MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Police investigate sexual assault claim against #MeToo activist actress Asia Argento
By artappraiser on Tue, 08/21/2018 - 2:19am |Asia Argento has been accused of assaulting fellow actor Jimmy Bennett when he was 17; authorities will speak to him after learning no police report was filed at time of alleged 2013 assault
@ Associated Press via TheGuardian.com, Aug 21
Police are looking into sexual assault allegations by a young actor against Italian actress Asia Argento — one of the most prominent activists of the #MeToo movement. Captain Darren Harris from the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department said investigators will seek to talk to Jimmy Bennett or his representatives about the alleged incident at a Southern California hotel in 2013, when Bennett was 17.
The move comes in response to a New York Times story alleging Argento settled a legal notice of intent to sue filed by Bennett for $380,000 shortly after she said in October last year that Harvey Weinstein raped her.
[....] Bennett said in the notice that he had sex with Argento in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Marina del Rey, California, in 2013. The age of consent in California is 18. The notice claimed the encounter traumatised Bennett and hurt his career, the Times reported.
Investigators have learned no police report was filed at the time, Harris said. The newspaper said it received court documents that included a selfie of Argento and Bennett in bed. Three people familiar with the case said the documents were authentic, the Times reported [....]
URL:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/21/asia-argento-police-investigate-sexual-assault-claim-against-actor
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Comments
Oh bother, way back then the standard for this was Summer of 42 with Jennifer O'Neill or The Last Picture Show with Cloris Leachman. In the 90's the lads just created a perfect robot, alien playmate, or other convenient foil. Alright, in this case the boy's gay, so it's different, but I wish back when I was 17 some nice looking actress wanted to further her & my career aspirations at the expense of my pecker and then paid me off to the tune of $380,000. I'm guessing these kind of jobs aren't advertised through Monster.com or Craigslist.
[wow, she gave him alcohol at 17, how horrible. I think I started drinking at 13, so guess would have had my head together enough to run shrinking out of the room.]
Somehow it all feels quite different to me from the Harvey Weinstein bit. Maybe it's also this kid had been in a movie with her 10 years before, so I imagine he was a bit wise to the ways of the world including Hollywood (in that 1st film his mother was a prostitute who let a boyfriend abuse him...). Strange that California along with Oregon have the highest consent age in the country, even though there's some paradoxical lower age for civil suits.
File under #WhyIDontPostWithMyRealName and #WhyImNotASpokesmanForMeToo, even though I was quite supportive of Rose McGowan's suit and efforts, et al.
Still missed how this hurt his career to the tune of $380k, but I'm sure there's a good explanation.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 08/21/2018 - 9:00am
I'm guessing these kind of jobs aren't advertised through Monster.com or Craigslist.
You so funny. But it helps to accentuate this point about the real problem here. It's a very interesting problem she has here It's not that this makes her a hypocrite about harassment because like you joke, it's likely it wasn't harassment. But it's the culture of trading sex for access, and with this she looks real complicit because she bought him off, probably on advice of attorney, but she did it. She assigned the assignation monetary value, worth it to get rid of the problem. And that's the casting couch problem of the Hollywood situation. By doing that at exactly the same time she's complaining about Weinstein, she's complicit with the system that allowed him to do a lot of what he did. The casting couch problem, it's a very realistic way of looking at things in that the whole business is is about whether someone has "sex appeal" for an audience, it's all about putting a price on attractiveness of some kind, and then trading that as a commodity, rather than just a skill or knowledge or manual labor.
by artappraiser on Tue, 08/21/2018 - 2:26pm
But that's the $380k i'm bitching about. I'm worth it, would have even bargained down to $200k, maybe lower. Ok, she bought him off, but he saw a moment to cash in. No one comes out looking swell.
