I brought up the acclaimed Wolf of Wall Street movie as a counterexample to show how ridiculous the cancellation of Woody Allen’s latest film was (actually, I believe the contract with Amazon was for three films). If you’re going to shun that as well as anything involving Woody Allen, and if you’re going to be consistent in your moralizing of every actor and director, then I think your movie repertoire may be limited to something like a grand total of five movies!
I just overlook this shit, except for a very small number of actors whose on-screen appearance is to me like nails scraping across a blackboard. I hated Clint Eastwood after his ridiculous appearance at the Republican National Convention in support of GWB, but I just loved The Mule, which came across as a sort of bittersweet farewell to the movie industry, perhaps the last movie he expected to ever actually perform in. That, and the theme song Don’t Let the Old Man In, I found very moving as someone not exactly getting any younger myself. What would have been the point of ignoring it because I didn’t like his politics?
I don’t find myself lacking for movies to see. Plenty of good non-shitty filmmakers out there.
Crime, whether white-collar or sexual, and political differences are two very different things. There’s no inconsistency applying one standard to one and not the other.
No, you fucking idiot. It does give me perspective. And what you are is someone who seems hellbent on believing that someone did something when there’s no proof of that.
Perhaps you have low standards of film quality. I find the ratio of good movies vs. shitty ones – counting only major theatrical releases – to be around 1:100. If I started moralizing about every participant, both in front of and behind the camera, it would probably be closer to 1:1000. I am a prolific movie watcher so I don’t moralize. I enjoy good movies for their own sake. The other night I saw a good one whose name unfortunately I can’t remember, but I remember feeling a little strange when the end credits included something like “A Harvey Weinstein Production” in large white letters. But the truth is, had I known in advance, I still would have watched it. I don’t think my watching and enjoying the movie produced any extra evil in the world, and in this particular fixed-cost situation it didn’t add a cent to his net worth.
Woody Allen is a unique and talented filmmaker and ignoring his films for something he may or may not have done is simply your loss, not mine. But the censoring of his new book or difficulties in funding new movies is going to be a loss to the world.
No, it’s just a continuum along a moral spectrum. By some estimates GWB’s Iraq war was responsible for more than a million deaths. Some consider him a war criminal. That has to be worse than anything Woody Allen was ever accused of doing. Eastwood helped to get him elected. I’ll still watch the films of both if and when they’re any good.
That’s the thing, though. You do moralize. That’s what you’ve been doing all over the place. You’re going around condemning people for concluding from the evidence they have that Woody Allen is a child molester and thus deciding to not financially support him.
Of course, I don’t think moralizing is wrong per se. The problem is that the morals you repeatedly push on this are shit. I don’t care that you can separate art from the artist. That is normal, and even arguably valid morally–why should one bad person be allowed to ruin your ability to enjoy something?
No, the issue is how much you keep making light of what the man most likely did. It’s about how you take a situation where there is more evidence one way than the other, and then act like it’s still equally up in the air. It’s about your fucked up priorities, as apparently art is more important than people. It’s some huge loss if we don’t see the films of one guy, but it’s no big loss
And it’s about your crafty, deceptive-appearing arguments, like the one below:
Yes, there is a moral continuum. And, yes, what George Bush most likely did was worse than what Woody Allen most likely did. However, you pull a switcharoo at the end there. You change the subject to Eastwood, someone who “helped to get him elected.” That is nowhere near the same level of moral wrong. Half the country helped get him elected by voting for him. And none of them did so knowing that he had committed war crimes. What wrong they did, if any, is very very small. And, even if funding or advertising is worse than voting, it’s still not a horrible wrong. Not when he didn’t know.
I take issue with all you keep doing to make excuses and to minimize the actual issue. I don’t care that you can separate art from artist. But that doesn’t mean that it’s okay to condemn the majority of the country, who have looked at the evidence and concluded Allen did actually molest his stepdaughter Farrow, that she is not some lying asshole.
And I take issue with you saying you care about rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and child molestation, while also condemning people for taking it seriously, coming up with ways those people are actually enacting mob justice and harming people. I don’t like how much more you seem to care about the poor accused than the victims.
And I do not like how you argue the same tired shit that the movement towards progress (in this case, #MeToo) is going “too far.” It’s a textbook way that opponents try to stop good things, while saving face. You can’t come right out and say you care more about “artistic contributions to the world” than rape victims, so you have to say shit like this.
Separating the art from the artist isn’t the issue at all here. That’s arguably a good thing, and one I do all the time. But you don’t find me actually defending the artists who most likely did the bad things, or exalting them as making great art that must be protected, while minimizing what they likely did.
