{"id":16564,"date":"2024-05-16T12:28:17","date_gmt":"2024-05-16T11:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=16564"},"modified":"2024-05-16T12:28:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T11:28:17","slug":"enough-confronting-woody-allen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2024\/05\/16\/enough-confronting-woody-allen\/","title":{"rendered":"ENOUGH! Confronting Woody Allen"},"content":{"rendered":"

These are extraordinary times. Last month serial sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein, had his 23-year sentence squashed<\/a><\/span>; a Channel 4 documentary<\/a><\/span> aired new sexual misconduct claims against Kevin Spacey, and Woody Allen and Roman Polanski are feted at the Venice Film Festival. \u2018Hiding in plain sight\u2019 \u2013 and having ruthless lawyers \u2013 still seem to work as a treat in the misogynist\u2019s playbook.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take Woody Allen. These days Woody Allen looks like someone’s favourite teddy that\u2019s been savaged by a pitbull, but don\u2019t be fooled \u2013 he\u2019s as unrepentedly misogynistic as ever. And just as keen to claim his innocence: No Court Ever Convicted Me.<\/p>\n

Some days it feels as if #MeToo had never happened.<\/p>\n

So Woody is the guy who, since the very beginning of his career, made films about older guys glomming onto young women. Very young women. Mariel Hemmingway, in everyone\u2019s favourite Woody movie, \u2018Manhattan\u2019, was sixteen-years-old. Sixteen! Being drooled on by a 40-something Woody Allen.<\/p>\n

When shooting wrapped on \u2018Manhattan\u2019 Woody drove her to her parents mansion and suggested she run away to Paris with him, where he would make her a star. Would there be separate bedrooms? Asked the kid. Eh, no.<\/p>\n

Praise the Lord (and pass the ammunition), that was the end of that.<\/p>\n

But Woody went on to make more, and more, movies featuring older men \u2013 very often himself \u2013 and younger, much younger women.<\/p>\n

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Emma Stone, Allen, and Parker Posey at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cultural Icon<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Part of the blindness to this carry on arose of course from Woody being a \u2018cultural icon\u2019 for millions of Boomers. The softly-spoken, wonky-specked hero of their fav films, could do no wrong. Woody was their very own \u2018Lovable, Neurotic Nebbish\u2019.<\/p>\n

As Steven Kurutz of the New York Times<\/em><\/a><\/span> wrote that Woody was the litmus test for all things groovy: \u2018E. E. Cummings, Paris, 1930s jazz and the sophisticated, cultured world his films came to represent.\u2019<\/p>\n

Apart from a few sharp eyed critics like Joan Didion<\/span><\/a> who said Mariel Hemingway in \u2018Manhattan\u2019 was \u2018another kind of adolescent fantasy,\u00a0 a high-school senior with perfect skin, perfect wisdom, perfect sex, and no visible family\u2019, or film critic Pauline Kael<\/a> <\/span>who asked, \u2018What man in his forties but Woody Allen could pass off a predilection for teenagers as a quest for true values?\u2019<\/p>\n

Most people played along. It was just Woody, playing out his \u2018predilections\u2019. Hahaha. Then came real life.<\/p>\n

It turned out it was the same Woody Allen who groomed, seduced, and had a secret affair with his and Mia Farrow\u2019s sixteen-year old high school daughter, Soon-Yi. A young woman whom he had been de facto father to for thirteen years. A young girl, chauffeured to him in his apartment still in her school uniform.<\/p>\n

When confronted by a horrified Mia \u2013 she\u2019d found the pornographic photos he had taken of\u00a0 Soon-Yi on his desk \u2013 Woody went full DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim and Offender. Who cared if he destroyed his family and his partner Mia in the process? Certainly not Woody.<\/p>\n

He denied Soon-yi was his daughter, that he had been in loco parentis for over thirteen years. Denied grooming her. Denied that Soon-yi, a Korean street child, surviving on trash until adopted by Mia and then husband Andre Previn, was peculiarly vulnerable, having never even had a boyfriend until Mr Specs moved on her.<\/p>\n