However. It's not the same power dynamic as Harvey. It's best I don't dig in too much why not w head full of alcohol, but I dont think this kid had a "never work again" on his head like Mira Sorvino.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 08/21/2018 - 6:40pm
She is claiming her chivalrous white knight admirer, Sir Anthony Bourdain, paid off the blackmailing teen:
Now aside from questions about verity, that is one good narrative. What Metoo supporter does not in her heart wish the world were populated with such (gentle)men to make a lady's heart swoon?
by artappraiser on Tue, 08/21/2018 - 9:22pm
Wow, simply wow. Combine that with Bourdain's suicide... everything's crazy.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 08/22/2018 - 2:16am
Bourdain was far more to the movement than just her, and did far more than make her heart swoon as a "white knight admirer". If he did what she says, and he's f'ing dead so can't really dispute it, what is her reasoning for throwing him under the bus? Because that's how it seems to me. It wasn't me, it was my man ... and he was worried about his own reputation (and felt sorry for the dude, does that help?). Screw that - and screw her.
by barefooted on Wed, 08/22/2018 - 5:45pm
sex, it's complicated, continued
by artappraiser on Wed, 08/22/2018 - 4:47pm
the saga continues, a summary to date followed by
Asia Argento's accuser speaks out
By Megan Thomas, CNN, Updated 3:06 PM ET, Thu August 23, 2018
by artappraiser on Thu, 08/23/2018 - 9:22pm
Trauma and adversity, stigma, bravery... rough stuff. Since he doesn't make any attempt to explain what was so life-destroying about it, it really is hard to understand his perspective as an "underage" 17-year-old boy. I know my father joined the Navy at 17 to go fight the Japanese, but he didn't have to face a 37-year-old woman - must have been rough (and my coyote experience was only 15 years difference, so I'm lacking some perspective). But hey, $380k may help to heal the pain, to allow him better to speak out and "break the silence", even if it's a bunch of market tested word salad with no details.
BTW - at what point does this get called extortion, or is that not a thing anymore?
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 08/23/2018 - 9:36pm
we are on the same page, why I used the wording "paid off the blackmailer" as regards Sir Bourdain. He impressed me as just the kinda guy to think "what's money for if not that?"
Edit to add: maybe we think the same because I have a similar dad story. Mine a sole surviving son dragged from high school graduation by the draft board to basic training and loaded on a ship to Japan with a whole bunch of other scared shitless guys Picked up some surviving troops from some small islands on the way, who scared them more shitless with stories of crazy Japanese who won't leave a cave even if you shoot a flamethrower in there. Lock and load, get ready to land, and the atom bombs go off. But in a way, isn't it kinda the greatest generation's fault we now treat 18 yr. olds like babies?
by artappraiser on Thu, 08/23/2018 - 9:51pm
Or simply I finished school early and left home just turned 17, so I was already in college when I, the underage lad with no one to understand his perspective, was supposed to be so endangered by them damn elder wimmin.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 08/23/2018 - 10:00pm
Ok like a year ago I would say this is a bizarro new development to this story. But we've had some major culture change in that year, so it's a new development but pretty standard in celeb and arts world these days (watch those pronouns, especially when people have bird or hot pepper names! Apparently the NYTimes style rulebook editor has decided the pronoun their writers will use for now is "they" and "their")
Who Is Rain Dove? by Jonah Engel Bromwich @ NYTimes.com/Style, Aug. 30
The gender-nonconforming model has been in the news after having turned texts sent by Asia Argento over to the police.
OH YES, THERE'S MORE...
by artappraiser on Fri, 08/31/2018 - 2:48am
They called my brother "Mr. Potato Head" - he actually liked it, to their chagrin.
My nickname was more of a hermaphroditic nature, for silly grade school reasons, but somehow had morphed by 12th grade into something less disagreeable and even Tolkienish, depending on which form.
People were always shitty towards each other & likely always will be - I don't see kindness sprouting from any of the new movements, except exceptional cliquish kindness - same as it always was.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 08/31/2018 - 4:35am