Have you heard the one about Louis C.K.?
Sorry/Not Sorry traces the fall and rise of Louis C.K. following the exposure of his history sexually harassing women. It talks to the women who spoke out, and subsequently received a slew of hate, and juxtaposes this against Louis selling out Madison Square Gardens, winning a Grammy, and releasing popular comedy specials where he walks on to standing ovations.
The documentary is very matter-of-fact. It just lays out the events, lets victims speak for themselves, and shows the media shitstorm around it. There’s no narration, you are left to form your own thoughts, ask your own questions.
For me, the big takeaway was our culture’s response to sexual violence only builds on and makes worse the harm done to victims.
Jen Kirkman talks about Louis’s interaction with her as being mostly weird and gross, but when she spoke out about it, suddenly she was inundated with hate, and every piece of press she did for her own career became sucked into a vortex of answering questions about Louis. She took down the episode of her podcast where she talked about it, stopped doing press for her shows, and eventually tried to back track on what she’d said so it would stop.
Men’s violence comes to be the defining story of women’s lives. No matter what you do, what you achieve, your story will always be That One Woman Who This Happened To. Like, when you die, the obituary headline will be ‘Famous Guy Accuser passes away’. Perpetrators come to completely eclipse their victims.
Sorry/Not Sorry is like a bingo card of the standard responses for insulating perpetrators from any repercussions of their actions. I have here “It’s just rumours, random tweets on the internet, so I don’t need to take it seriously”. And next out we have “If this was real why haven’t women spoken out?” Here comes “These women who speak out just want attention and publicity.” Bingo!
In Louis C.K.’s case, that whole process got short circuited when he issued a formal statement admitting all the accusations were true. You’d think that would stop it, right? If even the dude comes out and says all these women are telling the truth and I did exactly what they say.
WRONG.
When Louis C.K. went on tour with his show Sorry, he talked up how the women had consented to these interactions, something that was categorically false, he didn’t get a yes from anyone. And other comedians piled on, with Dave Chapelle talking about Abby Schachner, who spoke out about Louis masturbating while on a phone call with her, as “a brittle ass spirit” and said, “Bitch, you don’t know how to hang up the phone?” The victims became the punchline.
The bottom line is, Louis C.K. did what he did because he knew he had nothing to fear from doing so. And the victims were afraid to speak out because they knew they had plenty to fear from doing so.
Sorry/Not Sorry illustrates perfectly how the chat about how we are living in a new era for victim is bullshit. The dial didn’t move in their favour one iota.