Woody Allen at the courthouse where he answered Farrow's allegations the first time round. Credit: Rick Maiman/Sygma via Getty Images
There’s a saying, widely credited to Albert Einstein, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over yet expecting different results. If that’s so, the new HBO documentary series Allen v. Farrow seems like the latest episode in a cyclical drama of collective madness.
The controversy at the centre of Allen v. Farrow is a sort of zombie scandal, a story that keeps lurching back into the limelight, just when you thought it was good and dead. It stems from a now nearly 30-year-old accusation by Dylan Farrow, the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, who claims that Allen sexually assaulted her at her mother’s Connecticut summer home in the year 1992. The incident was notable not just for its horrifying details and famous cast, but for its existence within a second, more conventionally sordid celebrity drama. The allegations against Allen came in the midst of a messy split from Farrow, after it was revealed that he’d been having an affair with her 21-year-old adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.
While two separate investigations were launched into Allen’s possible misdeeds, it was the Soon-Yi debacle that dominated both the press coverage and public conversation when the story first hit. Even I, then a 10-year-old kid living in the boonies of rural upstate New York, remember seeing headlines about it in the Arts & Life section of the local newspaper. But by the time the case against Allen was dismissed, thanks in part to a report from the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of Yale-New Haven Hospital that determined no abuse had occurred, the public consensus was largely in his favour. Not that Allen didn’t have issues — the man had been in therapy since birth and once wrote himself into the role of a sperm, for Pete’s sake — but a paedophile? No, said the gossip hounds and film fanatics. Surely not.
Of course, the thing about public consensus is that it’s changeable — and even malleable, if conditions are favourable and the proper pressure is applied. And while Allen continued making films, and telling stories, his accusers stood by theirs. The assault allegations first resurfaced more than 20 years later, after Allen was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the 2014 Golden Globes. New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof published a letter from Dylan Farrow in his column at the paper, and questioned Hollywood’s continued support of Allen: “The standard to send someone to prison is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but shouldn’t the standard to honour someone be that they are unimpeachably, well, honourable?”
In 2016, Ronan Farrow, Dylan’s brother, renewed the allegations in the pages of the Hollywood Reporter. A year later, Dylan spoke out again, this time in the LA Times. The cultural tides began to turn: actors who’d worked with Allen in the past publicly denounced him; his new film struggled to find an American distributor; and the publication of his memoir was cancelled after employees at Hachette staged a walkout. (The book was eventually released by another publisher.)
And now, three years after the peak of the #MeToo movement, comes a new entry — the “definitive” entry — in the form of Allen v. Farrow. And it’s perfectly attuned not just to a changed political landscape, but a moment of cultural obsession with documentary crime series that make the audience feel like part of the story.
The Farrow camp has asked why the same movement that took down Weinstein didn’t catch Allen under its wheels, a sentiment that’s repeated in the first episode of Allen v. Farrow: “He was able to just run amok while I was growing up,” Dylan Farrow says, her voice full of incredulous frustration. The running amok in question was not criminal or even deviant — Allen is the peculiar #MeToo figure for whom only a single, isolated incident of misconduct is alleged — but it was a life, a fruitful one, and wasn’t that just as bad? If this was a story of good versus evil, Allen’s outcome was the worst sort of twist: here was a villain who not only escaped punishment but thrived in his freedom, so untouchable that not even a movement explicitly founded on the dispensation of justice for long-ago crimes could topple him. As fairytale endings go, this one positively sucked.
But in the era of Serial and Making a Murderer, this apparently glaring miscarriage of justice is the stuff prestige TV is made of — and you, the audience, are part of it. Not just watching but participating, nudging the universe another degree in its incremental path toward justice. Sometimes, the thrill is in correcting the mistakes of overzealous prosecutors, a righteous quest to free the protagonist who was found guilty, yes, but nevertheless seems innocent. But sometimes, and this is even more exciting, you get to catch the bad guy. The audience plays cop, judge, jury, and executioner. The police couldn’t punish the perpetrator, and now it’s up to us; if we all work together, we can make him pay.
Allen v. Farrow is best understood as an attempt to draw us into a narrative that is gripping, outrageous, scandalous, horrifying, and most of all, definitive. This TV series is meant to be the final draft of Woody Allen’s biography: you’ve heard this story before, sure, but this time it’s the official version. The one you remember him by. The one that ensures that when the 85-year-old dies, his obituary headlines describe him not as Woody Allen, Oscar-Winning Director, but as Woody Allen, Alleged Child Molester. (Allen has described it as a “hatchet job”.)
It should come as no surprise that Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick are the team behind the scenes on Allen v. Farrow. These filmmakers often present the “definitive” take on issues like this, which is a nice way of saying that they flatten away the complexity and nuance of a story until what you have is a tale so one-sided, so simple, that it goes down like a communion wafer. Take it on faith. Swallow it whole. Though they bill their work as documentary, the team prides itself on not giving a microphone to whomever it plans to paint as a villain; in a screenshot of a 2013 email that has been circulating online, an associate of Ziering and Dick assures a source that she and her collaborators “do not operate the same way as journalists,” promising “no insensitive questions or need to get the perpetrator’s side.”
