What I mean by “communicate” is “communicate,” just like a person “communicates” with any pet. Some people “communicate” more with their pets than other people do.
Aren’t gestures a form of sign language?
Anyway, I didn’t read the book and Sinatra was free to have whatever opinion he wanted about his ex-wife. If he thought it was ridiculous for her cat to understand any of her hand gestures, he was welcome to his own opinion. Lots of people are convinced that animals don’t understand any language at all and only respond to food. I happen to disagree. I don’t see why it’s so far-fetched that a cat could understand hand gestures; hearing-ear dogs do it all the time. Hell, hearing dogs do it too; there’s a particular area of training/showing that is all based on hand commands - no talking allowed, to the point that the handlers put tape over their mouths to prevent any possible verbal signals.
If Frank thought her method made her a dingbat, he’s free to have his opinion. I too think she is half-nutty but not because she uses hand gestures to talk to a deaf animal. It seems like the logical thing to do.
Wow such a dated question! I still know women that refuse to watch his movies because of “the incident,” however.
Yeah, it was a creepy thing to do. (This is regardless of Mia’s own weirdness; two wrongs and all that.)
I think it’s silly to boycott him as a filmmaker and artist because of his failings as a human, however. (Granted, they haven’t missed much in the past 10 years.)
It’s faintly icky, but mostly just wrong to me. It would be seriously icky if SoonYi lived under his roof as a child and he took parental responsibilities for her.
Which is still ethically dubious at best, regardless that “most human beings” feel an urge to have it both ways (and call me :dubious: at that “most human beings” in a no-win situation will TRY to have it both ways)… at the very least he should have realized that the empirical evidence is it usually does not work.
OTOH, he probably was aware of Mia’s past record on relationships and may have come to sincerely believe that she of all people would get where he was coming from. As malkavia said, hooray for karma.
There being no good solution does not absolve for handling the situation badly, which is about where I fall on this.
JRDelirious, your points are well-taken, although I still think it’s human nature to try to have your cake and eat it too. I see people do this all the time in matters both big and small.
But the purpose of my post wasn’t necessarily to defend Allen and Soon Yi. It was to offer an explanation as to why people may not necessarily take what would be considered a sensible, forthright or honorable course of action once they find themselves mired in such a situation.
Not only was the relationship disgusting, but Woody Allen’s further portrayal of Mia as an “unfit mother” was really in the toilet. I was so glad when he was forbidden contact with his three children, and I wonder how he was able to adopt two more after he married Soon-Yi.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe he only started on that line after Farrow falsely accused him of molesting their five-year-old biological son Satchel and/or their slightly older adopted daughter, Dylan. Whether Farrow believed this of Allen at the time or not, I don’t think we can condemn him for reacting in such a manner. (Again, that’s from memory which is now over a decade old, so I might be wrong about the timeline.)
I think it’s icky but doesn’t rise to the level of gross. You can’t help who you fall in love with, Allen was not Soon-Yi Previn’s parent, and I don’t believe they ever even lived in the same house (is that right?) Clearly Farrow does not have a customary relationship with her children – she has 14, most adopted, some with Allen, some with Previn, and some on her own. I don’t mean to suggest that Farrow is a bad mother, but it may well be the case that those of us from more traditional families are bringing understandings of the family dynamic to a situation where they simply don’t exist in the same way. (Of course, Farrow and Allen’s three children were all quite devestated, so maybe that’s a rationalization.)
–Cliffy
P.S. By far the creepiest part of the whole business is watching Hannah & Her Sisters – at one point a bunch of kids are running around and one of them is a young Soon Yi.
I think to a certain extent you can control who you fall in love with. However, I have a heart of stone, so YMMV. No matter whether or not you can control who you fall in love with, you do have control over how you handle the situation. Sneaking around and lying isn’t the way to do it, karma notwithstanding.
I agree. That said, neither Farrow nor Allen have a long history of not playing with a full ethical/moral deck. My understanding is that Allen did indeed play the role as adoptive father, although not legally so. His actions are beyond icky and strike me, among other things, as driven by disturbing pathology and passive-aggressivity. Having a sexual relationship with the woman you once helped raise is reprehensible.
NO! That is NOT what happened. Mia suspected sexual abuse of Dylan, and took her to the pediatrician to see if there was any physical evidence. The doctor was legally obligation to report it, and an investigation was made. Long before this happened, several other people had commented on Woody’s inappropriate behavior with Dylan–letting her suck his thumb, cuddling with her while he was only wearing underpants, talking her alone into a room for hours, etc. The guy was clearly obsessed with the child.
Woody Allen claimed when he filed for custody that Mia accused him of sexually molesting Satchel. She absolutely NEVER did so, and anyone who would falsely accuse someone of accusing them of sexual abuse with a child is a sociopath. Allen started the whole battle by filing for custody of the three children, and holding a press conference to state his (false) claims. Fortunately, the judge saw threw his claims and awarded custody to Mia, and did not force the children to visit with Woody.
Mia’s book “What Falls Away” gives a good accounting of the whole battle.
Is the above behavior only “inappropriate” if it involves an adopted child? Because it certainly doesn’t sound odd to me, as a mother. I have cuddled my kids in various states of dress and undress, as has my husband. If your kids crawl into bed with you to watch cartoons, and hubby sleeps in boxers, so what? It’s not as if he’s slipping the kid something. And letting a child suck your thumb? At what age? Teething children often want to suckle. And if spending one-on-one time with a child is skeevy, then I have no response.
I have always thought that Mia Farrow was not a well woman, and I have heard PhDs discuss her serial adoptions as part of a slight to moderate mental disorder. So the above-quoted post sounds a little hysterical to me. But YMMV, of course.
Basck to the OP- I was a little shocked at the time, but not skeeved out because it was my understanding that Soon-Yi was not a member of the Allen household. Yeah, cheaters are assholes but I had no real objection because I knew she wasn’t his daughter, despite the tabloid accounts to the contrary.
