On Woody Allen, Britney Spears, and Consequence Culture

Whenever somebody tells you that Cancel Culture is running rampant, just remind them that, as of now, Woody Allen is still allowed to make movies.

Not only is he allowed to make them, he has been celebrated for a whole slew of them even after he married his stepdaughter.

Just saying that so plainly feels liberating, because for years, you weren't allowed to put it that simply. Even mentioning Woody Allen and his marriage to his stepdaughter would result in some slovenly mansplaining, film student rushing to his defense by explaining that it was all okay, because she wasn't really his daughter, or even technically his stepdaughter, and who are we to judge, and gosh, wasn't Annie Hall so brilliant, and sometimes they would toss in that Mia Farrow is kind of nuts as well, and somehow, that all makes it okay.

And it was all bullshit.

But what could you do?

The media had decided that while Woody Allen was absolutely ripe for dragging and late night jokes for a period of time in the 90's, there was nothing that he did that should result in him being banished forever from Hollywood.

In fact, he kept right on making movies, and those movies kept on finding audiences, and he certainly never had a hard time getting well-reviewed for those films, and if you dared bring up how creepy it was that he had an affair with his partner's daughter, then you were seen as being stuck in the past or bringing up something that was somehow taboo, because the media, and therefore society, had decided that we were not going to talk about that anymore, because Woody Allen had made a lot of people a lot of money, and that meant, you had to drop it.

Before we can Cancel Culture, if you found something to be creepy, you could tell your friends about it. You bring it up at parties. You could write a letter to the editor and hope to get it published.

But that was it. Those were all the outlets available to you, and in no way could you ever hope to have the reach that the person you were being critical of could have, let alone the reach his defenders could have. It wasn't until the Rise of Twitter that normal people could point out that the Emperor has no clothes and actually have a decent platform upon which to yell it.

So, of course, powerful people have since tried to delegitimize that platform.

Make no mistake about it, we had cancellations long before social media. It's just that before Twitter, when people were cancelled, it was not because of what the average person thought of them. It was because they were determined to no longer be useful either due to their actions or just because Hollywood had gotten sick of them. Usually these people were women or minorities, and usually their infractions were nowhere near as bad as what Allen had done. In fact, sometimes those people were cancelled for calling out other people who probably should have been cancelled.

It was a wild time, and boy, I do not miss it. I know that's not a popular opinion at a time when nostalgia is everybody's favorite drug, but it's true. I do not miss having major newspapers and Entertainment Tonight telling me who I will continue to admire despite his affair being discovered by his then long-time girlfriend finding photos of her naked, 21-year-old daughter in his hallway.

Years after Allen managed to survive a calculated firestorm, Britney Spears committed the unforgivable crime of...cheating on Justin Timberlake? Not being the picture of an ideal young mother? Suffering from a breakdown after years of negative media attention that objectified and demeaned her?

What Britney went through is now documented in Framing Britney Spears on Hulu, but what you don't see in the documentary, is a comparison to the kind of scrutiny she faced versus what men like Allen faced for doing worse things than shaving their head at the height of their personal trauma. The juxtaposition would be quite damning to the media, and I suppose that's why the documentary stops short before it goes all the way there, because, let's face it, most of the people who should be condemned in the documentary are still working and profiting today. Those who have offered half-hearted apologies have been sure to follow them up with the condition that "But all you consumers were still buying it so..."

It comes back to what can be capitalized on.

Britney Spears made more money in her younger years that Allen's movies have made in decades, but as a woman, she was expendable. She was only going to get older and--according to the music industry--less sexy. In other words, less valuable. Allen's power was never in his sexuality.

In fact, Allen was like many men who came through Hollywood over the past century. An unattractive man who learned how to be clever and witty as a means of gaining power in an industry that only truly respects beauty, but is able to find beauty in someone who can make them money. Allen figured out how to translate his wit into currency, and so he was not only allowed into the VIP Room, but he was allowed to demonstrate how, once you're there, you can do whatever you like to whomever you like.

