Thomas Fiffer looks for the ‘truth’ behind the story—and ends up with more questions.
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By now, we all the know the story of Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen.
We’ve followed the sordid tale that’s been splashed all over the media, from Slate to The Daily Beast, and we’ve taken on the tweet that got Stephen King in trouble.
But what do we really, truly know?
There is the accusation.
There is the response.
And there is the response to the response.
So how do we form our own response to all this?
Ironically, the whole thing has played out a lot like a Woody Allen movie, taking us into the minds and hearts of people operating on the edges of morality, stuck in places we’ve all been to, if only in our minds, but don’t want to admit we’ve visited.
There are facts, opinion, interpretation, and conjecture, and of course, agenda. And we are left to sort it all out and come to our own conclusions.
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One thing that can help us find sense amidst the sensationalism and move beyond the competing narratives of the accused and the accuser, is the idea that stories such as this one incite a predictable pattern of reactions and behaviors from society at large, and that these are often based on archetypes that inhabit our subconscious mind and to a large degree inform our perspective and define our actions. In addition, these archetypes (as Carl Jung described them) possess the power to influence the way we form memories and associations, meaning that our recollections of events, the emotions those memories evoke, and the stories we form around them are, in fact, all subjective versions of “truth” affected by forces in our psyches over which we have little control and of which we have even less awareness.
With this in mind, here are 10 + 1 “truths” we can take home about the Farrow-Allen story, because we have revealed them ourselves in the way we have responded to it.
The whole thing has played out a lot like a Woody Allen movie, taking us into the minds and hearts of people operating on the edges of morality, stuck in places we’ve all been to, if only in our minds, but don’t want to admit we’ve visited.
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- Everybody loves a victim.
- Everybody loathes a villain.
- Everybody frames stories in good and evil, black and white. The primitive part of our brain is wired to see this story as either the scoundrel did it and deserves to be punished, or the liar has falsely accused him and owes him an apology. There’s little if any room in our collective consciousness for subtlety or nuance or ending with questions instead of a dispositive answer.
- Stories like this one place the players in archetypal roles—the axe grinder, the whistleblower, the disgruntled daughter, the manipulative mother, the fallible father, the fallen filmmaker, the pedophile on the pedestal, the creep who deserves his comeuppance, the ardent apologist, and on and on—and all this happens below our level of consciousness.
- We make assumptions and jump to conclusions and rush to judgments that are heavily influenced by who we listen to and what we read, which in turn is influenced by the biases that form our own information bubble.
- Every good story has an arc—a trajectory—and if the story itself doesn’t have one, the media tries to supply it. In this case though, after watching this story rocket onto the front pages, we are unlikely to see it land with Farrow silenced for false accusations or Allen punished for his alleged sins. Today’s media is so fractured and splintered that it is impossible not to have conflicting accounts from different sources cause a “collective cognitive dissonance” that will disappoint readers looking for a traditional happy or tragic ending.
- This, too, shall pass. In the media world, the next big story always takes the place of the last one and already has.
- We’ll never know the truth, even though we desperately desire it. Whatever happened happened long ago, and without eyewitness accounts or material evidence, the competing narratives can never be squared. And whether or not a Hollywood idol has damaged his daughter, Hollywood has programmed us to expect endings that provide resolution, if not vindication or epiphany. But much to our collective dismay, we’re going to have to make peace with the truth that this story will have no satisfactory ending.
- With truth being subjective and everyone having their own version, honesty—and leading an honest life—becomes less about always telling the “truth” and more about always being accountable for our actions.
- Pouring out our opinions about stories such as this one is a critical part of our social dialogue. Whenever there is a real or imagined breach of our rules, a transgression of this order, a crossing of boundaries that most of us dare not cross but some of us do and others may have thought about and still others search their souls on and wonder whether, if tempted, they could take a bite of the forbidden fruit and fall in the same fashion, we struggle to make sense of our own human frailty.
The +1 is this: Both childhood and celebrity are terribly dangerous places where awful things happen that can shift everything in a second. Childhood is supposed to be a place of safety, and when that safety is violated, or believed to have been violated, we search for answers and justice through the lens of our own vulnerability. When the alleged violator is a person of great accomplishment in his or her field, the story becomes more complicated, as it involves a potential fall from privilege and grace. When the alleged violator is a Hollywood figure, it causes us to wonder how long Hollywood will remain the last sanctuary for bad behavior, now that football locker rooms and churches are no longer available. Finally, the Farrow-Allen story presents us with the conundrum of two conflicting truths, both of which are critical to our cultural narratives: “Innocent before proven guilty” vs. “Victims should always be believed.”
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In the end, we are left with open-ended questions. What do we think about this? And what do we “believe?” The painful truth is, there are no easy answers. After the shouting match is over, we face a wrestling match of our own.