This full-throated commitment to incuriosity is a hallmark of Dick and Ziering’s work, which also includes the 2015 film The Hunting Ground, an examination of sexual assault on college campuses that has been broadly criticised for using discredited data and playing fast and loose with the truth. When Ziering was asked by the Boston Globe what people could do to combat the scourge of campus sex crimes, she replied, “You can believe the survivors.”
You can believe — and Ziering is here to help you do it. Her films are something beyond truth: they create the narrative that becomes the official story, drowning every doubt or alternative theory in blazing certainty. The Allen v. Farrow series promises to tell you everything you need to know about the allegations against Woody Allen, yet the information provided over four hour-long episodes points exclusively to his guilt.
What’s in the blurred-out text of the New Haven report from which only a handful of incendiary, out-of-context words have been highlighted? Why are Dylan Farrow’s allegations treated with the utmost respect, while Moses Farrow’s claims of abuse by Mia are dismissed, with a scoff, as fabrication? What was happening in the moments before and after Mia trained a camera on Dylan and asked her to describe where her father touched her? What aren’t we seeing, hearing, being given the chance to consider? Don’t ask. It’s not part of the story.
The documentary is haunted by the spectre of recovered memory — only instead of the victim, it’s the viewing public being asked to confront the truth they’ve been hiding from all these years, to edit their understanding. It’s a tactic that has been effective, even important, for addressing past wrongs within the framework of #MeToo: to think again about that encounter that left you feeling grimy, to revisit, reframe, and ask yourself if maybe it wasn’t your fault after all. For individual women, retelling the story in a different way can be a powerful means of illuminating the grey areas between consent and coercion, or violation versus regret.
But as a means of shaping the public understanding of decades-old allegations, it feels more like propaganda pushed on us by powerful people with tons of cultural clout. Ziering and Kirby’s history of deceptive filmmaking is one thing, but even Ronan Farrow, who appears frequently in Allen v. Farrow as his sister’s staunch defender, has often blurred the line between journalism and activism in his quest to unmask MeToo’s biggest villains. Writing about the work that became Ronan Farrow’s book about Weinstein, Catch and Kill, Ben Smith at the New York Times noted, “[Farrow] delivers narratives that are irresistibly cinematic — with unmistakable heroes and villains — and often omits the complicating facts and inconvenient details that may make them less dramatic.”
In other words, it’s not that Ronan Farrow makes things up. It’s just that he doesn’t like to interrupt the narrative with pesky doubts, quibbles, or caveats. Like this documentary, his work favours a good story over a messy truth.
At the end of the day, Allen v. Farrow is about establishing a narrative more than it’s about changing anyone’s mind. The information it contains is the same information we’ve always had, just repackaged as brave and groundbreaking for the Serial era, in which documentaries are supposed to make a difference — and in a lost year in which the only “safe” activity is sitting at home and watching TV. In this year of no socialising, no sporting events, and very little new content as Hollywood struggles to produce amid pandemic restrictions, here is a chance to feel something. To do something. To be on the right side of history, and be a hero of sorts, instead of just watching them in reruns.
But this is a rerun, too. It’s a story we’ve all heard before, a reboot of a horror show that never should’ve been made into a tabloid spectacle the first time. And no matter how much we might like to think so, tweeting our outraged intent never to watch another Woody Allen film again will not make the world a safer, kinder place for victims of abuse, most of whom will never see their stories told once, let alone over and over. That there’s nobility, even justice, in staying in on Sunday night to watch a premium cable documentary series about a 30-year-old celebrity breakup might be the biggest lie of all.
But we don’t want to think about that. Never mind all the kids who were abused yesterday, who will be abused tomorrow. Tell us the one about the bad little man in the attic again. Maybe this time, it’ll have a happy ending.
Kat Rosenfield is an UnHerd columnist and co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast. Her latest novel is You Must Remember This.
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SubscribeI’m sorry to say but the #MeToo movement truly does share the same logic of the which hunt. Better 100 innocents are punished, than one perpetrator go free.
It has without doubt taken down some dangerous men but I fear it has caused even more collateral damage in the process.
It has poisoned the concept of innocence until proven guilty, the right to answer your accusers in court and is campaigning to undermine the standards of a fair trial to “improve” conviction rates. The price of a few high profile convictions cannot be the efficacy of the whole legal system.
Thumbs up.
Indeed. The whole ‘believe the victim’ starts with the assumption that that person is a victim. Not possibly someone with an agenda that involves lying about someone else to get at them. Or even someone ‘retelling the story in a different way’, many years later. Are witnesses in a court allowed to ‘retell the story in a different way’ in order to get a conviction?
Actually the similarities between #metoo and #QAnon are pretty striking
Since discovering that her partner was in love with their adopted daughter and that love was reciprocated by Soon-Yi, Mia Farrow has been consumed by an acidic hatred that has eaten away at any ability to control her capacity to just get on with life after that rejection. To have infected her children with this same hatred is the saddest outcome of the whole sorry saga. Though it must have been traumatising,Woody Allen and Soon-Yi were able to argue their side but those young children could never understand what they’d been caught up in. Ziering and Kirby surely have no credence in the industry after their past works but so many are just simply naive fools who’ll watch and believe nearly anything even when any evidence is obviously lacking.
