We don't hear much about #MeToo these days, do we? Last I heard it was in SNL jokes.
When actress Asia Argento openly threatened powerful men in Hollywood, the series of events that followed could be viewed in different ways. One way is to think that everything was accidental, from the death of her boyfriend to her degrading downfall that coincided with Metoo losing all momentum and luster - at least in the mainstream media where she was considered one of the movement's leaders.
Asia Argento was openly out for revenge during her speech at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017. She was fighting power with power. When I saw all the admiring posts, I was not on board - I thought it was unwise at best - and was curious as to what would follow, since I thought what she did was to serve up a raw challenge for the network. Most people in the film industry are too caught up in the power trap themselves to represent the MeToo movement, which was grassroots, made up of a vast amount of primarily women who had quietly suffered sexual harassment, molestation or rape, who were inspired to finally share their stories. Argento is clearly caught up in the power system, which, as I have repeatedly stated, is itself trauma-based. That is to say that her desire for revenge expressed in her speech at Cannes was already a projection coming out of her own unresolved trauma, probably from childhood.
The network records the crime of pedophilia as its main tool to blackmail its own members, in case the insiders ever threaten to reveal the network’s secrets. We have several cases in which those who dared to stand up for themselves and challenge Hollywood or the music industry have been faced with charges of sexual abuse of minors.
Currently, I notice a tendency to believe such charges are false perse, as if the courageous act of challenging some aspect of the power machine automatically makes a person innocent. This is naive. Sometimes charges may be trumped up against whistleblowers, but inside the network and its entertainment branch, children are abused and pushed to perpetrate from a very young age. Why would such charges be invented, if the entire system is built specifically around that particular form of blackmail?
When someone - like Harvey Weinstein - is made to take the fall to protect the greater, darker secrets of the network, the charges are usually brought on by adult women. Without relieving the accused of actual guilt, those cases that make the mainstream spotlight are often questionable and could potentially be overturned at a much earlier date than the verdicts suggest, once the attention has been successfully diverted from the deeper, darker, more pervasive and more prevalent truth. It is still a question whether in any of these cases, the network sought to punish or humiliate these perpetrators for some other inside purpose. Usually exploitation operates on multiple levels at once. But the charges that are most widely featured in the news outlets are mild in comparison to what actually happens in the network circles of Hollywood, the music industry or among billionaires.
Jimmy Bennett, the young man who accused Argento of rape when he was a minor apparently approached her after her speech at Cannes. When he was six years old, Argento played his mother in a film she co-wrote. When he was 17, they ended up in bed together, and he took a photo of them in bed. While the idea of an adult woman sleeping with a minor she has known in his early childhood is disgusting to most, sex with a 17 year old is not frowned upon in Hollywood at all - it would only ever become a thing when it needs to be used to destroy someone’s reputation, because they have publicly challenged the secret of the industry. Why did the 17-year old take a photo of himself in bed with her? Why did he approach her after her speech at Cannes?
Argento publicly insisted that she was the 17-year old's victim, a classic pedophile, gaslighting move. It is certainly possible that he insisted to get together with her, to take the photo, and in general to complete his assignment in creating material against her, as children in the network are forced to do. For her, her behavior, of sleeping with a minor and then acting like the victim, points, again, to how symbolic repetitions of unresolved trauma are played out unconsciously, unless one focuses on healing instead of on power. Most of the time, those unconscious repetitions that lead to child abuse are not only acceptable, they are strongly encouraged inside the network’s culture. Again, the fact that they are illegal is only used to defend the network’s secrets.
In all of this, Anthony Bourdain's untimely death has been the most conveniently timed suicide in the history of MeToo’s media demise. Who knows what other reasons there could have been for his death, because, I repeat, exploitation usually operates on multiple levels, combining multiple nefarious purposes, but as Argento's ardent supporter, it would have been far more difficult to destroy her public image had he remained living. After she was outed as a perpetrator, the entire movement was thrown under the bus by the press, who centered the validity of a powerful grassroots movement entirely on the squabbles between two actresses.
Next, you may have noticed how mainstream and alternative media have stopped publishing MeToo stories and maybe how SNL started joking about women complaining about anything through MeToo statements. The media and Hollywood have tried to render MeToo powerless, ridiculous and hypocritical.
Meanwhile people keep getting inspired to speak out and create change. Through the countless women who have come forward, big and subtle changes have happened, rippling effects we don’t yet know how they will change the culture. We don't need the media and power-addicted actresses to lead us in this movement - it is ours!
Following up on the #MeToo revelations, started by actresses uniting to speak up about sexual harassment, assault and rape by men in their industry: I would like to relate these events to power dynamics in this context:
The road to fame and power is paved with many spoken and unspoken deals, with crucial choices that determine whether a person is going to be big in the industry, or whether they are going to fail.
