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      in Television

      I’m a Couples Therapist. Something New Is Happening in Relationships.

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      Listen to This ArticleAudio Recording by AudmOne afternoon in 2020, early in the pandemic, I met Syl’violet and Matthew for a virtual session. Young, idealistic, deeply in love, they were also prone to dramatic fights. In this session Syl’violet, a vivacious essayist and spoken-word poet, was trying to describe the ways she felt Matthew, a measured medical student, was trying to control her, in this case by trying to dissuade her from buying a slushy. He thought they should keep to a tight budget until after he became a doctor and achieved financial stability. Then she could have “all the slushies you want later.” Syl’violet found his reasoning maddening, especially since he seemed to imply she was reckless.On the face of it, the fight seemed insignificant, but then an exchange took place that changed the tenor of the argument, connecting us to the underlying roots of the issue. “I have trouble envisioning that finish line,” Syl’violet exclaimed, tearing up, “because the plan that he’s talking about? My life has always been: The plan never works. You can do all the right things, you can obey all the right rules and get [expletive].” For a moment, Matthew continued to try to reason with her and convince her of his sound financial strategy. “I know that sounds very conceited, cocky,” he said, to which Syl’violet whipped back: “No! It sounds privileged!” She described her family’s relationship to money; they’d had nothing but trauma for generations. Syl’violet resented Matthew’s pride in his plan. “A privileged setting gave you access to all these things,” she said. “You’re taking ownership over it like, ‘I did it according to plan,’ as if, like, if other people did it according to plan, it would work out.”With the mention of the word “privilege,” Matthew came around to realizing they were talking about forces larger than themselves. Each of them was African American, but he came from a financially stable family; his parents, a firefighter and a bank manager, followed a middle-class trajectory and did well. “Let me rephrase,” Matthew said carefully, signaling to Syl’violet that he could see how his certainty about his future reflected his class background: “I recognize that if it wasn’t for my parents’ credit score, my loans to get — OK — so, I get that.” As the relevance of class and race came into focus, Syl’violet’s rage transformed into deep sorrow, generations of poverty weighing heavily on her. “I cannot stop thinking that we’re going to go bankrupt.” She worried that they might even be evicted. “I wish I could believe what you believe,” she told Matthew. He replied, his voice growing tender: “We have the same life now.” He looked at her, exuding care. “We have to live with the idea, the thinking, the viewpoint, that we’re going to die old together.”Syl’violet and MatthewDina Litovksy for The New York TimesOne of the most difficult challenges for couples is getting them to see beyond their own entrenched perspectives, to acknowledge a partner’s radical otherness and appreciate difference and sovereignty. People talk a good game about their efforts, but it’s quite a difficult psychological task. To be truly open to your partner’s experience, you must relinquish your conviction in the righteousness of your own position; this requires humility and the courage to tolerate uncertainty. Coming to see the working of implicit biases on us, grasping that our views are contingent on, let’s say, our gender, class background or skin color, is a humbling lesson. It pushes us beyond assuming sameness, opening up the possibility of seeing our partner’s point of view.I’ve been working as a psychologist seeing individuals and couples since the mid-1990s, and in the past eight years, I’ve witnessed a tremendous change in the kinds of conversations couples can have. Not long ago, if I would ask a couple about the ways class or race played out between them, I’d typically be met with an awkward shrug and a change of topic. But recent events have reshaped the national conversation on power, privilege, gender norms, whiteness and systemic racism. Together these ideas have pushed us to think, talk, argue and become aware of the many implicit biases we all carry about our identities, unconscious assumptions that privilege some and inflict harm on others. These insights have also made it easier for people to realize there may be plenty of other unconscious assumptions undergirding their positions. I’ve been surprised and excited by the impact of this new understanding, and it has all made my work as a couples therapist easier.There has, of course, been ferocious pushback against many of these ideas, claims that they are divisive or exclusionary. #MeToo, B.L.M. and trans rights have been weaponized in service of the culture wars dominating the media. But in my practice, I’ve found that engaging with these progressive movements has led to deep changes in our psyches. My patients, regardless of political affiliation, are incorporating the messages of social movements into the very structure of their being. New words make new thoughts and feelings possible. As a collective we appear to be coming around to the idea that bigger social forces run through us, animating us and pitting us against one another, whatever our conscious intentions. To invert a truism, the political is personal.Some five years ago I started working on a documentary series called “Couples Therapy,” created by the filmmakers Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg and Eli Despres and airing on Showtime, that chronicles 18 to 20 weeks of therapy with couples who courageously volunteer to have their sessions filmed. (The couples in this essay were filmed for the show, which makes it possible for me to write about them; only some of those who are filmed end up on air.) We are now several seasons in. I was drawn to the project knowing that the directors were committed to an honest, vérité portrayal of therapy, and to looking at the social factors that thread through people’s lives and relationships.I am also trained as a psychoanalyst. Psychoanalysis is about exploring unconscious motivations behind thoughts or actions. It allows people to gain access to how early experiences — vicissitudes of attachment and trauma — have shaped them, and to expand their capacity for thought and feeling. For couples, I incorporate systems thinking, a practice that focuses on the system — a couple, say or a family — and interprets how each individual unconsciously behaves in ways that serve the system as a whole.But what we mean by “unconsciously” is an ongoing debate. Freud was known in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for his singular focus on the private, interior world. In particular, he wrote about the epic battle between unconscious drives and forces of civilization. Traditional psychoanalysis has mostly focused on early scenes between the young and their caregivers as shaping the psyche, leaving the sociopolitical context to other disciplines. I am of a later theoretical school that, rather than seeing civilization in conflict with the self, sees the social contract, our relationship to the collectives we belong to, as nested in the deepest corners of our unconscious. For me, psychoanalytic exploration is just as much about our deep ethical dilemmas regarding how to live with one another, and our environment, as it is about early family dramas; my patients’ repressed experiences with the ghosts of their country’s history are as interesting as with their mothers.Over the years, I’ve come to see that one of the most pernicious issues couples struggle with is working through wrongdoing and blame. The claim “You hurt me” often sends couples spiraling. People want to feel like good and lovable beings; their intentions make perfect sense to themselves, and they hate being interpreted as selfish. In psychoanalytic jargon we often say, “No one likes being the ‘bad object.’” In fact, there are few things people resist more than being held responsible for causing harm. It immediately threatens to overwhelm the “offender” with shame (Am I a bad person?) and guilt (Have I caused irreparable damage? Should I be punished?). Yet serious hurt that goes unacknowledged leads to the accumulation of resentment and a deadening of the relationship.Our ongoing national conversations about systemic biases have made it easier for couples to acknowledge wrongdoings by easing people into the idea of unconscious complicity. Accepting that you are part of a complex social system and implicated in its biases no matter what you tell yourself can also help you accept that in other aspects of your life, you are partly governed by unconscious forces you do not necessarily recognize. In Freudian terms, the ego is not a master in its own house. In other words, to know if you’ve caused harm, it is not enough to ask yourself, “Did I intend to hurt the other?”; you may need to listen to the feedback of others. These insights can have ripple effects beyond an awareness of specific biases, becoming relevant in many aspects of our lives — in our relationships with partners or children, in reviewing our life history. As my friend Nick described it: “Everything about me was raised to believe I am not racist or privileged, but in recent years I realize how easy certain things have always been for me simply because I’m white. I am humbled. And that has changed the way Rebecca and I talk with each other.”One of the most difficult challenges for couples is getting them to see beyond their own entrenched perspectives, to acknowledge a partner’s radical otherness.A shift in our vocabularies has also played a role. Language tends to evolve to better accommodate experiences of the dominant social group, leaving other experiences obscured from collective understanding, and thus silently perpetuating bias and harm. When these gaps are filled by new concepts, social change can follow. The expanding lexicon around bias and privilege includes terms like “white fragility” or “white tears,” referring to white people’s defensive refusal to fully engage with accountability; other phrases like “virtue signaling,” being “a Karen” or “performative allyship” underline the difference between honest and fake engagement with questions of ethics, morality and responsibility. These terms have implications beyond race, and I’ve seen them work their way into the therapy room. They’ve helped couples see the difference between the wish to receive forgiveness and assurance of your goodness and actual concern for the one you offended. Analysts call this distinction the difference between guilt and guiltiness. Guilt entails feeling bad for having harmed another; guiltiness