I hope that, at the least, Woody and Soon-Yi have had loving and happy decades together.
“their adopted daughter”? Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, not Woody Allen’s, moreover, Farrow and Allen did not live together.
Soon-Yi is the sibling of the child, Dylan, that Allen and Farrow adopted together. She’s also the sibling of the child of Mia Farrow, (supposedly) fathered by Allen, Ronan. Therefore, for any normal person, she’d have been off limits to Woody. That, and that she was a kid in high school when he was taking nude crotch shots of her. But perverts will pervert.
According to Woody Allen, only Farrow adopted Dylan, so he was never a legal parent to her. The two had a younger biological child together, their son, whose name was Satchel. When they split there was a custody battle over him, but Farrow retained custody. All in all it was a train wreck of a relationship. And yes, it was creepily inappropriate for Allen to pursue a relationship with Soon Yi, as legal as it was (she was at least 19 when it started), even though he never lived with Farrow so was never really a “stepfather” to her. But he’s always had a thing for much younger women. I remember first seeing his movie Manhattan, in which his character (who is nearly always just a cinematic version of him) has a relationship with a 17-year-old high school girl, played by Mariel Hemingway. I was the same age as Hemingway at the time. I saw the relationship as just a somewhat weird novelty, nothing more. I saw the Hemingway character as a nominal grownup, the way i saw myself. Watching the movie again much more recently, I was shocked at how young she actually looked, little more than a child. A middle aged man who sexualizes women that young is always going to teeter dangerously close to the edge. It’s very different from a young man her own age being attracted to her. He sees her as a peer. A normally-socialized middle aged man looks at a 17-year-old girl and sees her as ridiculously, remotely young, someone who could easily be his daughter. Generally, that puts a natural damper on any biological imperative to get her into bed, even if he doesn’t actually have daughters of his own. Allen just seems to be one of those men who doesn’t have that kind of internal brake. Still, it doesn’t follow that he’s a predator, or criminal, just one of that large minority of men who operate on the legal side of creepiness without ever crossing over.
I think that’s a good argument in relation to today’s Western societies, but historically, powerful men have very often had much younger wives and mistresses, and this was just considered normal. Some of these wives and concubines achieved a lot of power and influence. I’m not advocating it, but it was a reality.
Apologize for him all you want. Your rationalizations don’t get him off the hook. He’s a criminal and a scumbag.
So true. Some people seem to overlook the simple facts you state here. What man in Allen’s position, what father, would conduct a relationship with a very young woman who is essentially part of his family?
Soon Yi was the adopted daughter of Miss Farrow. Allen did not adopt Dylan and Moses till years later. Allen had Farrow had not been together for three years when adult and Soon Yi fell in love. Allen had very little interaction with Andre Previn’s children and never spent a night at Farrow’s apartment. There are always 2 sides to every story.
Wrong, but nice try. He’s a predator. He’s a criminal. You are almost as despicable as mr Allen for defending him.
Yup
Have been on the receiving end of this kind of insane hatred. The most surreal part being that the raving madness was brought on by rejection from a new love who you would have thought would be the object of hatred and not just stalking. I was hated and he was stalked and of course our children were damaged by being used for years as the weapon of choice in the traditional way. Such a scenario is beyond belief even when you are in it so you know why those outside just want to walk on by particularly any authority with the ability to help.
The rejection was first Mia’s. After Ronan was born, she told Allen that they would no longer be romantic partners. That puts about 4 or 5 years between their break-up and the Soon Yi business.
Clearly an eccentric bunch, but as is so often the case, we’ll never really know the whole truth about these matters and, in truth, nor really do any of us need to.
Living with this on a day to day basis must be hellish for all concerned, but those self-appointed judge, jury and executioner individuals who seek to profit from such an essentially deeply private, insoluble, irretrievable mess, no matter what informed it, and as the writer so rightly points out, are easily the most clearly identfiable, cut and dried villains here.
Now at 85, Allen remains with Soon Yi after well over 20 years of marriage and they have two adopted, now college age kids together, and whilst the Farrows have every right to persist with their claims, it is a shame that those they use to assist them seem far less interested in divining the truth, than they are in selling a salacious, headline grabbing, profitable story.
“..we’ll never really know the whole truth about these matters”
We already do, though, to a probative standard that exceeds that of any news outlet. Allen is innocent; the allegations were fabrications by an embittered woman.
The ghastly, shameful thing here is that Ziering and Kirby are able to obtain funding. Where’s Stop Funding Hate when you need them?
“Where’s Stop Funding Hate when you need them?”
Spot on.
No, you don’t know that. I have proof that woody and soon-Yi are romantically involved. So if anything, I can claim he’s a dirtball criminal.
Old Frank Sinatra’s one-time teen-age ex-wife is a loon.
it’s why you don’t marry crazy.
