Tuesday, February 4, 2014

What I Have To Say About Woody Allen

I have to get walking, have to get moving because today really IS the day I'm going to get hypnotized. Maybe.
And I slept a little late because why not?
And the birds are calling and the sky is still gray but it's warm and here's what I wanted to say this morning:

The whole Woody Allen thing?
Fuck the people who are defending his genius as a rationale for anything.
His movies aren't that fucking great. Whine, whine, whine. Every character is as whiney as he is and I haven't been to the theater to see one of his whiney films since it came out that he was fucking the daughter of his partner, Mia Farrow. You want to know why? Because that is just fucked-up shit. Plain and simple. He was the father figure in that house. She was a daughter. Blood had nothing to do with it.
And I have a policy- if a child claims someone molested her or him, I believe the child until there's some absolute proof it never happened. Kids don't make that stuff up and I seriously doubt Mia Farrow would force the child to make false claims although I am not letting Mia off the hook entirely here. Did she shut Allen out of the house as soon as the claims were made? No.
And she should have.

I say all of this from a place of having been molested as a child myself by my stepfather. I say all of this from a place of having listened to many, many women's stories of being molested as children, mostly in the home. I say this from a place of having gone to therapy for years.
My therapist used to say that if confronted, an abuser will first deny the accusations. Then, if pushed further, he (usually he, not always) will claim that the child enjoyed it, wanted it, asked for it.

Of course there's the slim chance that Woody Allen did not molest Dylan but that doesn't even matter to me. He without doubt courted and had sex with a girl who was a daughter in the house of his partner with whom he had children. (Although please god, let it be true that Ronan Farrow really is the child of Frank Sinatra.) And then had the gall to say, "The heart wants what it wants."
This wasn't about hearts and to even say it did was another sign of sickness.

And when someone is accused of molestation by a child, seemingly out of the blue, whether that person is a teacher, a priest, a coach, a stepfather, a lawyer, a mother, it does no good whatsoever and in fact, is an outrage and a perpetration of the abuse to disbelieve the child because of an image we may have of that person as a genius, a "good" person, a person of authority, a person of god, or whatever we, as a culture use to define a person as someone who could never, ever be guilty of pedophilia. None of that stuff matters, none of those titles will ever prevent a pedophile from doing what pedophiles do.

And here's what pedophiles do: They take away the innocence of a child. They take away a child's ability to trust either him or herself or other people. They take away sanity. They take away spirituality. They take away the ability of a person to grow up and enjoy fully one of the greatest gifts of humanity which is the ability to fully love and accept love in a sexual relationship. They quite often take a child's love and use it to fulfill their own evil desires, leaving the child about a million times more likely to become an addict of one sort or another, to be suicidal, to have lifelong emotional problems, to live a life which never, no matter how much therapy is received or help given or love given, is going to be the sort of life which could have been led if the molestation hadn't happened.

That's just the truth, whether that child was named Dylan or Oprah or Roseanne or Mary.

And how anyone can get past the damage done by Woody Allen because he's a fucking genius is a beyond me.

And I am not whining here. I am screaming. And if every grown-ass person who was ever molested as a child started screaming too, maybe things would change. Maybe people would trust children's words more, maybe mothers would stop hiding their heads in the sand. Maybe churches would stop protecting their priests, their elders, their deacons. Maybe universities wouldn't wait until they got hit with law suits to do something about the molesters in their midst.
Maybe people would face the truth which is that the sexual abuse of children doesn't just happen in trailer parks or in families where cousins marry cousins. It can happen in the most expensive of apartments on Central Park and even fucking geniuses can be pedophiles.

