Rose McGowan’s new show is uncomfortable, and that’s the point

UNITED STATES
Yahoo Lifestyle

January 30, 2018

By Elena Sheppard

“Do I make you uncomfortable?” Rose McGowan asks in voiceover, as we are met with an extreme close-up on her face while she rubs what looks like powder onto her high cheekbones. “Good.”

This question and answer comes within the first 30 seconds of McGowan’s five-part series, Citizen Rose, which premieres Tuesday night on E!. Making her audience uncomfortable is clearly important to McGowan, who instantly seeks to dispel the version of her you likely know — “the version that was sold to you,” she calls it. She’s here to set the record straight — the record being the story that she has long hinted at, and finally publicly told in 2017, of being raped by Harvey Weinstein. “The monster” as she calls him in the series, never once saying his name.

McGowan is a divisive figure, and always has been. She was sold to the American public as a “bad girl,” a sex symbol, all big eyes and pouty lips. But that version is not who she is. “It’s been really hard having the mind of an artist but being in a town that sells you as just a commodity,” she says. In Citizen Rose, we are again given a constructed version of McGowan, but it’s a construction of her own making; and in that, particularly in this moment and in this narrative, there is extreme power.

Since coming forward with her Weinstein rape allegations, McGowan has been combination powder keg and necessary rocket fuel for the #MeToo movement, garnering supporters as much as she repels them. She has championed women’s empowerment and simultaneously called out resistance efforts like the black dresses worn at the Golden Globes, as well as feuding with Meryl Streep. She is not here to make people feel comfortable or good; she is here to tell the truth — her truth. “Let me tell you how enraged I am,” she says in Citizen Rose, “Not just for me, but for anyone who’s been disbelieved.”

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