Each of them are victims. We don’t get to shame how they victim-ed.
A few thoughts about Quiet on Set
I watched Quiet on Set, and I probably shouldn’t have. Having a childhood stolen by being abused and sexualized is something I know too well. I didn’t need to watch it in a different package than mine looked like.
But I do want to call for more grace than I’m seeing. Not for the perpetrators, but I do think we need to figure out answers and accountability there, because eighteen months in jail is nothing for chronic and sustained and horrific sexual abuse.
We’re lacking so much grace elsewhere, though. I want to see grace for the once-child actors who chose not to participate in this program. We don’t know who wanted to share but didn’t get the opportunity to do so because of time limits of four episodes (so far). We don’t know how sharing in the past has hurt others. We don’t know whose circumstances made taking hush money the best choice in the moment.
Each of them are victims. We don’t get to shame how they victim-ed.
(For those of you who were also victims, that goes for you too. It’s not fair to blame or shame or condemn yourself for whatever you did to survive. You’re here. Good job.)
I want to call for more grace than the interviewers gave as well. When the female writer refused to tell about the time she play-acted being sodomized, she was able to shut that down. When Drake was obviously uncomfortable, they kept the camera on him. They could have cut. It wouldn’t have given them as much drama as they wanted, but we’re dehumanizing a person when we elevate capturing the discomfort more than protecting the person.
God, I hope he has robust mental health supports.
Like me, I expect Drake’s healing goals aren’t to get rid of all the symptoms of PTSD, because some of us were traumatized so often and so viciously that we’re palliative cases. The question for us is not “how do we heal fully from what happened?” to “how do we live healthily with what happened?” We aren’t going to eliminate the trauma that was too catastrophic for our psyches to bear, but we can do the hard work to turn down the volume on our PTSD symptoms and find joy in the present and be honest about all of who we are, knowing that our abuse did not define us even if it did shape us.
As a single mom, I even want to call for grace for Drake’s mom. I can’t drive my kids everywhere, and I use the kindness of friends to make our lives work. Should she have heeded her husband’s warnings? Absolutely, we all say, with the perfect perspective of hindsight. But she was deferring to someone in the industry who she considered safe (wrongly, oh so wrongly), and while anger makes sense, she isn’t unforgivable.
(Or, if she is, Drake gets to decide that. Not us.)
I know more episodes are coming, and as they do, I hope they’re brave enough to talk about the trauma of racism in more depth. Yes, we need to hear the stories of white and white-passing kids who are molested and raped. But we also need to reckon with and recognize the wrong in how Black kids were treated in an industry that elevated white kids.
But again, those once-child actors get to decide. None of us gets to demand anyone’s story.