David Choe · Peoples Temple · Suing Netflix
The Streisand effect sure is effective.
the true crime that's worth your time
It’s like some people haven’t even heard of the Streisand Effect. The origins of the term celebrate its 20th anniversary this year, I realized when I looked at its Wikipedia page, though technically the phrase itself is only 18 — it was first coined in 2005 by TechDirt writer Mike Masnick to describe how attempting to remove something from view actually attracts more attention to that very thing.
Actor David Choe brought the effect on himself this week, but this time we’re not talking about a photo of a mansion in Malibu: instead, the topic is a video that’s been freely available online since 2014, which Choe hustled to have taken down this week after it was shared on social media.
Many of you have likely been following this story, but here’s a quick summary of where we were before Monday: Choe, a writer and actor also known as the “Facebook graffiti artist” (to the tune of a reported $200 million), has in recent years appeared on shows like The Mandalorian and his eponymous 2021 art exhibit turned Hulu series, The Choe Show. His arguably highest-profile role in recent years is on Beef, the Netflix series starring Steven Yuen and Ali Wong that dropped on the streamer last week; it’s a show notable enough that it headlined last week’s Extra Hot Great podcast, on which Sarah, my Best Evidence better half, is a weekly co-host.
He also had a podcast called DVDASA, on which in 2014 he characterized himself as a “successful rapist,” while also saying — regarding a recounted anecdote in which he claimed he coerced a woman into nonconsensual oral sex — “I just want to make it clear that I admit that that’s rapey behavior, but I am not a rapist.”
That podcast was picked up at the time by XOJane writer Melissa Stetten, who painstakingly detailed what he said on the show in April 2014. It’s vile stuff, so consider this your trigger warning before you click on the Wayback Machine web archive of her report.
That podcast episode made headlines again in 2017, when he got a gig painting a mural in Soho. From a Hyperallergic report from June 2017 headlined “How the New Bowery Wall Commission Puts Rape Culture on Display”:
While he later claimed that his confession was simply “bad storytelling in the style of douche,” it’s still pretty fucked up. Even if it’s an embellished anecdote, it’s still one about sexual assault that Choe used to show how “cool” he is and to brag about how thrilling the interaction was. Worse, while it was perhaps the most extreme, that wasn’t the first time Choe has done something like this. The artist has an impressive history of making public statements that attempt to normalize or make a joke out of rape. And last week he was in New York City, painting a mural on one of the most iconic walls in the country.
The Houston and Bowery wall is curated by Goldman Properties, which has allowed it to display rotating murals since 2008. Since the passing of Goldman Properties founder Tony Goldman in 2012, the company has been run by his daughter, Jessica Goldman Srebnick, and its art practice has fallen under the banner of Goldman Global Arts, currently curated by Sarah Sperling. Being tapped to paint a mural at Houston and Bowery is a major career achievement for those in the street-art world, and the honor has previously been given to Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Os Gemeos, Lady Aiko, JR, Barry McGee, Faile, Crash, Maya Hayuk, and Futura, among others. Despite the fact that two women run the show at Goldman Global Arts, only three of the 20 or so artists they’ve invited in nearly a decade have been female. And now they’ve chosen a self-proclaimed (and self-congratulating) rapist.
The mural became the site of at least one protest, and was repeatedly tagged, reportedly in response to Choe’s history. Again, this latest chapter went down six years ago, and was well-documented by currently-in-publication outlets. It took me less than 15 seconds to google and find the reporting from that time; Choe’s instagram response to the controversy, in which he denied that the incident he recounted occurred, is also public and easy to find.
Fast forward to last week, when Beef was released, and Choe’s comments returned to the news. I first recalled the matter after seeing a tweet from Center for Investigative Reporting journalist Aura Bogado, but I’m sure many others raised the same point.
It wasn’t too long after that that the takedown messages began. Contacting Twitter as the David Young Choe Foundation, he (and/or his representatives) claimed that tweeted shares of the nine-year-old video clips of his rape story were copyright infringement, and that they should be removed by the platform. Twitter complied. And now his takedown demands — not the stale and long-ago-covered podcast yarn — are keeping his claims in the news. Per BuzzFeed:
Though the original upload of the 2014 podcast video was taken down, users on Twitter and TikTok have been continuing to share it and putting pressure on Netflix and A24, as well as Beef producers and costars, to speak out about the allegations against Choe.
