When I watch this clip from Manhattan I remember how it felt to see it when it came out. I was 14. The math of the story said she was 17 – but she looks and acts 12. I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t know I was a filmmaker yet. My urge toward protaganism was simultaneously inspired by his hubris and extinguished by being asked to identify with her. A pit in my stomach wound into itself with shame and guilt, but soon enough I was lost in the beauty of the skyline and the Gershwin, the comedy and the art. My discomfort went away. Today this scene reads like there is a gun to her head, just off camera.
That comedic-legacy family tree map in the New York Times a few weeks ago feels a little different now, as well. I joked to friends how it should have come with a trigger warning for those of us who felt left off of that map. But the truth is, we are all his children. We inherited his rules and took them as emotional gospel. One was that a sad sack Jewish man can re-imagine himself as the object of desire for the impossibly young, impossibly beautiful Mariel Hemingway – as long as he is brilliantly funny. For a post-Holocaust generation, that math was a life raft in the face of humiliations like old, Jewish, short, ugly. His voice gave me something to hold on to, a way to win again.
When I try to process whether I'm ready to indict Woody, I can’t ignore the way that film and art can work as propaganda for the self. Saying goodbye to our respect for him is more than giving up a few movies to watch. It’s giving up a way to be in the world. The beautiful, bountiful internet has gratefully given Dylan a million sister voices saying, “I believe you, I see it too, I knew it too.” We are children, joining hands – or better yet – clasping forearms for dear life, like a brutal Red Rover game is about to start.
CHATTER
Honk if you think Woody Allen should kill himself…now! There is no amount of good writing, witty banter, or intellectual fodder that can ever make what he did to little girls ok.
It sickened me. As did Leonard Cohen’s music clip with a kiss at the end from a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. Put me off him for life.
Rebecca–we didn’t know any better. And like this piece says, we inherited his rules and felt like his children. When I saw this first I was already writing screenplays. I didn’t even really process the underlying darkness because the music, the scene, the whole ambience carried me away. I am sorry my generation missed this but thanks to Dylan and her courage, we got it now. And I, for one, am gonna do something about it!
Thank you for this. We need to fight the good fight–more strong female voices in every aspect of art and entertainment!
Some of us protested then (MANHATTAN 1979) & we are still protesting now: http://secondcitytzivi.com/2011/12/16/manhattan-1979/
Waking up to read this was like a huge exhale on so many levels. I was up all night trying to articulate the same pit in my stomach about Mariel, the confusion I felt as a kid when I watched this movie my parents loved. I’ve heard people argue otherwise (into the wee hours, on twitter) but to me, she read as ME. Why were all these adults ok with it?
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