But bewilderingly to me, so many men do. Crazy seems curiously attractive.
Speaking generally, a good rule of thumb seems to be, ‘today’s charming ‘kooky’ is tomorrow’s bats#!t ‘crazy’.
Several of Allen’s friends warned him against getting involved with Mia.
He has a history of casting his romantic partners in lead roles, so Mia chased him down before the ink on her divorce papers from Andre Previn had dried.
Yes, Rosemary’s Baby was the real documentary.
Damn, the folks here have it all. Now we have this sub-thread denigrating Mia. You’re all disgusting people. Woody is a criminal.
I’ve never been sure what to make of Woody Allen, other than that he makes some superb films. I know what to make of Mia Farrow.
Documentaries, unfortunately, often as not sell drama, not truth. There was a Hugo Chavez documentary that sucked me in once. It was an inside-the-palace story of the coup against him. It was gripping and fascinating, and honestly a pretty good film. Unfortunately it was bullshit. A work of fiction commissioned by Chavez himself. But if you didn’t do your research you’d come away thinking he was unfairly maligned.
Grifters gotta grift…see Robin di Angelo and Woke-a-Cola,
As for ‘recovered memory’, I’ve just had a flashback to that film he made about tennis. I only watched about 10 minutes and it traumatised me for life.
Smile. Admittedly not his best film. Go back and watch Purple Rose of Cairo and Midnight in Paris to overwrite the Match Point unpleasantness.
I have seen Bananas, Take The Money And Run and some of the earlier films again quite recently. All wonderful, of course.
Plus the genius of Sleeper, Love and Death, Hannah and Her Sisters, Small Time Crooks, and many more.
Two hundred and four if you count my marriage
Moses Allen:
http://mosesfarrow.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-son-speaks-out-by-moses-farrow.html
But Ziering and Kirby are very moral, serious people.
Believe women, not children!
Why nobody in #MeToo talks about Tara Reade how is that? Somehow the concept of ‘trust all women’, ‘believe all victims’ and so on don’t apply here. This ‘mockumentary’ about Allen is just another commercially calculated smear and nothing else.
because Reade accused Biden and the rules of engagement are different. Juanita Broaddrick credibly accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault and despite his known dalliances with numerous women, he remains a party favorite. Trump, meanwhile, talked of what women LET rich guys do and he’s an animal. MeToo beclowned itself beginning with how many women in Hollywood were willing to cover for Weinstein, and it continued during the Kavanaugh / Ford farce.
Thumbs up.
And Trump was obviously making a joke when he said that, albeit a very tasteless one. But then, he was having a conversation with another man and this is generally the way guys of all political stripes talk to each other when they think no-one else is listening.
Tara Reade was just a bad grifter. She had a record a mile long of making friends with people, finagling money out of them, and then disappearing
The real importance of this ‘docuseries’ is its litmus test quality. In this day and age of social media and commercial mass-media doing everything to attract our attention and our money, will we yield ‘due process’ and the ‘presumption of innocence’ in order to have individuals subjected to spectacular trials-by-media?
Are we O.K. with totally one-sided narratives and legally non-scrutinized ‘facts’ and ditto ‘testimonies’, directed by people with an obvious agenda, sold to us as a ‘documentary’ as if some objective truth were represented, as if all sides were given fair and equal hearing?
As a documentary, I find ‘Allen vs. Farrow’ an abomination. It does not even try to hide its unabashedness, nor its disdain for the viewers it seeks to manipulate. Will we accept serious consequences resulting from such skewed ‘public trials’, when individuals are not just stripped of their reputation on possibly false grounds, but also find themselves socially and professionally outcast, their movie and book contracts being broken, their children being bullied and shunned, all as a result of a public frenzy?
Because there is no doubt that this effect is what the Farrows and their enablers are after.
I believe that every rational person who would study the facts of the Allen-Farrow vendetta would end up concluding that Allen is to be considered innocent as – not even once – charged. Yet even if you are presently convinced of his guilt, think again. Will you accept even guilty people being condemned and punished by puppet courts and hateful mass media productions, luring you with salacious allegations, made in order to earn big money?
Today it is Allen, tomorrow it could be anyone else. Including someone you love, and may believe to be totally innocent.
Not me. Because I am not a disgusting perverted criminal like woody.
In UK we had the very salutary lesson of ‘Nick’ the fantasist who made up a story about a conspiracy of abuse in the heart of government and also involving other famous people. The police, having been told that they must believe everything a ‘survivor’ says, without necessity of corroborating evidence, launched a highly damaging and extremely expensive witch hunt, sorry I mean investigation, into the allegations. In the end they were all proved to be complete fabrication but in the meantime the lives of innocent people were destroyed and at least one eminent former cabinet member died without knowing that he had been cleared of charges. We live in hope that future investigations will require a little more than hearsay.
Like most people I actually had a great deal of sympathy for Mia when the Soon Yi business became public. It was reported in sensationalist tabloid form, some even claiming Soon Yi was Allen’s adopted daughter. But as soon as Mia charged him with molestation, my sympathy vanished. It was like a last, desperate attempt at revenge, charging Allen with the most awful of crimes. The timing alone was so fishy!