(Note to others: Part of my response has to do with what wolfpup said in the thread where iiandyiiii is asking if #MeToo has actually worked. wolfpup argues that it is has been effective, but is at risk of going too far, and cites Allen losing his book deal as an example of some sort of horrible mob justice, among other examples.)
Your moralistic pontifications completely miss the point. Let me quote Stephen King more fully (from the Wiki cite in the other thread): “The Hachette decision to drop the Woody Allen book makes me very uneasy. It’s not him; I don’t give a damn about Mr Allen. It’s who gets muzzled next that worries me… If you think he’s a paedophile, don’t buy the book. Don’t go to his movies. Don’t go listen to him play jazz at the Carlyle Hotel. Vote with your wallet … In America, that’s how we do it.”
There’s also this, from the same cite: "Jo Glanville, the former director of writers’ group English PEN and an editor on Index on Censorship, also objected to Hachette’s decision. In an article in The Observer, Glanville stated "I am always afraid when a mob, however small and well-read, exercises power without any accountability, process or redress. That frightens me much more than the prospect of Woody Allen’s autobiography hitting the bookstores. Noting that Allen had been investigated twice after the accusation of alleged abuse and never charged, Glanville argued that “The staff at Hachette who walked out were not behaving like publishers; they were acting as censors”.
So there are three points here:
If you don’t like Allen, or believe the accusations and want to exact moral retribution for them, don’t buy the fucking book. I, however, have no choice in the matter, as there is no book to buy. It’s like censorship in China or the former Soviet Union. In the Land of Free Speech.
Some have suggested (in the other thread, I think, and I believe quoting Ronan Farrow) that the book should not be published because it’s full of deceptions and inaccuracies. How do we know that Farrow’s book is any more accurate? Doesn’t Allen have a right to present his side of the story, in the Land of Free Speech?
With regard to the second point, AFAIK the three movies cancelled by Amazon have absolutely nothing to do with Allen except that he would direct them, and are just three more fictional movies that would have been added to his extensive repertoire, many of which have been critically acclaimed and won major awards.
I don’t see any kind of justice here. I see hysteria and moral panic.
“Perhaps” your mom had low standards in her street clientelle, asshole…
I’ve only ever seen two Woody Allen films and they both left me bored, so obviously my opinion of his talent varies. And the world hardly lacks for nebbishy New York Jewish comedians, so “unique” is laughable.
No-one’s censored his book. And no new Woody Allen movies is no loss to me or anyone I know. So it’s a loss to you. The world, not so much.
You have no reason to believe from my posts that I’m “hellbent” on believing any particular thing.
There is evidence. It is not conclusive. We don’t know for sure whether he did it or not. But that’s the case on the vast majority of such situations. We do not have the luxury of “proof.” That means there’s no criminal punishment. But it also means we don’t get to act like we know for sure t didn’t happen.
There’s no risk to Woody Allen’s right to speak here. If he really wants to get his side of the story out he has many options to do so, more than most of us have. If nothing else, he could just get his own server and distribute it on the internet himself.
Powerful rich men like him have options that the rest of us don’t. And that’s part of the problem.
Free Speech isn’t always a good thing because of consequences. Alex Jones was free to spout his conspiracy theories and that didn’t turn out so well. Parents of Sandy Hook victims got death threats and he’s continually being sued.
Cancelling Allen’s auto is probably best for him in the long run. Allen may lack shame, but few people are going to identify with marrying one’s adopted daughter, and promoting that event could prevent him from travelling anywhere outside of NYC without breaking some sort of law.
Correction: Soon-Yi was Mia Farrow and Andre Previn’s adopted daughter. She was the sister to Woody & Mia’s three children, but Woody stated that he considered the bonds of adopted children to be different from the bonds of biological children.
I wonder how his two adopted daughters with Soon-Yi feel about that idea.
Either way, it seems clear that Woody didn’t have an equal relationship with all of the Farrow-Previn children.
It’s pretty obvious he’s a terrible father figure to most of them. But I’m not sure that his marrying one of their siblings should be all that traumatic for them.
I’m frankly not worried about the Soon-Yi matter. It doesn’t strike me as one the worst things he has been accused of. And their subsequent 20-plus years together seems to have justified any boundaries they crossed in my view. I think we can leave it up to Soon-Yi to let us know if we should consider her a victim in this matter.
I think his attempt to coerce Mariel Hemingway on a trip to Paris was worse because it was more clearly nonconsensual and an abuse of his position as a famous person and her employer.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and conclude that your use of the word “we” in this sentence, really actually mean “just me, because I’m an idiot”.
