Does HBO's 2016 Anita Hill hearing film Confirmation still hold up?

The Ringer

Released in April 2016, Confirmation feels both ahead of and out of step with 2018, says Alison Herman after rewatching the film on the 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings and Hill's sexual harassment allegations in advance of Thursday's scheduled U.S. Senate hearing on sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. "Rewatching Confirmation with an eye toward (Kavanaugh accuser Dr. Christine Blasey) Ford’s approaching testimony Thursday is, frankly, grueling," says Herman of the TV movie, which starred Kerry Washington as Hill and Wendell Pierce as Thomas. On the one hand, the film anticipated the #MeToo movement that would begin one-and-half-years later. Yet "the story already feels out of step with current thinking about the intersection between sexual politics and electoral ones," she says. Herman adds that the film's "harsh indictment of Washington’s power structure doesn’t imagine a future where 'sexual harassment and assault are wrong' has become a partisan issue. Still, the battle lines they do draw end up making a deeper, more enduring point, one that threatens to outlast the current dispute. The fundamental distinction that drives Confirmation isn’t between Democrats—who were in the majority and 11 of whom voted for Thomas—and Republicans. It’s between women and men who protect one another."