BREAKING: NPR has learned that Hachette Publishing Group will not publish Woody Allen's memoir, originally scheduled for sale next month. More to come.— Anastasia Tsioulcas (@anastasiat) March 6, 2020
But honestly, this is kind of chicken-shit. The hysteria over "Satanic cults" in child care from a few decades back has not yet left our culture. And yes, I went there. There's as much evidence Woody Allen is a child molester as there was evidence that children were subjected to Satanic rituals while their parents were at work. We unleashed this anxiety in the '60's ("Free love" among college students) which led to de rigeur sightings of topless females in movies in the '70s (one of my favorite comedies is "Trading Places," but tell me again why Jamie Lee Curtis had to be topless in that), which led finally to the New Victorianism. No, I don't think men who insist women sleep with them on the first date, or who behave as Harvey Weinstein did or as other fallen public figures were alleged to have done (and I believe they did) are unfairly maligned. But you really can't eat your cake and have it, too. Either sex is something people freely engage in (with all the physical and emotional issues that raises, starting just with diseases), or it's something we strictly control and restrict, as much as possible, to monogamous relationships.
Yeah, I know that doesn't really happen, either. But reality is one thing, and what we want reality to be is another. It's the latter I'm concerned with here. We refuse to face the reality of the consequences of our choices as a society, and so we punish individuals for our collective sins. Mr. Allen is not a Christ-figure in this analysis, but neither is he yet another disease vector we must purge from the body social in order to protect ourselves from his "contagion." Hysteria is hysteria, whether it's aimed at punishing people in court for our fears over leaving our children to be raised by strangers, or for punishing some people so we can think our sins have been atoned for.
"Religion is responsibility, or it is nothing at all." And my religion teaches me to be responsible for myself, and not to seek responsibility in others so I don't have to bear any. Mr. Allen is not a moral exemplar, but neither should he be a pariah. It makes some people feel better to think so, but they are not holier because of it. Indeed, they are part of the problem, not even the beginnings of the solution.
(Besides, I can buy a copy of Mein Kampf, or even The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and I can find a copy of "Birth of a Nation" to watch, but I can't buy Mr. Allen's memoir? Huh?)
No comments:
Post a Comment