In which I predict that Philip Roth will come out of retirement to fictionalize Woody Allen's latest troubles

Woody Allen weighs in. One commenter notes the line that jumped out at me as well: "After all, I was a 56-year-old man who had never before (or after) been accused of child molestation." Not accused, not the same as never did it, hmm? But then there's the small matter of context. Two sentences before: "I naïvely thought the accusation would be dismissed out of hand because of course, I hadn’t molested Dylan and any rational person would see the ploy for what it was." But he doesn't exactly deny ever molesting a child - he more denies ever having been caught. Except he's only accused of this one incident - must he also deny having ever (linking to the requisite Woody film clip, nothing worse!) fondled a sheep? Except child abuse is about patterns, so it's kind of relevant, after all.

So what is it? Is he a Roth protagonist, the target of a witch hunt, a modern-day Dreyfus whose Jewishness, like that of the original, is not incidental? Or - as I suspect, even if it wouldn't make for as good a novel - a molester who knows there's no way at this point he could be convicted of the crime in question, and who may as well protect his name and livelihood? Whether or not he did it, he's going to say he didn't. He's also one of the best writers of our time, certainly better than the op-ed page usual, so he's bound to do so persuasively, to make the narrator sympathetic.

But was this the best he could come up with? It speaks quite poorly of him and his judgment that he doesn't appear to get why dating Soon-Yi would have been so controversial. "[A judge] thought of me as an older man exploiting a much younger woman, which outraged Mia as improper despite the fact she had dated a much older Frank Sinatra when she was 19." Gah! It's not about an older man with some younger woman. This was her daughter!

As The Onion so aptly pointed out, "anyone who says that [Allen's innocent] is bound to sound like kind of an asshole, right?" But maybe with good reason? Lots and lots and lots and lots of children are molested. Because it's a crime whose victim, if they even speak up, is never thought credible (what with being a child), as well as the one generally considered the most heinous, it's kept tremendously secret, all the more so if the accused has a big-deal reputation to protect. We need to consider that Mia was furious at Woody at the time, but this could be what motivated her to finally speak out about something she'd known for longer. I mean, anti-Catholicism is a thing, but that doesn't mean the priest molestation scandals are the mere invention of Protestants and lapsed Catholics. No, we'll never know for sure, but this essay, clever as it is, didn't help his case.

Is fiction better?

As readers of the 'fiction is better' tag here know well, I see fiction as kind of magical. OK, not magical, but the place where the personal writing it can be tempting to do about yourself or your loved ones - tempting, that is, both because of the market for confessional writing, and because it takes less creativity - can be channeled. I tend to think it's impossible to ruin someone's reputation with fiction, because of the giant umbrella over it saying it's made up. You can certainly offend your relatives with fiction - either because they think they see themselves in it, or even just because, horrors, they now know that you know about whichever seedy situations, or it's humiliating to be in any way associated with someone whose mind came up with that.

There's sometimes some iffiness when the "fiction" is very amateur, and where it's not clear the person writing it has a sophisticated enough conception of genre to even intend for the document to be fictional - the obvious example being when a high school student's creative-writing assignments are all about shooting everyone in the class, and the teacher alerts authorities. But in general, at least with published work, we at least try to believe fiction is not fact.

Well! There's now a burgeoning movement to declare Woody Allen guilty (which, to repeat myself, I suspect he is, in part for the reasons Ann Friedman does) on the basis of his movies and writing. This kind of relates to the other movement - to announce that you never liked his work anyway - insofar as that's about making it clear that you are in no way tainted by any of this. (As if, if you liked "Annie Hall," it's because the movie contained subliminal pro-molestation messages you approved of, and not because it's an excellent romantic comedy about adults.) And it also subverts the whole you-can-like-the-art-but-not-the-artist conversation - is there any ethical way to like art depicting something horrible, created by someone very plausibly accused of the horribleness in question?

And... what to do with this? Some of what's 'revealed' is that, if we're blurring fiction and fact, Allen finds 18-year-old women attractive. It's my understanding that most men do - not to the exclusion of somewhat older women, and not as exclusively as some would have us believe (as the attention most women well over 18 get attests). But yes, if a really good-looking late-teens, post-pubescent woman walks by, many men appear aware of this. Such men are not pedophiles. What stops most middle-aged men from getting involved with them is a mix of their lack of interest in men their age who aren't rich and famous; the great likelihood that any 18-year-olds a man actually interacts with would be taboo for some other reason (students, children's friends, etc.); and the fact that they'd have nothing in common.

But other writing dug up (via) does seem to point to an interest in... things far closer to Dylan Farrow's accusation. What do we do with this? A strict 'fiction doesn't count' approach is highly sophisticated, but somewhat devoid of common sense. And yet you don't want a witch-hunt situation, where anyone who's written about something skeevy or illegal can then credibly be accused of the act in question, because it came up in their art. But then the idea that if someone's self-expression is Art, they get a pass, has its own messy implications - those who qualify as Artists (generally rich/old/white/male etc.) can discuss whatever, through their Art, whereas everyone else is held to a different standard. Point being, I have many questions here, but no answers.

