Mia Farrow's son -- Ronan Seamus Farrow -- really creeps me out!

'defend sister' isn't an impulse i'm gonna attack any brother for having, whatever quibbles about how it was 'stage managed' might exist.

not saying ronan was in poor form! just that it wasn't especially politic of him and that while it hasn't exactly backfired, it could have fired a lot harder. he's had many, many years to defend her & at this point you have to talk of stage-managing, even if the tweet itself was a white-hot enraged blurt

i suppose it's all achieved its ultimate goal of basically killing WA for whole hordes of his fans and tarnishing his name for posterity

poor fucking dylan tho getting impugned by the other half of the horde

because Alfred, i give about as much of a shit about booming posts as I do "good karaoke."

I do 100% believe that Mia asked Woody in the middle of the '92 blowup "When do we start the next movie?" Make of that what you will.

i think if there's "crazy" there with mia farrow, hypothetically (and going on the notion that what dylan says is true) much of it could be chalked up to discovering this and faced with the prospect of calling out the person you love, who also happens to be your primary artistic collaborator as well as this person being at the time one of the biggest directors in the world (and even now 20+ years later he's still one of the biggest names in cinema). i mean there must have been denial to some degree, blaming herself, hating herself, and all that coupled with the soon-yi thing and how everything just seemed to cause a moderate ripple and become fodder for late night jokes and soon enough he's back to cranking out a handful of widely regarded films. i mean when people are saying "huh maybe dylan seemed coached" it's possible that even if this did in fact occur that she had to be coaxed to talk about it, which perhaps might be misread as "coaching" in the sense that most people seem to think of it, as she was fed answers and fed a story.

i mean if mia farrow is crazy she might a decent excuse. and one of our closest friends was sexually assaulted as a child and it's basically rendered her incapable of engaging in any relationships whatsoever. and because of who did it, her mother's boyfriend, her mother has been carrying shit with her for years as well and it's caused some real emotional issues and denial and estrangement and all that. and this is without any attendant publicity and fame and seeing the attempt at prosecution derailed before it left the station and seeing the perpetrator continuing to be adored and beloved and seeing it written off like a joke.

On the topic of FB, I have a couple friends who posted to basically vent their frustration with all the doubt and dismissal aimed at Dylan (anyone see Stephen Kings gross comments?) only to get the same assholish comments from their friends that we've been seeing all over the place. Makes me think that having any discussion about this on FB is pretty hopeless unless you are just looking for a way to draw out the assholes and whittle down your friends list.

Yeah, people seem to be having real trouble distinguishing between 'putting together an opinion based on what you can gather about it' and 'forming a literal lynch mob'

A lot of talk about how, intellectually, we should all be keeping our distance and remaining non-judgmental until sufficient evidence is in, to which tbh and notwithstanding some of my blathering upthread, my response right now is 'Be consistent with this across everything and not just to defend the statistically probably child-molester who made those films you like'

Steubenville was actually the potential crime/internet phenom that slowed me down a little in this week's case. That one seemed so crystal-clear awful and black-and-white, with the Internet tearing the lid off a sleepy town and exposing all the corruption, only to have much of what wad reported as fact be inaccurate.

props to the guy in somebody's anecdote for taking a stance but: 'I don't watch movies by child molesters' is just kinda like ... like it's a hollywood view of hollywood

xp Note that since that article came out, a few school officials, included the school superintendent, were charged with obstructing justice, so there actually seems to have been a cover-up of some sort. Interesting article still; I would have liked to have heard from the other four accused as well.
http://www.newsweek.com/why-no-one-talking-about-second-steubenville-rape-case-207333

I don't vote for guys who blow apart 7-year-olds

As long as we're surveying generations, the only IRL Woody defender I know is an 80 year old man. My Facebook feed has been silent...

I was a long time fan of Cerebus from the beginning and am having an uncomfortable flashback to More Dave Sim Batshittery.

the thing with labelling mia farrow "crazy" is that it's a fucking meaningless word designed to play on misogynist archetypes. crazy, hysterical, irrational - when are high-profile men and the things they have to say dismissed like this?

"crazy": are you saying she has a mental illness? if so you should probably stop right there before using that word in the first place or implying a link between mental illness and her actions. if you're not saying she's mentally ill, how do you intend "crazy" to be read? if mia farrow has, at times in her life, been emotional or vindictive or eccentric, well, that means she's a human being, and being one or all of those things at one time doesn't preclude her from NOT being those things at other times, or from telling the truth in this case.

calling woody allen an abuser relates to specific accusations, calling mia farrow "crazy" is a handwavey and nebulous attempt to portray her character as a one-dimensional archetype that doesn't really exist.

re: generations - i have no anecdata in this instance because i was offline all weekend and haven't gone back to check, but i wouldn't be so smug about millennials' attitude to rape culture (see: r kelly). though i have noticed that older types tend to actively defend their heroes in these cases whereas younger types don't necessarily say anything but just continue to act as if they haven't heard the accusations

Or do younger types just assume that this sort of thing is far more common.

but in wide-release mainstream film, too, the baseline is "the audience is meant to relate to the main character" -- that's what's expected, and if a major film isn't very actively chipping away from that in a way that might be too obvious to be good, that horrible character is going have a lot of horrible fans. and sometimes filmmakers are just shitty at using film language and technique to communicate a character's repugnance.

