“Harvey Weinstein, monster”: antiblackness and the myth of the monstrous rapist

ABSTRACT

Rape myths are prominent social narratives that circulate harmful stereotypes that normalize and even sanction sexual violence. In this essay, we argue that the myth of the monstrous rapist in US rape culture rhetorically functions as an antiblack symbolic structure that circulates across historical and contemporary discourses. We outline the rhetorical norms of the myth through an analysis of discourses surrounding convicted serial sexual predator and Hollywood mega-producer Harvey Weinstein. Symbolic renderings of Weinstein’s monstrosity discursively darken him and mark him as a monstrous anomaly in relation to normative whiteness and masculinity. Content warning: This article contains references to, and descriptions of, racial and sexual violence.

KEYWORDS:

• antiblackness
• monstrosity
• rape culture
• rape myths
• #metoo

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank editor Greg Dickinson for his thoughtful and careful mentorship of this essay, as well as the two anonymous reviewers who offered generous, substantial, challenging, and forward-thinking feedback. The project would not be what it is without their labor and care.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 See Nadia Khomami, “#MeToo: How a Hashtag Became a Rallying Cry Against Sexual Harassment,” The Guardian, October 20, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/20/women-worldwide-use-hashtag-metoo-against-sexual-harassment.

2 Katie Kindelan, “The Art of the Apology: How High-Profile Men Have Responded to Allegations of Sexual Misconduct,” ABC News, December 1, 2017, https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/art-apology-high-profile-men-responded-allegations-sexual/story?id=51510451.

3 As we write, a New York court recently convicted Weinstein of sexual assault and rape, sentencing him to 23 years in prison. However, this essay attends to discourses from the first year of public revelations. See Jan Ransom, “Harvey Weinstein’s Stunning Downfall: 23 Years,” New York Times, March 11, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/nyregion/harvey-weinstein-sentencing.html.

4 See Bernadette Marie Calafell, Monstrosity, Performance, and Race in Contemporary Culture (New York: Peter Lang, 2015); Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, eds. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 3–25; Marina Levina and Diem-My T. Bui, “Introduction: Toward a Comprehensive Monster Theory in the 21st Century,” in Monster Culture in the 21st Century: A Reader, eds. Marina Levina and Diem-My T. Bui (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 1–13.

5 Salma Hayek, “Harvey Weinstein is My Monster Too,” New York Times, December 12, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/13/opinion/contributors/salma-hayek-harvey-weinstein.html.

6 Lee Moran, “Jimmy Kimmel Zings ‘Monster’ Harvey Weinstein in Oscar Nominations Recap,” Huffington Post, January 24, 2018, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jimmy-kimmel-on-the-2018-oscar-nominations_n_5a684e20e4b0dc592a0de3a1.

7 “Rose McGowan Doc: Weinstein Referenced as ‘Monster,’” BBC, January 31, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42886903.

8 Madeline Berg, “After Expulsion from the Academy, Here Are All of Harvey Weinstein’s 81 Oscar Wins,” Forbes, October 13, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2017/10/13/here-are-all-of-harvey-weinsteins-oscar-wins/#32e7921cd946.

9 Shannon O’Hara, “Monsters, Playboys, Virgins, and Whores: Rape Myths in the News Media’s Coverage of Sexual Violence,” Language and Literature 21, no. 3 (2012): 247–59.

10 We deploy “male” here (and throughout the essay) because the “myth of the Black male rapist” is the scholarly term that has been studied and utilized by Black feminists and critical race scholars for several decades. The use of “male” is not meant to signal support of the biologically determinism of gender or assigned sex at birth (as the difference between male/man is used among some writers a signal of assigned sex versus gender). The myth of the Black male rapist is a cultural trope that circulates stereotypes about “Black males” and rapists—the myth racializes and engenders the symbol of the “Black male” in ways that reinforces normative ideas of race and gender identity.