By that time, Soon Yi had given him the 411 on what really went on in Mia’s loving refuge. He sued for custody to spare his children.
There is a silver lining to this story: Soon Yi and Allen have been together for 30 years, raised two lovely daughters, and seem perfectly happy — and that probably bugs the living s__t out of Mia!
Love the Woody Allen films. They will be so acclaimed in future generations because of their gentle insight into what we really are. I believe Woody not the forever angry woman.
Of course. Yes, his films are good so he must be innocent. You are a treasure.
What bothers me is than none of the stories about Allen v. Farrow go into Mia’s sordid history and that of all the deeply troubled children of John Farrow and Maureen ‘bottoms up!’ O’Sullivan. They were dysfunctional even by Hollywood standards! I’m sure they all have a bit of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Mia and the Dory Previn business, brother John who did time for multiple charges of PEDOPHILIA. Dear Prudence’ long time extramarital affair with millionaire serial killer Robert Durst. Mia’s House-of Horrors orphanage, the three dead wards (two suicides, one overdose).
You could make the trashiest, most sensationalist documentary about the Farrows AND IT WOULD ALL BE TRUE!
Ok but false equivalencies much? Mia didn’t seduce her daughter, a child, from a position of power and trust. Woody did. So nice try.
I’m not familiar with the directors so I’m not endorsing them, but you strongly imply they didn’t give Allen a chance to share his side of the story, but CNN reports that “Allen declined to be interviewed for the documentary and told the New York Times he had no comment about it. His manager has not responded to a request for comment.”
in other news, I just read the Weather Channel drew more viewers than their first episode did Sunday. EDIT: I should probally clarify that that wasn’t a joke.
Apparently the film makers only reached out to him only a few weeks ago.
But, would you collaborate in a “documentary” that would accuse you of a crime you didn’t commit? Have you read anything about Woody’s false accusation, Mia Farrow’s insanity, the reports from 1993 that cleared Woody, the suicides in Mia Farrow’s house, the conviction of Mia Farrow’s own brother to 10 years for pedophilia (she never ever talked about that), the real accusations of abuse against Mia Farrow made by Moses Farrow and Soon-Yi Previn? Have you read anything? C’mon! This HBO “documentary” is completely garbage. Why Woody would spend 1 second with these false accusers? Think, please.
The “so-called” filmmakers had already spent years making this “doco” and a few mths before it’s release decided to ask Woody, Soon Yi & Moses. They’re not stupid & saw it for what it was, a hit job. Why weren’t they asked at the beginning? Because the film makers admit they have no interest in the perpetrators viewpoint. So now we have a couple of dodgy, 2nd rate film makers who have a barrow to push who get to decide who is guilty & who is innocent. I mean Mia is a woman & Woody a man so Woody must be guilty of something, right?
Thanks. But a bit ambiguos. Why are people in the US so afraid to say out loud that Woody has been falsely accused? The articles that talk about the insanity of Mia Farrow don’t mention clearly that Woody is a victim of a false accusation. And that’s a crime. To falsely accuse an innocent man is a crime!
Woody’s “case” is more clear that water: he was cleared in 1993 by two investigation teams, Mia Farrow is a crazy woman who abused her (non-White) adopted children -read the words of Soon-Yi Previn & Moses Farrow!- and she was horribly jealous of Woody’s love for Soon-Yi (by the way, Soon-Yi and Woody are together since 1992, so almost 30 years, and have formed a wonderful beautiful family: they have 2 adopted brilliant daughters). Case closed! Since 1993, Mia Farrow (whose career ended -didn’t do anything worth mentioning after Woody Allen masterpieces) has had 1 thing in mind only: to destroy Woody’s reputation (Ronan & Dylan Farrow also are in this horrid & lost quest). I feel sorry for Dylan-the-child (destroyed by her adoptive mother), but repulsion for Dylan-the-adult (a 35 year old woman, who clearly needs a lot of therapy, that has made a career by being a false victim for the past 30 years, only wants fame, poor her, and has a PhD in Tweeting).
The HBO “documentary” belongs to the garbage: it omits the voices of Soon-Yi Previn and Moses Farrow (who have declared that they were both mentally and physically abused by Mia Farrow), doesn’t mention the 2 suicides and 1 death of Mia Farrow’s (non-White) adopted children Tam (she died by suicide), Thaddeus (he died by suicide) and Lark (she died of AIDS, alone), doesn’t mention that Mia Farrow’s own brother has been convicted to 10 years for pedophilia (wow, weird, huh?), and paints Woody Allen (an innocent man, wonderful writer and genius cinema director) as a creep and Mia Farrow (a mediocre actress and an insane vengeful crazy woman) as a saint. I hope that Woody sues these “documentarians”, HBO and the 3 Farrows. This “documentary” should win an Oscar for fiction (genre: Horror).
Woody will always be remembered as one of the greatest filmmakers of all times. In contrast, the three Farrows, this shameful “documentary” and all the false accusers would be, with time, remembered as lying snakes. Keep creating, Woody! We love you, admire you, and support you! / Antonia Tejeda Barros, Madrid, Spain.