Photo—Wikimedia Commons
We don’t know what really happened in this story. However, Hollywood and society in general does have a tendency to ignore the bad behavior of those who entertain us. Even celebrate those who engage in bad behavior. (Such as Charlie Sheen who has degraded everyone from his co-stars to members of his own family and still gets another TV show.) I am also reminded of Corey Feldman and Corey Haim and the sexual abuse they both suffered at the hands of leading men in Hollywood left unnamed. Corey said that people knew exactly what was happening and no one did… Read more »
Good article. I think it’s interesting what Suzie says above about how she feels free to believe Allen molested Dylan because she’s neither judge or jury. That’s an interesting distinction. I always think of cases in terms of being judge or jury. What bothers me is having people who don’t know the difference between what they feel and what the facts mean in charge of passing judgment. Anyway, I read this piece earlier today and thought it was pretty amazing.
http://gawker.com/woody-allen-is-not-a-monster-he-is-a-person-like-my-f-1518291644
Tom, you write as if all we know is what Dylan said and what Allen said. Instead, we can read reports from the custody judges, including witness testimony; what the prosecutor says Allen did to stop the investigation; what a psychiatrist who specializes in child abuse said about the Yale-New Haven report, etc. We can learn that Soon-Yi was a shy and sheltered teen when Allen started paying attention to her, taking her to basketball games, giving her gifts, etc. Even after he took photos of her legs spread on his couch, he was still negotiating to get back with… Read more »
Suzie, I am aware there are reports and statements and testimony. Both Farrow and Allen make reference to this in their writing, as do their respective supporters and detractors. While one might make a dispositive conclusion as to Allen’s innocence or guilt based on this material, the salient point is that such a conclusion was never reached by the justice system, despite ample opportunity to do so. Granted, all that means is that Allen has not been found guilty in court, and it does not answer the question of whether he did or not in fact molest Dylan. You are… Read more »
Agree with Suzy. Take the story to the next level, too many children are being used, exploited and being groomed for sexual gratification by predator adults. Too much evidence exists on Allen appetite for young girls. He married one. It is creepy.
The plight of abused children can, and will, be the subject of one or more separate articles. Not to defend Allen’s marriage to Soon-Yi, but he’s not the only man, famous or not, ever to have married a substantially younger woman, and that fact in and of itself has no bearing on his innocence or guilt. Mia Farrow was 21 and Frank Sinatra 51 when they married in 1966. They divorced two years later (while Allen has been married to Soon-Yi for 16 years and has raised two children with her). Does this lead to the conclusion that Sinatra was… Read more »
“Creep” is a subjective term. Personally and subjectively, I do think it’s creepy when significantly older men marry significantly younger women. The younger woman has the grace of inexperience and immaturity on her side. The older man, not so much. Our society is still strongly rooted in the idea of male worth over female worth when it comes to aging. But we aren’t just talking about any old older man/younger woman relationshp. We are talking about a man, who had a romantic relationship with a woman, who while they were together, adopted a child, and who he was significantly around… Read more »
Tom thanks for taking on this topic and handling it with some amount of clarity. I read the part about Jungian archetypes and my first instinct was to throw up. I just don’t go in for that kind of, my words, “psycho-babble.” But the more I thought about it the more I think you are right. Since we have no way of ever finding out what happened in this case, the most revealing part of the story is what it stirs in us, what we project onto the unknowable, how we respond with such vitriol when someone else says something… Read more »
Tom, Thanks for your comments and of course for the impetus to approach this topic, conveyed through Lisa. I hear you completely about the Jungian archetypes, and I’m a firm believer in personal responsibility and never blaming the murky subconscious for our actions, especially ones that harm others. That said, I have spent most of the past decade trying to live what I call a “conscious life,” my phrase for maintaining the practice of being aware of programmed responses and behaviors that don’t serve me and consciously intervening when these arise to generate different, healthier actions. I reached this way… Read more »
Truth is subjective? That’s such a load of bullshit. It is wrong to molest a child. That is the truth. It is wrong to use a position of trust and power to harm the powerless. That is the truth. Contemplating evil and committing evil are two different things. That is the truth.
Our personal experiences and cultural backgrounds will color our perceptions. They do not change what is true.
Karen, I hope you didn’t interpret the article to suggest in any way that molestation of a child is acceptable. It is not, under any circumstances whatsoever. I would qualify your last two sentences as follows. Our personal experiences and cultural backgrounds definitely color our perceptions. They do not change what has happened. They do, however, influence the way we both perceive and present what has happened. That is my opinion.
“When the alleged violator is a person of great accomplishment in his field, the story becomes more complicated…” Yes, indeed…I have tried to bury stuff that happened long ago…my ex-abuser came out of nowhere and stalked me after a two decades of silence…the terror and panic such an experience triggers is truly awful…I know what happened long ago….and he knows it, too…to see an abuser’s face lauded in public and all over the internet is like a punch to the gut…it took a lot for me to acknowledge what happened or to call it for what it was…it took even… Read more »
Lela, I commend you for your courage and wish you the best. Thank you for your comments.
Everybody loves a victim????
Um no. Considering the treatment that most victims get when they go to report crimes in this country, I would say no, people don’t love victims.
I have no doubt in my mind that Dylan Farrow is probably getting huge amounts of hate mail and probably death threats at this point.
Joanna, I agree with your point completely. Perhaps that sentence should have read, everybody loves an underdog—or most people do. I have no doubt as well that Dylan Farrow is being vilified in many circles. So no, everybody does not love a victim. But many people do tend to side with victims blindly before they have heard even a shred of the story, before any truth has been brought to light, and they do this, I believe, for reasons that are deeply tied to their own psychological makeup and have nothing to do with the veracity of the victim’s statements… Read more »