wenn24814246

Nate Parker’s big effort to get ahead of the story blew up in his face. The past two weeks have been full of awful headlines for an artist who, just earlier this year, was being called one of the best young directors in America, an artist telling a vital story with The Birth of a Nation. But Nate Parker the Man has overshadowed Nate Parker the Artist. In 1999, Parker was charged with rape and put on trial. He was eventually found not guilty, but his roommate (and current Birth of a Nation writing partner) Jean Celestin was found guilty. The trial transcripts are public record, as is the lawsuit filed against Penn State for allowing Parker and Celestin to stalk and harass their victim/alleged victim.

In the wake of Parker’s self-serving, victim-blaming interviews, the AFI has canceled a screening and TIFF has backed away from helping Parker promote his film with a press conference. So Parker was sent out again to speak, this time to Ebony. This piece is absolutely worth a read because it is appalling at times, it’s shocking at times, and it’s convinced me even further that Parker should not have a public forum in any way, shape or form. He’s making it worse. I want to say one nice thing though: this Ebony journalist interviewing Parker is named Britni Danielle, and she is AMAZING. It’s worth reading the piece just for their back-and-forth, because she can’t hide the fact that she’s not buying his argument whatsoever. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

His selfishness: “I think it’s very difficult to talk about injustice and not deal with what’s happening right now. When I was first met with the news that this part of my past had come up, my knee-jerk reaction was selfish. I wasn’t thinking about even the potential hurt of others; I was thinking about myself.”

Male privilege: “This is happening for a very specific reason. To be honest, my privilege as a male, I never thought about it. I’m walking around daring someone to say something or do something that I define is racist or holding us back, but never really thinking about male culture and the destructive effect it’s having on our community. “

What he knew about consent at the age of 19: “To be honest, not very much. It wasn’t a conversation people were having. When I think about 1999, I think about being a 19-year-old kid, and I think about my attitude and behavior just toward women with respect objectifying them. I never thought about consent as a definition, especially as I do now. I think the definitions of so many things have changed…. Put it this way, when you’re 19, a threesome is normal. It’s fun. When you’re 19, getting a girl to say yes, or being a dog, or being a player, cheating. Consent is all about–for me, back then–if you can get a girl to say yes, you win.”

Is that ‘yes’ to having sex? “If I can be just honest about it, just being down. Back then, when I was young and we were out being dogs it was about is she down? You think she down?… Back then, it felt like…I’ll say this: at 19, if a woman said no, no meant no. If she didn’t say anything and she was open, and she was down, it was like how far can I go? If I touch her breast and she’s down for me to touch her breast, cool. If I touch her lower, and she’s down and she’s not stopping me, cool. I’m going to kiss her or whatever. It was simply if a woman said no or pushed you away that was non-consent. Let me be the first to say, I can’t remember ever having a conversation about the definition of consent when I was a kid. I knew that no meant no, but that’s it. But, if she’s down, if she’s not saying no, if she’s engaged–and I’m not talking about, just being clear, any specific situation, I’m just talking about in general.”

He was ignorant… two weeks ago: “I understand [the bad reaction to my interviews] now, but I was speaking from a standpoint of ignorance. Well, when you don’t know, you don’t know. It’s like, if I don’t know how to swim and two weeks later I know how to swim, I know how to swim. Honestly, when I started reading them comments I had to call some people and say, What did I do wrong? What did I say wrong? I called a couple of sisters that know that are in the space that talk about the feminist movement and toxic masculinity, and just asked questions. What did I do wrong? Because I was thinking about myself. And what I realized is that I never took a moment to think about the woman. I didn’t think about her then, and I didn’t think about her when I was saying those statements, which was wrong and insensitive.”

Why did he do the Deadline & Variety interviews? “This is hard; I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this. Not everyone has the best intentions. I thought I was giving the interview, at the time of those two interviews–and one really just bit off the other–I didn’t know the status of the women. I didn’t know. I was acting as if I was the victim, and that’s wrong. I was acting as if I was the victim because I felt like, my only thought was I’m innocent and everyone needs to know. I didn’t even think for a second about her, not even for a second. You asked me why I wasn’t empathetic? Why didn’t it come off more empathetic? Because I wasn’t being empathetic. Why didn’t it come off more contrite? Because I wasn’t being contrite. Maybe I was being even arrogant. And learning about her passing shook me, it really did. It really shook me.

Whether he thought about his alleged victim in the past 17 years:
“No, I had not. I hadn’t thought about it at all.”

[From Ebony]

Nope.

I don’t know what else to say? He’s trying to say that he had a come-to-Jesus moment after his interviews got such widespread backlash. He’s trying to be brutally “honest” about his privilege and his view of consent back then, but he literally admits to ONLY THINKING ABOUT IT NOW. Now that there’s a backlash. Now that he has to think about it because it affects how people see him. Because it’s still all about him. He never thought about it in 17 years. He was always thinking of himself as the biggest victim, because “consent” to him was about how far he could go with a woman too drunk/unconscious to consent.

Photos courtesy of WENN.
wenn23460224
wenn24814246
wenn28731357