Woody's Feminist Biographer
By Bernard Chapin (02/13/07)
For whatever reason, Woody Allen was a great hero of my youth. I saw every film of his that I could, and eagerly anticipated his seemingly non-stop new releases. Maybe it was due to my being enthralled by New York City or maybe I was addicted to his comedy or maybe I just loved the fact that a fellow juvenile had found a way to become rich and famous. Regardless, I have always been interested in him which caused to purchase a biography called The Unruly Life of Woody Allen. It was my hope that Marion Meade’s book would provide a critical and unvarnished examination of this controversial figure. Initially, I was quite sure that it had due its fact-filled, brisk, and concise narrative. Ms. Meade is a talented biographer and writer. She cites a plethora of primary sources who offer up unique and important observations about this cinematographic legend. Allen’s enigmatic personality is dissected in full, and, after finishing it, his oeuvre makes considerably more sense as there seems to be little truly fictional about his storylines.
Ms. Meade never seems to be very sympathetic towards her subject which, given Allen’s history, really isn’t remarkable; however, her subtle bias against the auteur becomes flagrant in those chapters concerning his rupture with Mia Farrow. Ms. Meade interprets their fantastically acrimonious parting as if it were a morality play wherein Woody is cast as the dark lord and Mia as a maiden of virtue. As the facts of the case reveal, this could not be farther from the truth. A better description of their relationship is to picture two twisted trees growing to maturity alongside one another with each mirroring the other’s juts and jags precisely.
Quite clearly, Allen is a man whose pathology cannot be denied. He is full of obsessions, compulsions, and neuroses in general. As if those demerits weren’t enough, he also appears to be a snob and an elitist. Yet it is hard to fathom how one could find Farrow much healthier. At best, hers is a manipulative, passive-aggressive, and violent personality. Ms. Meade must see Farrow as being a Grade A societal victim which then cleanses her of guilt for every horrific behavior she commits.
The biographer is incredulous that anyone could find anything wrong with Farrow’s single parent martyr act—which necessitated her adopting 11 children (to make for a total brood of 15). Well, let’s consider the possible motivation for these habitual adoptions. We can rule out that she was a saint as nothing in her life seems to suggest that this is a possibility. A desire to spend every waking moment with children is not likely because she maintained a busy professional and social life the entire in which she cruised the international orphanage circuit. That her infant acquisition often corresponded with her entering some kind of personal crisis should give us pause. Could she have been using these children, and the enticing emotional bonds they offered, as a form of self-medication? The explanation is quite feasible. During her crackup with Allen, she readily turned the two children he loved against him, and alienated them from the person they once saw as their father. She also made a point of sharing details with them to ease her own pain while exponentially increasing theirs, such as when she told her twin sons after discovering evidence of Allen’s treachery: “Woody’s been f*cking Soon-Yi.”
In a country where corrupt feminist statistics concerning domestic violence are actually believed by law enforcement officials, Meade makes no point of mentioning of the way in which Farrow happened to be the (only) physical aggressor in this case as she battered Allen repeatedly. During one of their arguments, she “punched him in the face” and “thwacked him hard across the back.” These acts continued months after she first heard of his infidelity so no crime of passion defense is possible. Perhaps Meade regards violence as being a sign of health when it is directed towards men. Farrow harassed Allen on the phone and threatened to kill him along with herself. She gave him a 1992 Valentine’s Day card with a picture of her family inside. It was adorned with “steel turkey-roasting skewers” that pierced the hearts of her children. It’s hard to imagine a person alive who wouldn’t find such evidence damning. If a man comported himself in the same fashion he would quickly be placed into a jail cell. Only a writer with a serious agenda could overlook the pathology of Mia Farrow.
Finally, the notion that Allen is a misogynist is entirely incorrect. He is far more of a misanthrope than anything else. He loathes himself and practically everyone else with whom he shares this earth, but, beyond that, he clearly favors women over men. Nothing in his oeuvre reveals any sympathy for his male peers whatsoever. His characters are never masculine in the traditional sense; they are aged yuppies at best or slight variations of a female personality at worst. Should men not be New York, neurotic pseudo-intellectuals then they are deemed worthless. That he hates his species is a foregone conclusion, but that he prefers women to men cannot be doubted.
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