Just recently, both an article at the A.V. Club and an episode of The Next Picture Show podcast debated whether the humor in Robert Altman’s MASH has become so dated as to be offensive. The 1970 film, adapted from Richard Hooker’s novel, is considered to be among the best movies ever made, and led to its long-running and critically acclaimed TV counterpart. Altman’s movie is a black comedy, which used the setting of the Korean War to transplant and explore some of the anti-establishment and anti-war sentiments surrounding Vietnam. MASH finds its humor in Army medical officers rebelling against incompetent authority figures through pranks, sex, and lots of booze, while satirizing the importance of bullshit rules and protocol in a situation where people are surrounded by death.
However, what’s interesting is how MASH comes off when shown to younger audiences with more modern sensibilities. Instead of laughing along with Trapper John (Elliott Gould) and Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland), many viewers see the characters as misogynistic assholes who get their kicks from using authority as “the pros from Dover” to bully anyone who disagrees with them. For example, the shower scene with Hot Lips (Sally Kellerman) was played for laughs in 1970 as a moment where a character with a stick up her ass gets a comeuppance. But viewed in 2016, it’s a bit uncomfortable for some to watch a woman be sexually harassed and arguably assaulted over a bet to see if she’s a natural blonde, and then giggle about it. In his review for the film, Roger Ebert argued the cruelty is justified because it’s supposed to be a reaction to and a distraction from the suffering which surrounds the characters. Since Major Burns (Robert Duvall) and Hot Lips are not as affected by these issues, it makes them “less human” and acceptable targets for flawed protagonists. But while this might explain things thematically, there’s a case to be made cultural standards have shifted to such a degree from yesterday to today the story just doesn’t play the same way in a modern context. Although, this doesn’t mean things are perfect in the here and now.
HBO’s Confirmation, directed by Rick Famuyima (Dope) with a screenplay from Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich), revisits the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The 1991 Senate hearings examining his nomination became an infamous full-blown political scandal when an FBI interview with law professor Anita Hill leaked to the media, wherein she alleged Thomas’s behavior was sexually inappropriate while he acted as her supervisor at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). This included repeated attempts to ask Hill out, bragging about his own sexual abilities, making lurid comments about pubic hair on a Coke can, depictions of rape and sexual acts with animals, and talking about the porn career of Long Dong Silver, with Hill claiming all of it made her uncomfortable in the performance of her job. Thomas denied the allegations and angrily denounced even the examination of the allegations as a “circus” and “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.”
Even though Thomas survived the hearing to take a spot on the court, one of the lasting legacies of the entire spectacle were discussions about women in the workplace, women in government, how hospitable the environments are women encounter on a daily basis, and the fact a lot of men can say and do things not as funny or cute as they may think. But Confirmation returns to Thomas’s nomination fight to examine the mindset of the time 25-years ago, and sees an event where, like the social critique leveled in MASH, flawed authority figures were more interested in the preservation of protocol and process in the furtherance of other interests, than finding out the truth.
As mentioned above, context can shape how an event is digested by the public. What I’m reminded of is how some things which were taboo culturally—basically anything controversial Oprah would spend an hour talking about in the afternoon—have now become commonplace. I’m not saying these issues have totally gone away, only that most people have decided they don’t really care if someone chooses to live their lives this way, or make these particular choices.
And I’m not talking about gay marriage or even something like legalization of marijuana. At the beginning of the 1990s, things were changing but there were still debates about the shame of women and men “living in sin” together unmarried. The sitting vice president was having an argument with a fictional character over her choice to have a child as a single mother. And there was a sizable portion of the population which was holding on to “traditional values,” which would become the basis for the religious right’s power in the 1994 midterm election.
But it’s also the sort of backdrop which informs the Clarence Thomas nomination fight, and the reaction to Anita Hill’s allegations. It was a polarizing moment where the country picked sides, but more importantly actually began discussing the issue.
