Weinstein's Sin Will Silence Millions

Salma Hayek had what she calls a "nervous breakdown" on the set of a movie when she caved to Harvey Weinstein's pressure to do a sex scene.  The National Post reports,

Her refusals — of massages, showers and sex — enraged him, she wrote. “I don’t think he hated anything more than the word ‘no,”‘ wrote Hayek.

When Hayek brought Frida, which she was producing, to Miramax to distribute, Weinstein made outrageous demands as payback. Hayek said he insisted on rewrites, more financing and, most heinously to her, a sex scene with full frontal nudity.

In order to finish what was a labour of love for Hayek, she agreed. But she said she had a nervous breakdown while shooting the scene. “My body wouldn’t stop crying and convulsing,” wrote Hayek.

"It was not because I would be naked with another woman,” she wrote. “It was because I would be naked with her for Harvey Weinstein.”

 Before the last few months, I wouldn't have known Harvey Weinstein or his name.  Unfortunately, now we all know who he is.  He's become a household byword.  When I first learned about him, I decided to read the content reviews of some of his films on pluggedin.  The lewdness described in those reviews sickened me.  I stopped reading.  The verbal description of the sexual and violent content in his movies is so shameful I won't quote any of it in this short blog post, and I wouldn't recommend you read it either.  I read those reviews to test a hypothesis of mine: public behaviour is restrained private behaviour.  If he was pervert in private, I figured he'd also be a pervert in public.  The movie reviews proved that.

Public sin is a dulled image of a private reality.  Harvey Weinstein was a Hollywood producer.  He made fortunes by imagining new ways to portray sex and violence on film, and sometimes he graphically imagined and portrayed the two together.  He got rich by lawfully ordering people to commit indignities.  Then, he proudly put his name in the credits.  If he was willing to attach his name publicly to lewd movies, how can we be surprised by the lewdness of his private life?

Selma Hayek should not have been treated the way she allegedly was.  No woman should be sexually objectified, assaulted, or harassed.  What allegedly happened to her is evil and satanic.  That all being said in very clear terms, she did agree to that sex scene. She feared not having that movie produced more than she feared God.  The movie was her "labour of love."  So she decided to take off her clothes for Weinstein.  It was the price she paid to get what she wanted.  On the set, like hundreds of other actors and actresses, she voluntarily subjected herself to self-degradation, indignity, humiliation, and shame.  She valued her work more than her dignity, and Weinstein valued his perverted desires more than her dignity.  The man found the woman, and the woman found the man.  He got what he wanted most.  So did she.  It cost them her dignity.

Many Miramax movies, like so much of Hollywood, should be relegated to a dark alley in the pit of hell.  Instead it's family entertainment.  Purchase the movie tickets.  Invite some friends.  Pop the popcorn.  Watch the young ladies disrobe.  Lick the butter and salt off the fingers.  Call it entertainment.  Head home.  Tuck the kids in.  Sleep soundly.  If people didn't want it, they wouldn't pay for it.  They want it.  And they enjoy it shamelessly in public.  Simple economics: supply and demand.  People demand it.  Hollywood supplies it.

All that said, anyone who has watched such movies is complicit in the sins of Harvey Weinstein.   For many, Harvey Weinstein is the man in the mirror.  The man found the woman, the woman found the man, and the man and the woman found a viewing audience.  She valued the production of the movie more than her dignity, and so did millions of others.

That brings me back to an earlier thought: Public sin is a dulled image of private reality.  People sin more boldly in private.  People restrain their behaviour more in public.  If the masses callously consume perversion in public theaters while they're burping up the bubbles of their Diet Cokes, what level of perverted perversion goes on in private?  I hypothesize that the private pervometer measures much higher than the public one.  Weinstein substantiates that hypothesis.  He produced perversion because he's a pervert.

Perverts produce perversion.  And perverts also consume perversion.  Weinstein did both.  A nation that consumes the perversion of perverts on the silver screen is a nation that likely produces perversion behind the scenes.  Either way, it's a society that's complicit in perversion.  Men and women love perversion because they're perverts.  What Weinstein produced, he also consumed, and so also is.  What people consume, they also produce, and so also are.  Perverts consume perversion.  Perverts produce perversion.  Perverts demand perversion.  Perverts supply perversion.  Weinstein proves at least one thing: this is an unbelieving and perverse generation.

The loud outrage against Weinstein now takes the witness stand, and it will silence millions.

"Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges.  For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.  We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.  Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?" (Romans 2:1-3).

Repent to Christ.