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PostPosted: 04/16/16 6:43 am • # 1 
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Having followed this closely in real time, Anita Hill became a heroine for me ~ I'm looking forward to seeing this movie, even after reading this "ho hum" review ~ Sooz

‘I Could Not Keep Silent’: HBO’s ‘Confirmation’ Reexamines Anita Hill And Clarence Thomas
by Jessica Goldstein Apr 15, 2016 2:44 pm

Confirmation, an HBO film on the gripping Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings, has so much potential. Quick scene-setting gives way within minutes to the meat of the matter: when Anita Hill (Kerry Washington), then a professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, accused Thomas (Wendell Pierce), who had been her supervisor at the U.S. Department of Education and then again at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of sexual harassment.

The film, which premieres Saturday at 8 p.m., arrives at a national moment of reflection on, if not pure nostalgia for, the 1990s, airing on the heels of the outstanding The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story and a year after Monica Lewinsky reemerged in the public sphere as an anti-bullying advocate. Fluency around the issues at the center of the Thomas hearings — not just general awareness of race and gender but the real nitty-gritty, with the introduction of terms like “victim-blaming” into the lexicon — mean that Confirmation is reaching an audience that is readier than ever to see a dramatic retelling of this story.

But maybe that heightened awareness is working against Confirmation, which fails to explore this riveting, game-changing moment in American history in a new or vital way.

To use The People v. O.J. Simpson as a point of reference (not an entirely fair side-by-side as O.J. is ten hours to Confirmation‘s two), that series managed to take whatever preconceived notions viewers had about the O.J. trial, and everyone in it, and reexamine them. Marcia Clark, long a shorthand punchline for incompetence, emerged as a thwarted feminist hero; nuance and empathy was afforded to everyone involved, save, really, for O.J. himself. But Confirmation offers little of that important reevaluation. Instead of adding nuance, it eliminates it. Everyone is either pro-Anita — moral, righteous, disenfranchised in some highly visible way (usually by being the female subordinate of a male politician) — or pro-Clarence: boorish, chauvinist, willfully indifferent to the plight of women the country over.

Many scenes isolate the men and women from each other, as if to double-down on this divide and suggest there is little to no room for people’s opinions on the case to be determined by anything other than gender. Female members of Congress, whose march to the Senate to demand a delay in the Thomas vote is what enabled Hill’s accusations to be heard by the Committee, are shown watching the hearing together, apart from their male colleagues. Male senators gather in their offices, in their cafeteria, in their gym, and, most powerfully, in the front of the room at the hearing. Women meet in hallways and by each others’ desks, all these spaces that are only adjacent to power.

The performances are solid. Washington nails Hill’s cadence, her soft, slightly breathy voice. At the hearing, she deploys the calm, strained delivery of a parent attempting to explain a complicated subject to a kindergartner. Holmes’ displays this anguish from which Thomas never seems to recover, even when his wife (Alison Wright, really cornering the market on “my husband is not who he thought I was” roles) delivers him the “good news” that he has, finally, been confirmed. He telegraphs to his loved ones that the source of his pain are “lies” from Hill and her allies but, to the audience — in moments when he is alone — he shows, silently, that there is something else going on in his mind. As Joe Biden, then Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, Greg Kinnear gets the man’s folksy manner, the well-intentioned paternalism.

Speaking of Vice President Biden, rumors about his camp asking HBO to make changes to the film were not confirmed (…sorry), and he comes off the best of a bad bunch, a “good guy” for the time, for the circumstances, for whatever. (The insistence that he or any of the men involved be regularly reassured of their essential goodness, in spite of their respective action or inaction in this case, calls to mind Brit Bennett’s phenomenal, blistering essay on “good white people.”) He spends a lot of time with his hands literally in his pockets. He appears exhausted with the accusations before the hearings even begin.

In this depiction, it appears most of the men on the Committee are not even sold on sexual harassment as a concept. After Hill describes, in graphic detail, the ways in which Thomas harassed her, Biden immediately asks her to repeat the more salacious details, suggesting either a prurient interest in hearing the play-by-play again or, as Confirmation seems to want viewers to think, because he did not care enough to listen to her closely the first time. Hill exudes competence and class. Her opponents, well, do not. The worst offender is Senator John Danforth (Bill Irwin), who fixates on the idea that Hill has “erotomania” and enjoys vivid, sleazy sexual fantasies, a diagnosis that conveniently smears her with that classic female disqualifier: hysterical. Unsurprisingly, Danworth was displeased with this depiction and released a statement dismissing Confirmation as “full of errors and distortions where I was concerned.”

