wise up
a cranky memo to takesters
Earlier this year there was a lot of drama about Blake Lively (blonde woman, actress) being toxic on the set of the film It Ends With Us and also just in general. There is something unsympathetic about Blake Lively when viewed from a distance—which is the only way I personally am ever going to view her. She feels a little smug. You feel as if she could easily be laughing at you as she makes a getaway. So it was easy to believe that she had been, again, “toxic” in an unspecified way, bossy on the set, insufficiently respectful of the director.
On the various self consciously progressive gossip forums people ate the idea up. It’s not just that Blake Lively looks annoying but that she has certain indelible marks on her record (like a plantation wedding). So oh—the general chorus goes—women can be bad, manipulative, they can “weaponize” feminism and victimhood. OK, here’s the first thing I would like to say: “women can be bad” is one of those truths that is so self-evident that if somebody is repeating it to you you should probably not trust them. Either they’re learning this information for the first time or they think you’re very stupid. In both of these cases they are not really going to be of much use to you.
But here comes the New York Times, telling us that, hey—actually Blake Lively was wronged, maybe. I highly recommend reading the whole piece (that’s a gift link) because it’s full of moments like this one, where people put things into writing while saying you know, it’s probably a terrible idea to put this into writing:
Ms. Abel relayed his frustration to Ms. Nathan: “I think you guys need to be tough and show the strength of what you guys can do in these scenarios. He wants to feel like she can be buried.”
“Of course- but you know when we send over documents we can’t send over the work we will or could do because that could get us in a lot of trouble,” Ms. Nathan responded, adding, “We can’t write we will destroy her.”
Moments later, she said, “Imagine if a document saying all the things that he wants ends up in the wrong hands.”
But the big thing is, if you were wandering around going oh women can be bad, you were played. You were played even if somebody files a countersuit that reveals a trove of Blake Lively texts that are just as noxious and (yes) manipulative and even “toxic.” You were played even if Blake Lively, personally, is the Zodiac Killer. It doesn’t actually matter if Blake Lively is a good or bad person! Because what the PR people relied on—and I’m quoting one of them here—is that “people really want to hate on women.” And to set that off… all you need are a few clips and somebody planted to say “isn’t she annoying.”
Again… I’m not claiming here that Blake Lively is a perfect angel who never did anything wrong ever, or even never did anything wrong on the set of It Ends With Us. It’s certainly possible that before the PR firm got involved, she was entirely in the wrong here. I’m saying that the PR strategy amounted to saying “don’t you think Blake Lively has a mean girl vibe :( ” and watching everybody else run with that ball.
I don’t have a mean girl vibe :( I am being actually mean :) and this what I want to say: if you, a lady takester, like to make little takes where you triangulate yourself into taking the Reasonable discourse slot by saying things like women can be bad, writing thinkpieces and TikToks about Blake Lively And Toxic Femininity or whatever, please, at least be getting something out of it. Real money, a book deal, whatever. You are being used. If you didn’t know, now you know. So at least make it worth it. Joan of Arc didn’t die for you to be a sap, now did she…? But if you’re just writing that kind of thing for good girl points, well, that’s really too much for me to bear.
Of course I’d prefer you didn’t write them at all, but if you must—wise up.
I wasn't aware of the discourse around the movie when it was happening in August, but after reading your post and the NY Times article I kind of went down a rabbit hole - figuring out who everyone is and how badly they fucked up was interesting, esp. because I have a legal education. I don't know how much detail people are into, but since you got me interested in it, I might as well share my read on the situation here.
From my point of view, there have been three phases to the drama so far -
- the portion of the production before the writer's strike, when Baldoni and Heath were out of control, freely sexually harassing the women on the shoot;
- the portion of the production that took place after the strike, when the production was being overseen by an outside producer, and was subject to the conditions in Lively's contract rider; and
- the promotional campaign for the movie, when Lively, Hoover, and the other cast members were promoting the movie, and Baldoni was promoting himself and paying PR people to tear down Lively.
We're now entering a fourth phase, with Lively suing everyone who was either involved with the sexual harassment or the PR campaign against her, which is the reason we have the information about the previous three phases of the drama.
Regarding the first phase, the most important thing to note is that it was a textbook case of a workplace that humiliated the women who were present. There's no way to know how people's careers will be affected by this, but if anyone makes a contract with Wayfarer that leaves Baldoni or Heath in charge of a production without supervision, they're insane. They got their chance to be in charge, and they failed completely. This phase is where the damage was done, and Baldoni and Heath made clear how shallow their commitment to being good people was. It is not, however, the point at which the production becomes interesting as a matter of law.
The second phase is where the legal complications start. Lively basically saved the production single-handedly by coming up with a way to complete the production without subjecting the women in it to further humiliation and misery. Bring in an outside producer to oversee the rest of the production, and explicitly prohibit Baldoni and Heath from continuing to act as they had been. She had plenty of reason to walk, or to go public with the on-set behavior, and she didn't. She completed her work, did the promotional tour, and took no steps to humiliate Baldoni, other than not wanting to make promotional appearances with him. The wording of the contract rider is particularly interesting in this regard, as it makes clear that Lively believed she had grounds for a lawsuit, and was choosing not to exercise those grounds AT THE PRESENT MOMENT. The message was clear - Baldoni and Heath were on probation, and as long as they kept their noses clean, they had a chance to have their movie distributed and their reputations preserved. Lively might ultimately tell the whole story, might sue them for sexual harassment, but she was choosing not to do so in the present, and if they were really nice to her, she might decide not to do so in the future.
This legal situation is what makes the third phase so amazing. Baldoni and Heath basically had a gun to their heads, as they had given her reason to sue them, something she had notified them of in writing. As a general rule, when someone rams something legal down your throat, and makes you sign papers you don't want to sign, you should seek advice from a lawyer, not a PR person. We talk about "the court of public opinion", but negative publicity is not going to stop a person from bringing a lawsuit if they know they have grounds for one. Nathan (the flak notorious for defaming Amber Heard) may have thought that the outcome of the Depp-Heard trial meant that online opinion could get someone out of legal jeopardy, but if she did, she is going to get an education. To reiterate the legal position of Baldoni and Heath when they hired the PR teams - Lively was refraining from suing them for sexual harassment in part because their contract with her now said that they would refrain from taking any actions to punish her for raising the issue of their sexual harassment of her. Hiring a PR team to promote a negative public impression of her was literally something they had agreed not to do as part of an enforceable contract.
I'm not sure how screwed the PR people will be in the coming litigation - I imagine that the worst consequence would be for them to be subjected to examination as a witness at a trial (5th Amendment protection against being forced to testify doesn't apply to a civil defendant), since that would involve sharing their tricks of the trade with the world. They'll likely want to settle before trial, but Lively isn't required to accept any settlement proposals. There appears to be some kind of code of omerta among PR people that communications between a PR person and their client should never be shared with an outsider, but so far no state has recognized PR firm privilege as a bar to testifying against a client. Seeing the relative legal insignificance of PR firms in contrast to their belief in their own power may turn out to be the most interesting part of the litigation.
Regarding the people that the PR people got to amplify their negative publicity, I think the Stalinist term "useful idiots" applies pretty well. The notion that a woman who seems mean deserves any negative consequence that befalls her is obviously an ideology of sorts. Add the fact that such people are useful as a means to generate bad publicity for people who want to win a publicity war and you have a situation similar to the role that American Communists played in the '40s and '50s for Stalin's regime. As you said, if they're not at least getting paid, it's pretty sad.
as someone whose beat is women behaving badly against other women, the most villainous women in this saga are the PR women!