It turns out former President Bill Clinton isn’t the only powerful man caught up in #MeToo with a glaring self-awareness deficit.
Woody Allen is now insisting he “should be the poster boy for the MeToo Movement.” But not in the way you might think. “I should be the poster boy for the MeToo Movement,” Allen contended in an interview this week, “because I have worked in movies for 50 years and … I worked with hundreds of actresses.”
“I’ve worked with hundreds of actresses and not a single one — big ones, famous ones, ones starting out — have ever, ever suggested any kind of impropriety at all. I’ve always had a wonderful record with them,” he maintained.
The celebrated director further addressed the allegations from his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, who claims Allen molested her in 1992 when she was seven years old.
“This is something that has been thoroughly looked at 25 years ago by all the authorities, and everybody came to the conclusion that it was untrue,” Allen said. “And that was the end, and I’ve gone on with my life. For it to come back now, it’s a terrible thing to accuse a person of. I’m a man with a family and my own children, so of course it’s upsetting.”
Unfortunately for Allen, “everybody” did not come to the conclusion that Farrow’s charges were untrue. But, as in other cases, the allegations are not conclusively true either. Cathy Young weighed the evidence effectively in a thorough article for Forward this past February, which I highly recommend. Though Young was ultimately skeptical of the allegations, she wrote, “Given the available facts, it is impossible to know with any reasonable certainty whether or not Allen molested Dylan Farrow.” Farrow, for what it’s worth, has the support of her brother Ronan, who is responsible for some of the #MeToo era’s most definitive journalism.
Allen has weighed in on the movement before, warning in October of a “witch hunt atmosphere, a Salem atmosphere, where every guy in an office who winks at a woman is suddenly having to call a lawyer to defend himself.” Before long, he became the target of #MeToo conversations himself, and several high-profile actors pledged not to work with Allen again.
Of course, when it comes to Allen, the circumstances of his marriage to Soon-Yi Previn have long raised eyebrows. And for good reason. Thirty-five years his junior, Previn and Allen carried out an affair while he was involved with Mia Farrow — Previn’s mother by adoption. Farrow learned of their relationship when she discovered nude pictures of the then-21-year-old in Allen’s apartment. Allen’s ostensibly paternalistic approach to their marriage has also consistently stoked media debate over the years.
The Hollywood icon is right that he’s not dogged by the same kinds of workplace allegations that did Harvey Weinstein or Louis C.K. in, but he’s certainly not in the strongest position to be patting himself on the back, given the public skepticism that swirls perpetually around his character.
All things considered, Allen really should be a poster boy for #MeToo in that his case, like those of several other men, is murky at best and no observer can say with total confidence whether he should be absolved of the allegations. Which is why he should know better than to carry on as though he’s a hero to women, drawing more attention to his dubious record.
