John Maier

Is this the last round in the great celebrity Punch and Judy show?

Woody Allen turns the tables on Mia Farrow, accusing her of abusing her adopted children — whom she collected ‘like new toys’

Woody Allen, Mia Farrow and children in New York in 1989. Credit: Getty Images 
issue 02 May 2020

It’s been tough recently being Woody Allen, something that didn’t look too easy to begin with. Last year Amazon breached his four-film contract, preferring to settle out of court. Actors have lodged their public regret at working with him. He is one of Hollywood’s notable sinking stars. In March, following a demonstration by staff, Hachette pulped this book. ‘Everybody should take responsibility for their actions,’ one protesting employee told the Guardian — anonymously, and apparently without irony. The New York Times called him ‘a monster’. And if you think that’s social rock bottom, in 2016 the Clinton campaign refused his donation. Imagine that: money so tainted that not even the Clintons will bank it. That’s the basement level below rock bottom.

What is curious about Allen’s partial blacklisting is that it isn’t a response to some recent unanswerable development in the case against him. Rather it seems to express the more summary verdict of a culture impatient with moral uncertainty and suspicious of the formal procedure of the law.

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