The court of public opinion doesn't really do acquittals. Maybe it once did, although not that often. Now the 24/7 news cycle and Twitter have pretty much made it a non-option.
Being a liberal used to mean staying open to the possibility that the accused were innocent. I can't be the only one who remembers insisting to rightish relatives and/or coworkers that you should let even accused drug dealers and murderers see the inside of a courtroom before you string them up. But that's another one of those liberal values that seem to have fallen by the wayside.
Woody Allen faced some pretty serious accusations in the nineties in regards to his daughter Dylan Farrow. He seemed to get off with at least a hung jury, partly because even in the midst of a bitter breakup with Mia (not technically a divorce since they were never married) no one could find enough evidence to actually charge him.
A reversal started a few years ago. I've always wondered if certain parallels between his and Mia's story and the backstory of the Cate Blanchett character in Blue Jasmine might have riled her and two of their children up. In any case now comes the HBO documentary detailed in Rosenfield's article.
One of the producers has been quoted as saying, "You can believe the survivors" in campus sex crime cases. And the "always believe the victim" line has started to become something of a standard. You can see the appeal. Doubt doesn't feel good, especially when it's about something serious. Certainty feels good, and the human mind is geared to find it. But certainty without any basis except for moral fervor is almost bound to lead you down the wrong path.
In practical terms, Allen―who's always been funny in both the positive and negative senses of the word―will be fine. He can continue in his diminished filmmaking career, and the number of actors who've publicly denounced him might even mean he can have more confidence in the ones who'll still work with him. Maybe that in itself bothers you, but it's better not to jump to conclusions.
2 comments:
The Unherd article is a good one and very much to the point. I hadn't known about the new documentary until a few days ago when I dismissed its relevance and truthfulness out of hand. There are definitely people who attempt to gain wealth and fame by doing their level best to demolish the reputations of others, Dick and Ziering being exemplars of this kind of disgraceful tendency. Ziering's "always believe the victim" remark is such shoddy logic I can't believe anyone ever fell it in the first place.
I don't know if you read it too, and it is long, but a few years ago I happened across Moses Farrow's blog post A Son Speaks Out, a very eye opening description of the experience of childhood with Mia as the mother. Woody, as you know, was never a live-in father but spent a fair amount of time at Mia's Manhatten apartment and at the country house where the incident was supposed to have happened. Ronan (Satchell) was about five at the time and Dylan seven. Moses who was fourteen says it never did and I felt his description of the events of that day and the overall circumstances I found believable. Of course that may be my own bias, but as you said, the case against Woody was never proved, plus it's also true that child molesters aren't known to attack just one victim. No one else ever came forward to make a case against Woody Allen.
I just read about Blue Jasmine and there are a few parallels as you noticed. Nevertheless, it seems to me that if there's truth in the claims made by Moses then Mia and Dylan were already stirred up. Spiteful even.
One thing that has long driven Jer crazy on the game forum he visits is when something about the #metoo becomes a topic someone there will always say, "Why would they lie?"
You're right that Woody Allen will do just fine and Soon Yi seems to be pretty cool too.
Still, one of these fine days it would be nice to see those two documentarians shown up for the weasels they are .
Of the two filmmakers who made the documentary (or "documentary") Kirby Dick has the more interesting history. One of his early projects was a film about the controversial performance artist Bob Flanagan, which I doubt either one of us would have the stomach to sit through, but it shows he once was willing to think and film outside of the box. Amy Ziering is apparently a pupil of Jacques Derrida, and the two of them previously collaborated on a doc about Derrida. Doesn't put postmodern literary theory in the best light. One nice thing about going to a safety school was that we didn't have to study too much of that stuff. In any case, they seem to be working in lockstep now.
It's a good point that child molesters so often turn out to be repeat offenders--as do sex criminals in general--that it would be weird for him to be guilty in this instance when no one else has accused him. Not impossible, but it makes you wonder. It always seemed to me, an admitted outsider, that they were in the long run not compatible as a couple and should have split much earlier than they did. But when they did, one of them felt a need to seek revenge.
Blue Jasmine was most overtly influenced by A Streetcar Named Desire but some of Mia bled in there. You're probably right that that side of the family was planning for a while. It was a matter of when the opportunity would arise.
You never know. Maybe one of their targets will be prepared for them and hire private investigators or the like.
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