What occurs during the hearings will be familiar not only to anyone who lived through them but to anyone who has followed any public allegation any woman has ever made against a powerful man. It is no surprise that Hill is pressed by the men of the Committee as to why she took so long to come forward, nor is there anything surprising in her reply: “He said if I ever told anyone of his behavior, it would ruin his career.” There is nothing shocking about those same men asking her, over and over, “Why would you ever speak to him again in your life?” if her allegations are true, simultaneously dismissing the harassment she experienced as not that bad (“So, he never made you watch pornography?”) and so clearly disgusting that she would have to be a lunatic to associate with Thomas in the aftermath of his advances.

At one point, Hill describes one of the strangest and most skin-crawling of Thomas’ actions — in which Thomas picked up a Coke can and asked who put a pubic hair on it — an instantly memorable exchange. But when she refers to “the incident with the Coke can” moments later, Biden asks her to repeat exactly what happened, as if he has no recollection of the testimony that just occurred. That night, Biden is shown in his office, icing a toothache with a cold can of Coca-Cola. Then he takes a swig. The symbolism, we are supposed to gather, is totally lost on him.

So the weakness in Confirmation is not in the source material or in the acting; it’s in the writing. In the screenplay, by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovitch, Pocahontas), the lines that are lifted from life still sting. But the rest of the dialogue is too cute, too obvious. There is no subtext. No thesis statement goes unsaid; every Very Important Message is articulated, sometimes more than once. Lines are so on-the-nose they can feel like they came from an after-school special. Hill hesitates to speak out because “in a case like this, when someone comes forward, the victim tends to become the villain.” She tells her counsel, Charles Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright), when he tries to rile her up as practice for the hearing, “You need to learn the damn truth about sexual harassment.” It’s all so neat, so 2016-looking-down-on-1991 from our superior perch, as if we are really so superior, like we’ve come so far, we’d never victim-blame, we always believe women who accuse powerful men of acts of sexual misconduct, we’re better people now, all of us.

Real news clippings are used early and often; they are so much more useful, in many scenes, than the fictionalized material, you could easily leave the film thinking a documentary would have been a better approach. The most powerful lines are the ones Hill really said, the kicker of her opening statement: “It would have been more comfortable to remain silent. I took no initiative to inform anyone. But when I was asked by a representative of this committee to report my experience, I felt that I had to tell the truth. I could not keep silent.”

http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2016/04/15/3769925/i-could-not-keep-silent-hbos-confirmation-reexamines-anita-hill-and-clarence-thomas/


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PostPosted: 04/16/16 8:06 am • # 2 
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Here's a far more positive review ~ I'll weigh in with my own after watching the movie ~ Sooz

Joe Biden's Darkest Day: The Vilification of Anita Hill
HBO's "Confirmation" looks at the campaign to smear Anita Hill and put Clarence Thomas on the bench.
By Kali Holloway / AlterNet / April 14, 2016

“Sleazy,” is how Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy recently described the hyper-partisan politics currently on display around the stalled nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. That word is also an apt descriptor for the events surrounding the 1991 confirmation hearings for SCOTUS nominee Clarence Thomas and what amounted to the trial of his sexual harassment target Anita Hill. HBO Films revisits the historic moment on Saturday night with Confirmation, a retelling that avoids heavy-handed polemics while revealing the political machinations that vilified Hill to ensure Thomas’ place on the court.

Confirmation: A standout cast helps revive history

Kerry Washington (Scandal), as Hill, and Wendell Pierce (The Wire, Treme), as Thomas, star in the film, which opens with archival news clips offering a view of the sociopolitical landscape at the time. The failed confirmation of 1987 Reagan SCOTUS nominee and uber-conservative Robert Bork has left Republicans angry and Democrats wary of another political battle. Civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall, the court’s first and only African-American justice, has announced his retirement due to advancing age. President H.W. Bush’s nomination of then-federal judge Thomas, a black man whose politics could not be more divergent from his predecessor, is applauded by conservatives. At the same time, African-American civil, women’s and reproductive rights advocates immediately call for a rejection of the nominee. “Clarence Thomas is an insult to the life and legacy of Thurgood Marshall and everything he stood and worked for,” Patricia Ireland, then executive vice-president of NOW, states in footage from the era.

