Pariahs on Park Avenue
 |
| Image not mine (Getty) |
I had just written about an unimpressive B-list celebrity experience back in Cleveland. But this was no B-list sighting. Woody Allen may be canceled, his last and final film barely finding a distributor; he may be morally repugnant to most, outdoing even Roman Polanski in the sicko department, but he is still, I would argue, a cultural force to be reckoned with and an icon of New York. Crossing paths with him and Soon-Yi was the most problematic of celebrity encounters.
As the eighty-eight-year-old filmmaker and his wife ambled ahead of us, I reflected on his greatest hits and fall from grace. In my youth, before the scandal broke, Woody Allen was a hero to me. Annie Hall was at the top of my list of favorite films. It elucidated Jewish/Gentile dynamics, the romanticization of neurosis, and the differences between “New York people” and “LA people.” Now, it is impossible to watch the great old films without the taint of his personal actions.
I was still processing my ambivalence with Joe at dinner that evening at a tiny restaurant in the West Village. A big-time international art dealer sitting next to us had overheard me recapping the encounter and volunteered that after years of living in New York and never seeing the dubious duo, he had recently spotted Woody and Soon-Yi twice in short succession. This captain of culture made the shaky argument that one must try to separate art from the artist. “Picasso was horrible to women and by all accounts a bad person.”
Maybe. Not sure it’s the same.
The art dealer seemed capable of processing ambivalence and moral ambiguity. I ventured that Soon-Yi was now an adult woman choosing to stay with Allen.
“Stockholm Syndrome!” rebutted his girlfriend or wife. She was having none of it. Neither was Joe.
They were right.
In late 2015, I saw a triumphant Picasso sculpture exhibition at MoMA. None of the reviewers resurrected the artist’s troubling relationships with women or his hideous comment that they were “either goddesses or doormats.” Picasso’s ceramics moved me to tears in Barcelona twice in my lifetime. I never once thought of his biography.
But with Woody Allen, it’s much more difficult to gloss over his sins. Mass media covered them in real time. He owned it and waxed on about Soon-Yi in his recent memoir. He had been charged with protecting her.
I don’t know if any future retrospectives of Allen’s films will allow audiences to assess his oeuvre for themselves. For now, it is overshadowed by his disgrace.
Meanwhile, as I thought about him and his wife turning left to ascend Park Avenue as Joe and I continued on 68th Street toward Lexington, I contemplated how those two could be so utterly alone in a city of 8 million.
As the eighty-eight-year-old filmmaker and his wife ambled ahead of us, I reflected on his greatest hits and fall from grace. In my youth, before the scandal broke, Woody Allen was a hero to me. Annie Hall was at the top of my list of favorite films. It elucidated Jewish/Gentile dynamics, the romanticization of neurosis, and the differences between “New York people” and “LA people.” Now, it is impossible to watch the great old films without the taint of his personal actions.
I was still processing my ambivalence with Joe at dinner that evening at a tiny restaurant in the West Village. A big-time international art dealer sitting next to us had overheard me recapping the encounter and volunteered that after years of living in New York and never seeing the dubious duo, he had recently spotted Woody and Soon-Yi twice in short succession. This captain of culture made the shaky argument that one must try to separate art from the artist. “Picasso was horrible to women and by all accounts a bad person.”
Maybe. Not sure it’s the same.
The art dealer seemed capable of processing ambivalence and moral ambiguity. I ventured that Soon-Yi was now an adult woman choosing to stay with Allen.
“Stockholm Syndrome!” rebutted his girlfriend or wife. She was having none of it. Neither was Joe.
They were right.
In late 2015, I saw a triumphant Picasso sculpture exhibition at MoMA. None of the reviewers resurrected the artist’s troubling relationships with women or his hideous comment that they were “either goddesses or doormats.” Picasso’s ceramics moved me to tears in Barcelona twice in my lifetime. I never once thought of his biography.
But with Woody Allen, it’s much more difficult to gloss over his sins. Mass media covered them in real time. He owned it and waxed on about Soon-Yi in his recent memoir. He had been charged with protecting her.
I don’t know if any future retrospectives of Allen’s films will allow audiences to assess his oeuvre for themselves. For now, it is overshadowed by his disgrace.
Meanwhile, as I thought about him and his wife turning left to ascend Park Avenue as Joe and I continued on 68th Street toward Lexington, I contemplated how those two could be so utterly alone in a city of 8 million.
Annie Hall was on the other night and believe it or not, I've never watched it in its entirety, but as I settled in, I just couldn't get the garbage surrounding Woody Allen out of my mind. I turned it off.
ReplyDeleteTalk about your spoonful of sewage.