Because he wasn’t falsely accused. He did it. It was wrong. He’s a criminal.
Great. So we have a documentary that does nothing to advance this story.
The allegations against Allen never seemed very plausible; unlike other predators, no one else has come forward to tell ‘their story’ of his abusive behaviour when it would be all too easy to kick a downed man.
What should case outrage is Allen’s signature of the petition to allow Roman Polanski to be pardoned of his conviction. But taking Allen up for that would also drag in all the Hollywood aristocracy who also tried to cover for Polanski.
This is a fair review, I agree on any point. As the MeToo movement, started by Tarana Burke to support college girls victims of sex assault, involved Hollywood it turns out as a witch hunt where people accused are guilty and with no possibility to be proven innocent. Allen could be the poster boy of this insanity, he had one accusation proven fake, but still repeated in any possible form to make it look true. Goebbels, rotting in hell, can’t believe to have such a devoted group of scholars. Moreover this documentary is a kick in the face to all the ordinary people who tried to have justice and no one listened to them, to all the people who was poorly assisted in court of law and their case was tossed with no possibility to appeal, but yes, for lazy journalists is more convenient repeating old lies filled with more lies because the prude viewers love saying: “ Oh I always knew he was a creep, have you seen Manhattan?” Yes, I saw Manhattan many times and I love it.
I will never stop watching Woody Allen’s films. As I didn’t stop reading Nietzsche after his work was hijacked by the Nazis. And it’s not for me to judge or convict a brilliant director /actor. And as for his work? His movies? They have now transcended Woody Allen and belong to all of us.
Question: why don’t #metoo and Qanon realize that they’re saying pretty much the same thing most of the time?
I don’t know about Qanon, but #MeeToo is kind of the dictionary definition of “removal of nuance”. Of course Weinstein was committing a crime, but the fact that he was chasing something that every heterosexual male would chase is cleanly eliminated from the discussion – and the obvious wholesale demonization of male libido (aka every male is no more than a rapist waiting for an opportunity) is cleanly disregarded as meaningless.
Not to mention the elephant in the room – that the reason Weinstein got what he wanted so many times is because way too many of these actresses viewed trading sex for opportunity as a reasonable deal (I don’t recall Weinstein pointing guns at their heads…). Yet the actresses are saints and Weinstein is the only sinner in this narrative… way to go for nuance.
What a shocking comment.
Care to elaborate? Nobody knows what you meant with your comment…
Very astute and well written.
This is the second article by Ms Rosenfield I’ve read, and the second one I’ve enjoyed.
The longer I have looked into the this over the years the more disturbed I have become. It really does seem like Mia Farrow lied, turned Rowan and Dylan into her accomplices and collaborated with various media allies (the greatest being Vanity Fair) to destroy Woody Allen and extract revenge.
https://youtu.be/muyaCg2dGAk
http://mosesfarrow.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-son-speaks-out-by-moses-farrow.html
From a meta cultural perspective Woody Allen has been a victim of the collective anima of America’s women, especially its powerful women. When this incident broke in 1992 the great sexual revolution of the 60s had truly broken down and there were millions of divorcees primed to vent their anger and frustration on a man foolish enough to rouse their collective attention. Woody Allen became a scapegoat and he will die as such.
Woody Allen will die as a famed American filmmaker, well respected by the people who actually saw his movies.
Maybe you believe that ‘from a metacultural perspective he’s been the victim of the collective anima of especially powerful women in the wake of the sexual revolution’, but I just believe Mia Farrow made a false child abuse allegation against him, and the facts and testimonies are there to support it.
As such.
Do facts matter? I researched this all deeply back when Ronan Farrow publicized these long running accusations. That court case in CT also found that Woody’s therapist was ‘treating’ Woody for having inappropriate contact with Dylan. Nobody disputed that Woody would lie with her and seek her out to be alone with her and it didn’t just happen once. He may have gotten overtly sexual only once but that isn’t actually clear from her statements. Woody’s counsel didn’t try to fight the fact that Woody was being inappropriate with Dylan. The only argument was whether it crossed the line to sexual behavior.
Then he starts in with Soon Yi while she’s a teenager. Keep in mind Soon Yi was severely developmentally challenged. She hadn’t spoken a word by age 7 and had lived on the streets with her prostitute mother. She was way behind developmentally. When Woody begins grooming and seducing her at age 14-15 and beyond, she’s the emotional equivalent of a 10yo girl at best.
This is sick behavior. It’s one thing to go after an 18yo girl that is well adjusted and not your family member. But Soon Yi? Sadly, Soon Yi herself has argued against this interpretation cuz she doesn’t want to admit how vulnerable she was to Woody’s grooming. But groom he did and it’s our responsibility to call it out even if she can’t see it.
I’ll bet 1000 bux he’s grooming some other child as I type this. He’s a garbage human – after what is publicly known about his grooming and sexually entrapping Soon Yi, I don’t need to know anymore. My only question is why others can’t see this as clearly as it is?