is the preoccupation with yourself — whether you are or aren’t guilty. This preoccupation is all about warding off shame, which blocks concern for others.Questions of guilt hovered over another couple I worked with. He had recently cheated on his wife. They were generally deeply supportive of each other, but after she found out about his transgression, she was terribly upset and also confused. Their attempts to talk about what happened were halting. #MeToo rhetoric was woven into their discussions, functioning as a superego, shaping and inhibiting what they could even think. She said that she felt that the lessons of the movement were telling her not to forgive but to leave him — “Especially now, if a woman is being wronged, you get out.” It was hard for her to know how she actually felt about it all. Early on, he couldn’t separate remorse from fear. He was terrified of getting into trouble, and guiltiness prevailed. His voice was hushed while he scrutinized me intently, worried about how he would be perceived: “There are a lot of men in this business right now who have taken positions of power and use them to have sex with people.”They were both white and understood their privilege and were apologetic about it. She often undid her own complaints — “I levitate out” — by having the thought, “Oh, poor cis white woman.” He was uncomfortable, too. He talked about reading the news “about another Black or brown person being killed. And it’s just like I feel a little — well, I feel guilty, to be honest, to be sitting here.” The lessons of the Black Lives Matter movement initially can provoke such paralyzing guilt and shame that people become defensive and stop fully thinking. Yet over time, I’ve found, the ideas can inspire deep psychological work, pushing people to reckon with the harm that has been done, the question of whom should be implicated, and the difference between virtue signaling and deeper concerns. These are tough and important lessons that can carry over into intimate relationships. In this case, the husband described a new understanding about the ways he exercised power at work: “Hold on. Have I been an ally? Has it just been optics?” These insights extended even to his way of speaking about his transgression. He had been rationalizing his behavior by saying that his wife was not giving him the attention he needed. But moving beyond what the couple called “optics,” now he was asking himself for a more thorough accounting of what his cheating was really about, and how it affected his wife. He explained how lonely he was if she traveled; he felt left behind and discarded, a feeling deeply familiar to him from early childhood. Acknowledging his vulnerability was hard for him, but it opened up a series of honest conversations between them. “I convinced myself she does not desire me,” he said. “I’m not the popular guy. I’m not the strong guy.” He linked those feelings to insecurities he felt as a teenager, when he suffered chronic teasing from kids at school for being perceived as effeminate.This new, nondefensive way of talking made it possible for her to understand how his transgression hit her where she felt most insecure, and he could see it, generating remorse and forgiveness between them. She described how it had become easier for both of them to “check” themselves for their impact on the other person, and quickly “notice or apologize.” In one session she said, smiling: “You were a jerk to me yesterday, and then you apologized a couple hours later. You recognized that you took out your frustration there on me because I was an easy target.” He realized that he stopped skimming over ways he caused others pain: “I actually was just thinking therapy and the Black Lives Matter movement have made me keenly aware of the words that just came out of my mouth, and the understanding that she reacted adversely to that, instead of me just going, ‘We move on, because that’s awkward.’ There’s a need now to address it.” He continued: “ ‘Did I just upset you? What did I do to just upset you?’”Couples work always goes back to the challenge of otherness. Differences can show up around philosophical questions like what is important to devote a life to, or whether it is ethical to have babies with a climate crisis looming; or it can be closer to home, like whether having a sexual fantasy about a person who is not your partner is acceptable; or even as seemingly trivial as the correct way to load a dishwasher. Whatever the issue, differences can become a point of crisis in the relationship. Immediately the question of who is right, who gets their way or who has a better handle on reality pops up. Narcissistic vulnerabilities about self-worth appear, which then trigger an impulse to devalue the other. Partners try to resolve such impasses by digging in and working hard to convince the other of their own position, becoming further polarized.The challenge of otherness may be easiest to see when we think of racial differences. This was certainly true for James and Michelle. Michelle was a calm, gentle, somewhat reserved African American social worker, and James, at the time a police officer, was a slight, wiry white man whose face did not reveal much feeling. They came in with classic conflicts around division of labor and differing parenting styles, and then the pandemic hit. Quarantined, working remotely and home-schooling their 3-year-old son, they started fighting about Covid protocols. Michelle was aware of the way that Covid was devastating Black communities and wanted to be careful. James, along with his fellow police officers and his conservative parents, thought the concern was overblown. Discussion about how race shaped James and Michelle’s experiences and ideas routinely dead-ended. If Michelle tried to bring up the topic, James would insist, “I don’t see color,” and say he didn’t know what she was talking about. In our sessions, Michelle sounded hopeless: She wanted him to understand how traumatizing Covid had been for Black people. But she was frustrated by his inability to acknowledge real difference, as if everyone was the same race. “He’s of the mind-set that ‘I don’t see color.’” She continued setting out his thinking: “ ‘I don’t want to hear what you have to say because that’s not how I think.’” That point of view “obviously angers me,” she said. James would shrug, expressionless. Michelle was describing the infuriating experience of trying to break through a barrier: Her husband wasn’t consciously aware that whiteness was a perspective that was constricting what he could imagine or comprehend.After George Floyd was murdered and protests of all kinds erupted across the country, the dynamic between James and Michelle started to shift. Psychoanalysts are often interested in people’s fantasies, the scenarios running under the hood of conscious thought that express hidden desires and fears. When I asked James and Michelle about theirs, they shared apocalyptic ones: Each was imagining a full-on race war. Michelle imagined loss of all contact and trust between Black people and white people. James, who seemed uncharacteristically tense, saw himself on one side of a divide and was envisioning an “all-out physical combat.” “With whom?” I asked. “With anybody outside of this household. Anybody that tries to come and take anything from us because they’re struggling to survive and they start looting to feed their family, they’re now coming to my house.” Yet over time, as the conversation about Black lives continued, his own identifications became more complex and nuanced. He still felt loyalty to his fellow police officers and his conservative family, but he became aware that those feelings were now in tension with Michelle’s beliefs and what he was witnessing on the news about police violence against Black men and loud public demand for police reform.Michelle and James with their son.Dina Litovksy for The New York TimesJames’s changing internal landscape was reflected in his clear distress about “the all-out chaos that a large conflict can bring if we’re further divided in this country. You wouldn’t know who to trust from place to place.” Not knowing whom to trust also meant he could no longer trust his old belief system — in which it was clear who was “good” and who was “bad.” This disruption was creating new concerns and fantasies. Rather than fearing looters, he now feared polarization: “Michelle might be able to seek refuge somewhere where I might get shunned, or vice versa.” He was terrified that they wouldn’t be able to keep their young child safe.Interestingly, engaging with the question of systemic racism did not polarize Michelle and James but rather helped them do the important psychological work that I doubt I, as their therapist, could have inspired in them on my own. Something began to shift inside James, and he was no longer assuming sameness. He was no longer imposing his version of reality on Michelle, but rather “mentalizing” — understanding his and her mental states as separate and different subjective experiences: thoughts, feelings, beliefs and desires. In a meaningful moment he said, “I know it hits her harder than it does me.” I was moved to hear James plainly state: “We can never truly know what each other goes through because we’re not each other. So all we can do is be in as much understanding as possible.” He also recognized that he felt less defensive, “because she’s not directly attacking me.” And he saw a way for the two of them to remain connected, despite their difference. “We could get into a debate or an argument and be on opposite sides of the spectrum, completely juxtaposed, and manage to come through it and learn something about another perspective.”Michelle, who often described herself as guarded, also began to drop her defensive posture. She was looking at him fondly, her voice warmer. “These are things that I never really heard him fully articulate, particularly about his insecurities and feeling caught in the middle. That’s helpful for me to hear, because it makes me more conscious and aware of how he’s feeling.” For the first time, they were each entertaining multiple perspectives. Love is ultimately measured by people’s capacity to see and care about the other person as they are; succeeding in this effort is how people in relationships grow.Dr. Orna Guralnik is a clinical psychologist, a psychoanalyst and an academic who serves on the faculty of the N.Y.U. postdoctoral program in psychoanalysis, teaching a course in identity and politics and psychoanalysis with culture in mind. She is also the therapist on the Showtime documentary series “Couples Therapy.” Her writing centers on the intersection of psychoanalysis, dissociation and cultural studies. Dina Litovsky is a Ukrainian-born photographer who moved to New York in 1991. In 2020, she won the Nannen Prize, Germany’s foremost award for documentary photography. More

