Let’s talk a little bit about prejudice.
When Donald Trump declares tax breaks for the middle classes and it emerges that they’re really tax breaks for the rich and that his family stand to profit the most, there is, naturally, cause to question his motives. The same is be true for anybody who works to achieve one end only for it to emerge that the results benefit them personally. Certain newspapers routinely slam the BBC and call for the abolition of the license fee whilst their parent companies are looking to start TV businesses of their own. Most governments are littered with examples of where lawmakers shape laws without admitting that they are prejudiced by shares that they or their family have in those companies or industries most likely to profit by change. In most cases, such self-serving is obvious and easily called out. Other times, it’s rooted in moral or emotional difficulty.
Take, for example, the case with Ronan Farrow, one of the most vocal advocates for the #MeToo movement. Ignore the fact that it was New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey who first broke the Weinstein story. With considerable irony, given that this was always about ensuring women’s voices are heard, it’s Farrow who has become the de facto hero of the tale. Just six days ago, The Hollywood Reporter published an article humbly titled “Ronan Farrow, the Hollywood Prince Who Torched the Castle”. There’s no denying that the work done to expose the culture of sexual abuse in Hollywood is laudable and nobody should doubt that good has come from the story that brought down Harvey Weinstein. Yet Farrow is also part of the movement that would now swing the story back around to the decades-old allegations about Woody Allen; the same Woody Allen generally considered to be his biological father.
That qualification, “generally considered”, is important because we’re now entering into one of the most hostile of family feuds. Ronan’s mother, Mia Farrow, has since admitted that Frank Sinatra might be Ronan’s real father and it’s a notion that her son clearly hopes to promote given that he has reportedly taken to wearing blue contact lenses. And if you consider this to be celebrity trivia not worthy of mention then also realise how convoluted the plot has become when even the colour of a person’s eyes becomes a matter of speculation.
Let’s also be clear. There is no crime more heinous than child abuse. Yet that also means that allegations should be treated with more caution than is the case with most crimes. So abhorrent is the alleged crime that the natural human instinct is to look away and even defending the accused can too easily be made to resemble advocacy for the crime rather than belief in due process. Given this, Ronan Farrow’s involvement in #MeToo makes his renewed allegations towards Allen a worrying step in the movement’s short history. If begins to feel like Allen is being lined up to be the next and possibly most celebrated scalp. They might take it too. The Guardian has spent the past week reporting various actors and actresses expressing regret at having worked for Allen. Of counter claims, there have been very few.
It’s all quite virtuous, of course, that actors should feel moved to speak and donate to the cause – but it should be noted that their regrets bring no new evidence to bear. Their words exist in the realm of emotional appeal; responding to #MeToo like the excited child who screams “me too, me too” when belonging is the fashionable thing to be. “This year has changed the way I see and feel about so many things”, writes Timothée Chalamet, who has just finished filming Allen’s new film, A Rainy Day in New York. “I am learning that a good role isn’t the only criteria for accepting a job — that has become much clearer to me in the past few months, having witnessed the birth of a powerful movement intent on ending injustice, inequality and above all, silence.” After promising to donate his salary to three charities, he goes on: “I want to be worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with the brave artists who are fighting for all people to be treated with the respect and dignify they deserve.”
Elsewhere in the statement, he cites “contractual obligations” which prevent him talking directly about the film but it’s noticeable that statements of things becoming “clear” do not make the key questions any clearer at all. None of this says anything about evidence or jurisprudence. There’s no talk of some new insight that does for Chalamet what Queen Elizabeth refused to do: make a window into a man’s souls. There is no suggestion that Chalamet knows more about Allen’s soul that we already know. As witness testimony, it is no better than the open letter that Mira Sorvino wrote to Dylan Farrow in The Huffington Post. In it she describes her relationship with Allen:
We were friendly though not close, but in no way did he ever overstep his bounds with me; I never personally experienced what has now been described as inappropriate behavior toward young girls. But this does not excuse my turning a blind eye to your story simply because I wanted desperately for it not to be so.
In other words, despite the good behaviour she witnessed, she regrets that she didn’t condemn him based on an account she read in the newspapers. She goes on:
In December I called your brother Ronan, sharing about the aftermath of my and other women’s coming forward about Harvey Weinstein. […] I told him I wanted to learn more about you and your situation. He pointed me toward publicly available details of the case I had ruefully never known of, which made me begin to feel the evidence strongly supported your story. That you have been telling the truth all along
Again, we’re now in the realm of interpretative justice and, at that, one prosecuted through the prism of Ronan Farrow’s blue (or not so blue) eyes…
Now, this is not meant to discredit his account nor that of his sister. Nor is it meant to affirm them either. The central tenant of the #MeToo movement is that silent voices should be heard. Yet there is a fine and important distinction between “being heard” and “being believed”. One advocates in favour of the due process of the law. The other advocates for something else entirely: a prejudicial form of justice based on gender, power, age, wealth, and, more broadly, influence. Allen is 82 and is hostile towards the media. Ronan Farrow barely into his thirties and their new poster boy. He has a life ahead of him in which to condemn Allen and that, no doubt, will ensure that in the public’s mind, the case against the director will become stronger. That does not mean, however, that it will grow any stronger.
All we, as outsiders, can do is read the evidence and form our own conclusions. That is your right as it is also your right to decide for one side or the other, or to decided for neither. For the prosecution, the articles are plentiful because the Farrows have been willing to use the media to further their case beyond the 1990s when a team from the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of Yale–New Haven Hospital determined that there had been no sexual assault on Dylan. On Allen’s side, he has chosen to remain silent beyond a few vehement denials. No charges were ever brought.
If you do look at the evidence presented by both sides, you will see that the arguments delve into some difficult areas about human psychology: Allen’s strange/complex but little known private life on the one hand and, on the other, a revenge narrative that argues that Mia Farrow schooled her children in what to say. It’s an argument supported by her own son Moses who has said that “My mother drummed it into me to hate my father for tearing apart the family and sexually molesting my sister. And I hated him for her for years. I see now that this was a vengeful way to pay him back for falling in love with Soon-Yi”. Dylan, on the other hand, remains the most forceful voice. “When I was seven years old,” she wrote in the New York Times, in 2014, “Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me.”
It is powerful and, perhaps, overwhelmingly so. Yet even her first-hand testimony is questioned by the defence who have argued that a child traumatized by the experience of being the source of conflict between two warring adults, can easily create false memories that support the dominant side. And that, ultimately, is where the story ends. Professor Ira Hyman, of Western Washington University, writes: “Here’s the bad news: Based on the memories, there is no way of discerning whether Dylan Farrow’s memories are true recollections of abuse or false memories created by repeated suggestions.”
And here too is where the #MeToo movement might founder. With those closest to the truth deeply divided on what actually happened, what do we have beyond a story that is ripe pickings for a celebrity-obsessed culture where evidence is less important than the chance to emote in public? A complicated case prosecuted through the media by actors who have only a passing understanding of what happened?
If #MeToo continues to go after Allen — and the signs are that they will and might well succeed in damaging the final years of his career — it would be another indication that this movement has stepped beyond the reasonable and welcomed work it has done to expose sexual abuse and harassment in Hollywood. It is now being weaponised to settle a feud in which one of its chief architects has a personal and deeply prejudiced stake. It is also no longer about exposing “the truth” but establishing “a truth” as a select band of people wish to believe it. It would no longer be about seeking justice but confirming injustice in an entirely different form.
