Woody Allen: The pedophile question

When Dylan Farrow heard that director Woody Allen had received a Golden Globe lifetime achievement award, “she curled up in a ball on her bed, crying hysterically,” said Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. For two decades, Farrow watched as Hollywood “lionized” the adoptive father she said once molested her. Sick of seeing her charges ignored, Farrow, now 28, is publicly telling her story. When she was 7, she writes in an open letter, Allen took her into her mother’s attic. “He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me.” At that time, Allen was already in therapy for inappropriate behavior toward Dylan. No charges were ever filed over Dylan’s allegations, even though a prosecutor found “probable cause” to pursue the case. Despite this murkiness, Hollywood has sided with Allen—“in effect accusing Dylan either of lying or of not mattering.”

“Not so fast,” said Allen’s video biographer Robert Weide in TheDailyBeast.com. There’s no “credible evidence” to support Dylan’s allegations. In fact, investigators said her version of events had a “rehearsed quality,” and that she may have been “coached” by her mother, Mia Farrow. Just a few months before, Farrow had discovered that Allen was sexually involved with her other adopted daughter, Soon-Yi, then 19. So she was hell-bent on revenge. Meanwhile, people wrongly conflate Allen and Soon-Yi’s legal, consensual relationship with Dylan’s accusations, said Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon.com. While it’s understandable to find it “goddamn creepy” for a 50-something man to run off with (and later marry) the 19-year-old daughter of his girlfriend, that “doesn’t make someone a pedophile.”

No one will ever know for sure what happened in that attic, said Sandip Roy in HuffingtonPost.com. That makes the decision to patronize Woody Allen films an ethical dilemma. Allen fans rationalize their continuing admiration for his work by arguing it’s “about the art and not about the artist behind it.” Still, it’s difficult not to feel “queasy” in this case. “Woody Allen put Woody Allen, the man, into his films.” That character often makes references to sexual relationships between older men and teen girls. In real life, that same man excused seducing Soon-Yi by saying, “The heart wants what the heart wants.” Acting on your desires, however, can sometimes be a monstrous thing.

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