13 comments:

  1. Amen and yes, Mary. Exactly what I've been feeling in this whole thing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes. Our rape culture. It sickens me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Amen~Amen~Amen!! I never liked his movies either, so not seeing them after molestation accusations came out made no impact on him or his earnings...but, I became vocal and hoped others heard and also boycotted his "art???". And then there's Roman Polanski...sheesh!!! creeps! Honestly I was shocked when he won the achievement award and even more shocked when Diane Keaton offered such a flowery acceptance. My opinion of her was greatly diminished.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Woody Allen can indeed be shrill but I am a huge fan. As for the accusations of child molestation, none of us begin to know what actually happened or if anything at all of a sexual nature happened between Allen and Mia's children. Soon Yi is still with Allen today and so it might be assumed she is happy with him and perhaps she even is in love with him.
    I also hate pedophiles and cannot even begin to comprehend the things they do. I just don't get it. I had a close friend whose 5 yr old daughter at the time said that an adult friend "touched" her and everyone around this family ostracized the man. A year later the child told her mother she had made it all up because her counselor kept encouraging her to say things she knew were not true, but she wanted to please the counselor. Indeed a child should be believed but I also think we should exercise caution in our accusations before we begin to accuse.
    I am very sorry for those of us who have suffered abuse as children. We were innocent and we still continue to suffer today, but for me I would like to exercise tolerance until I know for sure that a person is not being persecuted because of sheer jealousy and envy. Who knows. None of us. We are not close to this family and I do not trust our media one bit to give us any sort of true information.
    I am also a whiner. And yes, so is Woody Allen. But he whines about some things that are very important that our society refuses to talk about in an open way such as death and the meaning of life and falling in love and deceit and now with Blue Jasmine, tragedy. Life imitating art perhaps?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yes, absolutely. When I read the first pro WA reactions to the open letter, I was trying to imagine how these must feel like a punch in the guts for other victims.

    In this case, it seems it's not just the man who is believed more readily but for whatever reason his fame and artistic talent must be considered as mitigating factors. Why?

    This here sums it up quite well, but your post is way better!
    http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/woody-allens-good-name/

    ReplyDelete
  6. I have not liked his movies or him. He is a weasel. And I think that he needs to be prosecuted for his crimes against children.

    ReplyDelete
  7. You said EXACTLY what I was thinking, only you used way less F-words than I would have.
    That man is a piece of shit on the shoe of humanity. So are the men who act like him. It angers me beyond believe the people that hide these criminals behind the "genius" label or the "robes of the church," it's just utter horseshit.
    I'd like to see Woody Allen today because I'm in such a foul mood, I could make him pay for his sins.
    Ronan has to be Frank's! Ever see his eyes?!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thank you thank you thank you! You said everything I was thinking and feeling and why on earth would Dylan lie? On principle I believe the child.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I'm really glad she spoke out because I had grown complacent about it. And I am glad you continue to speak the truth, because you are right. It needs to be heard.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Blue Gal- Just my thoughts. I could be wrong.

    Sara- I think many of us have been.

    Rebecca- It's just so hideous. And it never ends and it's so destructive.

    turquoisemoon- Diane Keaton's speech upset me too. And truly I adore her. We live in a strange world.

    Rubye Jack- I know that many people truly find meaning in Mr. Allen's movies. I have frankly never really been one of them. I can appreciate his humor, his ability to get the best actors. But I do not find his movies anything which change my life for the better. I know that there are instances in which molestation charges are made up for reasons I hate to contemplate. But I can't believe that Mia Farrow would do such a thing.
    But you are right- we will never truly know. And if he and Soon Yi are really in love, well...good for them. Still, my gut tells me that there is something very wrong which happened there.

    Sabine- Well, we can all have opinions, obviously. And I have mine and it is admittedly biased due to my experience. But yeah, I thought that was a really good piece.

    Syd- Succinct. Thank you.

    heartinhand- Good for Woody that you didn't see him today.
    And yes, Ronan's eyes look nothing like Woody Allen's. He is such a beautiful boy.

    Angella- Why would she? Why WOULD she?

    Ms. Vesuvius- On this subject, I will never shut up. Trust me.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I'm pretty sure Dylan is telling the truth, given everything we DO know about what's happened in that household. I'm also pretty sure Ronan is Frank's son.

    I don't begrudge you these feelings at all, given what you've been through yourself.

    I HAVE compartmentalized my feelings about Mr. Allen. I enjoy some of his movies and I think he is a gifted screenwriter and director, but I also think he is a pervert. I'm not sure how these two things coexist in my head, but they do. Perhaps they shouldn't.

    ReplyDelete

Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.