- Of all the hashtag social movements, Me Too has proven among the most enduring, for its truth, for the power imbalance it revealed, and because so many women had the courage to speak out.

Today's guest tells a story about appearance, reality, and the facades that dominate public life, whether in the film industry or at the corner shop.

She's Winnie M. Li, this week on "Story in the Public Square".

(inspiring music) Hello, and welcome to "Story in the Public Square", where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from The Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller with "The Providence Journal".

- This week, we're joined by a remarkably talented young author, Winnie M. Li.

Her debut novel, "Dark Chapter" burst on the scene in 2017.

Now her second novel ""Complicit"" is in bookstores and she's talking about it with us today.

Winnie, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thanks, nice to be here.

- We want to talk to you about your career and about your books, but talk to us first about your journey to becoming an author.

When did you know you were a writer?

- Well, I always wanted to be a writer from the age of six.

So I just loved books and I loved writing for all of my childhood, but my mom said it wasn't the easiest career in terms of earning a living and she was right about that.

So, yeah, so in my 20's, I became involved in filmmaking, another form of storytelling.

And then sometimes it sort of, in your 20's you don't really often have the gumption to kind of go after what you really want.

So sometimes it takes a big event happening in your life to kind of give you that drive to write the book and get it out there and to find the issues that are important to you.

So I was 29 when I finally decided, well, 29, 30, early 30's when I realized I really wanted to become an author.

- And you mentioned storytelling.

What was it about storytelling that was so attractive to you?

- As a kid, I was just in love with fairy tales, like in love with all the stories that my mom read to me and I would go to the library and come back with like 20 books.

So yeah, I think it was just being able to be transported to other worlds.

And when I got older, I traveled a lot, which was my way of kind of that form of transportation, that kind of exploration, but at the end of the day, books are even more magical than traveling in some ways.

- So when your first novel "Dark Chapter" was a fictional retelling of a rape that you experienced, and we're so sorry that you experienced that.

Can you just tell us briefly what happened?

I believe you were in the film industry at the time, if you can just, again, just give us a quick overview of that terrible situation.

- Yeah, so like I told Jim, I was working in film and at the time I really wanted to, I thought I was gonna be a film producer and I was working on fictional films for an independent production company in London.

As somebody who traveled a lot, I ultimately ended up settling in London 'cause it was foreign, it was exciting, they still spoke English, you could do lots of traveling to see Europe from there and then I've always loved the outdoors, so I was on a hike at the tail of a business trip in Belfast when I was followed by a stranger.

And that stranger ended up following me and assaulting and raping me when I got to a really remote area of the park.

So that was kind of a bolt out of the blue, one of these things you don't expect to have happen to you, especially after you've traveled so much on your own.

And that's when I kind of realized that sexual violence is something that happens to a lot of people, it happens when you least expect it.

And it was so life-changing for me that I kind of realized I had to write that book about it, but I also decided to become an activist around that issue in terms of trying to educate people, trying to raise awareness, but also trying to build a community of survivors and celebrate our ability to tell those stories.

- So that brings us to ""Complicit"", which also features a rapist, and in the case of "Complicit", a rapist in the world of filmmaking.

It's a masterful book.

I thought of some of the great books about Hollywood by Nathaniel West, for example, and Larry McMurtry and others.

So it gives us that look at Hollywood and a lot more, we're gonna get into all of this, but can you give us just an overview of "Complicit" for those in the audience who have yet to read it?

And we're gonna recommend that if they haven't, that they certainly do.

- So "Complicit" starts, and it's set in autumn of 2017, some of you might recall what happened in that autumn of 2017, but essentially there's Sarah Lai is our main character and she's 39 years old and she's teaching screenwriting at sort of an unspectacular local college in Brooklyn when she's contacted out of the blue by a New York Times journalist who's quite celebrated, and that journalist says, "Well, I've got a few questions for you.

I heard you worked with this producer back in the day so I was wondering if you could speak to me about that."

So that's kind of what kicks off the novel.