11 Eric King Watts, “Border Patrolling and ‘Passing’ in Eminem’s 8 Mile,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 22, no. 3 (2005): 187–206.

12 Barbara Barnett, “Framing Rape: An Examination of Public Relations Strategies in the Duke Lacrosse Case,” Communication, Culture & Critique 1, no. 2 (2008): 179–202; O’Hara, “Monsters, Playboys, Virgins, and Whores.”

13 Martha R. Burt, “Cultural Myths and Supports for Rape,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38, no. 2 (1980), 217.

14 Matthew R. Meier and Christopher A. Medjesky, “The Office Was Asking for it: ‘That’s What She Said’ as a Joke Cycle That Perpetuates Rape Culture,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15, no. 1 (2018): 2–17.

15 Others have examined how depictions of monsters can prove potentially resistive to rape culture, but here we are explicitly referring to the mobilization of the rhetorical norms of the myth of the monster rapist. See Leslie A. Hahner and Scott J. Varda. “It Follows and Rape Culture: Critical Response as Disavowal,” Women’s Studies in Communication 40, no. 3 (2017): 251–69.

16 Jericho M. Hockett, Donald A. Saucier, and Caitlyn Badke, “Rape Myths, Rape Scripts, and Common Rape Experiences of College Women: Differences in Perceptions of Women Who Have Been Raped,” Violence Against Women 22, no. 3 (2016), 309.

17 O’Hara, “Monsters, Playboys, Virgins, and Whores,” 251.

18 Ashley Noel Mack and Bryan J. McCann, “Recalling Persky: White Rage and Intimate Publicity after Brock Turner,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 43, no. 4 (2019), 376; O’Hara, “Monsters, Playboys, Virgins and Whores.”

19 Patricia H. Collins, “The Tie That Binds: Race, Gender, and US Violence,” Ethnic & Racial Studies 21, no. 5 (1998): 917–38; Angela Y. Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Capitalist Setting,” The Black Scholar 12, no. 6 (1981): 39–45; Mack and McCann, “Recalling Persky,” 376; Joshua Daniel Phillips and Rachel Alicia Griffin, “Crystal Magnum as Hypervisible Object and Invisible Subject: Black Feminist Thought, Sexual Violence, and the Pedagogical Repercussions of the Duke Lacrosse Case,” Women’s Studies in Communication 38, no. 1 (2015): 36–56.

20 O’Hara, “Monsters, Playboys, Virgins, and Whores,” 256.

21 For more on rape culture and rape logics, see Annie Hill, “SlutWalk as Perifeminist Response to Rape Logic: The Politics of Reclaiming a Name,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 13, no. 1 (2016): 23–39. For data on perpetrators of sexual violence, see Matthew J. Breidinget al., “Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, Stalking, and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization—National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, United States, 2011,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 63 (2014), 7, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/ss/ss6308.pdf

22 Tommy J. Curry, “Expendables for Whom: Terry Crews and the Erasure of Black Male Victims of Sexual Assault and Rape,” Women’s Studies in Communication 42, no. 3 (2019): 287–307; Shannon L. Holland, “The ‘Offending’ Breast of Janet Jackson: Public Discourse Surrounding the Jackson/Timberlake Performance at Super Bowl XXXVIII,” Women’s Studies in Communication 32, no. 2 (2009): 129–50; Ashley Noel Mack and Tiara R. Na’puti. “‘Our Bodies Are Not Terra Nullius’: Building a Decolonial Feminist Resistance to Gendered Violence,” Women’s Studies in Communication 42, no. 3 (2019): 347–70.

23 Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Capitalist Setting.”

24 Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Capitalist Setting”; Patricia H. Collins, “The Tie That Binds”; Phillips and Griffin, “Crystal Magnum.”

25 Curry, The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2017); Ersula J. Ore, Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019).

26 Ronald L. Jackson II, Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial Politics in Popular Media (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2006), 41.

