“You’ll never make it in this business, this is how the business works.”
These were the words that Harvey Weinstein is alleged to have shouted to 24 year old actress Dawn Dunning as she fled in panic from his hotel room. And, if Weinstein says that that’s how it works, then that is how it works, as he is the owner of the game, and so to succeed you must play by his rules. The Chinese have a word for these unspoken rules, qian guize (潜规则), or sub-rules, defined as the modus operandi of those that use their power to gain sex and those that use their sex to gain power. In the vanity game, the satisfying of satanic social contracts and dilution of personal integrity is recognised as a cost of entry into the fold of power. The stinking oils that run the wheels of Hollywood are not just comprised of dollars, an older currency is transacted. Talent alone is not enough to feed this beasts insatiable appetite, innocence must also be corrupted in the process of creating the endless stream of representations that flicker into us from every screen, the small ones in our pocket, the big ones in the multiplex. This constant exposure subtly translates a message that our own quiet lives are worthless compared to what appears on the screen. So, when we are offered the chance of entering that demure world, and we chance meet one of its hallowed threshold guardians, how could we retire back to mundane existence. A social contract may easily become satisfied and levels of personal integrity become readjusted. Integrity will easily slip, and become “re-calibrated”. An ideology is being cultivated that the only way to truly exist is to get yourself onto that screen, then you can say you’ve made it. And who out there in this digital age is not striving to make it? Even those who look like they’ve made it are still secretly nuzzling their snout towards that imaginary goal.