Thomas’ confirmation is nonetheless proceeding smoothly into its final stretch when a background check results in a call to Hill, a former employee of the judge who’s now a professor of law at the University of Oklahoma. The young attorney is reluctant to reveal her harassment by Thomas, about whom there have long been rumors of inappropriate behavior toward female employees, informing her questioner that “when someone comes forward...the victim tends to become the villain.” Reassured her affidavit will be kept private, Hill recounts the litany of graphic sexual comments Thomas subjected her to. Her remarks are of course leaked to the press, thrusting Hill—and the topic of workplace sexual harassment—into the national spotlight.

The film follows the ensuing timeline of events, detail by troubling detail. We watch as the women of the House are forced to insist on a Senate investigation of allegations against Thomas; the carefully orchestrated, White House-backed smear campaign against Hill; the stunningly botched Senate Judiciary hearings; Republicans’ disgraceful behavior throughout the proceedings; and the shameful inaction, and arguable complicity of Committee Democrats—led by then-Chair, Senator Joe Biden—in Hill’s character assassination.

Pierce and Washington give remarkably nuanced and believably human performances, instead of the caricatures less capable actors might have offered. Washington superbly recalls the composure Hill maintained in the face of humiliating and often irrelevant questions posed by a panel of white men who seemed to have little interest in getting to the truth. Often dressed in a near-replica of Hill’s iconic turquoise suit, the actress’s portrayal evokes empathy, indignation and above all, respect for Hill’s unshakable endurance, even as we see how the smears took their toll off-camera.

Pierce, too, deserves accolades for making Thomas seem three-dimensional. It’s a testament to the actor’s craft that the character is fleshed out beyond pure villainy, despite historical hindsight and an enormous body of evidence stacked against him. Clearly, director Rick Famuyiwa wasn’t interested in carrying out the takedown of Thomas he undoubtedly could, and arguably should, have.

A partisan political circus

The filmmaker is particularly apt at showing how the politicians tasked with overseeing the case failed miserably on every count. Orrin Hatch (Dylan Baker) suggests, with theatrical gravity, that Hill’s accusations are taken from a passage in the book The Exorcist. Alan Simpson (Peter McRobbie) goes with the classic crazy-woman trope, stating that multiple anonymous sources warned him to “watch out for this woman,” then denigrates the entire proceeding as “sexual harassment crap.” Arlen Specter suggests to Hill that she must be confused, fantasizing or delusional, in an exemplary show of gaslighting that preceded the behavior being given its own name. Senator John Danforth (Bill Irwin), Thomas’ old friend and former boss, maneuvers behind the scenes, pulling out every stop to cast doubt on Hill’s sanity and believability.


GOP politicians may have actively turned the trial into a circus, but their Democratic cohorts mostly passively watched. Treat Williams plays Senator Ted Kennedy, whose own familiarity with public sex scandals made him wary of risking indignity by too full-throatedly calling out mistreatment of Hill. Greg Kinnear is fairly excellent as Biden, who from the moment he learns of Hill’s accusations is resistant to fully investigating Thomas. During the hearings, the committee head did little to mitigate or even address Republicans' over-the-top attacks on Hill. By standing down, Biden failed to conduct the most basic due diligence in ensuring justice and truth would emerge.

“I think [Biden] did two things that were a disservice to me, that were a disservice more importantly to the public,” Hill said in a recent interview. “There were three women who were ready and waiting and subpoenaed to be giving testimony about similar behavior that they had experienced or witnessed. He failed to call them. There were also experts who could have given real information, as opposed to the misinformation that the Senate was giving, who could have...helped the public understand sexual harassment. He failed to call them.”


"His race and my gender": The SJC's failure to think intersectionally

Thomas famously denounced the hearings as a “high-tech lynching,” a cynical use of racism to negate the sexism at the heart of the accusations against him. It’s fitting that the man who benefitted from affirmative action but has dedicated his career to its eradication, opportunistically leveled the charge when it aided him despite disparaging other African-Americans for decrying the issue. Both before and since those hearings, Thomas has done everything in his power to pretend racism doesn’t exist, including silently but intently whittling away at civil rights legislative gains that helped him attain his current position.

