It’s a strange dynamic how we can recognize villains in art much more readily than real life. Reality is satire stretched beyond plausibility.
Allen may be a terrible person.
But I don’t like the way this post is robbing Previn of her agency. She’s been married to him for nearly 25 years. We may suspect all sorts of things about this relationship, but we should respect her as a person rather than regarding her as a prop.
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Her agency is not so clear cut due to the ways he was involved in her life from childhood.
The court documents from the Allen/Farrow custody battle make it very clear that Previn saw him as a father figure when she was a child, but he deliberately withheld paternal affection. Allen has since stated in his own words in interviews that their romantic relationship is based on that dynamic:
“I was paternal. She responded to someone paternal. I liked her youth and energy. She deferred to me, and I was happy to give her an enormous amount of decision-making just as a gift and let her take charge of so many things. She flourished. It was just a good-luck thing.”
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There are lots of examples of people living in relationships that are clearly abusive and where the person does not perceive it as such, I’m thinking of things like cults and such.
We can respect the person AND acknowledge that are being taken advantage of.
Accusing Allen of predatory behaviour is not robbing Previn of her agency. No one is forcing her to agree with us. We’re just calling a spade a fucking spade.
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Invite people to read Moses Farrow’s account, Dylan and Ronan’s brother.
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This is an awful story, thanks for posting it.
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Yeah it wasn’t Soon-Yi that showed us all who he is, the signs were already there in Manhattan (the movie).
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gervais is good at making people cringe,
“Apropos of Nothing” has received some excellent reviews. Similarly, “J’accuse” has been described as one of he director’s finer works. It’s tempting to describe artistic merit as based on an ephemeral adulation contingent on good behavior— but sometimes bad people make good art. One cannot excuse the other.
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yes
Although I have never liked Allen’s obvious predilection for much younger women, evident in his films as well as his marriage, there is a big difference between finding young women sexually attractive and finding a seven year old girl sexually attractive.
It certainly seems that Dylan believes she was sexually assaulted, but given that we know that children that age are susceptible to false memories, the assertion that her mother planted those memories is not incredible. I’m curious what this documentary will show, and whether it will paint a more compelling case against Allen – because whatever the reality was, it clearly was pretty complicated.
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His marriage… you mean the one where he imported a child and raised it to be his lover? That marriage?
The excuses people come up with just to pretend abusive predators aren’t real is … nauseating.
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Believe the kid.
Get them professional help.
It isn’t rare enough to ignore and it is shameful that you think so.
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But that’s precisely the problem. She wasn’t the only kid with memories about the situation. Both she and her brother Moses can’t both be right because their accounts contradict each other.
Now, maybe she’s right and Moses is lying about the entire situation; I don’t know any of these people and wasn’t there. But what he wrote raises serious questions about his sister’s account. Should we just ignore him?
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You believe the kid in distress.
Every. Damn. TIME.
Why would you pick the side that says it didn’t happen? Even in a hypothetical situation?
If it turns out one kid lied, that’s bad.
You believe the kid in distress.
EVERY DAMN TIME.
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I haven’t been commenting here for a while, but you are so off-base with
You’re (and he) are asking us to trust his memories of a day that at the time he had no reason to commit to memory. He says in that account that it’s not the only time Woody had ever been there, so a rare event, but not unique. The “she got one or two details wrong, so it couldn’t have happened” is used to dismiss women all the time. We see it every time a sports star or a Supreme Court candidate’s actions come to light.
My grandmother was abusive. My father will deny this. My mother and I dealt with lies and manipulation, but she never got physical with us.
My sister is a different story. And the only reason we know is that one time it happened in clear view of one of our cousins who told my mom, and the proof was in the nail-marks still in my sister’s arm. If she hadn’t said anything, I doubt we would ever have known. Siblings do not share everything about their lives.
Maybe Moses does believe his version of events. That doesn’t make it the whole truth. It doesn’t mean that Dylan is confabulating. He would have reason to, as well, maybe even more reason than she would. And given that the investigative reporter in the family is willing to believe her version of events…
Abusers aren’t just good at grooming victims. They also excel at grooming character witnesses. Every time one gets revealed, there is a chorus of “I never saw him do anything like that.” Well, duh, because he made sure of it. It’s part of the defense, of how they can keep their victim afraid to say anything “because no one will believe you.” Because they’ve made damn sure that there are enough people who won’t.
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Um… Why should anyone believe his account over hers?
Especially in light of all the other accounts of Allen acting inappropriately towards his daughter from other sources?
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It is one particular person’s story. I thought ‘Schlemiel Filmmaker’ was damnation enough (so, I’m not as convinced as OA then.) It’s not that he doesn’t deserve work so much as that real predatory grooming and related lechery are good for a hard stop. We’re looking for complexity and some people argue with the complex number system (disparately or not.)
Yeah, believe the kid. But it’s a half-story (that grown, grouped) people are escalating from the Baskin-Robbins Sample Clerk to District Court 530% of the time or so. (So that exceptions don’t count down from 100% so easily, unfortunately.) I don’t attend District Court a lot, probably full’a Ice Cream Sample People and class-action multistate kidnapping vandalism gang homewrecker wholesalers.
The bar noticeably starts where people are going to hog-tie parents or attendants for going from place to place without taking a car (because walking, sometimes.) The kid can make it sound like you visited every Wendy’s in Wyoming on foot. Waypoint identification is good for larding a half-story. Fictive elements breaking into real activities, hold my coffee. Mention of Dragon Drops to rescue and damnation in even turn… Kids are very understanding of chagrin that comes from not training spiders and skink men. We should have them write more of our LinkedIn profiles. (You share an Anniversary with The Blood God of Kta’thocnidd! Share a half-gorilla frappe!)
Yeah, sorry Steve… I still believe Dylan Farrow over Woody Allen.
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