How Should the Media Cover Venice’s Problematic Men?
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The first issue is the headline. As a culture journalist reporting the news of the 80th Venice Film Festival, should you lead with this year’s impressive list of directors, including Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay, David Fincher, Bradley Cooper and Yorgos Lanthimos, and stars — Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Penélope Cruz, Adam Driver, Mads Mikkelsen — speculating, perhaps, on who will and won’t make it to the Lido during Hollywood’s double strike? Or do you go for the all-important clicks by emphasizing scandal: Venice includes new films from Roman Polanski (The Palace), Woody Allen (Coup de Chance) and Luc Besson (DogMan) in the official lineup.
“I really struggled with it, to go for the stars or to go for the controversy,” says Eric Randolph, arts & lifestyle editor for the English division of international wire service Agence France-Presse. “I just couldn’t decide. And in the end, we went with the stars and bumped Polanski and Woody Allen down to the third paragraph. I still don’t know whether that was the right thing to do.”
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Versions of this struggle are happening in newsrooms across the world. A premiere film festival will highlight work from three of the world’s best-known directors, all of whom have been accused of sexual predation. As a reporter, what’s your headline? What’s your angle — art or scandal? Or both?
The questions are not new.
Since #MeToo upended the assumptions of a generation of (mostly male, mostly white) reporters, debates on what to do with the art of “monstrous” men have become common, and spread beyond editorial meetings to kitchens and living rooms, to online meme battles and TikTok tirades.
The argument is often made, as Venice festival director Alberto Barbera is fond of repeating, that we need to “separate the art from the artist.” Asked about Polanski’s criminal record — the director admitted to the statutory rape of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in 1977 — Barbera likes to compare him with Italian painter Caravaggio, a convicted murderer and universally celebrated baroque artist. “I can’t be the judge of the man. I’m a festival director. I judge the quality of the films,” says Barbera.
But Caravaggio died in 1610. The question of what to ask him at a Venice Festival press conference, or how his victims will respond when reading a glowing review of his new masterpiece, just won’t come up. The women who have accused Polanski, Allen and Besson of abuse are still alive. Choosing to ignore the allegations and focusing on the films can look like picking a side.
“Just having these men at these festivals feels like a celebration of perpetrators, to be honest,” says Ursula Le Menn, an activist with French group Osez le Féminisme (“Dare to Be Feminist”) that in May called for a boycott of the Cannes Film Festival in protest of the opening night film, Jeanne du Barry, starring accused abuser Johnny Depp (Depp has denied all abuse accusations). Depp was in attendance at Cannes, and Besson and Allen are expected at Venice, though Polanski is not.
By following the festival line of separating the art from the artist, Le Menn argues, cultural reporters can become “a kind of witness for the defense, because they repeat the claims the festivals make to put these men in a good light. So [Barbera] talks about how Samantha Geimer has forgiven Polanski, but he doesn’t talk about the other allegations against him [several women have come forward with sexual abuse allegations against the 89-year-old filmmaker, all of which he denies]. Or he says Besson was found not guilty in his rape case, which is simply not true. He was never put on trial, so how could he be found guilty or not guilty?”
In June, France’s top appeals court rejected a request by Dutch-Belgian actor Sand Van Roy to reopen her rape claim against Besson, whom she accused of assaulting her in May 2018. Police investigated and cleared Besson of all charges. At least three other women have made allegations of sexual harassment against Besson, which he has denied.
In the case of Allen, claims that he has been found “innocent” are similarly inaccurate. Allen’s adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow has alleged he sexually molested her in 1992, when she was 7 years old. A prosecutor declined to press charges against Allen to spare the child a trial, even though he said there was probable cause. Allen has always denied the claims.
Le Menn says reporters miss the real story of a legal system that rarely brings perpetrators to justice. “Reporting on these directors should include the allegations against them, but done in a way that is fair and balanced and doesn’t just repeat the arguments of the defense and engage in victim blaming,” she says.
But is it fair and balanced to make abuse allegations the frame of every story about these directors? Is it fair and balanced to even group this trio — Polanski, Allen and Besson — together under the same headline, given the differences in the allegations and the legal evidence against them?
“I think that it could be potentially dangerous, if you have A, Polanski, a convicted sex offender, and B and C, two men who have never been charged with a crime, and you’re throwing them in the same #MeToo soup. It could be potentially libelous, as if you were inferring the allegations against them were equivalent,” argues Andrew Knight, a professor at the London School of Journalism. “There is also the difficulty of repeating and repeating claims that have been perpetually denied.”
Such a framing, however, could be justified if there is a clear public interest or news value, says Knight. “Say there are protesters outside the cinema or security threats against the festival because of these men. Then that, the protest, is something factually true. Of course, one of the problems, especially with people protesting on social media, is that they may not be well informed, and they might be making the same unsubstantiated and potentially libelous claims.”
Adds Randolph, “One of the things I worry about most is how the way in which these issues are being discussed, the nature of the discourse around them online, is almost as toxic and socially damaging as the issues the discussion is trying to combat in the first place. You don’t want your coverage to be guided by the trolls, but the problem, as a journalist, is that it has become harder and harder to find interesting ways to approach these topics. More and more, it seems we’re just pouring fuel on the flames of these online battles.”
Randolph, who has done extensive coverage of the #MeToo movement, notes that “important and relevant” AFP reporting on “things like festivals setting up adjudication panels to deal with harassment allegations, or hotlines for people to phone in complaints, real concrete stuff aimed at helping bring about institutional change” is mostly ignored. “But you put up a story on a Johnny Depp film opening Cannes, and boom!”
So should journalists perhaps ignore these entries, and deny alleged perpetrators the oxygen of publicity?
“I think silence is worse, actually,” says Le Menn. “For me, the fact that the festivals choose these directors shows they have a political agenda, one that downplays the importance, the significance of sexual violence in this industry and our society. So I’m not advocating to stop talking about them, but to do so in a more balanced way, a way that includes the voice of the victims.”
For British culture critic Jo Livingstone, the idea of banning or boycotting reporting on the films of “monstrous men” is “really unhelpful because it’s just the opposite of uncritical appreciation.” Instead, they argue, cultural reporting should return its focus to the culture being presented, to the films themselves.
“I haven’t seen any of these movies, the Polanski, the Woody Allen or the Besson, but from the trailers and clips available online, none of them look like terribly exciting movies,” says Livingstone. “So maybe the discussion we really should be having is why is a festival like Venice deciding to celebrate these disgraced or three-quarters disgraced or five-sixths disgraced directors when it’s clear this is nothing near their best work?”
Randolph agrees. “I really feel a better story on Woody Allen would be: Why is it Woody Allen hasn’t managed to make a good film in 20 years?”
For Livingstone, returning the focus, for critics and reporters, to the films, not the filmmakers, is not an argument for separating the art from the artist, but a way to take the power back from the directors, to subvert the “cult of the auteur” that puts the director at the center of any discussion of their work.
“I really think our job should be to continually prioritize and focus attention on the best ideas in the best, most interesting movies we see, and not give already famous people special treatment, either positive or negative,” they say. “I don’t care what the director has done. If his movie sucks, why should we be covering him at all?”
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