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      in Theater

      When Clothes Fly Off, This Intimacy Coordinator Steps In

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      It takes a lot of people to make a movie. You’ve got the director for overall vision, the gaffer on the lights, the set decorators to add texture to the film’s world, and the costume designers to envision the actors’ looks.And when those costumes come off and things start to get a bit steamy? That’s where Jessica Steinrock comes in.Ms. Steinrock is an intimacy coordinator — or intimacy director, when she’s working on theater and live performance — who facilitates the production of scenes involving nudity, simulated sex or hyper exposure, which she defines as “something someone might not otherwise uncover in public, even if it’s not legally nudity.” Much like a stunt coordinator or a fight director, she makes sure that the actors are safe throughout the process, and that the scene looks believable.The role has come to prominence in the last five years. As the entertainment industry reeled from the litany of abuses brought to light by the #MeToo movement, many productions were eager to publicly demonstrate their commitment to safety. Hiring an intimacy coordinator was one way to do that.“A lot of places were really excited about the possibility of this work and being ahead of the curve — showing that their company cared about their actors, cared about consent,” Ms. Steinrock said in a Zoom interview from her home in Chicago.Ms. Steinrock — who has worked on projects including the critically acclaimed Showtime survival drama “Yellowjackets,” Netflix’s teen dramedy “Never Have I Ever” and the Hulu mini-series “Little Fires Everywhere” — has been involved in intimacy coordination since its early days. The industry took off thanks in large part to the highly publicized work of the intimacy coordinator Alicia Rodis on the HBO show “The Deuce” in 2018. At that time, Ms. Steinrock, whose background is in improv comedy, was working on a master’s degree in theater at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, focused on navigating questions of consent in that space.“In the improv world, I was picked up a lot or kissed or grabbed, or jokes were made about me that I didn’t consent to,” she recalled in a TikTok video. “And I was really curious if there were ways to navigate that better.”Jessica Steinrock explains to students in an intimacy and consent performance workshop at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, how the acronym CRISP describes how to give and receive consent.Mary Mathis for The New York TimesMs. Steinrock uses a range of modesty garments and barriers, including pouches, pads and strapless thongs, to keep actors safe when performing intimate scenes.Mary Mathis for The New York TimesThe issue was particularly thorny in improv, which is grounded in a philosophy of accepting and building on whatever your scene partner gives you.“You got placed in these uncomfortable or even harmful positions because the whole culture is ‘yes, and … ,’” said Valleri Robinson, the head of the university’s theater department, who advised Ms. Steinrock on her master’s degree and Ph.D. “It really started to come to the foreground for her that this was a problematic way of creating art.”Ms. Steinrock and Ms. Rodis met through Ms. Steinrock’s then-boyfriend, now husband, who is a fight director. Ms. Rodis recognized a kindred spirit, with all the makings of a great intimacy coordinator, in Ms. Steinrock. She mentored Ms. Steinrock on her first gig: a 40-person orgy on the TNT show “Claws.” “She was thrown into the lion’s den, and she absolutely smashed it,” Ms. Rodis recalled.Ms. Steinrock quickly rose to become a leader in the burgeoning field, and she now dedicates much of her time to educating people about it. In April 2022, she started her TikTok account, which now has more than 700,000 followers. In her videos, she critiques “spicy” scenes on TV shows (her current favorites include “Bridgerton,” “Sex Education” and “House of the Dragon”); breaks down how such scenes are filmed; and answers frequently asked questions about her work, such as “What do you do if an actor gets an erection?” or “If two actors are in an offscreen relationship, do they still have to follow the same protocols?” She’s not just demystifying her job, but also engaging people in broader conversations about intimacy and consent.The role of the intimacy coordinator can be a tricky balancing act between choreography and care, and Ms. Steinrock brings an academic grounding in feminist and performance theory to the work, coupled with innate people skills.“She’s very patient,” said Karyn Kusama, a director and executive producer on the Showtime drama “Yellowjackets,” who worked with Ms. Steinrock on the show’s pilot. “She listens. She’s looking to the actor to take the lead in terms of … what will make them feel most cared for.”Melanie Lynskey, as Shauna, and Warren Kole, as Jeff Sadecki, in an episode of the Showtime survival drama “Yellowjackets.” Ms. Steinrock worked on the show’s pilot, including on a scene where Shauna masturbates while looking at a picture of her teenage daughter’s boyfriend.Kailey Schwerman/ShowtimeThe pilot of “Yellowjackets” includes several intimate scenes, including one where two high schoolers, played by Sophie Nélisse and Jack Depew, have sex in a car, and another where a housewife, played by Melanie Lynskey, masturbates. Having Ms. Steinrock on set for those scenes was vital, Ms. Kusama said.As a director, Ms. Kusama said she has always felt a deep empathy with how vulnerable actors are in these scenes and makes a point to check in. But even if she poses a question, it can be hard for an actor who is uncomfortable to respond honestly knowing how much is on the line. An intimacy coordinator, as a neutral party, is more likely to get an honest answer.“Societally, sex is really hard to talk about,” Ms. Steinrock said. Her role is to “create more pathways of communication,” she explained, so the actors feel safe discussing any issues, big or small, that may come up.Having an intimacy coordinator doesn’t just create a safer environment, Ms. Kusama said: It also makes for better, sexier art.“It demands that you take responsibility for your story with the actors, that you actually say, Yeah, we’re depicting sex and here’s what it needs to mean — i.e. it needs to mean something,” she said. “And conversely, I can say to an intimacy coordinator, ‘You know, it feels like I’m watching two people peck each other on the cheek, and there’s zero heat here.’”This is where the choreography piece of Ms. Steinrock’s job comes in: She can offer ways to use breath or adjust positions to make a scene more evocative.Ms. Steinrock and her husband, Zev Steinrock, an associate theater professor, demonstrate an example of consensual touch. Mary Mathis for The New York TimesIn just five years, intimacy coordinators have become a vital part of the entertainment industry. HBO has required them on all of their productions since 2019 (Ms. Rodis oversees their program). At this point, Ms. Kusama said, it’s hard for her to imagine signing on to a project with intimate scenes without one.The discipline’s explosive growth has meant that coordinators have had to create standards in real time — like building the tracks of a roller coaster as it shoots into the air. “We have to first define this role and agree on what it is,” Ms. Steinrock said. “That’s Step 1 of building a new profession. And then we have to define what being qualified for that role looks like.”In 2020, Ms. Steinrock, Ms. Rodis and another intimacy director, Marie Percy, formed Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, with Ms. Steinrock at the helm. She had never been a chief executive before, but she taught herself on the job, quickly growing I.D.C. into the leading training and accreditation organization in the field. Its four-level program includes a mix of virtual and in-person classes. It is the only organization to offer certification for both intimacy coordination and direction, and it also runs workshops for other artistic professionals, such as actors or directors, who want to bring these practices into their work.“Jessica has created the accountability structures so that we can say: ‘This is what our certification means. Here’s all the education behind it. Here are the equitable practices we have, and here’s the accountability we have to these artists,’” Ms. Rodis said.Two students practice giving and receiving consent to touch each other during a workshop taught by Ms. Steinrock, who sees education as essential to IDC’s mission to “create a culture of consent in which intimate stories can be told with safety and artistry.”Mary Mathis for The New York TimesMs. Steinrock sees advocacy for these standards as a key part of I.D.C.’s mission. She was part of a working group organized by the Screen Actors Guild to establish new safety standards for intimacy, which were published in 2020; in 2022, the union launched a registry of vetted intimacy coordinators and announced that it would create a pathway to union membership for these professionals.“Intimacy coordinators are not a panacea for an industry that has historically abused its actors — and, frankly, historically abused most of the people in it,” Ms. Steinrock said. But integrating them into productions is a clear step that institutions can take, as part of a broader commitment to safety and equity.For Ms. Steinrock’s part, that commitment also includes working to diversify intimacy coordination. While it is a rare female-led discipline in an industry dominated by men, it is still predominantly white and straight — one of the pitfalls of a young profession that has largely relied on word of mouth to grow.Ultimately, the hope is that intimacy coordination becomes standard across the entertainment industry, and “that it helps us see each other and the role of sex in our lives differently, as something richer and more filled with possibility,” Ms. Kusama said.“Ultimately, I serve as a place where folks can come to ask questions that are otherwise very difficult to ask,” Ms Steinrock said, “and to make sure that they have someone who can advocate for them, especially if they’re feeling uncertain about how to advocate for themselves.”Mary Mathis for The New York TimesMs. Robinson has been excited to see her former student bring these issues out into the open. “She’s enhancing our vocabularies and giving us pathways beyond the industry to address these topics that people find so difficult,” she said. And while much of that awareness has happened via TikTok, Ms. Robinson also noted that Ms. Steinrock’s dissertation had been downloaded more than 700 times — another sign of just how much interest there is in this area.Inviting people to re-examine how sex works in the media they consume, Ms. Steinrock said, could improve the way they approach sex in general.“Media is so many people’s first experience with intimacy,” she said. “And when we care about how things are made, it starts conversations about how things are operating in other spaces, and I think that can have a huge impact as to what people expect in their day-to-day lives.” More