Still not sure if links are allowed on Unherd, but there’s a fascinating interview with Soon Yi and Allen on Vulture.
Again obviously just one side of the story, but the comments underneath are equally worth a read and show that the truth of this is unlikely ever to be known.
Yes, read that one tells you a lot about their so-called ‘mother’.
She delivered these children from squalor to despair. Less a home than some nasty Victorian orphanage. Think Lowood Hall in Jane Eyre
One need only glance at María de Lourdes Villiers Farrow momentarily to understand that there lies a psychology at the extremes of the normal population distribution curve behind those haunted eyes. Even her own family describe her as eccentric as a child. No doubt that and her family film connection was what made her attractive to Allen.
It occurs to me that his ongoing therapy, wealth and previous success are the foundations on which a steely sense of self (a set of stones) has allowed him to get his head around ditching his partner and mother of his progeny and marrying her adopted child who is some 35 his junior thereby remaining within the law but way outside mores.
It seems to me that the film makers (one of which is like Farrow a California privileged kid) has missed a trick here by seeking to damn Allen. The sheer loopyness of all of the characters lives is a far more compelling narrative.
A good catch is “Coldwater Canyon” and ” Beware young Girls” two songs written by Andre Previns wife Dory about the fact that Farrow stole her husband.
I would advise you to read the lyrics of Dory Previn’s songs “With my Daddy in the Attic” and “Mama mama Comfort me”.
You would not believe it, but these two songs tell the story of a young girl accusing her clarinet-playing father of having abused her in the attic, while lying on her belly, being lured with a toy train. She then decides to hurt him, to soothe her poor mother’s misery over having lost his love.
Dory Previn, Mia’s once best friend, wrote these two songs in the early 1970s, that is almost 20 years before Mia and Dylan made that allegation about Dylan accusing her clarinet-playing father of having abused her in the attic, while lying on her belly, being lured with a toy train. Dylan then decided to hurt her father by accusing him, constantly referencing to her poor mother’s misery over having lost his love and her movie career. See the Yale-New Haven report.
Mia knew Dory’s songs. Dory told Allen about Mia’s “inspiration”.
I’m not kidding. Go check it out.
It’s all true and Previn believes Mia sought out her friendship with the intent of seducing her husband.
AHA! my first ‘Vanishing’. A good exeperience.
Too much TRUTH, apparently…
AHA! my first ‘Vanishing’. A good exeperience.
Too much TRUTH, apparently…
Mia Farrow is an awful person. The ‘Saint of Darfur’ who seduced the credulous Nicholas Kristof, was performing ‘undoing’, a primitive defense in shrink-talk. Or an Act of Contrition in her RC upbringing. If so, it makes me think Luther was right: Grace and Grace alone!
Woody is innocent. And a wonderful genius that has brought beauty and poetry to the world. Woody’s films make life better! On the contrary, the false accusers only bring injustice, shame and vomit to the world. Shame on the Farrows. Shame on HBO. Prepare your cells, Farrows, “documentarians”, and HBO. More about Woody here: https://www.ibelievewoody.com/
The authorities findings were in favour of Allen and that is why he was never charged. Yale New Haven was/is considered one of the best child abuse clinics in the US. Mia and Maco (the prosecutor in the custody trial as there was no other trial) thought so too when they put them in charge of investigating Dylan’s claim but then quickly tried to find fault with their report when it didn’t work out for Dylan and they believed she may well have been coached. That’s why Maco never went to trial. He knew he never stood a chance as the evidence was all against him.
What kind of person would truly not put a person they suspected of being a child molesters on trial to protect the child? It makes no sense. Dylan was being protected from “flopping” due to her discredited testimony & her unbelievable story that has changed so many times and still keeps changing to this day.
If they Farrows had a case Dylan could’ve taken it to the criminal court as an a dult. She let the statute of limitations on that run out but she can still sue in a civil trial. She doesn’t because she knows the gullibility of the public will support her whereas a trial would likely illuminate who the true criminal is, Mia Farrow.
Make sure you check out Dory Previn’s song, “Daddy in the Attic” if you need to understand how the story came to Mia . Dory was Andre Previn’s first wife before Mia, like a cuckoo in the nest, stole him away. A coincidence? I don’t think so. And maybe Mia should explain why she wont take a lie detector test but Woody did and passed his.
Nice succinct piece. Let us not forget #metoo is a selective thing – here in America, for some reason, it does not apply to Joe Biden’s accuser back in the 90’s. It does not apply to Andrew Cuomo’s accuser about his pig’ish actions over the last couple years. Me thinks Woody is onto something when he said “it’s a hatchet job”.
Why didn’t you ‘succinctly’ say what you wanted to say?
Whenever I see “Allen v. Farrow” I automatically think of Giger monsters.
Like other men, Woody has his uses as a symbolic Goldstein, the primal traitor in Orwell’s 1984, who could always be resurrected for propaganda purposes whenever convenient.
Whether Allan actually committed the offenses he has been charged with is no longer important. What’s important is his value as a symbolic representation of feminist stereotypes of man as oppressor, woman as victim.
