Thread by @carolecadwalla

I believe Dylan Farrow

I’m so glad that @RealDylanFarrow & @MiaFarrow have finally told their version of events in @hbo’s Allev v Farrow. But there is a lot to reckon with.

For years, we only had Woody Allen’s version of events. Mia pursued a policy of silence. And Dylan didn’t speak up until 2014.

I’m writing this thread because in a very small way, I feel complicit. In 2011, I interviewed Woody Allen. At that time, the allegations were historic. It would be another 3 years before Dylan spoke up theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/…

In a celebrity interview, you generally get ‘one question’, the question you lob in at the end like a grenade. I used mine to ask about his children. A question he turned & deflected.

(In 2014, interviewing Scarlett Johansson I used it to ask about Woody Allen. She defended him as she has ever since & I was escorted out of the room shortly afterwards)

theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/…

I didn’t ask Allen what I wanted to ask. In 2011, I was one small part of a media & PR operation that had normalised even the uncontested facts: that Allen seduced his daughter.

To those who say, Soon-Yi was not his daughter, fine. Use whatever words you want. She was his children’s sister, his partner’s daughter who he had watched grow up. Here she is as a teenager with him & Dylan

I hedged, I couched my q carefully around what was then acceptable. His r’ship with Soon-Yi had been successfully reframed as one of the May-Dec r’ships his entire oeuvre has so relentlessly romanticised. Teens & young women the seducers of hapless older men

Allen v Farrow contains new harrowing footage of Dylan from the time. But it also shows how the media was fed & fell for a line: that Farrow was a woman ‘spurned’ & the story about Dylan a hysterical over-reaction. Since Farrow remained silent, that story is the one that stood

And sure, this doc is one-sided. But then that’s all there’s been till now: Allen’s side. And what Allen v Farrow lays bare is how this narrative succeeded because of how deep this stuff goes. A paedophiliac aspect to our culture that we still haven’t recognised or reckoned with

Our entire culture has largely been defined by powerful men & shaped in their image. And while #metoo has changed so much, it hasn’t changed this. We are surrounded by this stuff. Steeped in it.

For years, there wasn’t even a language or a place from which to confront Manhattan’s status as a ‘comic masterpiece’. The story of a 17-year-old girl, Tracy, who is groomed & gaslit & dumped. (Played by a 16-yr-old who later said how terrified she was of kissing Allen)

These are the films which my generation internalised as art, as masterpieces, as desirable life choices. I’m so glad @RealDylanFarrow has found her voice. But we need an entire new generation of filmmakers to rip it all up. Burn it to the ground. Tell Tracy’s sodding story

And while I’m here, please, editors, please stop sending middle-aged men to interview hot young actresses. Looking up the Johansson interview reminded me of another controversy..

slate.com/human-interest…

I interviewed Johansson on the exact same day. The descriptions of female actresses by middle-aged male writers have always made me puke, but this was a new low. Salivating over her beauty to then call her shallow

latimes.com/entertainment/…

And yes. Johansson was 17 when she came to fame in a film as the romantic subject of a 54 year old man. And the fact this film was made by a woman & has undergone no re-evaluation for fetishising a teenager & general racial bullshit essentially proves the point I’m trying to make