And essentially Sarah decides if she's gonna speak to this journalist, and then we find out what happened to her 10 years earlier when she was working in the film industry and why she left and the kinds of feelings that might come up to the surface in the wake of all these investigations that were happening in 2017.

- So Winnie, you're gonna give us a brief reading from "Complicit".

So why don't we do that right now?

And I don't know if you need to set it up or not, but we'd love for you to do that reading.

- Sure, yeah, I'll do that.

I'll read, this is directly from the prologue of "Complicit", so hopefully it gives you a sense of the book.

"I see it now.

I looked at the free newspapers I collect on my commute, so much detritus abandoned on the seat of a subway car.

In these crinkled pages, I recognize names from my earlier life, faces I saw at a private club or an after party or an awards ceremony where I sat wearing borrowed jewelry and a borrowed gown, like all the rest of that vaunted, posturing audience.

Now in 2017, I sit among a different audience, the ordinary folk who commute on the shuttering subway through Brooklyn, already counting down the hours to when we will leave our offices and ride the same way back in the opposite direction, we who pick through the papers to catch a glimpse of that celebrated life.

What do we really know of these marque names, these reputations now ground into the dust?

Deep down, I'm quietly ecstatic and enthralled.

What latest studio head or screen icon will find his past circling back on him?

In horror films, there's the silent hoard of the undead dragging the villain down to a well deserved fate.

Some things we cannot bury no matter how much we obscure them with gift bags and PR statements and smiling photographs.

The truths live on, even though their traces can only be found if we're looking, in the comments that were edited out, the glances and unpublished photos, the meetings which took place behind closed doors, but were followed by strange silences or one way messages never returned.

So we are all seeing it now.

I saw it then too but I pretended I didn't.

I look at the life I thought I led and what I see now projected as if from a missing reel newly rediscovered.

The two images flicker, shift into focus.

I still can't make sense of it, but I'm trying.

I squint into the light and I hope I haven't been blind this entire time."

- Winnie, I love that you picked this passage because that one of the themes that occurred to me again and again throughout the book was this contrast between appearance and reality and the facades.

You describe award ceremonies where everybody's glamorous and beautiful, but unseen is the effort behind the scenes to borrow dresses, borrow jewelry, nobody really owns it.

That facade is fascinating in the way you portray it, but I think it's probably very familiar to a lot of people.

And I guess the question I want to ask is, to borrow your title, are we all complicit in that facade?

- Yeah, and I suppose, the title obviously when I was thinking of it was more about how complicit are we in the kinds of abuse of power that happen in that industry.

But if you think about it, like that's all interconnected, right?

I mean like why do some people have so much power?

Why do celebrities have so much power?

Because we've all sort of bought into this culture where, for whatever reason, if somebody's famous, they're powerful, and therefore you want to have that facade of fame, you want to have that kind of manufactured glamor, even though it is so manufactured.

So I think in the day and age that we live in, why did the Amber Heard, Johnny Depp trial get so much coverage?

Because they're celebrities, even though there's plenty of other situations like that, other couples that have possibly similar dynamics whose stories didn't get broadcast.

So I think, yeah, we've all bought into this facade of celebrity.

I certainly click on click bait that I probably shouldn't, but I'm like, oh, this person's famous.

So I think, yeah, I wanted to kind of look into that and look into this whole kind of culture we've built up where some people are held up as examples of something or other, and simply because someone's famous and accomplished, we think they're worth following and they have some value when there's plenty of people who have plenty of value, but aren't recognized.

- So Winnie, can you talk about complicit in the context of Hollywood and filmmaking?

I mean, you get into that in great detail in the book, but that's another level of complicity that you write about.

Talk about that.

- Yeah, so in terms of Hollywood and filmmaking, okay, so I started off, my own experience was that I started working in the film industry when I was 23 and like anybody starting out for the most part in show business, right, you're making teas and coffees, you're making photocopies.

I would spend entire days like photocopying scripts and binding them, but that is how you get in, right, that's your foot in the door, and eventually you work your way up, that's the myth that you work your way up and eventually get your opportunity.

