The extraordinary and disgraceful destruction of Geoffrey Rush’s personal reputation continues apace, the most recent contribution being a piece on RN Breakfast — an interview this morning between Fran Kelly and Adelaide Festival director Neil Armfield, which began with a pleasant canter around the 2018 Festival and the Armfield-directed Brett Dean piece Hamlet, The Opera (which has been very successful, and sounds ghastly), before turning very dark indeed.
Kelly began with the general allegations — one, of alleged “inappropriate conduct” once, in an STC production of King Lear — and then, almost unbelievably, asked Armfield (the director of the production), to comment on “what he saw”. Armfield, in a tone that quite understandably went from ice-cold to sulphuric acid, first tried to defer any discussion at all, then corrected Kelly on facts relating to the accusations, before having to shut it down again, as Kelly returned to it.
Nothing indicates more clearly the potential injustices of this process than the manner in which Rush has been treated. A theatre company releasing two-year-old allegations, of one possible event once, giving no details to the accused, and with no regard to the very limited number and corroborations of the alleged event, shows one very important thing: your whole organisation can be devoted to the production of culture that produced The Crucible, Othello, Hedda Gabler and innumerable other pieces which portray the power of groupthink crookedness of the human soul, and the potential for life to be motivated by deceit, revenge and destruction — and the first instance that comes along with a possible element of that, you fold like a cardboard flat of Elsinore Castle.
Sooner or later, as the US writer Erin Gloria Ryan noted, this process of trial-by-media is going to produce a discrediting case — one in which an accusation has been cut from whole cloth, and motivated by the less creditable of human motives. Cowardly organisations, and a compliant media — RN Breakfast, in this case, responding to higher demands for a new crassness, one suspects — will ensure it. When that happens, the process will reverse. You’d think, in a discussion of events around a production of King Lear, that there would be the realisation that, beneath all the moralising, life is a power play. The Daily Telegraph put Rush on the cover for culture war reasons, a blow against “the elites”. What’s the excuse of the “elite” institutions who have been part of this, and appear to be unshaped in their conduct by the culture they are established (and well-funded) to produce?
I agree wholeheartedly. This is like a bad report from ASIO that you are not allowed to know about and therefore cannot defend. Fran Kelly is in my opinion, after a long time of listening alas, a vacuous twit. There are a number of talented female news folks at ABC, but she is not one. She folds in the face of the coalition, harasses others until she runs into di Natale, Wong, Butler or Dreyfus who make her look very foolish. She has been elevated beyond her skill and compares unfavourably with her occasional locums Ellen Fanning, Hamish MacDonald and James Carlton (wasted where he is)
The bad behaviour comes from the STC for the manner in which this complaint/allegation was handled….& subsequently presented on a platter to Murdoch’s lowly Daily Telegraph. Which better rag to run with it as eagerly?
The media has prior form in being judge & jury in sensational cases, Lindy Chamberlain branded guilty-as-hell well prior to any court case commencing. In the matter of Geoffrey Rush the media scarcely needs to be aided & abetted by the STC.
When a complainant requests confidentiality and the employer agrees to protect their privacy, it leaves bother the employer and the accused in a bad place indeed….I have been there myself and I can appreciate Rush’s invidious position.
In my view an invisible complaint from an unknown complainant should be ignored outright as being probably vexatious.
I’m not clear as to why STC is behaving in this way. Surely, natural justice would insist that Rush knows what he is actually accused of, and by whom. Despite my sympathy and praise for all the men and women who’ve recently spoken out about past abuses, they named names and put their own to their accusations, unlike what’s happened to Rush. Protecting the ‘welfare’ of the anonymous accuser is one thing; publicly destroying the personal and professional reputation of another without showing cause, quite another.
Bit like 21st Century Salem.
Is there anything more righteous that a hack on a crusade?
“RN Breakfast, in this case, responding to higher demands for a new crassness, one suspects”.
Fran has a few possibles directions she can take I suppose; she can cop it sweet like a News Corp stooge, be fairdinkum or do a Jana Wendt. Either way, there will never be an excuse for the first option.
Oops, that’s weird. That was never supposed to be a response to Klewso. Sorry.