Quarto 2806: A Acusação

A very good and watchable series on the sexual assault and the aftermath. And a good airing of the freedom that rich and powerful people have, to do what they like, with little or no consequence.

The subject matter is sexual in nature and there is a good deal of talk about this sexual assault and the sexual habits of Strauss - Kahn and others. Not a show for children and not for someone who doesn't want to hear about this issue.

So it's about what happened in that Room.

Hence a lot of time will be spent about poor people being evicted. He is a French politician. So the footage is from the US.

Than the talk about what happened in the room starts. But everything is stopped, because now you have to know the political persona of the pig. Fine. Than we go back to the story. And as the story progresses we're in the 1980s in France. Huh? Than some French ministers are speaking highly of the guy.

So is he a rapist? The documentary will bring some high school friend who will tell you how he was certain the guy would get a Nobel prize in Economy. That was back in 1968. So relevant!

When they have brought in yet another inept politician to tell how smart this guy is, I tuned out.

I had never heard of DSK but in actual fact he's all we hear about anymore... another garden variety privileged sexual sociopath not held accountable for a single thing. This was a nice, measured look at the world around him, his victims, his investigators and the aftermath. Depressing but interesting.

The documentary is certainly well made and comprehensive but it does not add much the facts already known. The case was very muddy 10 years ago and still is: the victim was a weak witness (as in most of these cases) and the powerful forces deployed by the defendant made it even muddier. So the acquittal was - and is - morally outrageous but legally inevitable. As for the possible plot behind the event there was and still there is no evidence, not even circumstantial, that anything like that had actually occurred. Which does not mean it didn't, just that one, if willing to go down that path, must embark into conspiracy theories. But there is one fact that was and still is incontrovertible: DSK was unfit for office, wether in business or in politics, and this affair helped take him down. So it was a good thing.

"L'Affaire Dominique Strauss-Kahn" both pre-empted, and encapsulated, the later "MeToo" scandal. To an ordinary mortal, it's a strange and disturbing story. DSK, as he was known, was head of the International Monetary Fund and the favourite to be elected the next President of France. Clever, charming and (thanks to his 3rd marriage) rich, DSK was accused of sexually attacking a hotel maid apropos of nothing; he was thrown in gaol, but later released when the prosecutors decided they couldn't trust his alleged victim. But another similar allegation emerged, and he was subsequently unsuccesfully prosecuted in France on the charge of pimping. This latter prosecution seems to have always been misguided: he was involved in prostitution but only as a client. But the story is still extraordinary: that there was, it seemed, an international organisation existing for the sole purpose of providing him with women for sex wherever he travelled, and even then, his relationship to the concept of consent appears to have been weak. Even today, many of the great and the good of French society are willing to appear in this documentary to defend him, or laugh off his behaviour, as if it is absurd to expect a man in his position to treat women with decency and respect. It seems to me that one part of the problem is simply the huge imbalance of wealth and status in our society (coupled of course with underlying sexism); DSK was in a position to live a certain form of fantasy life, and while that is not (and can not) be a crime per se (the alleged assaults are obviously a different matter), if you get to play King, you inevitably become less human as a result. At the end of this compellling series, it's much easier to feel sympathy for the women he encountered than for DSK himself, who seems to have escaped any reckoning. Even if you don't believe DSK to be a rapist, we do not see a flattering portrait of our world here.