Hill has since pointed out that Thomas’ remarks made the proceedings “about [his] race and [her] gender,” as if the two issues were discrete and exist on a sliding scale of importance. In fact, Thomas effectively exploited the erroneous idea that racism denigrates only black men and sexism solely affects white women, a notion that effectively erases black women and their experiences—including the dual and intertwined forms of oppression they encounter—from the conversation.

“Here I was, an African-American woman essentially being accused by Clarence Thomas of provoking his lynching,” Hill told Rolling Stone this month. “Historically, that is just a fallacy. There is just no evidence that African-American women had ever had the power to call for someone to be lynched. Secondly, it ignores the history of sexual abuse of African-American women...Seventy percent of the public when they were polled after the hearings believed Clarence Thomas [and] were willing to dismiss my experience as insignificant, both racially and in terms of gender. People say, 'Well that was really more about his race,' but in the eyes of the Senate, it was about his gender. It was about male privilege. Who do you believe? You believe the guy who is a guy like you. And I think that is where the Senate came in on that.”

Kimberlé Crenshaw, the legal scholar who coined the term “intersectionality” to describe the unique way in which systemic sexism and racism overlap in the lives of black women, was a key figure on Hill’s defense team. In a 2014 interview with the New Statesman, she noted that during the hearings, “African-American women feminists were trying to say, ‘you cannot talk about this just in gender terms— you have to be intersectional—there is a long history you cannot ignore."

Washington, who also served as an executive producer, was 14 years old at the time of the hearings and saw them as a rare divisive topic in her household. The actress also reports the neglected issue of intersectionality was among the reasons she was interested in taking on the project. “In my house, we were always on the same page when it came to issues,” Washington recently stated, according to Variety. “These hearings came along and my father was engaging in these very specific ways, watching as an African-American man’s reputation and his career was being stripped from him, and my mother was identifying as an African-American professional woman. It was one of the first moments that I became aware of my own intersectionality in terms of race and gender. I belong to a couple of boxes, and they might be at odds with each other.”


The current Republican backlash

Screenwriter and executive producer Susannah Grant told the Washington Post that insights were gathered from more than “40 people connected to the hearings” and that filmmakers “consumed countless memoirs, articles and televised accounts.” To ensure its veracity, many of those players were given early versions of the script to review. While Confirmation is not a documentary (check out 2014’s Anita if that’s what you’re looking for), Grant and others behind the production say they worked diligently to get things right.

However, Danforth and Simpson have strenuously objected to the film, reportedly even threatening to sue HBO over “distortions,” though the movie seems to give every character a more even-handed treatment than anyone gave Hill during the hearings. All these years later, Simpson still seems dubious about the very existence of sexual harassment, at least based on statements he made during a 2014 interview with WNYC.

“I’d had a wife who’d had much more harassment than Anita Hill. And that’s when I lost my marbles,” Simpson said. “I thought, ‘What is this? I mean, for God’s sake, what did he do?’ Well, nothing. ‘Did he touch you?’ No. What is it? ‘He wanted to talk about Long Dong Silver and pubic hair and coke cans.’ Is that it? Is that it? ‘Yes, it is. I wanted you to be aware of his behavior.’ And so I was a monster. I was just pissed to the core.”

The presence of these sorts of attitudes on the Senate Judiciary Committee helped shape the nation’s opinion—primarily for Thomas and against Hill—and did a tremendous amount to aid the judge’s ascension to the court.

“Despite the fact that Hill took and passed a lie detector test, the two sides were no match for each other,” said NPR’s Nina Totenberg, who broke the story, according to the Washington Post. “The Thomas forces, frantic but unified, marched together to a strategic tune composed by Thomas and Danforth and orchestrated by the White House. Hill’s forces, inexperienced, in disarray, and with little or no support from Senate Democrats, were left to flounder. When it was over, public opinion polls showed the people believed Clarence Thomas by a margin of two to one, a ratio that would reverse itself in less than two years.”