Similar to how FX’s American Crime Story and even HBO’s previous jaunts down political memory lane, Game Change and Recount, deconstruct media moments for any deeper cultural meaning or greater insights about the people involved, Confirmation looks at an event where issues involving sexism, race, and government came together to produce a process which seemed to satisfy no one. And the film is more interested in examining the process than determining the correct, historical version of events. There are no flashbacks to show the audience a definitive version of what happened between Hill (Kerry Washington) and Thomas (Wendell Pierce). Instead we watch different factions attempt to either protect themselves and cover their own ass, or move Heaven and Earth to eviscerate Hill by any means necessary.
From Katey Rich at Vanity Fair:
For Famuyiwa, the story was not about what really happened, but what happened next. “How the parties reacted to that became more interesting to me than trying to re-create what I think happened,” he said. “Why we called it Confirmation, as opposed to any other title, was because once that process starts, and once the institutional power behind that process starts, it’s hard to derail it. Truth didn’t necessarily become what was important. What became important was tradition. What became important was protocol. What became important was this relationship between the senators and the White House. And not necessarily even the two people involved.”
Confirmation presents Hill as the very model of a dignified, but reluctant witness. When Thomas is nominated by President George H. W. Bush to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall, Hill is a law professor at the University of Oklahoma. Washington’s version of Hill is as poised and graceful as the real Anita Hill. She’s presented as uncomfortable with his appointment, but also unsure whether to act because of possible retribution. When a committee staffer, Ricki Seidman (Grace Gummer), inquires of Hill whether anything untoward occurred during her time with Thomas, Hill feels compelled to offer very detailed testimony, which describes a man who repeatedly sexually harassed a subordinate. But it doesn’t take long before Hill’s affidavit is leaked to Nina Totenberg of NPR. The resulting story causes an upheaval of the confirmation process, leading to Hill’s name being made public, and a subpoena to testify in front of Congress.
For his part, Pierce’s version of Clarence Thomas reacts to the situation with a cross between bewilderment and seething anger. He truly believes he’s done nothing wrong, and thinks he’s being treated differently because he’s black, whereas allegations of sexual harassment against a white nominee might be brushed aside. Thomas’s wife, Virginia (Alison Wright), never wavers in her support for him. While Thomas never attacks Hill directly beyond his denials, his surrogates begin an all out assault on her character, chief among them Senator Jack Danforth (Bill Irwin), who labels Hill crazy and begins looking under rocks for ammunition to use against her. Republican allies like Ken Duberstein (Eric Stonestreet) and Judy Smith (Kristen Ariza) play hardball, and begin tarring Hill to get Thomas confirmed.
On the Democratic side, most members of the committee are reluctant to stick their heads out too far for Hill. Senator Ted Kennedy (Treat Williams) is hesitant to push too hard, given some events from his past and having just endured being a witness in the William Kennedy Smith trial. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Joe Biden (Greg Kinnear) wants to put up just enough of a fight to seem like he tried, but not enough to actually rock any boats or get to the bottom of what happened. When given the opportunity to hear from other women with stories similar to Hill’s, such as Angela Wright (Jennifer Hudson), Biden balks at the chance and moves forward.
The interesting thing about this particular moment of history is how the people who were sitting in judgment on this committee were so ill-equipped to actually relate or respond to the central issues. The lack of diversity becomes significant when Thomas responds to Hill’s allegations by charging the entire process to be a “high-tech lynching” by the United States Senate. Hill’s attorney, Charles Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright), points out how self-serving it is, since none of the “white boys” are going to challenge him too hard after that salvo, since they don’t want to look like a bunch of racists.
But holding fire was not the way Hill was questioned or treated. It was a situation where the fact-finders were different levels of incredulous as to why a woman was saying the things she was saying, and then spent hours trying to prove she was crazy, a liar, or wanted attention. Senator Arlen Specter, played by Malcolm Gets in Confirmation, interrogated Hill and accused her of perjury, is said to have later regretted some of his treatment of her. In his memoir, Passion for Truth, Specter states the committee was full of “aging white males” who didn’t “understand the explosive nature of the [sexual harassment] issue,” and that he “had not know how painful it was for women who were watching the questioning, so many of whom had been victims of sexual harassment, and saw themselves, almost through transference, in Hill’s position.”