27 Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Capitalist Setting.” Also see Jackson, Scripting the Black Masculine Body; Ore, Lynching.

28 Kristin Bumiller, In an Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement Against Sexual Violence (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

29 Ashley Noel Mack and Bryan J. McCann, “Critiquing State and Gendered Violence in the Age of #MeToo,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 104, no. 3 (2018): 329–44.

30 See Ashley R. Hall, “Slippin’ in and Out of Frame: An Afrafuturist Feminist Orientation to Black Women and American Citizenship,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 106, no. 3, (2020): 341–51; Achille Mbembe and Libby Meintjes, “Necropolitics,” Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11–40; Armond R. Towns, “Black ‘Matter’ Lives,” Women’s Studies in Communication 41, no. 4 (2018): 349–58; Frank B. Wilderson III, Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).

31 Eric King Watts, “Critical Cosmopolitanism, Antagonism, and Social Suffering,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015), 277.

32 Fred Moten, Stolen Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 18.

33 Watts, “Border Patrolling.”

34 Achille Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 5–6.

35 Angela Davis, Women, Culture, & Politics (New York: Random House, 1989), 44.

36 See Jane Caputi, “The Sexual Politics of Murder,” Gender and Society 3, no. 4 (1989): 437–56; Kristen Hoerl, “Monstrous Youth in Suburbia: Disruption and Recovery of the American Dream,” Southern Communication Journal 67, no. 3 (2002): 259–75; Calafell, Monstrosity, Performance, and Race.

37 See Imani Perry, Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018).

38 See Calafell, Monstrosity, Performance, and Race.

39 Cohen, “Monster Culture;” Jackson, Scripting the Black Masculine Body.

40 Ronan Farrow, “From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Stories,” New Yorker, October 10, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories.

41 Ibid.

42 Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, “Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades,” New York Times, October 5, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html

43 O’Hara, “Monsters, Playboys, Virgins, and Whores.”

44 Farrow, “From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault.”

45 Given the clear power dynamics between Weinstein and Argento as well their initial predatory sexual encounter, describing any sex between them as “consensual” will understandably strike many readers as problematic. We employ the term “consensual” out of fidelity to Argento’s description of the relationship as recounted by Farrow. For a clinical description of sociopathy, see American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. (Washington, DC: APA, 2013), 659.

46 Kantor and Twohey, “Harvey Weinstein Paid.”

47 Hayek, “Harvey Weinstein Is My Monster Too.”

48 Ibid.

49 Scott Johnson and Stephen Galloway, “Young Harvey Weinstein: The Making of a Monster,” Hollywood Reporter, February 28, 2018, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/young-harvey-weinstein-making-a-monster-1089069.

50 See Hoerl, “Monstrous Youth.”

51 David Moscowitz, A Culture of Tough Jews: Rhetorical Regeneration and the Politics of Identity (New York: Peter Lang, 2015). On racialization and anti-Semitism, see W.J.T. Mitchell, Seeing through Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 63–90.

52 Farrow, “From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault.”

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

56 Jackson, Scripting the Black Masculine Body.

57 “Harvey Weinstein, Monster” by Edward Kinsella. Taken from The Hollywood Reporter Twitter. https://twitter.com/THR/status/920635713233801216

58 Edward Kinsella, “Harvey Weinstein, Monster,” Communication Arts, https://www.commarts.com/project/26247/harvey-weinstein-monster.

59 See E.M. Rose, The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015).

60 Lauren Huff, “Harvey Weinstein ‘Unforgiving,’ ‘Grotesque’ Courtroom Sketches Unveiled,” The Hollywood Reporter, 25 May 2018, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/harvey-weinstein-courtroom-sketches-unveiled-1115070

61 @Adeyemi10037, May 25, 2018, comment on @NYMag, “Jane Rosenberg, courtroom artist extraordinaire.”