You can talk about symbolism. I will talk about real people.
A ‘hatchet job’? A Hachette job, surely?
I’m happy to ‘flatten away the nuance’ regarding the sicko, Allen, who sexually preyed upon Soon Yi when she was a teenaged high school student (photographs were discovered).
Soon Yi is his ex-girlfriend’s adopted daughter, a sibling of 1 child, Dylan, adopted by both Farrow and Allen and another, Ronan, ostensibly fathered by Allen (and if you believe that Woody is Ronan’s father, there’s a bridge for sale in Brooklyn that you may be interested in buying). The entire bunch of 14 children experienced Farrow as a mother and Allen as a father &/or a step-father (God help them all).
Allen ‘married’ his step-daughter, Soon-Yi, tellingly, in France – a country that has rather lax views on the sexual predation of children, coupled with a perverse admiration for The Most Obnoxious Americans – and contempt for the nicest of us. But I veer from the subject, slightly.
Woody Allen is a pervert. That Mia Farrow is a nutball ought not be surprising. Who else would be attracted to him and be so fully capable of ignoring the obvious? However, she is no where near as culpable for the harm done to Dylan and Soon-Yi (and by extension, all of their siblings) as is Allen. Who ought to be imprisoned.
I don’t agree
Please wash out your mouth.
Allen married SoonYi in Venice, Italy, a country where you have to be 18 years old to get married, in fact SoonYi was 22-23, more or less. To be fair I was upset when the news of their affair broke out, but as their wedding was televised I realized it was a genuine relationship and as 25 years passed and they’re still happily married with 2 brilliant daughters I think it’s time to stop questioning their relationship. Mia could have had all the support by public opinion without made up a false accusation of sexual assault against Dylan, but she’s Mia, she’s a drama Queen, it’s not enough for her having support as a scorned woman she had to be the Angel of Vendetta. She’s a pathetic liar.
Nope. Your comment is pervert. Who has to be in jail is Mia Farrow. Ronan & Dylan, too. For lying and making a huge theater trying to bring down an innocent man. Intelligent people know that Woody is an innocent man who has been falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit. Read Apropos of Nothing and see all the official reports about this “case”, and read Moses Farrow and Soon-Yi Previn. You obviously know nothing about the case. You can start here: https://www.ibelievewoody.com/ You know to read, don’t you? Don’t make a fool of yourself, Daisy. Opinions like yours are the ones of the herd.
he wasn’t innocent. He took nude photos of his daughter when she was underage, and then he preyed on a seven year old who has not deviated from her account and whose brother supports her. People who defend this sick perversion give themselves away.
Hey, Daisita: You obviously have a big problem with Woody and Soon-Yi’s love. Well, that’s YOUR problem, not theirs. Their love doesn’t justify a false horrific accusation. Read about their wonderful story here, and, please, grow up: https://antoniatejeda.wordpress.com/2018/09/18/woody-soon-yi-a-true-love-story/
warning: vomit bag needed. I hope you are childless.
This commenter is a troll. Don’t respond to her.
Are you trying to “convict” Allen of taking up with Soon Yi as though that’s some kind of crime or of the abuse of Dylan? Which one is it or are you trying to make a correlation? Of course being attracted to young women is not a crime and is very, very normal. Many men have younger wives. Are they all peverted? Dylan’s accusation was thoroughly investigated many years ago and found to be a false allegation so I’d say the experts in the case who had privy to all the details would know more than you, me or these so-called doco. makers with their heavily biased, one-sided hit piece.
Dylan was seven years old. Soon Yi was a minor when her FATHER took nude photos of her. That she was adopted makes his disgusting sickness even MORE of a crime. The allegations WERE NOT found to be false. The court found that putting Dylan through testifying in court would have been HARMFUL to HER. Some of the parties involved in the trial have expressed remorse they did not carry through with it. Allen has to face God in the end, you can’t save him.
You’re incorrect about Soon Yi’s age. Also, the prosecutor did not move forward because he had no evidence against Allen. He admits this in the court documents. He & Mia hired Hale New Haven clinic to assess her and they determined she was likely coached. He tried to save face by saying he was protecting the child. Of course he was doing no such thing. Who would let someone they suspected & had evidence on of being a child molesters just walk away? It’s a silly & fanciful story. Perhaps it would help you to understand that this was all determined in Allen’s favour by the experts all those decades ago & for you to ask yourself why Dylan wont take her singular, constantly changing allegation to court. Did you know that she can do so as an adult?
agreed. It’s really scary to me that people can in any way justify the predator relationship of a father with their child. God knows what other things these people justify. Discussions on this topic do tend to pull pedophiles out of the woodwork in the comments section. Sorry you are getting downvoted, as usual the child-touchers union is out in force. Allen worked in Hollywood and if he wanted to cheat on his wife he had ample willing starlets around but he preyed on a child. I am sure I am not the only one who fears for his daughters, their tale may be told someday. My heart grieves for Dylan and what she went through. Two children in the same family preyed upon by one man is simply typical predator behavior. This column has brought out all the icky usual suspects to defend the indefensible.
Troll.