[ad_1]
“Hmmm.” Monica Lewinsky takes a long break. “I know this is going to sound weird. This is a very legitimate question. I don’t know how to answer this. She thought about it before finally saying, “In some ways, I just feel too close to this. “
Lewinsky discusses his experience with Bill Clinton and answers the question of whether he would have been “canceled” if his White House affair with an intern had occurred during the present day.
“I hope we have a different kind of conversation,” Lewinsky says. “I hope that most of the blame isn’t on my shoulders, and most of the consequences.”
Almost 25 years later, even in the post- # MeToo era, Lewinsky doesn’t know how different things would have turned out today.
“This situation, I’m not sure if it was a young, charismatic, democratic president, and perceived as being good in quotes for women…”, she begins to think. “I think it would be different. But I’m not sure it would all be as different as people think.
The indictment of Clinton in 1998 for lying under oath to a federal jury and obstructing justice, which is the plot of the current season of FX’s “American Crime Story” with Lewinsky as producer, is also the starting point for the author and the next activist. project, the HBO Max documentary “15 Minutes of Shame,” which debuts Thursday.
The film explores public shame and the concept of ‘culture cancellation’, and how it has worsened with the influx of tech, social media, and tabloids. Lewinsky’s own experience helps him identify with subjects who sit down for “15 minutes of shame.” She produced the project with “Catfish” co-creator Max Joseph.
“To move forward, we need to think about the subsets of the cancellation culture,” Lewinsky says. “I think there is definitely a place for that. Something we are pulling into the document is the idea of shaming change. We see the tool of public shame being used by marginalized groups and people who have traditionally and historically had no power and no voice. “
With the rise of the 24/7 news cycle, public humiliation has become the norm in modern society. When Lewinsky was scrutinized internationally at the age of 22, social media did not exist, so her narrative rested solely in the hands of the mainstream press. In some ways, social media would have helped her, she says, but it would also have been even more damaging.
“People could have judged me and got a better idea of who I was based on how my social media profiles looked,” Lewinsky explains. “But in other ways it would have been worse too. If I thought the late night shows and comments I read online were bad, it would have been worse to see them pile up.
By the time Lewinsky became a household name, another young woman was also under attack from the press: pop singer Britney Spears, who was constantly a “shameful slut” in the late 90s and early 2000s and mocked for her public unrest, which today, I hope it would have been viewed through the more favorable prism of mental health awareness.
“We were both fresh meat for that kind of behavior back then,” Lewinsky says of Spears. “I still think it’s important to say I made a mistake, but Britney didn’t – not to say I deserved everything I got because I think it was. much more serious, or that it was not commensurate with my age and power level. ”But Britney didn’t make the mistakes I made.
In the new documentary, Lewinsky says there is an element of the audience that questions their own behavior – like how the audience was complicit in consuming the shame of the Spears and Lewinsky tabloids in the ’90s. .
“With Britney and with all of these stories, we have to think about how we are contributing to this line of behavior in society, which is proliferating in some way,” Lewinsky says. “Our clicks count, what we read matters, what we retweet matters. They all make a difference. I really only wish good things for her. That’s for sure.”
The subjects of the new HBO Max documentary are not famous. These are private citizens who were catapulted into the international social media tsunami overnight. The doc explores various types of modern public shame and the consequences that flow from it, including a man who has been broadly vilified for storing disinfectant in the onset of COVID-19, and a woman who lost her job for posting rhetoric anti-Trump in a Facebook group. Taking a closer look at the stories of these people, Lewinsky says she came away with a different perspective than when she had just read the headlines.
“Everything was tried in the court of public opinion and we all sit on the jury, and I don’t know how that works on justice,” Lewinsky says. She adds: “What is difficult about this analogy is that in court, each party has the opportunity to present facts, context and nuance. Context and nuance are important.
Lewinsky says the political climate in America has also contributed to the rise of the “culture of cancellation”. A hot topic explored by the document’s experts is how the power of big tech companies has helped normalize public shame, hate speech and cancellation on social media. “I think there was a big change in 2016 with the election and our world got more vicious online with a lot more misinformation and misinformation,” she says. “Humiliation, shame and outrage are very attractive in getting people to engage online. “
The film also examines the importance of the #MeToo movement in empowering serial abusers. “Abuse of power was not something we were talking about in terms of inappropriate working relationships,” Lewinsky says. “I think it could have been a different avenue, for me personally. I wouldn’t have been so alone. That’s the positivity of the internet.
In addition to her anti-bullying work, Lewinsky is also now focusing on her work as a producer with a global deal with 20th TV. In her work as a producer, she hopes to make sense of her past.
“It’s been such an interesting experience to have both ‘Impeachment’ and ’15 minutes of shame’ a month apart and there really is that synchronicity for me of purpose and message,” she says. “With ‘Impeachment’, of course, I have selfish reasons, but there is also that element of not wanting this to happen to another kid again.”
[ad_2]
Source link