The actresses that were speaking up all were adult women, who may feel like victims as if they had no choice - but that is just not true. The choice was: have your integrity, and refuse to use the casting couch - and if you were raped or assaulted, speak out loud and clear to prevent other women from meeting the same fate. Or, handle the harassment or assault as best or as terrible as you can, and stay silent. I'm not saying that I don't have understanding or compassion for these women; the options are often slim. However, the hypocrisy of the women who have, as adults, benefited from the very system they are now attacking, could at the very least not present as frail, vulnerable victims. That was perhaps the case when they were little girls and were sexually abused, and these little girl parts are perverted in an adult playing a victim role, which is merely a set up to do harm, to obtain revenge, to regain the power lost during the original abuse. The entirety of Hollywood and the network is stuck in an endless symbolic repeat of various aspects of their own childhood abuse, with parts submitting and other parts rebelling and other parts seeking revenge. Only, inside the trauma-based system of the network, all these repetitions are meaningless. They are only fluff to be recycled and create division, to create the illusion of change while setting up to make the entire issue fail when the time seems right.
Someone with a strong sense of self would never fall for the casting couch. Such a person will be sickened by the reality of Hollywood, and refuse to pay that price for any career. There are many such people, and they choose another path. It is those who are not that strong who do whatever it takes to be part of this dysfunctional family, perhaps resembling the family of origin dynamics, where the prize is the big secret. “I’ll do whatever it takes,” is code in Hollywood, spoken by those who want to belong to the club. Anything really does mean anything, when we speak of satanism at the foundation of the industry. And power, money and fame are the prizes the devil gives out. Fame is one of the greatest love-substitutes that fakes self-esteem, hides cowardice, and makes it appear as if you are the strongest woman on earth.
Just as in incestuous families, those children who remain faithful to the parents and stay silent, reap the rewards of inner family status and inheritance. Actors gain status on the world stage and are rewarded financially. These are perhaps women who were born in a network family, or as girls already experienced sexual or other abuse. While they had no choice in childhood, they continue to blindly grope for external rewards in exchange for their soul. I thought the world of Meryl Streep, believing in her very powerful off-screen persona, until she gave a standing ovation to convicted child rapist Roman Polanski when he won an Oscar in absentia, and she commented: "I'm very sorry that he's in jail." This revealed an emotionally immature woman who sides with the abusive power figure (in the name of his art, or whatever justification) at the expense of the child victim, her own young self, and all the other girls betrayed by that action.
Sexual abuse is used on children because it breaks down boundaries. Every child who is sexually or otherwise abused is psychic, which turns their physical vehicle into an easily opened channel. The best actors are extremely mentally pliable, and can, even without make up, appear physically different, depending on the character they inhabit. They are channeling an unintegrated part of themseves that may be shut out of their consciousness, or they may perhaps even channel another entity.
My own example is unusual, because I lacked the self-esteem from the extreme childhood sexual abuse, and was primed for power - yet chose against it at each step of the way. This happened not only in Hollywood but in the yoga world as well. They were clear choices, and in my case painful ones - because I did not have the self-esteem to feel good about myself, while appearing to all power addicts around me like a big loser. Whenever I made a choice based on principles against power, I experienced ridicule and bullying (yes, in the yoga world, of course) and felt the accompanying humiliation and powerlessness from childhood. I lacked the humility that true self-esteem makes possible. But in feeling the extreme discomfort and pain, I was able to trace back these feelings to their origin, and find healing. Our negative reactions to any circumstances are always there for us to learn from, to overcome, to be able to get to their psychological or spiritual source, so that we can transform ourselves. The deep insights I received on that journey gave me the motivation to keep on.
I don’t easily name my childhood perpetrators because it is dangerous. Possibly it is more dangerous to name perpetrators in Hollywood, coming from someone who has an established platform and voice. There are many suicides and strange deaths that raise suspicion as to what was really going on behind the scenes. Did Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell not loudly speak out against child exploitation before their recent untimely deaths?
The question of MeToo and Hollywood is how much did you become part of the problem, how much did you enable the abuse? Can the actresses who were silent for decades honestly call themselves feminists? Are we still looking to the stars of Hollywood as role models? And what about politicians? Can we stop the partizan craze for a moment and stop to think that on both sides dangerous criminals are in charge? And that those who have survived these criminals can’t necessarily speak out about what they know, for various valid reasons that may have nothing to do with fear of being killed?
The hierarchy is trauma-based. The belief in authority is the most dangerous superstition. All those who have blindly accepted the good intentions of authorities, have become co-opted in the worst atrocities in the history of humankind.
Empowered human beings rely on their own moral compass to make their own choices, and make themselves accountable. Dysfunctional dependence on hypocritical power structures only serves those at the top, fueling the urge to climb the ranks and become part of the select few. Our numbers are so much larger, we can have the power anytime we want it.
Maybe we all are in need of more healing, and all this turmoil is only part of the healing process.