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      in Movies

      Breaking Out of the #MeToo Movie Formula

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      How “Women Talking” and “Tár” make the discourse around the movement feel thrillingly unfamiliar.When I walked into a screening of “Women Talking,” all I knew about the Sarah Polley film was that it was based on true events — the rapes of more than 100 women and girls in a Bolivian Mennonite community that were revealed in 2009. The premise did not exactly thrill me. I was, frankly, tired of such stories. It felt as if I had spent the last five years watching accounts of sexual violence get spun into tabloid spectacles, stripped for contrarian essay fodder and slowly strangled in the courts. Experiences of harassment and assault had been swallowed by endless debate. This had made me cynical, then bored. I knew what happened when women talked.“Women Talking” is all about debate. The crimes themselves are sketched in exposition; for years, women in the colony had awakened dazed and bloodied in their beds. Their elders dismiss the rapes as the work of devils, or else the “wild female imagination,” until the rapists are caught in the act. When the colony’s men head to town to post their bail, the women assemble in a hayloft to argue their options: They can do nothing; stay and fight; or leave. By film’s end, conversations that had grown so tedious on the internet had been reborn as riveting, hilarious, tragic. I cried through the whole movie, rationing tissues from a little plastic packet until all that was left was the wrapper crinkling in my hands.The movies were once Harvey Weinstein’s domain; now he is their subject. Five years after the story of his abuse broke, a growing genre of movies is pulling character sketches and themes from the #MeToo movement and plugging them into glossy re-enactments (“Bombshell”), workplace dramas (“The Assistant”) and dark comedies (“Promising Young Woman”). Even haunted house movies are now visited by ghosts of toxic masculinity (“Men” and “Barbarian”).A strain of careful literalness pervades many of these works, as if they are nervously eyeing the discourse. This fall’s “She Said” is such a faithful reconstruction of the New York Times investigation of Weinstein, Ashley Judd plays herself. Films that aren’t ripped from the headlines have evinced a staid predictability, as they drive toward studiously correct moral outcomes. But two new films feel truly transformative: In addition to “Women Talking,” a parable about a community of victims who claim their power, there is “Tár,” a portrait of one despotic woman who seizes more and more and more. Both are so wonderfully destabilizing, they manage to scramble our cultural scripts around sexual violence, cancel culture, gender, genius and storytelling itself.What a relief when “Women Talking” drops us into unfamiliar territory. Its colony is a patriarchal religious order that keeps its women illiterate, subjects them to systematic violence and tells them they are imagining things. The women wear weighty floral dresses, sturdy sandals, viciously tight braids. One of them is always sharing wisdom gleaned from her geriatric carriage horses, Ruth and Cheryl. And yet when these women speak, it is as if they are talking about us.Though “Women Talking” is based on a novel that is based on true events, it has a distilled, allegorical quality that frees ideas to circulate in new ways. #MeToo testimonies drew a persistent and cynical retort: What about the men? Here in the hayloft, that becomes a literal and urgent question. If the women stay and fight, they risk losing their families to the colony’s culture of violence. But if they escape, they would have to abandon their brothers, husbands and sons.Much of the hayloft’s conversation concerns men, though they barely appear in the film. It is the survivors who grapple with the moral questions raised by their crisis. Rape is never alienated from the experience of its victims; it need not be carefully phrased for public consumption, and it cannot be flattened into an issue for others to debate. This allows the conversation to grow incautious and complex: Ona (Rooney Mara), pregnant by rape, is coolly philosophical; Mariche (Jessie Buckley) is cynical and resigned; Salome (Claire Foy) is out for blood.Along the way, “Women Talking” makes a case for the intellectual life of the survivor. There is a dark edge to the cultural celebration of women speaking out about their victimization: For decades, centuries, they have been praised for “breaking the silence,” but they have also been entrapped by the expectation that they publicly explain themselves again and again. “Women Talking” sketches an alternate moral universe, one where the spectacle of rape testimony is unnecessary. Here, talk proceeds directly to action.Todd Field’s film “Tár” imagines its own parallel #MeToo universe, one in which the figure of the perpetrator is transferred to a beguiling new host. She is the fictional conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), and she rules atop the rarefied world of classical music. By making his art monster a woman, when her real-life analogues are almost exclusively men, Field makes it impossible to recoil at her in pre-emptive, familiar disgust. He grants us permission to inspect her up close.Tár, we learn as her absurd résumé is unrolled onstage at a lightly satirized version of The New Yorker Festival, is a virtuosic conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, an international celebrity and the author of the forthcoming memoir “Tár on Tár.” She is also an imperious blowhard with undeniable charisma, a self-described “U-Haul lesbian” and a delicious sendup of middlebrow prestige. Onstage, she describes her work in godlike terms. “I start the clock,” Tár says, and with another flick of her baton, “time stops.” But times are changing.When a former acolyte kills herself, Tár’s penchant for seducing her underlings comes back to haunt her. The New York Post shores up anonymous complaints; a crudely edited video of her berating a Juilliard student ricochets across the internet. The online cancellation of an artistic giant can be a tedious subject, but in “Tár,” it acquires sneaky complications. Tár tells a fangirl that a percussive interlude in “The Rite of Spring” makes her feel like “both victim and perpetrator,” and that also describes her social position. Her job is to channel the works of long-dead white men, and she enjoys trying on their privilege, too. After scaling a male-dominated industry, she has created a fellowship for supporting young female conductors — and for grooming assistants and lovers. When Tár ensnares a new protégé, it is as if she is exploiting a younger version of herself.Tár’s real achievement is not conducting but self-mythologizing. The film’s most revelatory scenes show her leveraging her power to lift people or crush them, masterfully coercing artists and philanthropists into submission. But when Tár schools a Juilliard class that a conductor’s job is to “sublimate yourself” into the canon of white male composers, the young musicians do not bend to her will. And when Tár’s power trips can no longer be sublimated into her work, her self-image splinters. The film itself seems to warp under the weight of her anxiety and self-pity. Dark satire sinks into gothic horror. Tár tries to follow a comely cellist into her apartment, but instead encounters a dank basement and a hulking black dog that recalls the maybe-supernatural Hound of the Baskervilles. Later, she finds the strewn pages of her memoir manuscript floating around a former assistant’s empty room, its title transposed to “RAT ON RAT.” This is the stuff of nightmares, where the accused dreams up a version of her comeuppance so overt, it tips into wish fulfillment.The other anagram of “Tár” is, of course, “ART,” and as real-life art monsters disappear from view, “Tár” offers up a work into which we can sublimate our own Schadenfreude and sympathy for abusers. Thanks to Blanchett’s luminous performance and Field’s puzzle-box storytelling, we are freed to obsess. “Tár” has inspired its own bizarro-world discourse, one with pleasingly low stakes, because Lydia Tár is (despite a meme suggestion to the contrary) not a real person. She now circulates as an internet-culture fixation, edited into a fan video set to Taylor Swift’s “Karma” and splashed onto a spoofed cover of Time magazine as a “Problematic Icon.” When the groaning What about the men? question became, instead, What about this one strange woman?, I found that I wanted to discuss little else.If “Women Talking” is about the power of the collective, “Tár” investigates the church of Western individualism, provoking us to confront our tendency to worship at its altar. The most pointed editorializing in “Tár” comes at the very beginning, when the end credits roll and we spend several minutes watching the names of makeup artists and gaffers drift by. Art is not the product of a singular genius, the film seems to say, but a collaborative work of many. Reversing the typical credit sequence signals something else: We are witnessing the end of something — perhaps, an era.“Women Talking” is also concerned with a shifting of power, and it, too, scrambles the typical language of movies to make its point. It opens with a God’s-eye view shot, looking down at Ona stirring helplessly in her bed and screaming for her mother. This is a chilly (and clichéd) perspective on an assault, one that invites a sensation of spectatorship over the victim. The movie ends with another shot from above, but this time it is from the perspective of a mother, presumably Ona, peering down at the newborn baby stirring in her arms. Finally, she has become the omniscient narrator of her new reality.“Women Talking” and “Tár” are two very different films, but they are riffing on the same provocation: God is a woman. More