Questions of the morning

-How do you separate art from artist if the artist is still living? I mean this in a very pragmatic sense. If the artist's dead, it's simple enough. But won't a living artist, to go on producing that wonderful art that the world so appreciates, need to keep whichever lifestyle to which they (no one specific in mind, ahem) have grown accustomed? As in, there won't be any more art from this person if we don't keep supporting them. And if we liked their old stuff more anyway, we're still supporting the living person by demanding more, say, DVDs of "Annie Hall."

-Will it ever stop snowing? It's fine if the answer's no, but I may want to invest, as they say, in the appropriate gear. While not essential, it would be nice to sometimes leave the house.

CCOAs, art-vs.-artists, and grocery-guilt

-Flavia, who I understand has a new book out (congrats!), also has a blog post that I, unsurprisingly, endorse in full, and not just because of the h/t at the end. (I do remain proud of that template.) She gets at two key points regarding conservative critiques of academia: 1) the CCOA-perpetuated myth that academics no longer know or care about canonical texts, and 2) well, let's just quote Flavia:

[A[s someone who works on an earlier period, I've long noticed that conservative critics who inveigh against the teaching of pop culture, ephemera, women and minority writers (and so on) do not take quite the same position when it comes to very minor writers who happen to be part of the establishment. So, early modern ballads, sermons, and the works of fifth-rate playwrights are so interesting and so worthwhile and even an important work of recovery (because: OUR HERITAGE!), but Mary Wroth and Margaret Cavendish--nevermind Toni Morrison, August Wilson or The Sopranos--aren't important enough or central enough to the culture.

-While I probably covered all I needed to and then some (it's upsetting, so I babble) re: the Woody Allen debacle in the post below, I will nevertheless add this: there are no Brownie points for having never really liked the work of someone who turns out to be/to do something despicable. Having never much liked Galliano's clothing designs or Michael Richards's Kramer doesn't make you some kind of amazing judge of character who just knew all along, from their art, that these people had terribleness inside just waiting to get out. This is in response to all the people chiming in, 'well I never liked his movies,' as if that's somehow relevant. If there's a moral quandary here, it's what to do if you do like the artist's work.

-Whole Foods, I know, I know. If you don't want the liberal-guilt shopping experience, why go? But it was on the way home, and there's kind of a car-oil situation, and it's Sunday, so this wasn't the moment to try anything geographically inessential like Wegmans or, where I really wanted to go, H-Mart in Edison. And this is what gets to me: they ask you at Whole Foods if you want to donate your bag refund, and ask this without specifying to what entity. Now I promise I'm not a terrible person. I went to my usual Sunday volunteering despite not knowing what that would mean for the oiliness or lack thereof of whichever internal parts of the car. And my grievance here is obviously with the company policy, not this particular cashier. But my default response to a super-vague request for a donation is always going to be no. (I could take this in a Feelings Essay direction, and hold forth on how disappointed in me this cashier surely was, how she's no doubt still thinking about this, but will leave it there.)

Do you know where your art comes from?

Should we continue to watch and enjoy (some) Woody Allen movies? Dylan Farrow and Nicholas Kristof say no, and Robert B. Weide says yes. This is a tricky art-vs.-artist question because the relevant parties are very much alive and very much continuing the conversation, in public, in forums where comments from the public are solicited. This isn't like such-and-such a writer having been a racist, but back when everyone was an open racist, and if we're going to read books from a long time ago, that's something we just have to confront. Woody's still making movies, and his estranged relatives are still - not unreasonably - complaining about him.

The best I can sort this out, using first names for clarity's sake:

-There seems to be a consensus that because Dylan's op-ed rings true to many, including some abuse survivors, Woody did what she claims. This seems potentially problematic, not because Woody is, as a Great Artist, above criticism, or because we must agree that a lack of a guilty verdict means, in the world of what actually happened, case closed. No, it's a problem because both child molestation and inaccurate accusations of child molestation are tragic, and there's a plausible case that he didn't do it. We may reasonably conclude that the former's worse than the latter, and that the balance of power makes it likely that the accused - especially when they're Woody-level famous - are getting away with something, as vs. unfairly accused. This is nevertheless different than the Roman Polanski case, where the only question, as I understand it, is whether in the 1970s, a 'mature' 13-year-old girl could consent to sex with an adult man (and not to even get into the drugs) - an evil, nonsense assertion from the get-go. Not whether he had sex with that child.

-Dylan's certainly the victim of something. One of two horrible things happened to her. Either she was abused by Woody, or she's repeating a horrible story she was encouraged to tell when she was seven. Either way, she's been through the ringer to the point that one can safely say she's been abused. (Ack, that family!) The appropriate response, regardless, isn't to blame her. In other words, there really isn't a choice between accusing Woody of molestation and accusing Dylan of lying. "Lying" implies an adult - or at least someone closer to the age of reason than seven - deciding to say something untrue. If this is something she's believed since childhood and is now repeating, that's something quite different from what false accusation normally implies.