Hill's legacy, and familiar SCOTUS fight

With the complete turnaround of public opinion in Hill’s favor, attitudes around workplace sexual harassment also began to notably shift. As the Establishment points out, “Hill’s bravery single-handedly brought sexual harassment into the public consciousness. According to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filings, sexual harassment cases have more than doubled in the wake of the case, from 6,127 in 1991 to 15,342 in 1996; over the same time period, awards to victims under federal laws nearly quadrupled, from $7.7 million to $27.8 million.” Those numbers are a testament to Hill’s legacy, and the importance of Confirmation in ensuring its recognition.

Senator Patrick Leahy, one of the few who spoke out on Hill’s behalf (“I think Anita Hill was telling the truth," Leahy told the Seattle Times back in 1991. "It wasn't a search for the truth. It was a search to try to smear Anita Hill."), recently contrasted the Republican refusal to move forward with Garland’s nomination with the Democrats’ behavior, even in the midst of partisan conflict, back then.

“There is also a poignant lesson from those hearings for this very moment,” Leah said, according to the Washington Post. “There was a Democratic majority in the Senate at the time and a Republican in the White House. In sharp contrast with what we’re seeing today with the [Merrick] Garland nomination, with a Republican majority calling the shots, no one back then blocked Clarence Thomas from a hearing, from a committee vote, or from a floor vote. After those revealing hearings, when the committee voted to disapprove the nomination, the committee still sent Justice Thomas’s nomination to the floor and the full Senate so that all senators could uphold their constitutional duty. We followed precedent, and we felt a responsibility to respect it.”

Though she has become a hero to many, Hill dealt with continued assaults on her character in the years following the hearings. Republican operative turned left-leaning media watchdog David Brock admitted to including "virtually every derogatory and often contradictory allegation" in his American Spectator writings about Hill, with the goal of making her seem "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty." (Brock now says a 1993 book he wrote to malign Hill was full of misrepresentations and denigrating information on Hill’s backers provided indirectly through Thomas.)

In 2007, Clarence Thomas wrote a memoir in which he assailed Hill as his "most traitorous adversary,” a charge to which Hill responded in a New York Times column, “I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.” In 2010, Thomas’ wife left a voicemail for Anita Hill asking her to recant her testimony, a baffling suggestion and overstepping of boundaries for the ages.

Yet Hill, today as yesterday, has taken the high ground, while remaining honest and forthcoming. "I'm really at peace with my role in history,” she said in a recent interview on the Today show. “I don't think I have to become at peace with [Thomas] being on the Supreme Court.”

http://www.alternet.org/media/hbos-confirmation-joe-bidens-darkest-day-vilification-anita-hill


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PostPosted: 04/16/16 8:29 pm • # 3 
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I just watched this HBO movie ~ the story basically tells itself but the casting is TERRIFIC and lifts the movie to the upper stratosphere ~ Kerry Washington does an excellent job as Anita Hill, showing great vulnerability and internal fortitude/moral strength ~ Wendell Pierce as Clarence Thomas actually looks a lot like Thomas and captured all of Thomas' attitude and dishonesty ~ the film works in real news clips of the hearings throughout, and it's somewhat eerie to see Tim Russert, Peter Jennings, David Brinkley, and others reporting ~ all of the actors did a great job and some really do resemble the senators they were portraying ~

I remember the hearings being a mess but I didn't remember a lot of the details, many of which are exposed [on both Rs and Ds] and all of which are enraging ~ it came mighty close to creating the "perfect storm" ~

I highly recommend this movie ~

Sooz


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PostPosted: 04/17/16 5:38 pm • # 4 
I'll have to watch it. I didn't even know it existed.

I thought The People v OJ Simpson was the strongest series of the year. I see Emmys for Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark, Courtney Vance as Johnny Cochoran and Sterling K Brown as Christopher Darden. Brown actually talked to me a little on Twitter so he's a particular fav.


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PostPosted: 04/26/16 11:22 am • # 5 
Just finished watching Confirmation. It was very good and I was infuriated. Joe Biden, I think you grew up a little since then. He could have resolved this to a better conclusion if he'd shown a little more strength.

I also recommend everyone watch if only to refresh your memory. Coming up in May on HBO, Bryan Cranston as LBJ passed the Civil Rights legislation. Should be must see.


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PostPosted: 04/26/16 3:22 pm • # 6 
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I reacted much the same way, Kathy ~

Thanks for the "heads up" on the LBJ/civil rights legislation movie next month ~ I want to see that one too ~

Sooz


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