Cossman on #Metoo and the Corporation in Popular Culture @BrendaCossman @SULawRev

Brenda Cossman, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, is publishing #Metoo and the Corporation in Popular Culture in the Seattle University Law Review. Here is the abstract.

This paper considers #MeToo films and televisions shows that take place within corporations. Bombshell (2019), The Morning Show (2020), The Loudest Voice in the Room (2019) and The Assistant (2019) each explore the issue of sexual harassment and sexual assault within the corporation, loosely based on real storiesI consider the ways in which these films/shows focus on the corporation as the site of #MeToo events: sexual harassment and assault of female employees by powerful men. The representations are paradoxical. The corporate officers and directors are represented as culpable, as at best turning a blind-eye, at worst covering up the violence in the interest of their financial bottom line. Yet in most, the leadership of the corporation is ultimately called to action, if not account; powerful men are fired, the old boy network toppling (yet not). While initially part of the problem, they become part of the solution. Problems of sexual harassment and corporate governance are individualized, and the image of the corporation sanitized through the outcome.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. On a related issue, see Christine A. Corcos, Growing Up With Popular Culture in the Time of Title IX, 83 Louisiana Law Review 60 (2022).