-Mia was understandably angry and disgusted when her partner ran off with her daughter. She would have had a motive to make a story like this up. Such cases are not unheard-of, and remember that if we're talking about what people in power can get away with, Mia's not nobody. But even if we're giving Mia and Woody the benefit of the doubt, it's entirely possible that Mia would have been sufficiently shaken-up by her partner's sexual involvement with one of her children (!!!!!) that she'd start asking the others if he'd ever tried anything with them, and in doing so, might have accidentally planted the idea in their very young daughter's head.

-Weide's much-linked-to Daily Beast contrarian version has its problems as well. Most obviously, Weide retroactively rounds down the Mia-Woody relationship and the Mia-Soon-Yi one, when he emphasizes that a) Woody wasn't married to or living with Mia, and b) Soon-Yi isn't Mia's biological child. These things seem a bit beside the point. Woody and Mia were not just casually dating - Woody had adopted two of her other kids! - and an adopted daughter is still a daughter. And while I'd take Weide at his word that Woody didn't tell him to write this article, he clearly - by his own admission - has a career largely based on promoting Woody, and benefits from his good favor. And as a Jezebel commenter (!) correctly notes, there's a whole lot of "slut-shaming" of Mia, as if her cheating on Woody and getting involved with married men somehow matters to this case. If the Soon-Yi relationship can't be rounded up to the child molestation (Weide's argument), nor can dalliances between consenting adults be rounded up to making up a story of child molestation.

-Dylan opens and closes her op-ed with the provocative question, "What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie?" Many of the comments are from people who proudly never watched/liked Woody's movies, because they always knew there was something up (one uses the word "deviant") about that guy. Which, eh. Unless they could spell out which of these stories they were reacting to (i.e. the abuse allegations, or at least the Soon-Yi episode), what are they going on? it seems as if what they're saying is, his sensibility was too New York Jew. I mean, one commenter even writes, "Let's be real about this; the *ONLY* reason Woody Allen is not in a jail cell it because he is Jewish." Another, responding to a comment about Allen's global appeal: "Elites 'celebrate' people like him. Those of us in fly over country never have."

Basically, I get suspicious when people's objections to Woody aren't to Woody-the-accused-child-molester (which is reasonable) but to Woody-the-purveyor-of-humor-that-never-did-anything-for-me-so-to-hell-with-him. And if much of the anti-Woody sentiment is coming from people's preexisting sense that Jews control the media, or are above the law, I'm inclined... not to be any less upset by the accusations, but to be less quick to assume he's guilty.

-Ultimately, I don't know what to think about this. I do on some level end up leaning towards thinking child molestation - among celebrities and non-celebrities alike - is more often covered up than made up. And because there's no likely ulterior motive for Dylan to have discussed this with the NYT now, because in all the intervening years, she continued to believe this happened, I'm inclined to believe it did. I'm not convinced it did, but if it did, the art-artist distinction would be awfully tough to make.

The things to worry about roundup

-The question of "fast fashion" is in the news again, thanks to a new and much-publicized book by Elizabeth Cline. To some of us, it might come as surprise that there's anything new to say about this issue, about how we the entitled (female, American) consumers screw over labor and the environment with our insatiable lust for whatever is $5.99 at H&M. Wasn't this book already written? Having for a while now been a voice of gratuitous contrarianism on this issue, I'd assumed that the system of ever-cheaper, ever-trendier clothing was under a great deal of criticism, that we were already supposed to feel bad about "Made in Bangladesh." But until we're all hand-stitching our own clothes from worn-out farmers-market tote bags, until we get the message, we can probably expect more exposés along these lines.

-What to do when knockoff Hermès bags are made by the same workers who make the real deal? Perhaps not be one of those people who insists they only care about "quality," and then goes and buys an expensive, name-brand handbag named after Serge Gainsbourg's muse.

-Do you check your email? Use the Internet to watch videos? You might be depressed. Phrased otherwise: some people are and others are not depressed, and everyone checks their email and watches videos; those who never leave the house probably do more of both. Given that by the standards of Important New Research, all of us currently have the symptoms of every disease ever mentioned on "House," not to mention that if you ever felt awkward in a social situation, OMG Aspergers, we are all depressed. Or: no wonder we're all depressed, given that we are all at immediate risk of Mediterranean Sleeping Sickness and amyloidosis. (Imagine the "Seinfeld" plotline where George has a "white discoloration," in the age of WebMD.)

-Another subset of hypochondria: that which is on behalf of one's pet, who of course cannot announce that she feels ill and in what capacity. Every possible thing that goes on with a dog that does not appear in a Beneful commercial (shown on Internet video source Hulu, alas) is possibly devastating. Or: every so often, dogs throw up, and if you find yourself tearing up about this, you might be depressed. If, while online to check your dog's symptoms, you also check your email, or watch a video of some impossibly cool foodies preparing lunch, you might need to Google your own symptoms as well.

-Best answer yet to NYMag's question, "What makes someone a New Yorker?," from Frank DeCaro: "The inability to resist telling complete strangers where to eat." Guilty as charged - thus the hordes I insist on pointing to Dos Toros, Le Boulanger des Invalides Jocteur, and now Pad Thai in Highland Park.

-Touché, estranged son of Woody Allen, touché.