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      How an LAPD Officer Helped Les Moonves Fight an Assault Complaint

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      A captain in the department, who had moonlighted as a security guard for CBS, disclosed to the network information about a confidential complaint made in 2017 against the C.E.O.When the New York attorney general’s office announced this week that the former CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves and CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, had agreed to pay $9.75 million after a state investigation found that they had concealed allegations of sexual misconduct against him, the news was accompanied by another revelation. The account from the office of Letitia James also made public how Mr. Moonves, who stepped down from CBS in 2018 after multiple misconduct allegations, and other network officials worked with a captain in the Los Angeles Police Department to suppress details of a formal sexual assault complaint against the entertainment titan. The complaint was filed with the department in 2017 by Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb, who had worked with Mr. Moonves decades earlier.The L.A.P.D. said this week that it had begun an investigation into the now retired captain’s conduct. But the circumstances surrounding the officer’s actions and Mr. Moonves’s eventual downfall, much of which has not previously been detailed publicly, highlight the powerful entertainment industry’s attempting to use any means at its disposal, including relationships with law enforcement, to try and keep allegations of misconduct quiet. And that can be especially true when the allegations involve a “V.I.P.,” as the Los Angeles police described Mr. Moonves in a referral to the county district attorney regarding the accusation, which was viewed by The New York Times.This account is based on numerous interviews, including with Ms. Golden-Gottlieb and Gil Schwartz, the former head of corporate communications for CBS; confidential notes of interviews of Mr. Moonves by CBS lawyers; a person directly familiar with how Ms. Golden-Gottlieb’s complaint was handled by the police; and documents obtained by the New York attorney general’s office. It is detailed in a forthcoming book by these two reporters, “Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy,” to be published by Penguin Press in February. The L.A.P.D. declined to comment for this article.In November 2017, a month after sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein exploded into public view, Ms. Golden-Gottlieb was watching late-night TV at her home in the Miracle Mile neighborhood of Los Angeles. Ms. Golden-Gottlieb, then 82, was a veteran television producer who had given up her entertainment career years earlier to teach special-needs children.“For those of you tuning in to see my interview with Louis C.K. tonight, I have some bad news,” Stephen Colbert said that night on CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Louis C.K. had canceled his appearance after The New York Times published an article in which five women described him committing acts of sexual misconduct.For Ms. Golden-Gottlieb, the revelation was the latest painful reminder of her time at Lorimar in the 1980s, when she was in charge of sitcom development. She had her own stories to tell, and as she sat on her sofa in front of the television, she decided to take action that very night — not by calling a reporter but by filing a police complaint.At first, Ms. Golden-Gottlieb did not know where to go, but she quickly found the address for the Hollywood police station, just south of Sunset Boulevard on North Wilcox.Ms. Golden-Gottlieb told the officer on duty that she had worked with Mr. Moonves while she was at Lorimar and he was the younger, fast-rising head of movies for television. One day in 1986, she said, Mr. Moonves invited her to lunch. They got in his car, and he drove her not to a restaurant, as she was expecting, but to a secluded area. There he parked, unzipped his pants, grabbed her head and forced it onto his erect penis until he ejaculated.Two years later, she said she was in his office when Mr. Moonves excused himself to get a glass of wine. When he returned, his pants were down. She ran from the room.The next day, he berated her, then threw her against a wall. She fell to the floor and couldn’t get up. She lay there crying.That was the story she told the police. She requested confidential treatment, but her complaint did not stay confidential for long.The desk officers working that night had no idea who Mr. Moonves was. But, according to a person directly familiar with how the complaint was handled, a senior watch commander recognized Mr. Moonves’s name and alerted Cory Palka, a veteran police captain for the precinct, because there was a notification protocol regarding celebrities.Mr. Palka moonlighted as a security officer for CBS and worked for the network at the Grammy Awards show from 2008 to 2014. He knew and liked Mr. Moonves. Not long after Ms. Golden-Gottlieb’s visit to the police station, Mr. Palka called Ian Metrose, the head of special events for CBS, and left a message.“Hey, Ian, it’s Cory Palka,” he said in the message, which was included in the attorney general’s report. “I know we haven’t talked in a while. I am a captain at L.A.P.D. Hollywood. Somebody walked in the station about a couple hours ago and made allegations against your boss regarding a sexual assault. It’s confidential, as you know, but call me, and I can give you some of the details and let you know what the allegation is before it goes to the media or gets out. So, all right, talk to you after a while. Bye.”Mr. Metrose promptly alerted his boss, Mr. Schwartz, who recalled in a later interview that he was shocked. Reporters from several outlets, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, had been calling him about rumors involving possible allegations against Mr. Moonves. But Mr. Moonves had earlier assured Mr. Schwartz that CBS had nothing to worry about.Earlier that month, Mr. Schwartz heard that Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker, whose reporting had helped bring down Mr. Weinstein, was making calls about Mr. Moonves. Mr. Schwartz braced himself for more. But he heard nothing. But a police report was a reportable fact. Mr. Schwartz told Mr. Metrose to get a copy, and Mr. Palka obliged, even though the report was marked “confidential” in three places. (Mr. Schwartz died in 2020, and Ms. Golden-Gottlieb in 2022. Mr. Palka did not respond to a message left on his cellphone on Thursday. CBS declined to comment and also said Mr. Metrose declined to comment.)The incidents in the report were too old to prosecute Mr. Moonves, but Ms. Golden-Gottlieb’s allegations were graphic. If the contents of a formal police complaint became public, it could be a public relations nightmare for CBS, especially in the early days of the #MeToo movement. It was a Saturday, but Mr. Schwartz called Mr. Moonves, who was at his eight-year-old son’s soccer game.Mr. Schwartz outlined the allegations.“That’s preposterous,” Mr. Moonves responded, according to Mr. Schwartz’s recollection of the conversation.“Do you know the woman?” Mr. Schwartz asked.Mr. Moonves told Mr. Schwartz that he did, that he’d had consensual sex a few times with Ms. Golden-Gottlieb and that they had been “friendly before, during and after.”Mr. Schwartz didn’t want to hear much more, in case he got calls from reporters. That way he could honestly say he didn’t know anything.Mr. Schwartz assured Mr. Moonves that he didn’t see any immediate threat. The incidents were so old that the case would never be brought to court. None of them happened while Mr. Moonves was at CBS. Still, there was always the risk that the allegations could become public. Mr. Schwartz told Mr. Moonves that he had better notify a CBS board member so that there would be no surprises.Leslie Moonves resigned from CBS in 2018 after multiple women made allegations of sexual misconduct against him.Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressMr. Moonves promised he would, though he did not do so until much later, when questioned by a lawyer representing directors on the board. A spokesman for Mr. Moonves declined to comment this week.Mr. Schwartz drafted a response to potential media inquiries. If asked, he would confirm that CBS was aware of a police investigation of Mr. Moonves, say that the CBS board had been notified and nothing more. Mr. Schwartz alerted his press team over the weekend, sending an email to one: “Watch for messages and don’t miss any please. Will explain later. I wouldn’t bother you if this wasn’t serious.”Time passed, and no reporters brought it up. Mr. Schwartz heard from numerous people who were contacted by reporters who had heard more rumors about Mr. Moonves, but none had offered any concrete allegations. But Mr. Moonves wasn’t taking any chances. Without telling Mr. Schwartz, he hired Blair Berk, a criminal defense lawyer. Ms. Berk got in touch with Mr. Palka and asked him about the police report. On Nov. 15, Mr. Palka texted Mr. Metrose and Ms. Berk to say he’d “make contact & admonish the accuser tomorrow about refraining from going to the media and maintaining ‘her’ confidentiality.”He added that they would “be the first and only point of contact” regarding the investigation. Ms. Berk did not respond to a request for comment this week.Ten days later, Mr. Moonves arranged to meet with Mr. Palka and Mr. Metrose at a Westlake Village restaurant and vineyard. Mr. Moonves stressed that he wanted the investigation closed, and they discussed contacting other public officials.But that proved unnecessary. On Nov. 30, according to the attorney general’s report, Mr. Metrose told Mr. Moonves that he had heard from Mr. Palka that they could stop worrying: “It’s a definite reject,” Mr. Metrose said, adding that there were no witnesses or corroborative evidence.In the police referral to the Los Angeles County district attorney, Ms. Golden-Gottlieb was identified only as Jane Doe. Mr. Moonves was formally designated as a “V.I.P.” The assistant district attorney reviewing the matter noted, “The applicable statutes of limitation have expired as to all three incidents.”That was the end of it, or so it seemed.Less than a year later, Mr. Farrow reported in The New Yorker on several allegations against Mr. Moonves, including from Ms. Golden-Gottlieb. On Sept. 9, 2018, in his second of two articles on Mr. Moonves, Mr. Farrow revealed the existence of the police report. That same day, Mr. Moonves resigned from CBS.Mr. Palka wrote Mr. Metrose shortly after: “I’m so sorry to hear this news Ian. Sickens me. We worked so hard to try to avoid this day. I am so completely sad.”Two days later, he wrote Mr. Moonves directly: “Les -I’m deeply sorry that this has happened. I will always stand with, by and pledge my allegiance to you. You have embodied leadership, class and the highest of character through all of this. With upmost respect.” More

