Standing by your idols

MANILA, Philippines - When Woody Allen was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes, the reaction was swift and mixed. “Missed the Woody Allen tribute — did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?” tweeted Ronan Farrow, the director’s estranged biological son. Right before the segment aired, Allen’s former partner Mia Farrow also took to social media to share her thoughts. “Time to grab some ice cream & switch over to #GIRLS,” the actress wrote, referring to Lena Dunham’s hit HBO show.

The Twitter messages allude to an incident that took place over 20 years ago, when the couple’s adopted daughter Dylan told her mother and her pediatrician that Allen had touched her inappropriately during an unsupervised moment. Although Allen was not prosecuted in court for the charges of sexual abuse of a child, the allegations feature in Mia Farrow’s 1997 memoir What Falls Away. 

The Golden Globe lifetime achievement award, along with the tweets and a Vanity Fair article published in October, have sparked a debate about the propriety of the recognition. That Allen’s Blue Jasmine is nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay for the director, helps little.

Calling them out

In an open letter published in the New York Times, Dylan finally broke her silence. “When I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me.”

Now 28, married and living in Florida under a different name, she also called out the Hollywood actors who have recently worked with Allen, pretending that “nothing was wrong” and in effect, celebrating her tormentor. “What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett? Louis CK? Alec Baldwin? What if it had been you, Emma Stone? Or you, Scarlett Johansson? You knew me when I was a little girl, Diane Keaton. Have you forgotten me?”

Family saga

At first glance it’s easy to draw parallels between Allen and Polish-French director Roman Polanski. But while the latter pleaded guilty in 1977 to having sex with a 13-year-old during a drug-fueled photo shoot, the former “was never charged with a crime, since investigative authorities never found credible evidence to support Mia’s (and Dylan’s) claim,” says screenwriter Robert B. Weide, who produced and directed the two-part PBS special Woody Allen: A Documentary. 

Allen, through his attorney Elkan Abramowitz, told NBC’s Today show that he feels overwhelming sadness at the false allegations. “The case is over. There is no case. The fact that it is being brought up now is suspect. The timing is suspect,” said Abramowitz. 

The latest twist in the unfolding family saga is Dylan’s brother Moses, who has spoken out to defend Allen. “My mother drummed it into me to hate my father for tearing apart the family and sexually molesting my sister,” he tells People magazine. “Of course Woody did not molest my sister. She never hid from him until our mother succeeded in creating the atmosphere of fear and hate towards him.” The 36-year-old is estranged from Farrow and many of his siblings and is close to Allen. 

Different nuance

On the one hand, when it comes to pop culture, the fact that you like something does not necessarily mean you support everything about the artist behind it. Most of the time, a TV show is a TV show and a film is just a film. Then again, I don’t want to seem as if I’m condoning someone’s deviant behavior either, even if I can divorce a person from his or her work and judge a piece of art based solely on its merits. Therein lies my dilemma. 

Up until now, I had no idea that we were even supposed to be angry at Woody Allen, or that we should feel only disgust at the mention of his name, since I was too young to know that he married Soon-Yi Previn, Mia Farrow’s college-aged stepdaughter, in the ‘90s. Of course, as someone on the outside looking in, without absolute knowledge of the facts, I still want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But given all that’s been said in the media, being a fan of his movies seems to have taken on a different nuance and suddenly I’m not so sure if I should. 

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