Lots of ink – literally and figuratively – has been spilled the last couple weeks over disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. There’s no need to rehash what has been covered over and over and over again, in greater detail than many of us would care to know. Numerous theories have been proposed as to how he grew into the poster child for sexual assault. That’s something worth considering, for the sake of our sons and daughters. Who created Harvey Weinstein?
Orthodox Christians and Jews have offered a simple, profound, and historically verifiable reason for the rise of the Harvey Weinsteins of the world. It’s an easy-to-spell three-letter word, “sin.” Informed by the Scripture, Jews and Christians hold that “sin” began at the earliest stage of human development, as recorded in the first pages of the very first book of the Bible, Genesis. By the third chapter, having barely gotten our feet wet in the depths of the theological ocean, sin enters and corrupts the world, particularly the safety of the husband-wife relationship. Sex, and sexuality, is collateral damage, wounded by the explosion of sin. Adam and Eve are no longer innocent, the freeing intimacy of the first marriage impaled on the altar of selfish, self-aggrandizing desires. By the time Genesis records 50 chapters, we are introduced to sexual assault, homosexuality and incest. The Bible doesn’t come with an “adults only” label, but perhaps it should! It certainly isn’t lost in the land of denial, whatever you might have heard to the contrary. Harvey Weinsten is, no more or no less than any of us, affected deeply by this age-old infection called sin.
Another explanation, less-obviously theological, can be offered for Harvey. It is the cultural air we breathe. The sexual revolution began in the 60’s – “free love” and all that jazz. This became a long trudge downward into a cultural frenzy with regards to sex, aided and abetted by the release of the birth control pill, enabling “sex without consequences” (As though such a thing were possible.).
Simultaneously technology, beginning with the television and leading to home computers, laptops and now smart phones, exploded exponentially onto the scene. Who paid for that air time, whether in the little confined boxes of our TVs or in the even smaller, more portable laptops and smart phones? In large part, advertising pays, effective advertising. Sex sells, as the saying goes. And the sexual revolution accelerated, through almost every promotion, whether of toothpaste, beer or lingerie.
While these explanations have merit, and one is foundational to it all, I would like to nominate an imminent, infamous person as “the man who created Harvey Weinstein.” I exaggerate, but perhaps only slightly. Until very recently you would have found this man lounging in his PJ’s morning, noon and night, surrounded at his “mansion” by scantily-clad, buxom, bleached, spray-tanned and artificially-enhanced young women who might well have been his grandchildren. If this had been going on next door, you would have thought it disturbing, even creepy. But for most this was a “fantasy island” somewhere out yonder. If we saw it at all it was through a passing magazine article or news story, amusing in its strangeness. Yet this man served as a generational, even a two-generational going on three, role model for millions. His perpetually grinning, well-manicured public profile was as a happy, winsome philosopher whose stock-in-trade was “sexual freedom.” How many young men, and older men, harbored secret ambitions to be what he was? How many women took their cues for beauty and sexuality from him? He was the maestro, the symphony conductor, for all things sexual.
By now have you guessed my nominee? The founder of the Playboy empire recently took up residence in a grave near his first cover girl, or one might say his first and most publicly tragic victim, Marilyn Monroe (You might find Sir Elton John’s tribute, Candle in the Wind, a thoughtful, compassionate commentary on her journey.). It was Hefner who spurred the innate tendency of those lacking wisdom to objectify women, to divorce sex from relationship, to lean into the dark side of their fallen, broken, sinful natures. How predictable that many would end up sexual predators, whether in their imaginings, or behind closed doors. He even convinced scores of women that this is “who men are” and “how women behave.” Behold the man, the enabler and promoter of thousands upon thousands of sexually-confused and sexually-abused men and women. I give you Hugh Hefner, a man with a long and lasting legacy, one that lives in even greater infamy than his disciple, Harvey.
For further reading/listening:
“The Catastrophic Vision of Hugh Hefner” at http://breakpoint.org/2017/10/breakpoint-the-catastrophic-vision-of-hugh-hefner/.
“The Briefing” podcast by Albert Mohler, “A pornographic revolution, Playboy, and the death of Hugh Hefner,” at http://www.albertmohler.com/2017/09/29/briefing-09-29-17/.
“Behold Your Hero of the Sexual Revolution” at http://melindatankardreist.com/2017/10/behold-your-hero-of-the-sexual-revolution-girl-child-centrefolds-rape-cartoons-sexual-harassment-and-wife-beating-jokes-mtr-on-hefner/. Beware, this unblinking, in-depth look at Hugh Hefner’s contributions to culture, splayed out over decades, is not for the faint-of-heart.
Listen to Sir Elton John’s tribute to Marilyn Monroe at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGIjHeLUlY4.