No no no, wrote Woody. \u2018Here was a sharp, classy, fabulous young woman: highly intelligent, full of latent potential, ready to ripen superbly<\/a><\/span>\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cReady to ripen superbly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn in Venice in 1996<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Worse to come<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

During custody proceedings it turned out, as Dylan would testify years later in her open letter to the New York Times<\/em><\/a><\/span> that Allen had groomed her, and abused her, ‘doing things to her that she didn’t like’ for ‘as long as she could remember’?<\/p>\n

Immediately, the vast army of lawyers, PR wonks, \u2018experts\u2019 employed by him to destroy Mia Farrow and allow him \u2018have\u2019 Soon-Yi, switched their attention to destroying the evidence of his then seven-year-old daughter, Dylan.<\/p>\n

In a classic Toxic Dad move, Woody lodged a legal appeal to gain custody of his and Mia\u2019s three younger children: Moses, Dylan and Ronan, saying Mia was an unfit mother. A harridan. A bully. A crazy person. Whom her children hated. That these \u2018false allegations\u2019 of abusing Dylan were manifestations of Mia Farrow\u2019s \u2018festering anger\u2019 against him. Part of a \u2018bitter custody battle\u2019.<\/p>\n

Woody was the first to bring up the toxic \u2018Parental Alienation<\/a><\/span>\u2019 defence now poisoning thousands of custody cases in both America, the U.K., even here in Ireland, whereby abusive fathers can get full custody of children when their lawyers assert the Mums have \u2018alienated\u2019 them against the same abusive Dad.<\/p>\n

According to one top US lawyer, it\u2019s \u2018easier for the Courts to grant custody to an abusive father than to believe the mother\u2019. Thousands of women, and children, have suffered terribly. Little comfort to them that the guy who dreamed up this latest patriarchal wheeze hacked himself to pieces in his kitchen with a carving knife as local deputies moved in with child abuse charges.<\/p>\n

As Woody\u2019s attacks on Mia as \u2018harridan\u2019 were amplified by an adoring press, lapped up by fans, interview after sympathetic interview was conducted with our man, \u2018as New York as the Statue of Liberty\u2019. It was box office. Who doesn\u2019t love to see a super-rich, beautiful blonde with a large, multicultural family, taken down?<\/p>\n

Luckily, Woody overplayed his hand. The seven week-long custody case didn\u2019t go his way.\u00a0 The judge, to Woody\u2019s and his expensive lawyers evident astonishment, denied him custody. In case anyone was in doubt as to why the Judge spelled it out<\/span><\/a>: \u2018Mr. Allen\u2019s resort to the stereotypical \u2018woman scorned\u2019 defence is an injudicious attempt to divert attention from his failure as a responsible parent and adult.\u2019 Hurray!<\/p>\n

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Mia Farrow at the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes awards ceremony.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

No Criminal Conviction<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sadly, attempts at securing a criminal conviction against him for the sexual abuse of Dylan foundered.<\/p>\n

First, the New York hospital who conducted \u2018interviews\u2019 at Woody\u2019s behest with seven-year-old\u00a0 Dylan, destroyed all their evidence, then claimed she had either been \u2018coached\u2019 or was \u2018deluded\u2019. Before any judicial process could take place they allowed Woody Allen to hold a press conference on the hospital steps to \u2018proclaim his innocence\u2019.<\/p>\n

The New York Prosecutor was apoplectic. But hey, Woody was Woody. He brought millions of dollars into New York, right? What was a seven-year-old\u2019s \u2018discomfort\u2019 compared to that?<\/p>\n

A young NYC welfare officer who interviewed Dylan separately, believed her. He was \u2018instructed\u2019 to find her allegations \u2018unfounded\u2019. When he refused, he was fired. His superior said<\/span><\/a>: \u2018The elite do whatever they want to do. There are no consequences\u2019. She\u00a0 resigned.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile in separate proceedings in Connecticut where Mia and the children lived, another prosecutor believed there was \u2018probable cause for a criminal case\u2019. But it was this prosecutor and Mia Farrow who reluctantly decided to call a halt to further legal proceedings as putting a traumatised seven-year-old through any more of this brutality would be too much.<\/p>\n

