In this week’s news roundup: Expanding your awards show radar toward diversity, how Ellen Pompeo became the $20 million-dollar-woman, some badass women uniting to support Olympic abuse victims, the impending government shutdown, and the week in Trumpiness. But first we’re going to have to talk about this whole Aziz Ansari incident a little bit because everyone else is.

What happened with Aziz Ansari?

So, basically a publication no one had ever heard of before found a woman with a story about a terrible date she had with the comedian and Master of None creator, and published that story in great detail. According to the account, Ansari was repeatedly sexually aggressive and obnoxious with her, and didn’t listen to her asking him to stop or slow down. Why is everyone talking about this? Partly it’s because of increased awareness around the subject of sexual assault, harassment and misconduct, the #metoo and the #TimesUp movements, and because Ansari had previously declared himself a feminist. Ansari also co-wrote Modern Romance, a book about the challenge of modern dating, and there was an entire arc on Master of None that dealt with Dev’s awareness that his friend and creative partner was a sexual harasser. And some people don’t understand why a woman who was uncomfortable with a man in his apartment wouldn’t just leave. The story is complicated and is landing differently with different audiences. Why are there so many different takes on this? Because it’s not just another example of a man behaving badly: it’s a bigger story about a lot of things, like the different ways boys and girls are socialized around expectations in dating and sex; the blurred lines of consent; the murky definitions of ‘harassment,’ ‘misconduct’ and ‘assault,’ as well as whether ignoring hesitation, discomfort or outright lack of consent in sexual situations is considered any or all of those; whether you can call yourself a feminist and still engage in disrespectful sexual behavior; whether this story – and the way it was reported – was responsible or irresponsible journalism; and many, many more things. For a more complete rundown, you’ll want to read Vox’s “The controversy around Babe.net’s Aziz Ansari story, explained.”

In “Aziz, We Tried to Warn You” (in the NY Times), Lindy West took the period of time that Ansari has been alive – 34 years – and created, essentially a bibliography of articles and books examining the concept of affirmative consent, noting:

The notion of affirmative consent did not fall from space in October 2017 to confound well-meaning but bumbling men; it was built, loudly and painstakingly and in public, at great personal cost to its proponents, over decades. If you’re fretting about the perceived overreach of #MeToo, maybe start by examining the ways you’ve upheld the stigmatization of feminism. Nuanced conversations about consent and gendered socialization have been happening every single day that Aziz Ansari has spent as a living, sentient human on this earth. The reason they feel foreign to so many men is that so many men never felt like they needed to listen. Rape is a women’s issue, right? Men don’t major in women’s studies. It may feel like the rules shifted overnight, and what your dad called the thrill of the chase is now what some people are calling assault. Unfortunately, no one — even plenty of men who call themselves feminists — wanted to listen to feminist women themselves.

As always, Samantha Bee weighed in fiercely on Full Frontal.  (The whole segment about #metoo is excellent, including the phrase, “it doesn’t have to be rape to ruin your life,” but the Aziz Ansari segment starts about 4:20 in…)

Last week I live-tweeted the Golden Globes and the Critics’ Choice Awards and am looking forward to the Oscars, which I live-tweet every year. But we never got to talk about the NAACP Image Awards, which took place on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and provide a different vision of Hollywood that’s worth considering. At the Image Awards, the nation’s preeminent multicultural awards show from an African American point of view, Ava DuVernay won for Entertainer of the Year, and Daniel Kaluuya won best actor for Get Out. The Best Motion Picture was Girls Trip, for which Tiffany Haddish won Best Supporting Actress. Idris Elba won for his turn in Thor: Ragnarok. Black-ish was rewarded with multiple awards. Overlooked shows, actors and films also had their day in the spotlight: the intense film Detroit; Power, a Starz drama I’d never heard of before, took home a few honors, and Joe Morton was honored for his recurring role as Eli Pope (Scandal) where he has had some of the best and scariest monologues about power and control we’ve seen outside a White House press briefing. The event also includes achievement in music and literature, and “those individuals or groups who promote social justice through their creative endeavors.” The awards show is on my radar for next year, and until then, I’m going to check out some of these winners.

