The cultural sector needs to be protected from itself. Maryam Hassouni makes that crystal clear in What the Fak!

Patronisation! Woke terror! These were some of the reactions from the film world when it was urged to appoint a intimacy coordinator at Dutch film productions. As if anyone could allow or display sexually transgressive behaviour in a studio with 40 other staff around it. Impossible!

Yesterday, the book What the Fak! by award-winning actress Maryam Hassouni and it describes exactly, first-hand, how even with 40 others on set, boundaries are very easily crossed.

This book, written as a furious indictment of the Dutch cultural sector, must have consequences. For the perpetrators she does not name, but who are perfectly recognisable to everyone, but not only that. What Hassouni describes concerns a rotten climate in our theatre, in television and among filmmakers. Maryam's story could be described by dozens of actors and actresses, but for fear of their own careers, it remains untold.

Loss of anonymity

At hotline Mores.online, set up last year to do something about the blurring of norms, dozens of stories have come in over the past few months, but none of them are followed up because the reporters do not dare take further steps for fear of losing anonymity. After all, once you are known as 'difficult', or have dared to tarnish the reputation of a producer, patron, co-star or director, you can shake it further with your career.

The writer has since announced her retirement from her beloved profession. This despite the many good experiences she has also had. The main reason is the way internal hygiene is organised. The public broadcaster that ignores signals that the shooting of that one randsted police series is rife with harassment, intimidation and physical boundary-breaking. The producer judging his own meat with an investigation into his own performance, and the environment stating that the actor in question 'is just like that'.

Character assassination

It is only a matter of time before the character assassination of Hassouni will also begin. After all, in her ghoulish book, she does not spare herself. We get to know her as an extremely ambitious woman, honoured early on in the world's highest places of honour. She is the first to receive an Emmy Award, is held up as an example to her generation of actors by the country's biggest patron and sits on juries of our most important film festival. It's logical to get high in the head and it's to be applauded that Maryam is also taking the consequences of that by opting for an extremely expensive private theatre school in New York.

That she returns to the forefront of Dutch film and TV with many compliments and major awards in her pocket and two university studies in her pocket, mainly provides her with many lessons in humility: she should not think that with her haircuts she can force herself not to do nude scenes, that her genitals do not have to be on screen and that she does not want to play clichéd Moroccan types. Not to mention completely that she is not paid as well as others. Most of all, she should be happy to have work.

Never have a big mouth

This is how the Dutch cultural sector works, and in which it does not differ from other industries. Hassouni has too big a mouth and did not learn at a Dutch theatre school that crossing boundaries is simply the core of the profession. When you call existing manners into question, you naturally threaten everyone who has so far accepted them without grumbling. That's how you create silent bystanders.

I personally remember how once, in a previous life, I entered a salary negotiation with the business leader of a well-subsidised national company and was so baffled by the minimal offer (how about a collective bargaining agreement, we don't do that), that I did end up getting more money, but also the assurance that I had priced myself out of the market with my request for a minimum wage. Duly noted. Later, employment with a national daily was also out of the question, and with a freelance contract as an 'oddity', I was able to work as a self-employed worker who paid charges, but could not derive any rights from it, with the consent of the union.

Collaborate

Meanwhile, as a fairly established journalist with high morals and loyalty to the Bordeaux Code, I get plenty of reports of abuses. With these, I can usually do nothing because my sources do not dare to go on the record, because in the end everyone is made complicit (money is power), and in the case of serious and proven abuses, expensive lawyers are brought in to intimidate, without there being even a legitimate reason for a complaint. This is how the industry protects itself, but not from itself.

I love art, I experience my moments of deepest joy in theatres, cinemas and museums, but the abuses, and double standards sometimes make that enjoyment difficult too. That is why Maryam Hassouni's book should have consequences. Not because that one actor or that jaded filmmaker should be indicted, but because everyone should think very carefully again about what they are collaborating on.

Good to know

What the Fak! by Maryam Hassouni is in bookstores now.