62 @ZebSmathers, May 25, 2018, comment on @NYMag, “Jane Rosenberg, courtroom artist extraordinaire.”

63 New York Magazine (@NYMag), “Jane Rosenberg, courtroom artist extraordinaire,” Twitter, May 25, 2018, 12:19 pm, https://twitter.com/nymag/status/1000078975471964161?lang=en.

64 On visual rhetoric and darkening, also see Greg Dickinson and Karrin Vasby Anderson, “Fallen: O.J. Simpson, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the Re-Centering of White Patriarchy,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 1, no. 3 (2004): 271–96.

65 Calafell, Monstrosity, Performance, and Race; Hoerl, “Monstrous Youth in Suburbia.”

66 Farrow, “From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault.”

67 Ibid.

68 See, for example, Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film—Updated Edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992).

69 Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Capitalist Setting”; Jackson, Scripting the Black Masculine Body; Ore, Lynching. For a cinematic example of this trope, see Birth of a Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith (Los Angeles: Triangle Film Corp., 1915).

70 Johnson and Galloway, “Young Harvey Weinstein.”

71 Debbie Ging, “Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere,” Men and Masculinities 22, no. 4 (2019), 638–57.

72 Calafell, Monstrosity, Performance, and Race.

73 See Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Capitalist Setting”; Jackson, Scripting the Black Masculine Body; Ore, Lynching.

74 Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws, 30–31.

75 Leslie J. Harris, “Rhetorical Mobilities and the City: The White Slavery Controversy and Racialized Protection of Women in the U.S.,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 104, no. 1 (2018): 22.

76 See Reggie Ugwu, “The Hashtag that Changed the Oscars: An Oral History,” New York Times, February 6, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/movies/oscarssowhite-history.html.

77 Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, “Linda Bloodworth-Thomason: Lessons from Witnessing Four Decades of Harassment in Hollywood (Guest Column),” Hollywood Reporter, October 18, 2017, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/linda-bloodworth-thomason-i-knew-harvey-weinstein-you-did-guest-column-1049819.

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid.

80 See Brent Lang, “Patricia Arquette’s Comments Draw Praise, Unleash Controversy,” Variety, February 23, 2015, https://variety.com/2015/film/news/patricia-arquette-comments-oscars-2015-controversy-1201439814/.

81 Sonia Saraiya, “Harvey Weinstein Is a Monster of Hollywood’s Own Making. What Are We Going to Do About It?,” Variety, October 23, 2017, https://variety.com/2017/biz/columns/harvey-weinstein-hollywood-monster-solutions-1202596477/.

82 Bloodworth-Thomason, “Lessons from Witnessing Four Decades.”

83 Saraiya, “Harvey Weinstein Is a Monster.”

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid.

86 Calafell, Monstrosity, Performance, and Race; Hoerl, “Monstrous Youth.”

87 Sarah Deer, The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015); Cristy Dougherty and Bernadette Marie Calafell, “Before and Beyond #MeToo and #TimesUp: Rape as a Colonial and Racist Project,” Women & Language 42, no. 1 (2019): 213–18; María Lugones, “Toward a Decolonial Feminism,” Hypatia 25, no. 4 (2010): 742–59; Ashley Noel Mack, Carli Bershon, Douglas D. Laiche, and Melissa Navarro, “Between Bodies and Institutions: Gendered Violence as Co-Constitutive,” Women’s Studies in Communication 41, no. 2 (2018): 95–99; Ashley Noel Mack and Tiara Na’puti, “Our Bodies are not Terra Nullius”; Aimee Carrillo Rowe, “A Long Walk Home: Decolonizing #MeToo,” Women & Language 42, no. 1 (2019): 169–74.

88 Calafell, Monstrosity, Performance, and Race. On monstrosity as a mode of resistance, also see Amy L. Brandzel, Against Citizenship: The Violence of the Normative (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016); Susan Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1, no. 3 (1994): 237–54.