Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation, a movie about a slave revolt that was supposed to be 2016’s answer to 2015’s #OscarsSoWhite, is facing a unique trial in Hollywood circles: The film’s producers, and the Oscar voters, will have to decide whether it’s more important to appease those who want racial equality in motion pictures, or those who want campus rapists burned at the stake.
Birth of a Nation was an instant hit at the Sundance Film festival, and studios entered a bidding war for the rights to release it. On the heels of last year’s Oscars controversy, with black filmmakers and actors boycotting the annual ceremony over charges of race discrimination in Hollywood, it seemed the perfect salve.
But the political landscape has shifted slightly since last February, and Parker, who is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in college, has become a member of a very unpopular crowd.
In 2001, Parker and his college roommate at Penn State (who also helped pen th screenplay for Birth of a Nation), were accused of raping a female student while she was intoxicated and barely conscious. The accuser also claimed Parker and his roommate stalked, harassed and intimidated her after she went to authorities. Parker was eventually acquitted. His roommate was convicted and then appealed. The accuser ended up suing Penn State for $17,500, claiming the school did nothing to protect or help her during the ordeal.
She tragically committed suicide in 2012—a fact Parker discovered just as the promotional campaign began for Birth of a Nation.
A film that was supposed to be a shoo-in for the Oscars was suddenly shrouded in controversy, and Hollywood’s social justice warriors are having a hard time figuring out how to approach a move that checks all the right boxes—minority directors, minority writers and minority actors turning in a spectacular project—but a director and star whose background puts their liberal bona fides at risk.
Suddenly Hollywood has to decide which group of activists are more important to pander to: last year’s #OscarsSoWhite racial bias activists, or this year’s campus feminists, eager to eradicate campus sexual assault by any means necessary.
Cracks are already appearing in the foundation. Posters for the movie have been defaced to read, “Nate Parker, Rapist.” Prominent African-American sites have posted lengthy think pieces calling on women and minorities to skip Parker’s film. One even called Parker’s ordeal an example of “the power of Patriarchy.”
Parker tried to respond. But his explanation—that the event happened so long ago, it shouldn’t matter—wasn’t satisfactory.
Campus rape activists, who believe in a presumption of guilt, took to social media to respond, where they joined the regular crowd of social justice warriors for what has to be—for the movie’s studio, Fox Searchlight, anyway—a terrifying one-two punch.
Nate Parker. No Pass.: Nate Parker does not get a pass. Neither does Jean Celestin. Nor does the creation o… https://t.co/w7OUPlU7rb
— Black Girl Nerds (@BlackGirlNerds) August 17, 2016
Amy Ziering producer of @thehuntinground: "The absence of a conviction does not indicate the absence of guilt." https://t.co/JQay2lzJev
— Melissa Silverstein (@melsil) August 18, 2016
This isn’t the first time Hollywood has had a rape controversy. Roman Polanski is famously living abroad to avoid justice for his alleged crimes. The Bill Cosby case has stunned the comedy and moving-making communities. But this is the first time they’ll be in the middle of a battle between warring factions of their own political community.
