The Celebrity Sexual Harassment and Rapists Thread

[Carbomb]

The only singer that's ever really been impacted is R Kelly, and that's mainly because he escalated his noncery to outright criminal, prosecutable levels. Prior to that, everybody seemed OK with his relationship with an underage Aaliyah.

Let's also not forget Jerry Lee Lewis.

It's only whataboutery if the examples are being used to excuse Brand. I'd rather we used them as a means of shaming the media into doing their fucking job. 

[Merzbow]

1 hour ago, Tamura said:

The number of actors, many of them big names, willing to appear in Roman Polanski films suggests some people within the entertainment industry are prepared to bury their head in the sand. It's not like the vast majority of them actually need to work with him is it, they aren't poor, out-of-work actors struggling to pay their rent.

It's worse than just that, many big names from all over film signed some shite in support of him. A shocking amount of names you'd have expected much better from and most people will likely find their fave there.

https://m.imdb.com/list/ls090808434/

[Keith Houchen]

4 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

It's worse than just that, many big names from all over film signed some shite in support of him. A shocking amount of names you'd have expected much better from and most people will likely find their fave there.

https://m.imdb.com/list/ls090808434/

Lol at the first name on that list. What a shocker!

[Tim Healys Chutney Spoon]

3 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Lol at the first name on that list. What a shocker!

Penultimate name isn't overly surprising either....

 

Does seem quite a few of the 'luvvy darlings' set on that list though, which always seem to be looking out for eachother. 

[Jazzy G]

3 hours ago, deathrey said:

Very well said @SuperBacon

I know everyone is making a big deal of questionable things he said on tv/during stand up routines etc. That was on stage and makes him a prick, it was during a time where the culture wholly accepted people being pricks and glorified it. That is not the same as rape and sexual assault. They are crimes. 

Yeah, if we're using jokes people tell during their stand-up routines as evidence of a person's behind the scenes activities Frankie Boyle is history's greatest monster. 

[SuperBacon]

18 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Lol at the first name on that list. What a shocker!

Its because its alphabetical, but yeah that is a fantastic coincidence. 

Edit: Just clocked D-Mals tag on this thread. 

Edited September 20, 2023 by SuperBacon

[Factotum]

1 hour ago, Tommy! said:

"Researching a book", although the question of what he's writing about that needs him to research that never really got clarification.

 

2 hours ago, LCJ said:

Pete Townshend from the Who seemed to escape a media backlash too after “accidentally” logging onto a child porn site for “research purposes”.

Towensend was quite famously abused as a kid. Its literally in loads of his songs and he has spoken about it. His book did come out and it deals with what happened to him as a child,

He was seen as having paid for a site but I believe it was proven he never accessed it and his computer etc were clean.

He told to take a plea so as to avoid court and allow him to still tour. Badly advised really but he's an emotional guy and he probably would have hit a judge.

[Tommy!]

Just now, Factotum said:

His book did come out and it deals with what happened to him as a child,

Yesh, but still why that needs that sort of research I'm not sure. Still off topic and Pete Townsend is by all accounts a nob

Apparently it's not him the Simpsons, he refused to do it last minute so Rodger D got on the phone to Pete's brother to fill in last minute.

[Loki]

4 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

Framing this as 'Nuts and Zoo magazine bred a sexual predator' is lazy, stupid and quite frankly offensive to his victims.

 

2 hours ago, Carbomb said:

I get the impression that the reason why they're picking apart his past behaviour is because of Savile. There's now an established narrative that, because Savile was hiding in plain sight, with all the documentaries that analyse all the stuff he was saying and doing at the time as being clear indicators that he used as a smokescreen, someone like Brand might be the same, though to a lesser degree. 

I don't see anyone in this thread blaming Nuts and Zoo Magazine for Brand.  His criminal actions stand on their own, as does his more general behaviour that's on him.

However, I don't doubt that he was enabled and to some extent protected from earlier repercussion by the incredibly toxic "lad" culture in which his career operated.  That's not insulting to his victims, it's more about opening ourselves up to confronting the fact that predators like Saville or Brand don't operate in isolation.  They're not like serial killers, committing crimes anonymously - they are often out in the open and exhibiting behaviours publicly that should perhaps have been massive warning signs.

I don't know if any other Kiffers watched the C4 doc Spice Girls "Girl Power" but it is well worth watching mainly for its interviews with women who were tv presenters, singers, actresses, journalists at that time, about just how appallingly misogynistic and outright hostile the public attitudes were at the time.  Sexual assaults of the type the Brand documentary showed, grabbing women's breasts or bras, overt sexualisation, were rife (alongside predatory rapists like Max Clifford running the entertainment industry).

Whereas with Saville there's a temptation to dismiss it as "another era", all this shit happened in our lifetimes and recently enough that both victims and perpetrators are still around and active.   And judging by the number of current celebs rushing to Brand's defence, I suspect a lot of this stuff is STILL happening now, to young girls and young women in positions of vulnerability.

Edit: and honestly it should be a moment of reflection for all of us who grew up in that time, as to whether we picked up any lingering bad habits from that time.  I wasn't a Nuts guy but I bought Maxim and similar when I was a teenager, and plastered half-naked celebrities over my walls at uni.  If any of them were coerced into those shoots, I inadvertently contributed to that with my purchasing power.  How much of the porn we still consume as adults is exploitative in a way we'd decry if it was made by the BBC or C4?

Edited September 20, 2023 by Loki

[Factotum]

17 minutes ago, Tommy! said:

Yesh, but still why that needs that sort of research I'm not sure. Still off topic and Pete Townsend is by all accounts a nob

He's spoken about it. Its also in his book. Its been out there for years.

"Authorities could not prove that the website accessed by Townshend involved children, and no incriminating evidence was found on his computer. The Met stated that "it was established that Mr Townshend was not in possession of any downloaded child abuse images"

So I don't think lumping him in there is really fair given that. He was told to accept a caution and he did, which he shouldn't have probably.

[SuperBacon]

11 minutes ago, Loki said:

I don't see anyone in this thread blaming Nuts and Zoo Magazine for Brand.  

I didn't say they did?

[Keith Houchen]

Didn’t it take Townshend, quite a prolific writer, about a decade for his book that he was “Researching” to come out after he got done for noncing? And he said he was trying to prove a link between the banking system and paedo rings. Ok Pete, that’s why you did it, sure. 

[Tommy!]

4 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Didn’t it take Townshend, quite a prolific writer, about a decade for his book that he was “Researching” to come out after he got done for noncing?

You can only assume he had more "research" to carry out.

[Loki]

46 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

I didn't say they did?

In the context of our discussion here, it seemed like it.  Otherwise if you're railing against people on other forums you might make that clear.  I guess we're both discussing things between us, and also discussing the greater response, but it can get muddled.

[SuperBacon]

2 minutes ago, Loki said:

In the context of our discussion here, it seemed like it.  Otherwise if you're railing against people on other forums you might make that clear.  I guess we're both discussing things between us, and also discussing the greater response, but it can get muddled.

I don't go on any other forums. The Keff is the only love of my life.