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      After Hollywood’s #MeToo Reckoning, a Fear It Was Only Short-Lived

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      Harvey Weinstein’s second sex crimes trial began Monday in Los Angeles. “She Said,” about the journalistic investigation that took him down and helped ignite the #MeToo movement, arrives in theaters on Nov. 18. “The Woman King” opened to strong ticket sales last month, with Viola Davis saying she thought about the man who sexually assaulted her to power her visceral performance as the leader of an all-female group of African warriors.The convergence is a reminder of just how earthshaking #MeToo was for Hollywood.It helped touch off a broader reckoning in the entertainment industry around diversity, equity and inclusion on both sides of the camera — who gets to make movies, who gets to be the subject of them. Activists say that studios and sets have been permanently changed for the better. Zero tolerance for workplace sexual harassment and discrimination is real.In recent months, however, Hollywood’s business culture has started to regress in subtle ways.New problems — widespread cost-cutting as the box office continues to struggle, coming union contract negotiations that producers worry will result in a filming shutdown — have become a higher priority. Fearing blowback, media companies that were vocal about #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have been quieter on more recent political debates over cultural issues.Diversity, equity and inclusion executives say they are exhausted by an old-boy network that is continuously trying to reconstitute itself: Women who were hired for big jobs and held up as triumphant examples of a new era have been pushed aside, while some of the men who were sidelined by misconduct accusations are working again.“The Woman King,” starring Viola Davis as the leader of an all-female group of African warriors, opened to strong ticket sales last month.Ilze Kitshoff/Sony PicturesIf asked to speak on the record about their continued dedication to change, Hollywood executives refuse or scramble in terror toward the “we remain staunchly committed” talking points written by publicists. But what they say privately is a different story. Some revert to sexist and racist language. Certainly, much of the fervor is gone.This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen industry leaders — including top studio executives, agents, activists, marketers and producers — who spoke on condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the current state of the entertainment business. They varied in age, race, ethnicity and gender.“For three years, we hired nothing but women and people of color,” said a senior film executive, who like many leaders in the industry is a white male. He added that he did not think some of them were able to do the jobs they got.In hushed conversations over lunch at Toscana Brentwood and cocktails at the San Vicente Inn, some powerful producers and agents have started to question the commercial viability of inclusion-minded films and shows.They point to terrible ticket sales for films like “Bros,” the first gay rom-com from a major studio, and “Easter Sunday,” a comedy positioned as a watershed moment for Filipino representation. “Ms. Marvel,” a critically adored Disney+ series about a teenage Muslim superhero, was lightly viewed, according to Nielsen’s measurements.“There was an overcorrection,” one studio head said.At another major studio, a top production executive pointed to the implosion of Time’s Up, the anti-harassment organization founded by influential Hollywood women, as a turning point. “For a while, we all lived in complete fear,” he said. “That fear remains, but it has lessened. There is more room for gray and more benefit of the doubt and a bit of cringing about the rush-to-judgment that went on at the height of #MeToo.”“Bros,” the first gay rom-com from a major studio, had disappointing box office results.Nicole Rivelli/Universal PicturesIs this a pendulum swing back to the bad old days?“Amazing progress has been made that is not going away, and that should not be discounted or overlooked,” said Amy Baer, a producer, former studio executive and the board president of Women in Film, an advocacy organization. “But there is fatigue. It is hard to maintain momentum.”Entertainment companies are not backing off the tough sexual harassment policies that have been introduced in recent years, in part because board members are worried they will face shareholder lawsuits. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently recommitted to its diversification campaign. Despite years of aggressive efforts to invite women and people of color to become members, the academy is currently 66 percent male and 81 percent white..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Studios remain focused on inclusive casting, most notably Disney, which has a live-action “Little Mermaid” movie on the way with a Black actress playing the title role, and a “Snow White” movie in production with a Latina lead.The moment is nonetheless unnerving, said Sarah Ann Masse, an actress who appears in “She Said” — which is based on a book by The New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey — and who serves on two sexual harassment prevention committees for SAG-AFTRA, the omnipotent actors union. In 2017, Ms. Masse accused Mr. Weinstein of sexually assaulting her in 2008. He has denied wrongdoing.“I’m not naïve enough to think that a system that is unequal and oftentimes oppressive — yes, still, very much so — is going to change overnight,” Ms. Masse said. “At the same time, I find it incredibly frustrating. People at the top of the food chain, in particular, seem to have gotten distracted by new concerns.”In August, Warner Bros. Discovery shelved “Batgirl,” a nearly finished movie starring a Latina actress, featuring a transgender actress in a supporting role, written by a woman, produced by women and directed by two Muslim men. Warner Bros. Discovery never publicly explained its decision, but signaled that it found “Batgirl” to be creatively lacking.Dan Lin, a producer whose credits include “Aladdin” (2019) and “The Lego Movie,” was among those who inferred something else.“It’s no longer about optics,” Mr. Lin said. “A recession is coming, budgets are tightening and I’m really worried that diversity is going to be the first thing that goes.”The producer Dan Lin recently started a nonprofit that aims to help budding minority filmmakers and writers.Todd Williamson/Invision, via APLast week, Warner Bros. Television, as part of wider cost cutting, shut down “new voices” programs for emerging writers and directors, prompting a fiery reaction from the Directors Guild of America. “The D.G.A. will not stand idly by while WB/Discovery seeks to roll back decades of advancement for women and directors of color,” the guild said in a statement.Within a day, Warner Bros. Discovery had scrambled to clarify that, while the “new voices” programs would indeed end, it had planned all along to expand talent pipeline programs in its diversity, equity and inclusion department.“The resolve is still there to have more women and people of color in writers’ rooms and directing and up on the screen” Mr. Lin said. “The problem is that there is so little training and support. Those things cost money.” To help, Mr. Lin recently started a nonprofit accelerator called Rideback Rise that focuses on budding minority filmmakers and writers.There is no longer across-the-board banishment for men who have been accused of misconduct. Johnny Depp is directing a film, having largely won a court case in which his former spouse, the actress Amber Heard, accused him of sexual and domestic violence. John Lasseter, the animation titan at Disney and Pixar, was toppled in 2018 by allegations about his behavior and unwanted hugging and apologized for “missteps” that made some staff members feel “disrespected or uncomfortable.” He is now making big-budget films for Apple TV+. James Franco’s acting career imploded in 2018 amid sexual misconduct allegations. Four years later, after a $2.2 million settlement in which he admitted no wrongdoing, he has at least three movies lined up.Johnny Depp largely won a court case in which his former spouse, the actress Amber Heard, accused him of sexual and domestic violence.Craig Hudson/Associated PressStudios have also started to take more risks with content — backing scripts, for instance, that would have been radioactive in 2018, at the height of #MeToo, or in 2020, when Black Lives Matter was at the forefront of the culture.Examples include “Blonde,” the Netflix drama about Marilyn Monroe that has been derided by critics as exploitative and misogynistic. (It features an aborted fetus that talks.) Paramount Pictures is working on a live-action musical comedy about slave trade reparations; it comes from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the politically incorrect creative forces behind “South Park” and “The Book of Mormon.”Two ride-along reality shows that glorified the police, “Cops” and “Live PD,” and were canceled in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in police custody have both been reconstituted. “Cops” was picked up by Fox Nation, a streaming service from Fox News, and “On Patrol: Live,” a thinly disguised copy of “Live PD,” debuted over the summer on Reelz, a cable network.At the same time, some movies and shows that overtly showcase diversity and inclusion have either struggled in the marketplace or failed to get off the runway. The takeaway, at least to some agents and studio executives: We tried — these “woke” projects don’t work.Of course, most of what Hollywood makes struggles to get noticed, and almost never for a single reason; nobody looks at poor ticket sales for a Brad Pitt movie and concludes that no one wants to see older white men onscreen. But entertainment is a reactive business — chase whatever worked over the weekend — and there is a risk that “go woke, go broke” jokes could calcify into conventional Hollywood wisdom.“When the real question should be whether comedies generally can succeed at the box office, my concern is that the question is becoming ‘can a Filipino comedy work’ or ‘can a gay comedy work,’” said Mr. Lin, who produced “Easter Sunday,” which starred Jo Koy and collected $13 million in theaters before stalling out. “If you are a woman or a minority, you still do not get repeated chances.” More

