When it comes to answering questions about the Woody Allen–Dylan Farrow controversy, most celebrities tend to play it safe, or — like Scarlett Johansson — feign to not really understand what the big deal is. Lena Dunham, on the other hand, was not shy on her feelings about Woody Allen. While appearing on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast yesterday, she stated the the filmmaker “nauseated” her. (Dunham has previously tweeted her support for Dylan Farrow.)
While Dunham says that she is personally “disgusted with Woody Allen’s behavior,” she did bring up an interesting conversation on what many have struggled with, on whether or not you can feel comfortable still enjoying Allen’s work knowing the full extent of the allegations against him. From The Wrap:
“I’m not gonna indict the work,” Dunham said. “I think that you can decide that you don’t want to support the work of somebody who has molested a child. That’s a completely appropriate choice. But going through it and saying, look, he’s told us in 57 ways that he rapes kids — that’s not the thing. The thing is to look at the actual evidence that exists in the world, which I think strongly suggests that Woody Allen is in the wrong. But for me the point is not to go through his one-act plays looking for references to child molestation. Because I’m not comfortable living in a world where art is part of how we convict people of crimes.”
“I mean for me, I haven’t wanted to watch his movies for a long time, partially because of who I think he is and partially because I think they got really bad,” she said.
BURN. In other words, don’t not watch Woody Allen movies because he’s a giant child molester, not watch them because they suck ass. When Marc Maron noted that “bad people have done amazing things,” she continued:
“It’s totally true,” Dunham said. “People who really believe Woody Allen is guilty have not felt comfortable saying that. Because they’re so afraid to lose their connection to his work. And the thing is, I feel like people need to understand that you can hold two positions in your mind. You can know that someone’s made work that’s meaningful to you and also know that they have most likely molested their daughter. … I was so unimpressed by people’s inability to think in less binary ways and to just experience the ambiguity that life is constantly offering up.”
I have to admit, I was with her there until that last line. Please, oh sage 27-year-old, tell me more about how I can be less “binary.” I guess the rest of it does make sense though, or at least it’s a nice thing to be able to tell yourself if Annie Hall is your favorite movie and you still want to sleep at night.
