This morning I watched the talking heads programs. I know. That was a mistake. One of the features on CBS Sunday Morning that caught my attention was a profile of Harvey Weinstein, formerly the CEO of Miramax Films, then The Weinstein Company, and now in prison for multiple convictions on sexual assault and abuse.
The fact of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual predations were distressing but they didn’t surprise me. Sexual abuse has been part of the Hollywood culture from its very origins. The first Hollywood sex scandal to make national news was in 1921. What really distressed me was that people have failed to connect the dots.
Even following Mr. Weinstein’s multiple convictions on charges of rape and predatory sexual assault people have continued to praise the movies (at least some of them) that Mr. Weinstein produced. Has it never occurred to anyone that the properties that Miramax and The Weinstein Company chose to produce were vehicles for Mr. Weinstein’s proclivities and promoted sexual promiscuity and violence without consequences? Although the history of Miramax’s productions has been substantially sanitized, frequently described as “music pictures”, while reporters wax poetic over some of Miramax’s great movies, for the first half dozen or so years of its existence a lot of the pictures distributed by Miramax were basically soft core European porn.
The first movie actually produced by the Weinstein brothers was an R-rated slasher movie. It was notable in avoiding one of the conventional Hollywood tropes in which the victims are sexually promiscuous while the lone survivor isn’t, suggesting that the horrible fates of the victims were punishments for their promiscuity. The Miramax slasher picture suggested the opposite. During the making of that movie Harvey Weinstein harassed the staff, setting the pattern for what was to come.
In a country in which most of what young people “know” they’ve learned from watching television and the movies, a continuous diet of sex and gore has an effect and that effect was completely consistent with Weinstein’s sexual crimes. Say what you will about the Motion Picture Production Code, a reaction to Hollywood sex scandals, the period of its greatest sway is known as the “Golden Age of Hollywood movies” and Bollywood movies, which now exceed Hollywood movies in viewership and revenue, must meet a strict code enforced by the Indian government.
I’ve wondered if proclivities only become loathsome when the rake ages and becomes unattractive.
Cosby, Weinstein, Epstein.
Weinstein was loathsome when young.
In his case I suspect a string of flops had more to do with it.
Are there official dates for the Golden Age? I think I mostly see late 20s until the end of WW2. Anyway,the code existed until 1968. AFAICT as long as Boreen was in charge (1954?) it was pretty strictly enforced. No really sure i ma seeing a direct relationship between the code and quality of movies. Effects on morals? Not sure about the chicken and egg aspect here but maybe we would have been better off if the code allowed priests and ministers to be shown as evil. Might have made Catholic priests and altar boys more likely to be found out.
Steve
Nothing official but I would say from 1930 to 1948.
It continued to run on fumes for a few years after that but had really and truly died by 1960.