There's no reason to pretend

“So what do you do around here?”

Another reason I fucking love Benedict Cumberbatch. 

Matt Damon has been saying that the men who haven’t been raping/molesting/inappropriately touching women should be praised for y’know, not being rapey and grabby, for having basic human decency. Someone on twitter was saying how if someone broke a dish, Damon would show up and ask you to say what a good job he did for NOT breaking dishes that day. 

Matt Damon, I’m going to quote the ancient one….IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. 

But the rage directed at Damon, a privileged white man who has the world laid out for him on a golden platter (I’m speaking as a woman who lived in a refugee camp for over a year to escape persecution and death in the Middle East…I can expand on that if you wish). 

It’s. Not. About. You.

This is about women, this is about the daily struggles of women. Women who wake up every morning and think “oh is my boss going to grope today?” “am i going to get blackmailed into submission?” “is my boss going to be condescending today?” “how much blatant disrespect am i going to have to put up with before i explode?” 

For a lot of women, this is a reality, this is every day.

Matt Damon, it’s not about you. 

But as most things, this reminded me of BC. I will forever and always blow his trumpet when it comes to the work he did for the Syrian refugees and for the graceful way he dealt with Weinstein. 

Damon had/has NOTHING to lose when the allegations against Weinstein started. Cumberbatch, on the other hand, had a movie coming out, had started the press tours, had introduced the movie at TIFF. TCW was set up to premiere just in time for Oscar nods, and even though the TIFF reviews weren’t kind as a whole, they all agreed that Cumberbatch delivered and he was generating Oscar buzz. 

Cumberbatch had A LOT to lose. And yet, he SPOKE UP. he could’ve quietly gone along, no one would have really blamed him and we would all have attributed his silence to him being a private person and never really jumping into inner-Hollywood drama, and being a busy daddy of 2 young babies and a busy actor and budding producer with his own company to run. 

And yet! 

HE SPOKE UP.

Almost immediately, he was one of the first actors to come out and he kept his statement focused on the victims, NEVER talking about himself except to say that he was disgusted. 

I hated Damon the second he said that he found Weinstein’s actions to be deplorable now that he had a daughter….Meaning that it was ok for Weinstein to do what he did when Damon had no daughters. Meaning that it’s ok as long as it happens to someone else’s daughter? 

But then you have Cumberbatch, with 2 boys. With Damon and the rest of Hollywood’s logic, he should’ve kept his silence then, encouraged his boys to do as they wished. EXCEPT HE DIDN’T. His boys will grow into men, read their father’s statement, see the campaign he participated in, and know the difference between right and wrong, between acting like a decent human being and well, acting like Weinstein (and Trump…and Lauer….and Rose…and Spacey…)

And the DAY that TCW was set to release, this movie that got pushed back, that meant BC lost a chunk of the year, lost the US market, he participated in a campaign that empowered and encouraged WOMEN and VICTIMS to speak up without ever, ever, ever putting himself into the equation except to lend his voice. his articulate, loud, methodical voice. 

How lovely is that? Just let yourself think about the statement he made.

So Matt Damon wanting praise for not being a rapist makes me love Benedict Cumberbatch even more. 

As a woman, as a victim, and as a budding advocate, I choose to praise BC in the way that he will never praise himself. 

Know why? He’s a decent, human being. 

He is a good man.

(I realize I’ve been writing essays on here latey but I’m going to be out of court for like 3 weeks and the advocate in my head is getting bored)

1500 pixels - 2017 04 10 - ’ The Child In Time ’ Still by Charlie Best = Charles Best TCIT-355

Charles Best : Anyone who caught last night’s BBC drama, The Child in Time, about a couple whose daughter goes missing while out shopping, will have found it a gruelling watch. As Sam Wollaston in the Guardian wrote: “a deeply affecting portrait of loss and what that does to love, painful but not entirely without hope”. I was lucky enough to be on set for a couple of days during the filming back in April. After three or four takes of this scene between Benedict Cumberbatch and Kelly Macdonald as the husband and wife, I tentatively asked the director if I could have one more run through for stills - the emotion was so raw and so intense that I actually felt guilty taking the pictures, as it felt like a terrible intrusion, perhaps one of the reasons I would never make a good photojournalist. Getting to watch actors this good, this close, is a rare privilege.