Brian Cox offers another baffling defense of Kevin Spacey
Cox's "old friend" Spacey didn't commit genocide, so what's everybody's problem?
Water is wet, sky is blue, Brian Cox has a controversial opinion. This is not the first time the Succession star has railed against cancel culture (“shaming culture” as he might call it) or defended Kevin Spacey. But it may be the first time the Holocaust has gotten name-dropped in the conversation. In short, his new interview with UK outlet The i Paper is a big yikes.
In long, Cox brings up Spacey unprompted while railing against cancel culture. He finds the industry’s treatment of Spacey “sneaky and petty and not right.” “Kevin is an old friend of mine,” he says, “All right, Kevin did certain things….” And then: “We all used to worry about Kevin,” continues Cox. “But at the same time, you don’t destroy a man’s career because of what he’s….”
Most PopularThe ellipses, here, are doing neither Cox nor Spacey any favors. When the interviewer proposes that people who commit sexual crimes shouldn’t be cast in films, Cox deems it “understandable,” but argues that “we live in a free society, so people are allowed to be who they are, and they sometimes push their luck, particularly in the sexual area of life. Not everybody is abusive. I’ve never found Kevin Spacey abusive. He was misguided, certainly, in terms of his sexuality. But that’s to do with him coming to terms with his own sexuality and how he’s dealt with that, and the dilemma that it’s caused in his life. And I think that one is to try to understand where he’s coming from, and what that’s about.”
There are gray areas in human sexuality, to be sure, and in fairness Spacey has never been found liable in court for sexual abuse. He has, however, been accused of sexual assault or misconduct by over 30 men. But Cox frames things differently, and alarmingly. “When you look at the Holocaust, it’s bad and it’s wrong and it should never have happened, that’s obvious. People who did that, they should be cancelled,” he says. “But because you sought to have sex with a few people, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should be cancelled.”
Related ContentPhew! That would be a pretty tough comparison to make even if Spacey’s father wasn’t an actual “neo-Nazi.” But the go-to defense for Kevin Spacey supporters is to downplay his actions, though typically not in such extreme terms. “Kevin grabbed people by their genitals. Many people. But nobody [has publicly said] he’s raped them or forced them into a sexual encounter. But there’s so much hatred for him because in his case it was man-on-man. That’s why he’s not allowed to come back. Because he offended men,” Sharon Stone is on record as saying (somewhat inaccurately, given that Spacey has been accused in court of drugging and molesting at least one victim). Similarly, Cox himself previously hand-waved the accusations with vague language: “I just think Kevin had certain things which he couldn’t or didn’t admit to, and I think it was a strain on him in many ways. And for me, that was Kevin’s only difficulty,” he told The Hollywood Reporter last year.
It seems fair to say that Cox is biased towards his “old friend” Kevin. But perhaps he’d champion anyone who has been so-called “cancelled,” so long as they didn’t perpetuate the Holocaust. He really just hates the concept. “We’ve got to an age now where people are going, ‘Oh, that’s bad, he’s out, boom, he’s cancelled,'” he complains. “What do you mean ‘cancelled’? How dare you cancel anybody?”
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