Woody held another press conference: he was clean! More parties! More cheering!<\/p>\n

And he continued to make films, play jazz, and yes, actually get married to Soon-Yi. He was sixty-two, she twenty-seven.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, he got to keep his precious status as an \u2018auteur\u2019 and \u2018proven genius\u2019. One of the \u2018greats\u2019 of Western cinema.<\/p>\n

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Ronan Farrow.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Post Traumatic Stress <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

He almost got away with it.<\/p>\n

His victims, daughter Dylan and partner Mia Farrow \u2013 though all the children in the family were affected \u2013\u00a0 were left with the pain, post-traumatic-stress, years of self-loathing, anxiety and depression, while he partied on.<\/p>\n

As Dylan wrote<\/span><\/a>, \u2018Sexual abuse is a life long sentence. It never goes away\u2019.<\/p>\n

Woody said it was all \u2018stupid\u2019, \u2018silly\u2019.\u00a0 There was nothing he could do. And, magic trick!, no court had convicted him. He was clean.<\/p>\n

Luckily, just when you think you\u2019ve killed it off for good, the truth has a nasty habit of reappearing.<\/p>\n

It was the lionisation of her father at the Golden Globes in 2014\u00a0 that drove Dylan, now a beautiful young woman in her twenties, into offering that open letter to the New York Times<\/span><\/a>:<\/p>\n

For as long as I could remember my father had been doing things to me that I didn\u2019t like\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t like how often he would take me away from my mom, siblings and friends to be alone with him. I didn\u2019t like it when he would stick his thumb in my mouth. I didn\u2019t like it when I had to get in bed with him under the sheets when he was in his underwear. I didn\u2019t like it when he would place his head in my naked lap and breathe in and breathe out. I would hide under beds or lock myself in the bathroom to avoid these encounters, but he always found me.<\/em><\/p>\n

Woody\u2019s obsessive grooming culminated in taking the little girl to a \u2018crawl space\u2019 in the attic in the family home in Connecticut, making her lie on her tummy and watch her brother\u2019s train set go round, while he touched her private parts, then penetrated her with his finger.<\/p>\n

He told her it was \u2018their secret\u2019.\u00a0 That one day he would take her to Paris and make her a movie star.<\/p>\n

Horribly, the exact same line he\u2019d used on Mariel Hemingway.<\/p>\n

Dylan\u2019s letter to the New York Times<\/em> was a bombshell. Twenty-two years after her mother\u2019s initial disclosure of abuse, cultural indulgence towards male abusers had chilled. Significantly.<\/p>\n

Dylan\u2019s younger brother, Ronan Farrow, who Allen had offered a \u2018comfortable life\u2019 to in return for speaking out against his sister and his mother, was developing a successful investigative journalism career.\u00a0 His eyes were on that other elephant in the room of abuse, Harvey Weinstein.<\/p>\n

Crucially for Dylan, and for their mother Mia, Ronan became an ally.<\/p>\n

At first, he admits he was horrified at his sister\u2019s public re-announcement of their father\u2019s sexual abuse. He begged her not to<\/span><\/a>. \u2018It was the last association I wanted\u2019. A bonfire in which friendships, powerful allies and those all-important connections would get burnt. Where Woody Allen\u2019s ferocious spin machine would go into overdrive once more.<\/p>\n

Thankfully the #MeToo Movement was sweeping through the \u2018entertainment world\u2019.<\/p>\n

Woody\u2019s \u2018this is all too silly\u2019 schtick began to look threadbare.<\/p>\n

Ronan\u2019s book on the Harvey Weinstein scandal, Catch and Kill<\/a><\/em><\/span> became a Pulitzer Prize-winning best seller. Hachette, poised to publish Woody\u2019s memoir under the same imprint, pulped Woody, and championed Ronan. Amazon cancelled a four film-deal.<\/p>\n