SEX, LIES & NETWORK TAPES In The 21st Century Artistic World

The poster boy of "The Casting Couch" with revelations
of sexual harassment of over 60 women over decades.

The early 21st Century seems to be a time for brutal honesty, a form of housecleaning of things long known but never talked about, or at least in polite company. I was a very naive boy regarding anything sexual and remained that way until my early 20's, maybe even later. However, even I knew about the casting couch and we would all snicker at rumors and then question how a particularly pretty but terrible actress made it big. Of course the answer was, "The Casting Couch." 

   As kids we were particularly attuned to tone of voice (if you have young children, listen up), when the adults started to whisper, like vampire bats to blood, our ears became ultra sensitive and we heard things we shouldn't have. The saving grace was we didn't understand what they were talking about at the time. There are moments, even now, for me.

   The recent revelations of the antics of producer Harvey Weinstein seemed, to me at least, the confirmation of all those snickers us boys had as we found and ogled my Dad's collection of the first Playboy Magazines. As an artist the revelations of so many men and women behaving badly who are in the arts calls to question many of the artworks I've seen over the years and dismissed. Now, in light of all this, the "MeToo" movement suddenly explains artists anger, particularly works of women, bringing their anger into focus.

   Last year the Palm Springs Art Museum had an exhibition of women Expressionists from mostly the 50's though some were earlier or later. The group I toured the exhibit with were mostly women, many Lesbians and they admired the strength and boldness of the art. Staring at it I was struck not at the boldness, but the anger. Jackson Pollack's wife, Lee Krasner's paintings started the show but there were many others and none were motherly or Mary Cassatt styles of art. There was emotion, great emotion that I was not prepared to handle.

   Sex seems to be a great modifier. My whole life I've been told that men have two heads and one of them though smaller is greater in its actions.

   First there was the scandal of priests in the Catholic Church. Revelations started in the United States and then spread around the world. Parishioners are paying the bail out from that still.

America's Father abused his celebrity

   When the Bill Crosby scandal hit the news in what seems eons ago now, I think it was still considered an isolated incident of a powerful, even important actor who abused his celebrity. It appears he was saying one thing and practicing anther. While he still denies many of the accusations, where's smoke there is usually fire. You have to admire the courage of his wife. This cannot have been easy to endure.

Kevin Spacey caught diddling.

   The LGBT community became enraged and the fallout has yet to end over allegations that Kevin Spacey, one of our greatest actors, was or is at some point in his life a Gay pedophile. When the accusation hit the airwaves, he pleaded that he didn't remember that event and then, as an aside, a distraction, finally came out saying,  by the way, I'm Gay. I hate to tell Spacey this but this was hardly a well kept secret. I was told this years ago but I didn't care. He was an amazing actor. Several other actors, Neil Patrick Harris and Jim Parsons, both wonderful actors were openly Gay and appeared with their husbands in public. What made Spacey so vile was that he paired his sexual impropriety with being Gay. Excuses from the Old Vic Theatre in London, where Spacey served as artistic director for many years sound hollow. Ignorance is not bliss. They knew yet said nothing for years. Can it be that an artist will do anything to achieve success? As Edmund Burke stated in 1795, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." In hindsight it appears that good men and women have done nothing not for days, or months or even years but for centuries.

   Daily the airwaves are replete with new revelations. Charlie Rose, a host of Fox Channel hosts, Billie Bush, Senator Al Franken, the paradigm of respect for women. When does it end? Roy Moore in Alabama, a state that would rather elect a Republican sexual harasser than elect a Democrat. Then there's John Conyers another Democrat that Nancy Pelosi holds up as an icon of the party! Really? We've already endured a president that couldn't keep his pants zipped in the Oval Office and another that brazenly says that women "want it."

Ugh, hello boss! Can I help you?

To be fair, any kind   of harassment comes in many forms. Men harass women in what appears to be a rather regular basis. 

   However, there was an amazing Mike Douglas movie where his female boss harassed him in a style all too common to women. It is said men are ashamed and won't talk about it. Thinking about it, the women had good teachers; they just turned the tables is all. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Women are not alone. Men can
face the same kind of harassment

 The same can be said for men on men sexual harassment. As Spacey and others have shown, no one is immune. Not all the "MeToo's" on Facebook were women. 

   The question remains, how do we deal with this? Is it the way children are raised? Have the abused been silent too long? I know from friends abused as children that the memory is always there. A woman raped carries the memory the rest of her life. It would be much easier if harassers were like Marley from THE CHRISTMAS CAROL, dragging their sins in chains as they walked the streets, a clear sign that they needed to be avoided. 

   All we can hope is that this, ALL this, serves as a notice to men and women that such behavior will not be tolerated. That artists ... actors, artists, writers, musicians, broadcasters do not and SHOULD not have to sleep their way to success. NO ONE SHOULD! We founded a country where every man and woman was given a certain amount of freedom to become the best person they could. A lesson that many in this country seem to have yet to learn is that your Constitutional Rights end when they step on mine. In the eyes of our laws we are all to be regarded as equal, no one, and I mean NO ONE, is special. We should not live as the final sign over the barn in ANIMAL FARM that states, "Some animals are more equal than others." To that I saw BS! Yet ... we see that this is also sadly true.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. Many of the items talked about here are for sale there!