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      Kevin Spacey Is Cleared of Anthony Rapp’s Battery Claim

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      A jury found Mr. Spacey not liable in a civil trial. Mr. Rapp, an original cast member in “Rent,” had filed a lawsuit accusing Mr. Spacey of making a sexual advance when Mr. Rapp was 14.A federal jury in Manhattan found Kevin Spacey not liable for battery on Thursday after the actor Anthony Rapp filed a lawsuit accusing Mr. Spacey of climbing on top of him and making a sexual advance in 1986, when Mr. Rapp was 14.Mr. Rapp’s claim was one of the most prominent in the early days of the #MeToo movement, as accusers started to come forward with allegations against high-profile men in the entertainment, political and business worlds. Mr. Spacey, a star of the political drama “House of Cards” and a lauded actor who had hosted the Tony Awards months earlier, quickly experienced career blowback.The disclosure by Mr. Rapp, which BuzzFeed News published in October 2017, was followed by more than a dozen other sexual misconduct accusations against Mr. Spacey. He has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault charges in Britain, and outside the courthouse on Thursday, one of his lawyers, Jennifer L. Keller, said he would be proven innocent in all cases.The civil trial to consider Mr. Rapp’s claim of battery hinged on his account of a night in 1986, when, he said, he attended a party at Mr. Spacey’s New York apartment during a Broadway season in which both of them were acting in plays. Mr. Spacey, who was 26 at the time, denied that such an encounter ever occurred.After less than an hour and a half of deliberation, an 11-person jury in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan decided in favor of Mr. Spacey, whose lawyers had hammered Mr. Rapp with questions that challenged his memory of events said to have occurred more than 36 years ago.Following the verdict, Mr. Spacey stood up with tears in his eyes and hugged his lawyers. He was silent during his exit from the courthouse, but Ms. Keller told reporters, “We’re just grateful that the jury saw the truth.”Anthony Rapp sued Mr. Spacey, accusing him of making a sexual advance when Mr. Rapp was 14.Eduardo Munoz/ReutersMr. Rapp was straight-faced in response to the decision. In a statement later posted to his Twitter account, Mr. Rapp said he was “deeply grateful” for the opportunity to have his case heard before a jury.“Bringing this lawsuit was always about shining a light,” the statement said, “as part of the larger movement to stand up against all forms of sexual violence.”Mr. Rapp, an actor on “Star Trek: Discovery” and who is best known for his originating role in the musical “Rent,” was able to bring his claim under a New York State law, the Child Victims Act. The law included a temporary “look-back” window during which old claims that had already passed the statute of limitations could be revived.The jury determined that there was not enough evidence to prove that Mr. Spacey had touched one of Mr. Rapp’s “sexual or intimate” parts, meaning the claim could not be revived under the law. Mr. Rapp testified that when Mr. Spacey picked him up, one of his hands “grazed” his buttocks.Mr. Rapp’s lawyers presented testimony from three men who said he had told them in the mid-1990s or earlier about an encounter with Mr. Spacey. The defense focused on inconsistencies and picked at vagueness in his account, highlighting that Mr. Rapp, 50, presented no third-party corroboration of the gathering on the night that he said the encounter had occurred. Midway through the trial, the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, dismissed a claim against Mr. Spacey, 63, of intentional infliction of emotional distress.“There is no evidence that this happened and plenty of evidence that it didn’t,” Ms. Keller said in closing arguments.Both actors took the stand to testify, presenting disparate accounts about what happened in the spring of 1986, when Mr. Rapp was a teenage actor in the play “Precious Sons” and Mr. Spacey was in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”Mr. Rapp testified that he had withdrawn to the bedroom to watch late-night TV during Mr. Spacey’s party because he did not know any other guests. Once the party wound down, Mr. Rapp testified, Mr. Spacey approached him, picked him up, laid him on the bed and climbed on top of him, pressing his groin into Mr. Rapp’s hip.“I knew something was really wrong now,” Mr. Rapp said, recalling feeling frozen in place.He testified that he was able to wriggle out from under Mr. Spacey, who appeared intoxicated, and escape to the nearby bathroom. Mr. Rapp recalled that before he exited the apartment, Mr. Spacey said, “Are you sure you want to leave?”The defense contended that Mr. Rapp had fabricated the claim to get attention for himself and his career, which he denied.“Does it look like he is enjoying the attention of this?” a lawyer for Mr. Rapp, Richard M. Steigman, said in closing arguments. “He is doing this to hold Kevin Spacey accountable.”Despite issuing an apology shortly after Mr. Rapp made public his allegation, Mr. Spacey testified that the encounter never happened, that he had never been alone with Mr. Rapp and that he had not had a party at his apartment in the time frame Mr. Rapp described.Peter Gallagher and Mr. Spacey in the Broadway show “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1986.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesMr. Spacey said he did recall that Mr. Rapp had attended with a friend a performance of “Long Day’s Journey,” and that afterward, Mr. Spacey had invited them to dinner, then to a nightclub and then back to his apartment.Mr. Spacey said he had flirted with Mr. Rapp’s friend, John Barrowman, who was 19 at the time. Back at Mr. Spacey’s apartment, he said, he pushed Mr. Barrowman gently back onto the bed when Mr. Rapp left for the bathroom. Feeling that Mr. Rapp was too young to see them in a romantic situation, Mr. Spacey said, the two men sat up when Mr. Rapp returned.“I had no interest in Mr. Rapp joining us,” Mr. Spacey testified.Mr. Rapp testified that on the night they all went to the nightclub — which he described as his second time meeting Mr. Spacey — they did not go back to the apartment. In a videotaped deposition, Mr. Barrowman, an actor known for his role in the TV show “Doctor Who,” recalled the series of events that night as Mr. Spacey had.Mr. Rapp called the alleged encounter with Mr. Spacey the most traumatic event of his life. Mr. Rapp testified about moments when he later saw Mr. Spacey onscreen — in films like “American Beauty” and “Working Girl” — and felt startled, sometimes feeling as if “poked with a cattle prod.”Mr. Spacey’s lawyers suggested throughout the trial that Mr. Rapp was motivated to fabricate the accusation because he was envious of Mr. Spacey’s career or frustrated that Mr. Spacey was not public about his relationships with men.Mr. Rapp denied those motivations, asserting that he had come forward to seek belated justice for himself. But during a lengthy and tense cross-examination, he acknowledged that he might have been mistaken about a couple details, including that the alleged encounter had occurred in a separate bedroom in Mr. Spacey’s apartment.Mr. Spacey’s lawyers also questioned Mr. Rapp on similarities between his account and moments of staging in “Precious Sons.” In the play, the character of Mr. Rapp’s father, who was played by Ed Harris, had picked up the character of Mr. Rapp in the same manner that he described Mr. Spacey picking him up — like a groom carrying a bride. Mr. Harris also climbed on Mr. Rapp twice during the play.Mr. Rapp dismissed the idea that there was any connection, saying the staging had been done “with care and consent.”Mr. Rapp’s lawyers pointed to Mr. Spacey’s initial response to Mr. Rapp’s accusation, in which he did not categorically deny the encounter, as supporting evidence for their client. In a statement Mr. Spacey posted after the BuzzFeed article, he said he had no memory of the encounter, adding, “But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.”In his testimony, Mr. Spacey said he regretted making that apology, attributing the decision to advisers who feared that people would call Mr. Spacey a “victim blamer” if he denied the allegation outright.“I’ve learned a lesson,” Mr. Spacey testified, “which is, never apologize for something you didn’t do.”One additional accuser, Andy Holtzman, testified during the trial that Mr. Spacey had groped him in an office in 1981, when Mr. Holtzman was 27 and Mr. Spacey was several years younger. Mr. Spacey denied doing so. No other accusations were discussed in front of the jury, and Judge Kaplan instructed the jury to disregard two instances when Mr. Rapp had alluded to other allegations against Mr. Spacey during his testimony.As a result of the sexual misconduct allegations against him, Mr. Spacey — who has won two Oscars and a Tony — lost major roles, with an arbitrator ordering him to pay $31 million to the “House of Cards” studio for breach of contract.But the jury’s verdict on Thursday adds to the list of legal victories for Mr. Spacey. Prosecutors dropped a sexual assault charge in Massachusetts, and an anonymous accuser who had originally sued alongside Mr. Rapp decided not to continue his claim when Judge Kaplan ruled that the plaintiff would need to identify himself publicly.“What’s next,” Ms. Keller said outside the courthouse on Thursday, “is that Kevin Spacey is going to be proven innocent of anything he’s been accused of.” More

