position in 2018 over allegations of sexual harassment against CBS journalists.

This shows that the casting couch does not belong to the right or to the left, but rather that it is a tool of power that has left its mark on many of the most recognized women in the world. – RODRIGO NORIEGA, La Prensa.