Ali Wong, who starred in Beef and served as an executive producer alongside Steven Yeun, set her Twitter account to private after the allegations recently resurfaced. Yeun is not active on Twitter. They both appear to be friends with Choe, and neither has addressed his comments, much to the dismay of critics.
NBC News has also reported on the removal attempt, as has Variety, Deadline, the UK Metro, IndieWire, and others. As of publication time, neither Choe nor anyone from Beef addressed the matter — a situation that, with a little forethought and 45 seconds of internet research, might have been completely avoidable. But here we are, with a news cycle spinning even more, and perhaps rightfully so. — EB
In that same vein…Multiple franchise star Jonathan Majors has apparently been dropped by both his publicist and his management company, Deadline reports. The actor, who was arrested and charged with domestic violence last month, is set to appear in court on May 8. — EB
Also in the same basket, I suppose: Kentucky resident Taylor Hazlewood filed suit against Netflix last week, claiming that the streaming company depicted him in a “sinister and defamatory light” in its true-crime doc The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.
Hazlewood has nothing to do with the case THWH details, and has never had any sort of relationship with its central figure, Caleb “Kai” McGillvary. However, he did post a photo of himself with a hatchet to Instagram, which for some reason the doc used as a narrator intoned, “Is this a guardian angel or a stone-cold killer?”
BuzzFeed reports that Hazlewood, “a 27-year-old who works as a respiratory therapist in a neonatal ICU,” didn’t have any idea his photo would appear in the doc, and never gave permission to Netflix for its use. From the court filing, Hazlewood says he’s experienced “reputational harm, stress, anxiety, and anguish,” and is seeking at least $1 million in damages.
According to the Dallas Morning News, the Hazlewood hatchet photo was an “homage to his favorite childhood book, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.” But now, per the court filing, its out-of-context use “causes Hazlewood a constant fear of losing future employment or relationships because of people believing he is dangerous or untrustworthy.” As of send time, Netflix has not issued a response. — EB
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I know it’s only Tuesday, but this paywall-free not-too-long-read might be a good diversion for your afternoon break or commute today. From SF Gate, it’s a look back at a 1980 slaying of two escapees of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple cult, a couple who just the year before wrote a memoir about their experiences entitled Six Years With God.
The story, headlined “They fled Jim Jones only to be killed in their Berkeley home,” recaps the involvement Al and Jeannie Mills had in the cult and their break with Jones. It also covers their violent death five years later — a case that, to this day, remains unsolved. Snip:
The scene before detectives was a perplexing mix of chaotic and efficient. The street was — and still is — one of Berkeley’s most sedate, a tidy little enclave in the middle-class Elmwood neighborhood. But no one in the care home, just yards away, or nearby neighbors reported hearing a thing. The coroner deduced from the victims’ stomach contents that they’d been killed shortly after they’d eaten, which means someone murdered them between about 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. — hardly the dead of night.
The news was met with terror by Peoples Temple survivors. “Virtually everyone contacted about the murder said they believed it was temple-related,” the Gazette reported the day after the killings. Several prominent defectors went into hiding, concerned the long-feared hit squad had finally materialized.
Detectives were faced with dozens of suspects: people who were still loyal to Jones, family who had lost loved ones at Jonestown and perhaps blamed the Millses for the massacre, and even the people closest to Al and Jeannie, who often had complicated relationships with them. Lowell Streiker, a psychologist who worked with them after they defected, was candid in an interview with the San Francisco Examiner. “When our relationship was good, it was very, very good,” Streiker said. “... And when it was bad, it was horrid. … [Jeannie] brought terrible habits with her from the temple — vindictiveness, paranoia, secretiveness, back-stabbing — basically cult games.”
You can read the full piece at SF Gate. — EB
Wednesday on Best Evidence: When you don’t want to believe.
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