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Nigerian Harvey Weinstein

By Andrew Bobori
08 February 2018   |   3:37 am
The news media in the later part of 2017 was dominated with the Harvey Weinstein story. For those who are not conversant with the Harvey Weinstein story let me update you. Mr. Weinstein was a powerful producer in Hollywood.

Harvey Weinstein

The news media in the later part of 2017 was dominated with the Harvey Weinstein story. For those who are not conversant with the Harvey Weinstein story let me update you. Mr. Weinstein was a powerful producer in Hollywood. He was regarded as a movie mogul who in recent months has been accused of sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, sexual assaults and rape by some women.  These women include, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, Lupita Nyong’o, Asia Argento and seventy-three others and counting.

Weinstein’s exposed dark sexual inimical iniquities has emboldened other victims – both male and females – within the film industry in American and even in other countries such as Great Britain to speak out about their experiences. This has further exposed the likes of James Toback with 238 accusers, Kevin Spacey with multiple accusers (this means they are too many to count) and a former U.S. president George H.W. Bush has four accusers.

More victims hopefully will be courageous enough to speak out about their ordeal. They are taking advantage of a society and a media that does not blame victims of misogyny, sexism, abuse of power or position, a predatory cabal of men exhibiting toxic testosterone.

The likes of Weinstein, were machoistic monsters, having great power and influence in their vocation and occupying enviable positions within society. If anybody was a big man in the true sense of the word, Weinstein was one, he was powerful, well connected and very influential in the film industry that a word from him could make or mar a budding actor or actresses’ career. He was feared and revered openly but was secretly loathed. 

Weinstein’s social circle included the likes of Bill and Hilary Clinton and former U.S. president Barrack Obama and his wife. He was a man of great means, having the power to ruin the careers of his victims if they resisted his predatory claws. Men in such positions wielding such tremendous power like Weinstein assumed wrongly, that sexual gratification from his victims was his God given entitlement. He had a false sense of entitlement especially towards the women he worked with. He demanded sexual favour from them and in cases where they put up resistance it is alleged by some of them that he raped them. He treated them like wares or his personal products to be used as he deemed fit. This false assumption of entitlement has now come to haunt him.

He lured some of his victims to his hotel rooms under false pretence. There are some who would blame them for honouring his invitations; such people are exceptionally naïve in the workings of Hollywood and deny the power Weinstein commanded. A producer of his status invites a budding artist or actor to his hotel room you are more than happy to go as turning him down jeopardised your budding career. Imagine you as a student of quantum physics being invited by Einstein for a private session. Would you turn down that invitation? I really do not think so. These actresses though were willing to advance their careers at all cost did not envisage the cost to be sexual gratification nor outright rape-as alleged by some of them.

In every country’s industry and walk of life, if there are females, there will be the Harvey Weinsteins within that industry, this includes Nigeria.
Bobori, a Nigerian, wrote from the United Kingdom.

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