Anita

Anita

I was reminded of Twitter while watching Freida Lee Mock’s documentary “Anita,” about Anita Hill’s testimony before the Senate in 1991. Twitter, of course, did not exist then but I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if it had. The court of public opinion has always had a hanging judge presiding, but at least 23 years ago there was time for a trial. Today social media allows you to be executed minutes after you’re accused.

In 1991 we had CNN, the network news and the papers that was the infamous gauntlet of photographers and reporters through which you ran. Now in addition to that there’s a virtual gauntlet that is much more devastating to navigate. Would she have been able to become a high profile gender and workplace-rights advocate in today’s binary universe? And would he still be on the Supreme Court? Today’s media explosions can destroy both sides.

The Anita Hill Senate hearings were the first big hit of ratings based heroin for channels like CNN. It’s an origin story for the now-standard 24-hour news cycle’s repetition and regurgitation of often false, unproven information for ratings’ sake. What started out as a supposedly private response to an FBI questionnaire during the Supreme Court justice vetting process became a very public nonstop display of salacious details that had never before been uttered on TV.

To recap: In 1991 George H.W. Bush appointed Clarence Thomas, an African-American candidate to succeed Thurgood Marshall as SCOTUS’ first appointee of color; during vetting process a written statement from lawyer Anita Hill documenting alleged workplace sexual harassment by Thomas was leaked; this led to her appearance in Washington D.C., where the homogeneous all-male Senate committee asked some cringe inducing logic-defying questions; “Anita” provides enough footage to make your skin crawl explicitly answering why so many women hesitate before reporting workplace abuse if they do so at all.

And these hearings existed at the very thorny intersection of race and gender. “Anita” gets maximum mileage out of this, using comments from people like Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree and reporters Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson. “This was a Black man vs. a Black woman,” one talking head tells us and while American had certainly heard of racism and civil rights by 1991, sexual harassment was still pretty new for the majority to wrap its head around.

The movie splits its time between the details and aftermath of the judiciary hearings, and Hill’s current role as an advocate for gender- and workplace-rights laws. It doesn’t try to change anyone’s mind about her, instead focusing on how it put sexual harassment in the public spotlight. To her credit Oscar-winner Mock goes after both political parties, though she saves most of her ammunition for Democrats; the entire Senate commission gets raked over the coals, including our current Vice President, who is on the receiving end of one of the harsher comments in the film.

Mock also provides airtime for Girls for Gender Equality, a Brooklyn-based group. She speaks to her pride in seeing young women engaged with the movement, which she calls a passing of the torch that fills her with hope. These clips are intercut with footage of Hill speaking at a variety of events commemorating the 20th anniversary of her Senate appearance, where she is consistently poised, articulate and unflinching about what she went through and what it meant.

As a record “Anita” is an acceptable documentary sometimes more than that. But I wished for more time on both the hearings themselves and Hill’s activism afterward. And there should have been some exploration (or at least mention) of things like corporate diversity training or sexual harassment prevention classes, both of which directly responded to this case by seeking to deal with an increasing number of complaints and greater awareness.

When the credits rolled my first thought was how this trial would play in today’s Twitter verse. Late in the film, Hill takes us into a basement filled with file cabinets. Inside them are letters she has received in the 20-plus years since she testified before Congress; from one file, she pulls out a typewritten letter whose physicality feels positively quaint as if it comes from an era when you had time to think before putting your support or bile down on paper. Typing, stamping and mailing that letter would take an eternity by current opinion-rendering standards, not to mention all those wasted moments when the world doesn’t get to know just how outraged you are right this second.

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