“They’re impossible to touch, but they’ll touch you.”
That’s how “Rape In The Time Of Celebrity,” created by Vana Dabney and Deirdre Devlin, starts out in its parody of how so many famous men are able to shrug off rape allegations, simply because they’re celebrities.
Even when multiple women come forward to tell their stories, any nostalgia or positive impact from these men’s careers seems to exempt them from the demands that they confront the allegations.
While the video takes a comedic tone, it makes some important points, calling out the media and the public for seemingly going to great effort to avoid discussing sexual assault allegations against celebrities. In a diagram tracking “amount of fame” relative to “forgotten” allegations, “Legend Territory” includes none other than Bill Cosby, Roman Polanski and Woody Allen.
“Bill Cosby is finally paying the consequences of his crimes, at least in his career, but for decades he was able to get away with rape because people refused to believe it,” Devlin told The Huffington Post. “They focused on his achievements and his beloved television image instead. This video, which can be hard to watch at times, shows how ugly this mind set can be.”
The video is so absurd it’s laughable, until you realize that this actually happens all the time. “You know the best part?” A pseudo-celebrity accused of sexual assault in the parody says. “My victims get to see my face everywhere! I’m taking billboards, TV, movies! America loves me. It doesn’t matter what these ‘victims’ say or think. In fact, if they say anything bad about me people are going to hate them for it that’s why most of them stay quiet.”
