Tuesday, February 11, 2014

A Few Notes About Woody Allen's Accuser-By-Proxy

I'm on the fence as to whether I'll run a red pill analysis on the two articles that form the backbone of the public accusations against Woody Allen. I may get sick of the whole thing. I do think there's some value there, though.

As I've read the commentaries and the public's response, it's clear that opinions are polarized beyond hope. However, I'm not interested in convincing anyone one way or another.

My goal isn't to exonerate Allen--I think he's generally a rotten person. My goal is to point out that Allen's defense is completely plausible. The opposition would like us to believe that women are simply incapable of making up horrendous lies to smear a man, let alone convince a daughter that she's been violated.

Adherence to this belief is denying the reality of what women are capable of doing. The core of the dark female arts is accomplishing a goal without appearing to have done anything underhanded. For example, woman don't usually murder--they get a man to do it for them and then claim they had nothing to do with it. There are a lot of signs within the articles that indicate Farrow is playing the game of getting what she wants and appearing to have done nothing to get it.

The articles in question are Mia’s Story: Farrow on Woody Allen, published in Vanity Fair in November 1992 and Momma Mia!, published in the same magazine in November 2013. Those articles, and the supplement 10 Undeniable Facts About the Woody Allen Sexual-Abuse Allegation, were all written by the same journalist, Maureen Orth.

For some context:  The first article was written in the midst of the controversy as it happened. At the time of publication, no legal decisions had been made. It's also written without Farrow's direct participation, although it relies heavily on "friends," some named and some not. The supplement is simply a shorthand version of the public case against Allen, written for people who want to argue without doing much research. It's also a spun version of the facts, based mostly on the official legal opinions, which one may or may not choose to believe.

(Discounting the support of the prosecutor and the judge is a fair game tactic, as the Farrow position is that any expert support for Allen was bought with his wealth. It's just as likely--and more established--that our courts favor female accusers and mothers as it is that Allen's money fixed the game.)

The November 2013 article is the powder keg that was waiting for the Golden Globes spark. It's probably the most-cited source for Farrow/Dylan supporters. It's a very strange article, starting out as a profile/hagiography before settling into another point-by-point accusation.

There's a lot of dark red pill stuff in there, intentionally painting Woody Allen as an evil, domineering man and Farrow as his hapless, confused victim. "Friends" are always reporting terrible things that Farrow told them Allen did, while few were witnessed. The story of the messy breakup is full of situations where circumstances forced Farrow's hand. Farrow's suspect behavior is painted glowingly.

In hard-nosed journalism, the tactic is to poke as many holes in everyone's story as possible. One assumes that everyone is spinning the facts in their favor; when the perspectives are put together, holes and all, it paints a picture (we hope) approximating the truth.

This form has devolved simply reporting perspectives beside one another; "Person A says this. Person B says this." (Modern journalism usually adds a third, "Person C says this about why Person B is wrong. The End.")

Orth's articles are closer to advocacy pieces. They gray the line between advocating a position and "reporting the facts." Orth offers just enough of Allen's defense to let you know it exists, then demolishes it. Cleverly, she even lets Allen win a couple of minor points, just so it doesn't look like a blowout.

Now, a tangent:  As the book on the right suggests, I've been a long-time true crime reader. I recommend Gary Indiana's Three Month Fever, about the Andrew Cunanan case. It's not your typical true crime book; Indiana calls it a "pastiche." It relies less on the dry details of Cunanan's life than on the aspects of the gay world he lived in. He creates a context for Cunanan's murder spree, primarily the pains of the sexual marketplace (Cunanan had "sugar daddies" that took care of him until he hit the Wall) and the dehumanizing aspects of the extreme BDSM scene.

I mention that because there was another mass market book written about Andrew Cunanan:  Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, by none other than Farrow advocate Maureen Orth. I don't recommend it.

Orth does a fine job detailing Cunanan's life--indeed, she provides a more complete set of facts than Indiana--although she doesn't give us much sense of what Cunanan was like before he went over the edge. If I remember correctly, she also does fine by fashion designer Gianni Versace. But the book falls apart at the end as she focuses on the manhunt.

Orth's mistakes show how clever Indiana was in approaching Cunanan by imagining his interior world. The Cunanan story, writ large, is a big, sloppy mess.

I suspect she was attracted to the Versace element--she was a long-time entertainment profile writer--but Cunanan's murder of the designer was something less than an assassination and something more than random. Cunanan didn't have an obsession with Versace and he didn't have any connections with his world. Probably, Versace was just a symbol of the wealth-and-beauty life Cunanan had been shut out of. The Cunanan story and the Versace story don't connect in any literary way.

Orth was trying to broaden Cunanan's crimes. If she couldn't connect him to the world of high fashion, then she'd use his crime to explore the workings of a nationwide manhunt. But the manhunt was a wash--Cunanan was able to evade capture for three months, not through any brilliant maneuvers but by keeping in motion until he arrived in Miami, where he knew no one. The manhunt accomplished nothing.

This is simply bad luck. Orth had probably gone into the book thinking that there was a larger story somewhere in the mix. But Cunanan was simply a man who compounded murder with murder and lashed out one last time at someone famous. Versace and the manhunt were incidental. So she tried to make the best of a bad hash (I suppose that writing a straight true crime book instead was beneath her).

But did she have to devote the last third of the book to that "failed manhunt?" It became incredibly boring as she ran though detail after detail about the FBI's workings and the life stories of the agents who, I'll say again, had nothing to do with the end of Cunanan's spree.

The reason that Orth did this is that she caught a case of Journalist's Source Syndrome. JSS is a condition that has ruined many non-fiction books and runs rampant in the true crime genre.

The journalist is tasked with gathering information about a situation and putting that information into a readable story. To accomplish this, she interviews many people. Some are more forthcoming than others. If she's not careful, she ends up writing a story based on who was more willing to talk. She doesn't tell the story, she tells the source's story.

This is what happened at the end of Orth's book. The FBI is usually open to discussing closed cases. Most people would be flattered to have a reporter come in and ask them everything about their jobs. Orth got a lot of information about the manhunt and used it, even though it told us nothing about Cunanan and didn't catch him, anyway.

(Incidentally, the most common true crime incarnation of this syndrome occurs when the reporter starts investigating a case as the trial begins. The book will detail the crime and then give one a day-to-day report of the trial, repeating all the facts from the first half of the book. It's tiresome.)

I think that Orth suffers from JSS when it comes to the Farrow articles. She appears to speak to a large number of Farrow's friends and her legal team, but only one or two of Allen's circle--and then only to grab an "Allen's camp disputes this." It's natural to believe what a person is saying to you, but it's the journalist's job to overcome this tendency.

Orth spoke only to Farrow's circle in the first article but I think in the newest she found a personal connection with Farrow.

In the last fifteen years, Farrow has remade herself as a champion of the Third World poor. Orth, too, has a long history of charity work, in Colombia. She was in the Peace Corps in the 60s; during that time she somehow had a school named after her which is still in operation. She also runs a foundation in her name. I believe that Orth found Farrow simpatico.

In addition, Orth has a bit - of - a - fixation - on - pedophiles. You'll notice she doesn't clear anyone's name.

No comments:

Post a Comment