Addressing allegations in the guise of his House of Cards character is a cop-out. It overlooks those who have accused him.
This Christmas Eve, the 59-year-old actor released a strange and creepy video online titled Let Me Be Frank, in which he (uninvited) reprised his role as Frank Underwood. There’s an uncomfortable 11-second silence as the short film begins, before Spacey/Underwood, donning a Christmassy apron, looks straight to camera and announces: “I know what you want.” My instinct is that he really doesn’t.
I’ll refrain from providing a running commentary of the entire three-minute clip, but needless to say it looks like an attempt by the disgraced Hollywood star to address both his professional and personal decline: “So we’re not done no matter what anyone says, and besides, I know what you want. You want me back,” he says, apparently referencing both the fact his character was quickly killed off from the final season of House of Cards, and that in Hollywood Spacey is now something of a pariah. Since October 2017, more than 30 people have come forward to make accusations of sexual misconduct against Spacey. He disappeared from public life soon after the first.
To my mind, an effort to critique and comprehend this video from an artistic perspective does Spacey too much of a service. It’s not unusual for an artist to respond to their flaws through their work and practice, but for an actor facing such accusations to do so only in character is cowardice – a cop-out and a deflection. When the part you play is that of a murderous, conniving and ruthless villain, true expressions of regret or honesty don’t quickly come to the fore.
“You wouldn’t believe the worst without evidence, would you? You wouldn’t rush to judgment without facts, would you?” he asks, as Spacey-cum-Underwood. It’s not too much of a stretch to read this as Spacey denying what he is accused of, not for the first time playing the victim, and despite the fact he has already accepted that he is in no position to deny at least some of the allegations against him.
When, in October, fellow actor Anthony Rapp alleged that when he was just 14, Spacey (then 26) carried him to a bed and attempted to initiate sex with him, Spacey also pivoted attention away from his victim towards himself. In the statement he later published, Spacey offered excuses for his behaviour and a caveated apology, before coming out as gay, as if that was at all relevant. There’s a long and dark history of gay men being depicted as predatory and a threat to young people – Spacey (consciously or otherwise) conflated this historical prejudice with the position in which he actually found himself. It was a cynical attempt at a distraction.
It may be that, this time too, Spacey hopes to create complexity where there is none. This video comes just a couple of weeks before Spacey is due in a Nantucket court accused of sexually assaulting an 18-year-old in 2016, which he denies. Another distraction? I’ll leave you to be the judge.
“Wouldn’t it be easy if it was all so simple?” Spacey asks in this video. Yes, there are occasionally complexities to the question of consent – some particular, as I myself have noted, to the gay community. But with a string of allegations against him, some relating to minors, Spacey’s actions aren’t in that arena. It seems he once again hopes he can hide by including the allegations against him in a discussion in which they have no place.
The final line Spacey delivers in this bizarre film is simple: “Miss me?” Let me be frank, Kevin, no we don’t. Prior to this video’s publication, the last post from Spacey’s Twitter account was his Anthony Rapp statement, which concluded with a suggestion that Spacey understood how grotesque his actions had been. “I want to deal with this honestly and openly,” he wrote, “and that starts with examining my own behaviour.” Clearly, Spacey hasn’t.
As I sat in a pub last night, and talked about this with friends, they pointed out that in discussing this video we were once again overlooking those who have made allegations against Spacey. While scrutinising those accused of abuse is worthwhile, they did have a point: Spacey shouldn’t be allowed to control this narrative. So instead, here are the words of someone who was aged just 15 when he says a 24-year-old Spacey attempted to rape him: “I always have said, ‘He tried to rape me.’ I told him I didn’t want that, he went again to do it, I told him no, he went again and pushed harder and grabbed me and pushed harder … What he left me with, more than what he took from me, was a sense that I deserved this. And that’s the knot I’m still untangling.”
Wolfgang
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