Ellen Pompeo Gets Huge Paycheck for Grey’s Anatomy

Ellen Pompeo (Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy) became the highest paid woman on TV, earning $20 million for this season (about $575K an episode, plus other contractual perks and development deals). How’d she do it? While it’s not easy, it’s a lot easier when Shonda Rhimes is in your corner giving you advice like, “Decide what you think you’re worth and then ask for what you think you’re worth. Nobody’s just going to give it to you.”

In the Hollywood Reporter, Pompeo said that “In Shonda finding her power and becoming more comfortable with her power, she has empowered me. And that took her a while to get to, too. It was part of her evolution. It’s also why our relationship is so special. I was always loyal to her, and she responds well to loyalty. So, she got to a place where she was so empowered that she was generous with her power. Now, what did that look like? It looked like her letting me be the highest-paid woman on television, letting me be a producer on this show, letting me be a co-executive producer on the spinoff and signing off on the deal that the studio gave me, which is unprecedented.” 

Pompeo also spoke about participating in “Time’s Up” meetings, and hearing stories from fellow actresses about how they’d been preyed upon, which Pompeo called “frightening,” but that it “confirmed that my path really was the right one for me, because I’ve chosen to financially empower myself so that I never have to be ducking predators and chasing trophies.”

McKayla Maroney Speaks Out about Abuse; Abuser is in Court Listening to Testimonies

In October, Olympian McKayla Maroney alleged abuse at the hands of Dr. Larry Nassar, who is accused by more than 140 gymnasts (women and girls) of abuse. This week, she released a statement in which she said that she had been sexually abused as a teenager by Nassar, the former doctor for the national women’s gymnastics team,” and that it left “scars” on her psyche “that may never go away.” Having already been sentenced to 60 years for child pornography, Nassar pled guilty to molestation, and will be sentenced this month. According to a nondisclosure agreement Maroney signed in 2016, if she spoke out about the abuse, she’d have had to pay more than $100,000; this week Chrissy Teigen offered to pay the fine so that Maroney could speak out, and other Hollywood folk including Kristen Bell, Michael Schur (show creator of The Good Place),  and Susan Sarandon stepped up offering to split the bill with Teigen. U.S.A. Gymnastics later said Maroney wouldn’t have to pay the fine if she spoke up.

The entire principle of this should be fought – an NDA to stay quiet about this serial monster with over 140 accusers, but I would be absolutely honored to pay this fine for you, McKayla. pic.twitter.com/lsBEgEqZpD

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) January 16, 2018

Other victims are speaking out in court, and Nassar has to sit there and listen to them read their statements – after he complained to the judge that it was hard for him to listen to these testimonies, the judge responded with “Spending four or five days listening to them is significantly minor, considering the hours of pleasure you had at their expense and ruining their lives.” Here are some of the women sharing their difficult statements in court.

‘Perhaps you have figured it out by now, but little girls don’t stay little forever. They grow into strong women that return to destroy your world.’ — This courageous group of gymnasts spoke up about their abuse while testifying against USA Gymnastics Dr. Larry Nassar pic.twitter.com/RQgvRa0rgo

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) January 17, 2018

Lunchtime poll: Have you seen the new Heathers trailer?

In this remake of the classic dark comedy, Heathers, the three bullying “Heathers” are body positive, genderqueer and African-American; while some see this as a shift in the power dynamic of high school (one teacher says, “fat kids can be popular now?”) others who are familiar with the original are wary of a plot in which the two white, cisgender protagonists begin murdering the now-diverse Heathers. Have you seen the original movie? Have you watched the trailer? What do you think?

What else are you talking about this week? Let’s continue the conversation in the comments sections.

Sources

• “Aziz, We Tried to Warn You” (NY Times)
• “Women can tell the difference between Aziz Ansari and Harvey Weinstein” (Vox)
• “The controversy around Babe.net’s Aziz Ansari story, explained” (Vox)
• Here’s what happens in a government shutdown (CNN)
• The NAACP Image Awards (nominees and winners)
• “Ellen Pompeo: TV’s 20 Million Dollar Woman” (Hollywood Reporter)
• “McKayla Maroney, Describing Sexual Abuse, Calls Larry Nassar a ‘Monster of a Human Being’” (NY Times)