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A review by captwinghead
Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan
4.0
My thanks to Maureen Ryan for the hard, brutal work researching decades long stories of abuse and misconduct. I’ll have to sit with this one for a bit.
It's been a really long time since I've taken notes on a book. This time, I took notes partially because there was some really great commentary on the Hollywood cultture and partially because I'm definitely going to do a TikTok on the stories about Nicole Beharie's treatment on Sleepy Hollow. Ryan's writing is sharp and packs a real punch when she wants to. There is a wealth of information and statistics on Hollywood's history of casting and directing "diversity" and the changing stats on harassment in the workplace. I hope this book is introduced in film studies curriculums because the ending proves how far we have to go in changing these dynamics.
This book discusses how Hollywood has taught those within it not to value themselves or fight for better treatment, unless you're one of those in power. The way that tied into what happened with Allison Mack was, shamefully, not a perspective I had considered before. I still think there's a limitation to how much someone's bad acts can be tied to an unprotected childhood, but it's worth noting that the Hollywood machine probably didn't help her develop stronger will.
There's a wide range of topics here from toxic workplace environments for those behind the camera and those in front of it. It discusses what happened on Lost (and that Mr. Eko story will haunt me for quite some time), Sleepy Hollow (Beharie deserved better), X Files, The Muppet Show, American Hustle, and I will certainly never look at SNL the same way. They cover a wide range of people in the industry from staff in talent agencies to big TV actors like Harold Perrineau and Orlando Jones.
There's a lot of love in the way Ryan writes about the magic television and film and create and how it blinds some of the public to the hell people went through to create it. I think this book does a good job of not shaming the reader for any hesitance to learn about the way the sausage is made because once you know what went on behind the scenes for some of these productions, you can never love the work the same way again. It ends on a hopeful note, with a healthy does of skepticism because a lot of progress in this country seems to be cyclical. Representation, fighting toxicity in the workplace, once the hashtag stops trending, a lot of this stuff just fades from the public consciousness. There was a tweet circulating this past week about how 4 major studies let go of their officers in charge of Diversity and Inclusion. How much work could they have gotten to do if the articles about their hiring were 2 or 3 years old? You want to hope any changes made in the interest of progress were permanent, but we've seen time and time again that they usually aren't.
Anyway, this wasn't a fun read because of the nature of the subject matter. It was detailed without being sleazy or sensationalized, which I appreciate. Looking up the names of the some of the actresses discussed in this book and the reporters that dissected the "juicy" bits were way less respectful with their headlines. I will say, there were times I paused in reading this because it was quite dense and occasionally repetitive. I believe the density is more Ryan's writing style, especially when it veered into anecdotes that sometimes took me out of the flow of the book.
However, I definitely recommend this. I got some new recommendations for diverse shows to watch and it references some books on representation that I've added to my TBR.
It's been a really long time since I've taken notes on a book. This time, I took notes partially because there was some really great commentary on the Hollywood cultture and partially because I'm definitely going to do a TikTok on the stories about Nicole Beharie's treatment on Sleepy Hollow. Ryan's writing is sharp and packs a real punch when she wants to. There is a wealth of information and statistics on Hollywood's history of casting and directing "diversity" and the changing stats on harassment in the workplace. I hope this book is introduced in film studies curriculums because the ending proves how far we have to go in changing these dynamics.
This book discusses how Hollywood has taught those within it not to value themselves or fight for better treatment, unless you're one of those in power. The way that tied into what happened with Allison Mack was, shamefully, not a perspective I had considered before. I still think there's a limitation to how much someone's bad acts can be tied to an unprotected childhood, but it's worth noting that the Hollywood machine probably didn't help her develop stronger will.
There's a wide range of topics here from toxic workplace environments for those behind the camera and those in front of it. It discusses what happened on Lost (and that Mr. Eko story will haunt me for quite some time), Sleepy Hollow (Beharie deserved better), X Files, The Muppet Show, American Hustle, and I will certainly never look at SNL the same way. They cover a wide range of people in the industry from staff in talent agencies to big TV actors like Harold Perrineau and Orlando Jones.
There's a lot of love in the way Ryan writes about the magic television and film and create and how it blinds some of the public to the hell people went through to create it. I think this book does a good job of not shaming the reader for any hesitance to learn about the way the sausage is made because once you know what went on behind the scenes for some of these productions, you can never love the work the same way again. It ends on a hopeful note, with a healthy does of skepticism because a lot of progress in this country seems to be cyclical. Representation, fighting toxicity in the workplace, once the hashtag stops trending, a lot of this stuff just fades from the public consciousness. There was a tweet circulating this past week about how 4 major studies let go of their officers in charge of Diversity and Inclusion. How much work could they have gotten to do if the articles about their hiring were 2 or 3 years old? You want to hope any changes made in the interest of progress were permanent, but we've seen time and time again that they usually aren't.
Anyway, this wasn't a fun read because of the nature of the subject matter. It was detailed without being sleazy or sensationalized, which I appreciate. Looking up the names of the some of the actresses discussed in this book and the reporters that dissected the "juicy" bits were way less respectful with their headlines. I will say, there were times I paused in reading this because it was quite dense and occasionally repetitive. I believe the density is more Ryan's writing style, especially when it veered into anecdotes that sometimes took me out of the flow of the book.
However, I definitely recommend this. I got some new recommendations for diverse shows to watch and it references some books on representation that I've added to my TBR.