Late last night, the American Film Institute (AFI) cancelled a planned screening and Q&A session with Nate Parker which was scheduled for Friday. Parker’s film, The Birth of a Nation, is based on Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion. Written, produced, directed and starring Parker, the movie has received much critical acclaim since being showered with accolades at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. And there had already been talk about the movie being a potential big Oscar winner, as well as some speculation that with issues of race and the Black Lives Matter movement being topics in the national zeitgeist, the film might spur more conversations about the history and treatment of black men.
However, both Parker and the film have seen their fortunes take a turn for the worse over the last two weeks. Variety published a story which revealed seventeen-years-ago Parker had been accused and charged with sexual assault as a student at Penn State. A woman claimed Parker and his wrestling teammate Jean Celestin —who has a writing credit on The Birth of a Nation— had raped her while she was drunk and unconscious in Parker’s dorm room. Both men said the sex was consensual and stood trial. Parker was acquitted, while Celestin was convicted and sentenced to six months in prison. The conviction was later overturned on appeal, and the charges against Celestin were dropped after the accuser refused to take part in a new trial. The victim claimed she became an object of harassment after coming forward, dropped out of school shortly thereafter, and ultimately committed suicide in 2012, with members of her family saying the entire thing “sucked the soul and life out of her.” As part of the incident, Penn State paid the accuser $17,500 for “deliberate indifference to known, severe, and pervasive sexual harassment” in violation of Title IX, with some having suspicions it was a case where a university protected their student athletes. On the other hand, others point out this was a case where the person at the center of it was acquitted, and accuse the questions and controversy of being a smear campaign.
The decision by AFI and Dean Jan Schuette —who’s embroiled in his own controversy— to cancel the event, citing the need for more information before a screening of The Birth of a Nation could be rescheduled, may be a bellwether as to whether the rest of Hollywood will shun both the film and Parker for the upcoming awards season.
This sort of issue is not specific to just Parker. Over the years, there have been many arguments over whether the personal conduct of entertainers should influence the perception of their work. At issue is how much separation can there be? Is there a point that someone's conduct becomes so heinous that it’s impossible to separate the two? Or should a work of art be judged solely on its own content and nothing else?
From Erik Pedersen at Deadline:
AFI dean Jan Schuette announced the cancellation in a note to the film school’s fellows ... “I have been the recipient of many different passionate points of view about the screening, and I believe it is essential that we discuss these issues together — messenger and message, gender, race and more — before we see the film,” he wrote. “Next week, we will be scheduling a special moderated discussion so we may explore these issues together as artists and audience.”
For his part, Parker has responded to questions about the incident in interviews by saying “it was a painful moment,” and he “welcomed the conversation.” Asked if justice had been served in the case, he replied: “I was cleared of all charges. We’re talking 17 years later. We’re discussing a case which was thoroughly litigated. I was cleared of everything. At some point I have to ask myself, ‘How often am I willing to relive it?’”
He went on to elaborate some more in a very lengthy Facebook post when the accusations entered the mainstream media.
The family of “Jane Doe” gave a statement to The New York Times asking for privacy but also praising the publicity for holding the men accountable.
In a statement to The New York Times, the woman’s family said: “We appreciate that after all this time, these men are being held accountable for their actions. However, we are dubious of the underlying motivations that bring this to present light after 17 years, and we will not take part in stoking its coals. While we cannot protect the victim from this media storm, we can do our best to protect her son. For that reason, we ask for privacy for our family and do not wish to comment further.”
But the woman’s sister, Sharon Loeffler, said that statement did not represent the sentiments of other family members or the woman herself. “I know what she would’ve said,” Ms. Loeffler said, “and that would be, ‘I fought long and hard, it overcame me. All I can ask is any other victims to come forward, and not let this kind of tolerance to go on anymore.’” Ms. Loeffler said her sister had believed there were other victims and had been broken by the 1999 case and its aftermath. “These guys sucked the soul and life out of her.”
On the other side of things are some activists, as well as some in Hollywood, who argue the timing of the controversy is suspicious.
"Personally, I find it really hard to separate the man from the film when he wrote, directed and starred in it," says Marcia Nasatir, an Academy member in the executives branch. "Do I want to see a movie from someone who has committed an assault against a woman and who I do not think recognizes his guilt? Right now, based on what I've read, I would not go to the movie."
From Julie Miller in Vanity Fair:
Al Sharpton discussed Parker and the backlash against him at the Harlem headquarters of his civil-rights group National Action Network last week. During his dialogue, Sharpton, who said he spoke to Parker by phone, spoke about the rape charges—which were made over two decades ago—and blamed the media for addressing them at, what he said was a key moment for the film. “Now, all of a sudden, they rediscover what they already knew,” Sharpton said, according to the Root. “The way you kill the message is you try to smear the messenger.”
“Nobody is justifying wrong, but if you go to court, charge somebody with the crime, and the courts in Pennsylvania in 1999 find you not guilty, you can’t have it both ways,” Sharpton said. “All I want to know is, what is the standard? Is the standard now that you can take an almost two-decade acquittal and beat him down and deny him the Oscars, but it’s all right for others who’ve done crazy stuff to be Oscar material? I just want to know, what is the standard?” Speaking about Hollywood’s failure to tell more stories about African-Americans, Sharpton continued, “All these millions of dollars these folks get paid, and they won’t tell our story,” Sharpton said. “All these elaborate homes they build, and they won’t tell our story. And here comes a man with a wife and five children, who puts it all on the line, and you think I’m going to be quiet? We are going to stand up and tell our story.”
In a new feature from Variety, two black directors, both of whom requested anonymity, expressed suspicions about the timing of the latest story development—which comes over a month before the film’s planned October 7 release.
“I don’t like the timing of this,” says one well-known black director, who asked not to be named. “I’m not defending his actions, but something is wrong about the way it went down.” Another black director who knows Parker, but also requested anonymity, said: “It worries me that a film and a guy with so much promise gets cut down a month before his masterpiece gets released. The last two years have proven how much our stories matter to this industry, and this seems like a way to muffle a very important piece of work.”
And others argue the entire controversy, whether one feels Parker’s film is tainted by the accusation or think it’s an unfair smear against someone who was acquitted of the crime, is evidence of how broken the system is in dealing with sexual assault allegations. A recent spate of examples, where sexual assaults and how the legal system dealt with the crimes engendered outrage, has also made the situation much worse.
From Willa Paskin at Slate:
The criminal justice system is so broken that, with regard to sexual assault cases, we have no faith in its ability to deliver a verdict of guilt and no confidence in a verdict of not guilty. The system is seen to be so skewed towards the aggressor in sexual assault cases that it cannot render a fair and just ruling. In the absence of such a definitive decision, accusations become the lifetime verdict. Nate Parker was acquitted of rape charges 17 years ago. These facts have permitted him to become a successful actor and director with a much-anticipated film shortly to arrive in theaters, but they will never free him from the suspicion that he is an unpunished rapist, despite being designed to do exactly that.
In criminal cases that are not about sexual assault, we are also skeptical of the criminal justice system’s rulings. Except in those instances, it is the verdict of guilt about which we have doubts. How could we not?