Directly after finishing Miss Representation, I popped onto Facebook and this little clip came up. The eerie similarity between the issues she brings up and those elaborated on in Miss Representation made me feel like she was an important figure into evaluating Hollywood right now and the effects of discrimination in Hollywood on a single human. I especially liked her quote the discrimination is a result of "Institutionalized stupidity"
https://www.facebook.com/StrongOpinionsLooselyHeld/videos/775618815953466/?hc_ref=ARR68HF8dxxg0haWUxJSZT5M17SnVk4Wst2ctuyouCAWTMmpkPKylJyozmsb8l-WsxE
Mcgowan is one of the women that first came out with their accusations of Harvey Weinstein, triggering an increase in stories against Hollywood big names. In the following article, the controversy between Alec Baldwin highlights how blatant the boy's club is and complicit men are in the abuse. To summarize, Baldwin admits that one of the biggest rumors in Hollywood is Weinstein’s rape of Mcgowan and that everybody knew. Mcgowan responded by saying, "Told you everyone knew. No one cared. Men ran the show. Women toed the line. No more." Though this side of the story was also discouraging since one of the biggest news articles surrounding the controversy centered around Baldwin, I think it highlights an important underworking of Hollywood that these assaults and cases of harassment are not completely secret but rather a complex web of complacency and the heads of the industry actively diminishing women's stories. http://ew.com/movies/2017/11/04/alec-baldwin-twitter-leave/
To build off of this point, I was shocked when I googled to find out more about Rose Mcgowan just from the short clip I had discovered, that the first page of news articles featured headlines such as the following:
Rose McGowan Arrested For Felony Possession Of Drugs
Evidence for the media bias described in Miss Representation in every way. Mcgowan was accused of cocaine possession while, ironically, en route to the Women's March in Washington. Mcgowan strongly denies the allegation saying it was a “load of horseshit.” and"Are they trying to silence me?" https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/rose-mcgowan-speaks-out-about-her-arrest-on-drug-charges This article goes into how Weinstein hired private investigators into the felony charges and wanted to leak them to the press. The hearing won't begin until January 23rd but I think the case has the potential to be a clear indication of the media industry attempting to take down the image of a woman who poses as a threat to the abusive patriarchy of Hollywood. The language of the headlines place the blame into Mcgowan's hands and occupy the space once taken up by the case of rape. This could be an attempt to deface and delegitimize her in the eyes of the public, and even if it proves to be a true incident, it's current success of overshadowing the work Mcgowan has done demonstrates how the media operates without the fact to back it up and the bias it takes.
(http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/15/entertainment/rose-mcgowan-arrest/index.html)
Throughout this brief research, I've overall been disappointed by the disjunct information on her I've been able to parse. Perhaps the reason we don't see the accurate or clear reporting on this figure is that the news stories I've gotten my information from are all under the same hoods as the large corporations that, as Mcgowan points out, are attempting to protect themselves in the matter.
McGowan has a new, said to be revealing, book "Brave" set release for January 30th.
A preliminary hearing in the case is set for January 23.
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