So we're all kind of already told that this is the power structure that we have to work within, right, and you always kind of basically have to say yes if your boss is asking something of you, right?

Otherwise you might lose your job and you might never get another opportunity.

So I think even within that kind of hierarchy of power, like that is a already setting up a structure where we have to be complicit to certain demands and expectations, we have to be complicit to massaging certain egos because that is how we get ahead in the industry, that is how we advance our own careers.

- There's a scene too, where you describe the director, the hotshot young director and the new money man behind the production going through headshots and they're making kind of callous comments, sexist comments, misogynistic comments about the attractiveness and desirability, for lack of a better word, of each of the actresses whose headshots they're reviewing.

And I wonder, you know you've been on the inside, as it were.

How real are moments like that?

How prevalent is that level of misogyny and sexism in the industry?

- It's very real, yeah.

I mean I think anyone that's worked in film and worked with certain kinds of male directors wouldn't be surprised by that.

And I suppose if you're not in the industry, you might find that shocking, but for me, I was, when I was working in a production company and I might be in the corner like sending emails, I would be hearing all these sorts of conversations where male directors and male casting directors and producers were constantly commenting on women and how they looked and what they'd do to them and that sort of thing.

And you kind of almost just end up turning a blind ear to it 'cause you're so used to that kind of discussion, you're so used to that kind of talk.

So it was only after I left the industry that I was like, wait, that that's like not right, you know?

I mean I, as a young woman I was kind of subjected to listen to all this, listening to this like very casual objectification of women that you just become accustomed to it and you think, okay, that's how things should be, right, and it's okay for men to go around and make those sorts of comments and it's okay for women to be seen simply as sexual objects or fodder, as I say in the book and not much else.

So yeah, for me, that was very real.

And I don't actually think I was exaggerating in any way in terms of how misogynistic the conversations can be.

- And actually, the part that sort of stunned me was that in some ways I almost thought it was understated.

There was an insidious about it that it didn't sort of like hit you over the head.

It's like, oh, they're at a party and oh, wait, what just happened?

It's that banality that I found really so enthralling, because it draws you in, you can see yourself there and then these horrible things happen.

- Yeah, and I think also, it's also young women, there's some party scenes where young women let cocaine be snored off them basically.

And that does happen, right?

And I kind of wanted to explore that dynamic of why do young women go along with this kind of situation where they're basically being objectified?

Well, maybe is it because they think this is they're in, this is the way that they can get a job, right, or because we grew up in a culture where as women we're expected to be attractive, we're expected to be, it's considered a win on our end if we gain the attention of a hot shot director, if we gain the attention of a wealthy man.

And I think in the book, I really wanted to question like, well, why is that?

As women, we are capable of telling our own stories and making our own films and having our own successful businesses, but why do we always kind of devalue ourselves to try to get male attention because we think that's way to get ahead?

Not always, but there is certainly kind of, in the film world, there is that, young women often are expected to act a certain way around men to hopefully advance their own careers.

- So Winnie, why is that?

Jim was talking about some of the horrifying scenes, the misogyny and the things that were just accepted by young woman, also, of course, by the men in the book and in real life in Hollywood.

What is the power and the allure of being in filmmaking, whether on screen or behind the scenes, that allows young women or encourages young women or keeps young women in that industry, knowing that all of this is going on?

Again, this is really a question I think that speaks to the larger culture outside of Hollywood and maybe you can address that.

You certainly do in the book, but let's hear it now.

- What is the allure of the film industry?

I mean on one hand the industry creates its own PR, right?

So like if you look at all the movies about film, right, and there are some dark ones, and I even mention this in the book, there's "Sunset Boulevard", there's "Mulholland Drive", but there's also "La La Land" which in its own way was gritty, but there's so many films about bright, young thing that gets off the bus in LA and wants to make it and somehow miraculously does make it, and that obviously does happen, but by and large, you're very much dependent on connections to get ahead in the film industry so you kind of have to make your own connections, but I think Hollywood generates its own myth about how wonderful this lifestyle can be without actually showing the huge amount of work that goes into it and the fact the actors have to get up at four in the morning to shoot every day if they're working on something, right?

