Everyone loves a good courtroom spectacle. The heightened nature of legal warfare, paired with celebrities or notable figures, creates an abundance of viral coverage. Since the release of It Ends With Us, the movie’s hype has been eclipsed by the flurry of lawsuits between its two costars, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
Public opinion has shifted as new information is revealed. People have been quick to jump to black-and-white analyses of the situation, looking for a Bad Guy to blame. Baldoni and his team knew this, preemptively mudslinging Lively before her sexual assault allegations against him came out.
The misogyny behind the smear campaign
To cause negative discourse about Lively, Baldoni’s PR team (managed by Melissa Nathan) accused Lively of the worst thing to accuse a woman in Hollywood of: being mean. An old interview clip resurfaced, in which Lively made a snarky remark about the interviewer’s body and ignored her questions.
It wasn’t a good look for Lively, but the internet’s reaction was overwhelming. In her twenty-year career as an actress, of course Lively had a less-than pleasant moment. The extreme backlash she faced from that interview really highlights the double standard of respectability politics forced upon women, especially since male actors (such as Robert Pattinson) have received praise for essentially doing the same thing.
It’s not like Blake Lively hasn’t had genuine problematic behavior. She married Ryan Reynoldson a plantation, and continued to feign ignorance and downplay that decision years later. She also had a website, Preserve, that published a newsletter titled “Allure of the Antebellum”. Let’s call it what it is: racist. And yet her racist actions, while briefly discussed during the storm of recent Lively hate, was a mere background detail to the accusations of being a mean girl.
Remember Amber Heard?
The flippant reception toward these lawsuits isn’t surprising, especially given the fallout of the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp trials. In fact, Baldoni’s PR team are the same people who represented Depp.
As a reminder, the Heard vs. Depp case was largely about Depp’s abuse toward Heard. Clips of the trial were internet gold, and Depp’s PR team manufactured fake lies online about his victim. Heard’s every move was scrutinized– first she was crying too much to gain sympathy, then she wasn’t crying enough which must mean that she was a liar, while Depp showed up in court with a smirk on his face, doodling and cracking jokes.
The public painted Heard as a liar because she was considered to be unlikeable, which is what the same PR team is trying to do with Lively. After all, misogyny allows women who come out against violence or sexual assault from men to be dragged through the mud, while the men who are accused continue on with their successful careers.
The battle between Baldoni and Lively is far from over. This is a reminder to all of us not to hastily jump on the bandwagon of public opinion. The truth, like most cases, is probably somewhere in the middle, but when it comes specifically to Lively’s accusations of sexual misconduct, remember who is pulling the strings behind the scenes. The outrage of the day is most likely contrived by PR. Before we brand Lively as a mean liar, though, consider the message that sends to all other victims.
What's Your Reaction?
