The other night, I stomped on a massive cockroach, thought it was dead, and went to get a tissue to toss it out. As I leaned down, what I thought was a corpse began scampering at full speed. Something primal comes over me when it comes to cockroaches. I leapt, and killed it properly the second time, ensuring its body was ripped apart by the force of my bare foot. I do not fear cockroaches but I loathe them, having lived with someone who enforced squalor upon the household. They are rare creatures in my home. When sighted, they are never spared.
I thought of the cockroach that pretended to die — I am very sure of this; I ascribe that level of intelligence to that particular one — when I read that Harvey Weinstein is facing retrial. The serial sex predator, once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, was sentenced to 23 years in prison in February 2020, and later given a 16-year sentence in a 2021 trial. He was born in 1952; these sentences should have meant that he would rot in jail for most of the remainder of, if not the entirety, of his natural life. But last year, the first conviction was overturned on a technicality. Now, retrial proceedings have begun for the second, with an additional charge. All charges pertain to sexual assault.
Weinstein, like that cockroach, may resurrect himself, and he has many on his side. He may be just one man, but he is as symbolic to misogynistic behaviour as the Gorgon/goddess Medusa is symbolic to survivors.
The world has changed since 2018, when Weinstein was the chief effigy in the MeToo movement, which deeply transformed everything from vocabularies to laws on significant global and more subtle levels. Several media outlets carry reports of the confidence of Weinstein’s legal team. The far right, which has embraced him, has gained more ground everywhere, and most importantly in America. His exoneration would deal a further blow to women’s rights. The protests and the charged public discourse that accompanied his earlier trials are no longer as active. Understandably so: the pandemic, failing economies and the internal erosion of defeat after defeat have altered the might of progressive frontlines.
Weinstein has had a series of medical issues following his incarceration: he has been treated for bone marrow cancer, and had emergency heart surgery last year. Depending on what you count as karma, the outcome of his legal cases may not matter. But to some, justice is indeed linked to the law. Much is demanded emotionally of those who must testify again, who are fighting not only a set of personal battles but also ones of cultural impact.
That Weinstein still has the resources and the will to drag these women back to court is infuriating. We thought that cockroach was done with, didn’t we?
One cockroach to symbolise all cockroaches. How much harm it does to the heart, and to the mind, to not see justice either in one’s own life or at least for another, or on some bigger stage — in any place, really, except perhaps in the catharsis of art.