So there is this whole mythos about making it in entertainment, which I think a lot of people buy into, and maybe I did in some ways, right when I wanted to become a filmmaker, even though I never wanted to appear on screen, but there was the allure of storytelling, the allure of, the buzz of working with a team of people to create a work of art or a piece of entertainment that thousands of people out there could see or millions, like that is really exciting.

Is that creatively exciting?

Is that a form of power in its own way?

Probably.

I think it's all of these things, but there's no denying that we are a culture that's very, very much tied into visuality, into entertainment.

These days we go home and we watch Netflix, right?

So if something's on Netflix, it has a huge amount of command in terms of the amount of people it can reach.

So yeah, of course there's an allure to that, and of course, there's I don't know, maybe even a sense of legitimacy, like culturally, you're legitimate, if you are making something that thousands of people could see, which maybe explains TikTok and YouTube and all these other kinds of other forms of entertainment that are out there.

- So I was gonna mention social media and TikTok and sort of the allure, the power of celebrity, whether it's celebrity, and again, we're talking now in the larger culture, whether it's celebrity on a small screen or celebrity that you might seek in politics, some people go into politics drawn by ego and not necessarily for the most benevolent reasons.

Celebrity is such a huge part of American culture now and I would argue it has been for a long time, but particularly now with social media, have you thought about that?

And why are we so obsessed in America with celebrity, whether again, as individual celebrities, on a TikTok or on a larger stage?

- I don't know, and it's obviously not just America, right?

I mean I live in the UK which is equally celebrity obsessed.

I think kind of any developed country, any country that has a huge level of media is very celebrity obsessed.

And partly that's because that is the media machine, right?

Like there is an entire industry, we're both complicit in that industry, right, 'cause we're creating content that people are watching, right?

There is an entire industry which employs people, which is out there mainly to try to make money, obviously, PBS less so, but it's about creating content for people to see.

So celebrities are in their own ways created by the industry.

You'll read, in the UK, there's a huge amount of celebrity magazines, right, "Hello" or "What Have You", right?

And so you'll pick up these magazines, you find out what this model was wearing or how she celebrated her wedding and like somebody's out there creating that content, right And yet, people buy that and they read that.

So I think it's this almost a sense of intimacy in a sense of here's the celebrity and I can read about her wedding, I can read about what she had for breakfast or her daily routine and there's a weird sense of connection to this glimpse into another person's life, right?

And then also, I think that's what social media is about as well, like trying to find a connection with somebody who's more famous or a connection with a kind of network of people out there that agree with you.

But maybe we can say that's about the fragmentation of our society today where we're in touch with people over social media and Twitter, but we don't necessarily know our nextdoor neighbors.

We move around a lot today for jobs, maybe less so during post-COVID, but we don't necessarily know our neighbors, so we are more fragmented so maybe we try to seek that connection through social media.

- Winnie, you set the book in 2017.

You made reference to this before, it's the start of the Me Too movement.

What impact has Me Too had in the film industry?

- I think it varies according to which industry you're talking about.

I think in LA definitely, there's a lot of, there has been structural change taking place.

Talking more broadly about gender equality in LA, yeah, you're certainly seeing more female directors, you're seeing bigger name projects and bigger budget projects being given to female directors and also directors of color as well, because race and gender and all these sorts of I guess minoritized groups are intertwined in terms of access to being able to direct the big projects.

And so, yeah, there's much more awareness.

There's intimacy coordinators that deal with filming sex scenes.

There's a lot more practices in place in LA.

Less so in the UK, partly because the industry isn't as well funded here, so you don't actually have the money necessarily to put into place structures for safeguarding effectively.

And I don't know, I can't speak to other industries.

So I mean there are changes happening, that's one thing.

