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‘On the Record’ Review: A Black Woman Says ‘#MeToo’ - The New York Times

‘On the Record’ Review: A Black Woman Says ‘#MeToo’ - The New York Times

‘On the Record’ Review: A Black Woman Says ‘#MeToo’ - The New York Times
May 28, 2020 1 min, 42 secs

This documentary about allegations against the music mogul Russell Simmons generated controversy at Sundance when Oprah Winfrey pulled out as an executive producer.

In her 1999 book, “When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down,” the cultural critic Joan Morgan describes eloquently the ways in which racism often makes it difficult for black women to call out sexism within their own communities.

The film details the allegations of sexual assault against the music mogul Russell Simmons, but its scope is much wider: It explores the particular (and often overlooked) struggles of black women in the #MeToo movement.

At its center is Drew Dixon, 48, who says Simmons raped her in 1995 while she was a rising A&R executive at his pioneering company, Def Jam Records.

“On the Record” closely follows Dixon before, during and after her decision to go public with her accusations in a December 2017 article in The New York Times.

It also weaves in the testimonies of seven other women who say they were raped by Simmons — including the writer Jenny Lumet, the former assistant and model Sil Lai Abrams and the hip-hop artist Sherri Hines.

But for black women who have been assaulted by black men, the quest for justice is intersectional.

Shortly before it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, Oprah Winfrey, one of its executive producers, dropped out, citing creative differences, and the filmmakers lost their distribution deal with Apple TV and moved to HBO Max.

Amid speculation that Simmons might have pressured Winfrey to withdraw, she told The Times that she continued to stand by the women in the film but felt that their stories hadn’t been sufficiently “elevated,” and that the film lacked an appropriately broad context that took in the “debauchery” of the music business at the time.

As Dixon and the other survivors describe their painful experiences of harassment and shame, the commentators situate them eloquently within the broader picture of African-American history and raise important questions that have often remained at the periphery of the #MeToo movement

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