I realise you don't want to derail this thread, but I really don't think this is a massively compelling argument against seeing the central character of Manhattan as being purposefully written as massively flawed, morally and otherwise.

Lex absolutely otm there

lex, what did you think of the Woody Allen 1992 CBS interview on the Fandor page i posted the other day?

(i know nobody watched it, i'm just interested in what words you'd use to dismiss it)

bye

(and I called both Allen and Farrow crazy)

'putting together an opinion based on what you can gather about it'

in this case, why? how about doing it with larger tragedies that actually affct all of us instead? this is EXACTLY why i never followed thwe OJ Simpson trial.

why - because it's essentially gossip, and gossip is how societies assert their norms. participating in that process can feel downright virtuous if you feel like you're contributing to where the boundaries are getting drawn.

i had a similar (to morbs) allen-centred upbringing. i knew all his books by HEART. watched his movies a zillion times. read his plays (maybe even tried to put one on?)

all of which makes me extra mad and let down :(

i'm almost as big of a fan of mia as i am of woody. people keep referring to him as being a great artist and nobody seems to be referring to her that way. but mia has turned in some incredible performances.

lex, what did you think of the Woody Allen 1992 CBS interview on the Fandor page i posted the other day?

Actually watched it after following the link. Surprised it isn't being shared more on FB, etc., as a way not to take his side but to present his defense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mqyS36-n7U

Well, now there's this:
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20783306,00.html

yeah, was waiting for that shoe to drop

moses can fuck off imo

I can understand better now why people believed the "Mia made it up" version of the story at the time. The problem is that now you have adult Dylan averring it happened (with no obvious apparent motive to lie).

Moses sounds a little clueless about child molestation, particularly for a "family therapist." Even if he is correct that Mia drove wedges into their family, tried to make the kids hate their father, etc., that doesn't mean Dylan's story isn't true.

this is good
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/why-young-sexual-assault-victims-tell-incoherent-stories/283613/#disqus_thread

^^^^that piece is so fucking important. you'd think it would be obvious but it appears not. as a child you're perpetually second-guessing what your words or actions "should" be.

Shut up, Moses, white women are talking.

*straps seatbelt*

xp That's why I found it so bizarre when the Weide piece cited the fact that Farrow stopped the tape when Dylan "appeared not to be interested" as casting some kind of doubt on the story. Like it seemed so patently obvious to me that a 7 year old would have trouble telling the story on tape!

it also seems patently obvious that any kind of traumatic experience would have an effect on the memory but it only seems to be sexual assault cases where that's taken as proof that the victim is lying

the biggest tension in my ability to believe that woody allen did this is that despite knowing that parents abuse their children every day, the fact of a father hurting his child is so incomprehensible to me that i can only truly believe it when it's something as horrific + evil as lostprophets dude. woody allen doesn't seem on the face like a sociopathic force of evil. but maybe that's the lesson - that evil comes from ppl who don't necessarily seem evil. that even ppl w/ keen insight + hilarious jokes can still do things beyond the pale. like watching that woody allen video he's so reasonable that i can't help but wonder what other seemingly reasonable human beings in my life have done such condemnable things.

nb, i accept dylan's charges. i'm just going into the parts of my psychology that have not fully signed on.

the fact of a father hurting his child is so incomprehensible to me that i can only truly believe it when it's something as horrific + evil as lostprophets dude.

people used to smack their kids around as a matter of good parenting. like, for millenia they did this

sorry not trying to be churlish.

they still do it

well sure, and i was potched around as a kid. but that's more of a mistaken way to raise + discipline your children. kids do respond to smacks so on some level you might believe it works w/out recognizing the detrimental effects. no sane parent in history has ever mistakenly thought that sexually molesting their children was good for them.

like you don't have to be evil to believe that spanking yr kid might be a good disciplinary strategy - you just have to be misguided. you have to be evil to touch your daughter's genitalia in a sexual manner and think that it's okay.

i have no idea how at this point that could be seen as improbable to the point of incomprehensibility and disbelief. how many cases do you need to know about?

hey lex w/ no due respect i don't think you understand what i wrote + also i think you're an idiot so let's just leave that there

i have no idea how at this point that could be seen as improbable to the point of incomprehensibility and disbelief. how many cases do you need to know about?

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 5 February 2014 17:06 (16 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

2nded.

and mordy, you've always struck me as infinitely more of an idiot.

that's lovely

maybe if one day you're a parent you'll understand why it's so horrific + unfathomable to imagine a father touching his daughter like that. it goes against every natural instinct to protect + love.

This is a cornerstone plot element in one of the most popular stories in the Bible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lot_%28Bible%29#Lot_and_his_daughters

Clearly this is an idea that's been floating around in people's heads for years