Then there's also perpetrators, what are we doing with perpetrators?

Yeah, I mean Weinstein has been convicted and he's serving prison time.

Bill Cosby's now out of prison.

But there are many, many other people that were accused and possibly found somewhat guilty of things that they had done who I don't necessarily think have served time in the criminal justice sense, and certainly not that hasn't happened here in the UK in a lot of ways.

So it's a bit mixed in terms of what's happened because you don't necessarily have perpetrators being held accountable.

And that's the big concern, I think that's a big concern for me in "Complicit" that fine, you might have somebody like Harvey Weinstein or Hugo North in my novel, but there's many, many other perpetrators out there.

And until they're held accountable and prevented from committing other trauma, there's gonna be a load of other women that will have suffered at their hands, and the impact on their careers, on those women's careers, is in some ways a huge cultural loss.

- So Winnie, the book also gets into racism in Hollywood.

And there's one scene that comes to mind immediately where it's a casting scene where they're going through photographs of people possibly to play the lead and when a black person or a person of color comes up, the photograph has just cast aside and like forget it, we're not gonna do it.

Has there been any progress in terms of addressing racism in Hollywood in recent years?

I mean it certainly has become a much talked about and written about issue, but what's happening on the ground there?

Do you know in terms of progress?

- I mean yeah there's a lot happening in LA in terms of even opening up the Academy and making membership more accessible for people of color.

So there has been a really big push in terms of that.

The Golden Globes has kind of fallen apart in some ways.

I don't know if you've been following that, but the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has been accused of not being very inclusive in any way.

So the Golden Globes doesn't even really exist in the same way as it did in my novel as an awards show.

But yeah, I mean if you look at the big profile projects that are happening, you definitely are getting more directors of color, you're getting, Marvel is making films that appeal to a broader audience, Disney is making films, although Marvel's part of Disney, right, but you're seeing, and if you look at Netflix, there is a lot more kind of diverse casting that's happening there.

things like Bridgeton, even for example, where you wouldn't expect there to be people of color, you are getting quite diverse casting so that is a change.

But for years, we lived in a landscape where predominantly it was white people that you saw on screen.

So growing up as a person of color, you never saw somebody that looked like you on screen if you were a Chinese, or if you were, it was a Chinese creepy person that sells gizmo, that sells like the gremlin to the white family, right?

There were certain stereotypes of Chinese people that you saw on screen.

And as a Chinese person, you're very conscious of that, so that is obviously changing now.

- So Winnie, your eye for detail is extraordinary, start to finish in this book, not only about Hollywood, but about America and about two cities, LA outside of the film industry and New York City.

I want to read just one sentence and then I have a question.

This is about New York, one sentence.

"The New York summer had started in all its glorious messiness, the teeming of a thousand feted parties and arguments and muggings on this concrete grid of streets."

It's just a beautiful sentence and there are so many of them in the book.

How did you develop this eye for detail and then how did you translate it into writing such elegant prose?

- [Jim] You've got about 60 seconds, Winnie.

- Okay, I mean I love traveling, right?

So for me, it's always about, I love traveling on my own, I love sense of place, right?

So for me, in my writing, it's important to capture sense of place, which you can only do through those sorts of details.

That's what makes New York different from LA, for example, or from Boston.

So for me, it was like my love for traveling that made me pay attention to description and how we can capture a setting or a character through words.

- Hey, really quick in 20 seconds, tell us about the Clear Lines Festival.

- That was a festival I started in 2015 to celebrate the ability of the arts to allow us to address experiences of sexual assault and consent.

So we wanted to showcase art, film, literature, visual arts, stand up comedy being created by survivors to make us more aware of the human experience behind sexual violence.

- Well, it's remarkable work and your books are amazing, Winnie.

Thank you so much for being with us.

She's Winnie M. Li, the book is "Complicit".

It's in bookstores now.

That's all the time we have this week, but if you want to know more about "Story in the Public Square", you can find us on Facebook and Twitter or visit pellcenter.org where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square".

(inspiring music)