You can make a film where you play a protagonist who, at the age of forty-two, is very much you and give yourself a seventeen-year-old girlfriend, and create an entire world where not only is that plausible, but where it's normal.

Now, Allen may put his toe in the water, but it was film critics who warmed up the pool for him. They put that film--Manhattan--on "Best of" lists for years. They hailed it as a modern classic. They signaled to Allen that he could keep going down this road. It might be because many of them were older, unattractive, straight white men as well, and they would love to live in a world where teenage girls would be interested in them and they could date them and it would all be just fine.

It's a straight line from that point in culture to how Britney Spears ends up on the cover of Rolling Stone styled to look both childish and sexy at the very same time. Every inch of that cover was carefully curated to get the desired effect of placing youth and sexuality right next to each other, and we, as a society, still think of that cover as a kind of iconic triumph in photography and media, and not something of questionable taste.

I was a teenager when that cover came out, and I remember thinking there was something about it that wasn't right. That didn't seem designed for someone my age. That it was clearly an adult's fantasy involving sexualizing a teenage girl. But MTV said it was great, and so it was great.

Did people call it controversial?

Sure.

But controversial, at that point, was a word that had already been neutered. It was a way of helping boost sales on a given product without ever exiling the thing itself.

Usually anything that, at one point, was labeled "controversial" only has to wait a short time before it ends up on the right side of history, but who decides what "the right side" is?

What people need to understand about Cancel Culture, or, as I hope we can one day call it, Consequence Culture--a term I took from a wonderful person I spoke to as part of a series of interviews I did last year, is that while it might appear extreme, culture only ever exists in the extreme, which is to say, the other side of Consequence Culture at its worst is an episode of Family Feud where the survey is "Things Britney Spears Lost This Year" and contestants laugh and shout out answers like "Her Hair" and "Her Mind."

Everything works on a pendulum. It's naïve to think we can get to a middle anytime soon, so we have to choose what kind of radical we prefer. On one side, there's no consequences for anyone in power, and "cancelling" only exists to keep the lower ranks in line, and on the other side, every so often, somebody gets in trouble for something questionable, but at least in the current climate, that person has the same platform that's available to their detractors. This was not always the case.

The currently scrutiny on Allen is the result of a new HBO series Allen v. Farrow and it's brought about yet another conversation about separating the art from the artist. I've already written extensively about the dangers of indicating to young artists that you can be as awful as you want provided you create wonderful things, so I won't go too far into that, but I will say that Allen, more than any other artist I can think of, utilized his work like a weapon not just to shield himself, but to promote his own proclivities and normalize them for others. He has caused profound damage, and there is absolutely no reason to speak well of him or any of his work.

I will admit that for years Annie Hall was one of my favorite films, but I've recently had the chance to go back and examine it again, and it's clear now why it appealed to me. Here is a film about an ugly-but-funny young man who still, somehow, manages to date and charm a series of gorgeous and fascinating women leading up to the epitome of the ideal woman, played by Diane Keaton, who he then proceeds to obsess over and nearly destroy. I can see how it would have been appealing for me, an unattractive young guy who could write, to see what Allen did in that film and admire it.

Once you realize you want to be a part of the culture, but you're not conventionally beautiful, you have a hard time seeing how you can go about attaining a foothold.

Annie Hall is Woody Allen calling out to people like him--and people yet-to-be like him--letting them know how to do what he did.

This, he seems to say, this is how you get that power.

He put out a memoir last year. Nowhere in it was there an apology or even the semblance of a regret for any of his actions. He did go out of his way to blame and attack Mia Farrow, Dylan Farrow (his daughter, who accuses him of sexual molestation), and anyone else who tarnished his pristine image as a genius.

Meanwhile, Britney Spears isn't allowed to do so much as a sit-down interview with Kelly and Ryan.

Someone like Allen is still given access to a bigger platform, and chances are, the only reason he's avoided a much deeper reckoning, is because his relevancy is faded so much in recent years.

In other words, he stopped making people money.

Which appears to be the only thing many people still deem to be consequential.