And therein lies the lasting legacy of this entire event. It was a moment in our history where many men and women heard someone say she experienced something that made her uncomfortable, and it was okay to talk about it, and it was okay to say it was wrong, and it was okay to do something about it. And while Thomas was confirmed to the court, the shift in the culture on the issue of sexual harassment was real and has been for the better for many, many people.
From Christina Radish at Collider:
Collider: We don’t really get to emotionally connect with Clarence Thomas and it’s hard to know how to sympathize with him in this, but at the same time, he is a very well spoken and intelligent man.
Wendell Pierce: With that in mind, you say, “What motivates him, and what can people connect to?,” and we can always connect to people’s humanity. When we see something atrocious, violent and awful that someone perpetrates on other people, we always ask, within that anger, hurt and pain, why? And that question of why really taps into a desire to understand the humanity of it, but the ugly part of humanity and human nature. So, it’s clear that you have to focus on the humanity. When it comes to the things that you can’t know to portray in a role, you focus on those things you can know. I know he loves his son, so that was something that I could key into. I know he’s on a journey of self-reflection, when he apologized in the middle of his confirmation with his fervent denial of all of it. That was very eye-opening for me. So, I focused on those things. I knew he had a great love for family and his son. That’s in his autobiography. He was trying to be the father that he knew this developing young man would need.
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1 in 3: According to a poll done by Cosmopolitan magazine and Survey Monkey of over 2,000 full-time and part-time working women last year, at least one-third of women between the ages of 18 and 34 claim to have experienced sexual harassment.
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Not happy with their portrayal: Former Senators Alan Simpson and Jack Danforth, as well as Mark Paoletta, a Bush White House lawyer who worked on Thomas’s confirmation, have all threatened legal action against HBO over Confirmation for what they claim are inaccurate events and a bias against everyone “except Anita Hill.” HBO strongly denies the accusation of bias and calls it “absurd.”
"I don't know what I'll do but it won’t be fun and games,” Simpson said. "I won’t just sit still. I’ll have a response, I always have. An attack unanswered is an attack believed." Simpson, who is played by actor Peter McRobbie in the film, said screenwriter Susannah Grant (a prolific Hollywood screenwriter who wrote the movie "Erin Brockovich") traveled to his home in Cody, Wyoming to conduct research for the film. Simpson said he enjoyed his time with Grant and in his first read of the script, he found minor lines he disagreed with, which Grant told him she would change.
But after he was contacted by Danforth and Paoletta, Simpson said he took another look at the script and realized he objected to its portrayal of others involved. He sent a scathing follow-up letter to the screenwriter, saying it "savaged" Danforth's reputation and hurt others by putting false words into their mouths with comments about Hill and the confirmation process … According to sources familiar with the negotiations, there has been some concern from the Biden team about his portrayal, though both the vice president's office and HBO declined to comment on what interactions the vice president and HBO may have had.
But both Simpson and Paoletta said Biden is not given a fair treatment in the film.
"It’s unfair to everyone but Anita Hill, including Joe Biden who did a hell of a good job (during the hearings), the best he could," Simpson said.
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Scandal: Judy Smith, who served as Special Assistant and Deputy Press Secretary to President George H. W. Bush, is thought to have been instrumental in handling the Thomas nomination when things went south. She now manages a crisis management firm, whose clients include Fortune 500 companies and celebrities embroiled in scandal. Smith is thought to be Shonda Rhimes’s inspiration for the character of Olivia Pope on ABC’s Scandal, which stars Kerry Washington.
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Chutzpah: Back in 2010, Virginia Thomas contacted Anita Hill. Mrs. Thomas left a message at 7:31 in the morning on the voice mail system at Brandeis University, where Hill is now a professor of social policy, law and women’s studies. In it, Mrs. Thomas asks Hill to apologize and explain “why you did what you did with my husband.”
“Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband … So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. O.K., have a good day.”