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      Jennifer Bonjean, the Lawyer Who Defended R. Kelly and Bill Cosby

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      Jennifer Bonjean has become known for her aggressive approach as she has defended men accused of sexual misconduct in several of the highest profile cases of the #MeToo era.Jennifer Bonjean, a defense lawyer who has the words “not guilty” tattooed on her right arm, called one woman who accused R. Kelly of sexual abuse a “pathological liar.” She accused another of extortion. She tried to pick their accounts apart, and attacked prosecutors for stripping her client, the former R&B star, of “every single bit of humanity that he has.”Ms. Bonjean, who was Mr. Kelly’s lead lawyer during the criminal trial in Chicago that ended with his conviction last week, has become known for her aggressive tactics in representing men accused of sexual misconduct in several of the highest profile cases of the #MeToo era.She helped Bill Cosby get his sexual assault conviction overturned last year, which led to his being freed from prison. She has also represented Keith Raniere, once the leader of the Nxivm sex cult, as he appealed his conviction on sex trafficking and other charges, for which he was sentenced to 120 years in prison.“Everyone’s entitled to a vigorous defense,” Ms. Bonjean, 52, said in an interview last week shortly before Mr. Kelly’s conviction on sex crimes involving minors was announced.Her theatrical, knock-down-drag-out style is hardly atypical in the world of criminal defense, but it has attracted attention at a time when #MeToo-era cases are reaching trial, as she has urged jurors to be skeptical of women who have testified, often through tears, about being sexually abused.“We are in an era of ‘believe women’ and I agree, but not in the courtroom,” Ms. Bonjean said during closing arguments in the Kelly case. “We don’t just believe women or believe anything. We scrutinize. There’s no place for mob-like thinking in a courtroom.”That perspective and her relentless cross-examination of accusers, which typically involves drilling them on any inconsistencies in their accounts and questioning their motives, has drawn criticism from those who say it could scare abused women from coming forward.Ms. Bonjean accompanied Bill Cosby when he returned to his home in Pennsylvania last year after she worked to overturn his conviction, and he was freed from prison.Mark Makela/ReutersLili Bernard, who has sued Mr. Cosby and accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 1990, said she was upset by Ms. Bonjean’s behavior earlier this year where she defended Mr. Cosby in a civil case brought by a woman who said he had sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager. Ms. Bernard, who attended the trial in California, called the lawyer’s cross-examination of that woman, Judy Huth, and other accusers “victim blaming and victim shaming.”Originally from Valparaiso, Ind., Ms. Bonjean (pronounced bon-JEEN) is a classically trained opera singer who earned a master’s degree in music and once worked at a rape crisis center in Chicago, advocating for victims of sexual violence — a stint, she said, that some might now see “as ironic.”That job led her to study at Loyola University Chicago’s law school with the intention of becoming a prosecutor, but she ended up going into defense work after gravitating toward “underdog” clients. As a lawyer who views prosecutorial overstep as her driving force, she gained prominence by focusing on so-called wrongful conviction cases.Russell Ainsworth, a staff attorney at the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School, has worked with Ms. Bonjean on civil rights cases for a decade and said that typically, he plays the “straight guy,” while she “comes out swinging.”“If I needed a lawyer to go to the mat for me, that’s the lawyer I would choose,” he said.Her approach was on display earlier this year in the civil suit brought by Ms. Huth, who accused Mr. Cosby of sexually assaulting her at the Playboy Mansion in 1975, when she was 16.During Ms. Bonjean’s cross-examination of Ms. Huth, she challenged her on why it had taken her decades to come forward with her accusation. At one point she suggested that Ms. Huth had kept quiet about the trip to the mansion, not because she had buried painful memories, but because she was uncomfortable telling people that she had gone there with Mr. Cosby because he is Black. Ms. Huth strongly denied that.During the trial, Ms. Bonjean turned her attention to Ms. Bernard, and accused her in court of speaking with a juror during a break. She argued for a mistrial. (The judge denied Ms. Bonjean’s request.)“In that little moment that she tried to falsely accuse me, I felt the wrath of her, the depths she would go to,” Ms. Bernard said in an interview.Ms. Bonjean, whose firm is based in New York, said that she considers herself a feminist, insisting that the label is not inconsistent with her work as a defense lawyer for accused men. Her responsibility, she explained, is to exercise every legal lever at her disposal for her client, noting, “that will not always be consistent with sensitivity to a victim’s feelings.”And she contends that if she were a male lawyer, people wouldn’t think twice about her approach, simply chalking it up to a lawyer doing his job.“I’m supposed to be some type of ambassador — a vagina ambassador,” she said, “Seriously, I get a lot of those questions, like somehow I am traitorous to women by taking on these cases.”During Mr. Kelly’s Chicago case, Ms. Bonjean was boldly combative at every turn. She fought to keep as much of the video footage away from the jury as possible, maintained a steady stream of objections and sometimes kept the fight for her client going on Twitter.At one point, prosecutors complained to the judge about a tweet she posted in which she accused them of playing dirty tricks. Ms. Bonjean offered to refrain from tweeting about the court proceedings, she said, and the judge agreed. A few days later, Ms. Bonjean posted: “I’m not allowed to tweet but I think I can retweet,” sharing someone else’s tweet that quoted her from the trial, calling one of the government’s key witnesses “a liar, a thief and an extortionist.”“I had to find what worked for me,” Ms. Bonjean said of her approach. “My aggressive style — some people call it fiery, some people call it, whatever words you want to use to describe it, that was the way that I could be effective.”Debra S. Katz, a lawyer who has represented high-profile sexual misconduct accusers, said that defense tactics seeking to shred a woman’s credibility or impugn her character run the risk of failing with a jury, citing Harvey Weinstein’s conviction in New York, during which she represented one of the women accusing the producer of sexual assault.“Everybody deserves a defense, but to attack women in this way is, in my view, absolutely unconscionable,” Ms. Katz said.Ms. Bonjean’s highest profile success has been her role in appealing Mr. Cosby’s sexual assault conviction. She and her co-counsels persuaded the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that prosecutors violated Mr. Cosby’s rights by reneging on an apparent promise not to charge him on allegations that he drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand in 2004.Mr. Cosby’s more recent civil trial ended with a jury finding against him that awarded Ms. Huth $500,000 in damages.In Mr. Kelly’s recent case, he was found guilty of some of the most serious charges, including of coercing minors into sexual activity and producing child sexual abuse videos. He was acquitted on several other charges, including that he had sought to obstruct an earlier investigation.In both cases, Ms. Bonjean has pledged to mount a vigorous appeal.Robert Chiarito contributed reporting from Chicago. More