Woody Allen: separating the artist from the individual

[David]

A few things have happened since we last discussed this – notably, the #metoo movement, in which the reaction against Hollywood’s culture of sexual harassment and (perceived) protection of abusers has led to a substantial backlash against Allen, with actors lining up to denounce him or apologise for having worked with him in the past.

What hasn’t happened is that no new evidence has emerged since 2014, or, for that matter, since the mid-‘90s. Arguments for or against are still based on court documents and news stories from 20+ years ago, materials that were very much available and in the public eye even then. It’s hard to imagine that opposition to child abuse has grown since 1992, so what’s changed?

I don’t see any point in further debating Allen’s guilt or innocence. Personally, I think it’s a hubristic and pointless exercise to make assertions about something we simply do not and at present cannot know the truth of. The reason I’m bumping this thread instead relates to the title – my impression is that the most decisive factor in this shift in attitude has to do with our approach to the concept of “separating the art from the artist”.

This, to my mind, is a concept that is increasingly misunderstood. The principle emerges from liberal enlightenment ideas about the freedom of expression and the championing of intellectual/philosophical thought as an end unto itself, but it is not, at its core, an argument that an artwork is wholly disentanglable from the life, actions or beliefs its creator. What it means is something much simpler: that the perception of the merit of an artwork should not be affected by views about the moral virtue of the artist.

It was not that people didn’t care about sexual abuse in 1992 – indeed, this was around the time that it had come to the forefront of the public imagination, as revelations of mass institutional abuse was starting to surface – it’s that, I think, on some level, a certain artistic and intellectual tradition saw it as mostly irrelevant to the question of how we should value and assess Allen’s work. The question of his guilt or innocence was a matter for the gossip magazines and current affairs shows, and ultimately one for the courts to resolve. That, again, was not at all to diminish the gravity of what he was accused of, but to simply argue that it was not a matter that affected the realm of art, or appreciation thereof.

Perhaps the biggest effect of the #MeToo movement has been to make that view decidedly unfashionable. It is, alarmingly, increasingly treated as a relic of a past time. In some ways, that’s understandable: this cloistering of the art world likely contributed to the tolerance of Weinstein and others’ alleged crimes and standover tactics. But that was an issue of poor (atrocious, really) workplace practices and regulations. It had nothing to do with whether Woody Allen should be permitted to make films, or whether actors should work with him. It had nothing to do with whether or not we could value his work irrespective of his guilt or innocence.

We don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If the #MeToo backlash has ensured that a Weinstein figure can never traipse through the industry again, then that is a major achievement and victory for women in Hollywood (and other industries through which these principles flow down). But it would be a terrible error if we allow our zeal to take down crucial principles with it, I feel. If art matters, then placing moralistic restrictions on who can make it is something that needs to be vigorously opposed. I just worry that there are not many people left who are willing to take up that fight.

[Mugwump]

Art is always being used to define or contest power relations. This is no different.

One of the side effects of a socially mobile society is that power becomes fluid, a source of anxiety - so people constantly seek ways to access power and advantage over others. #metoo is undoubtedly doing a service in exposing some men’s abuse of power over women to obtain sex, but at the same time it has passed great power to women who wish to make trivial or vexatious complaints. Anyone who has lived In the world knows that many women use sexual allure and consent to gain power over men. It is subtler, but it happens, and since women are not more moral as a group than men, so #metoo is used for that purpose where it suits.

Actresses who wanted to gain fame and fortune by working with Allen did so when it suited them. Now they wish to distance themselves. Welcome to the use of art and abstracted victimhood as a ruse to power.

On the question of whether art works are really separable from the character of the creator, It seems obvious to me that they are. I don’t care that
Wagner was a nasty anti-Semite, that Picasso was a deep misogynist, or that DH Lawrence had essentially fascist beliefs. Today, once the artist is dead, it seems to matter less than when the artist lives ; but on present trends, the iconoclasts who wanted Rhodes dethroned at Oriel College will probably one day wield their hammers of grievance at Bayreuth. Until we banish the capacity of collective victimhood and collective preference to confer individual advantage, we will see art subjected to its vicious impulse.

[think positive]

The women proving to be less than moral themselves doesn’t make the perpetrator any less guilty. Just means they are all scumbags.