Fiction v Reality

Public opinion on Woody Allen and his films has shifted since the #MeToo era. Allen and his films were at the heart of the American establishment and at the centre of film criticism since the 1970s (Monaco 1981: 299). We only have to consider two of his comedies in the early part of that decade – Bananas (1971) and Sleeper (1973) – to acknowledge his standing, and then there is also Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979). These films created this era along with the mythic elements of New York (ibid.). From the 1950s to 1970s, professional opinion did not consider sexual abuse to be a danger or significant social problem (Jenkins 1996: 84–85). Perpetrators, especially those in positions of power, were protected by the press (Lee 2005). The late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed a media storm in the United States and Britain concerning sexual abuse allegations (Davies and Dalgleish 2001). Since 1992, Woody Allen's life and work, often indistinguishable as argued here, have been inseparable from the media attention given to the child sexual abuse allegations made against him. His influence is ‘characterised by a compulsion to repeat and a desire to separate, underpinned, no doubt, by Allen's biographical scandals’ (Hannington 2020).

Concern over sexual abuse led to what Allen's supporters would call a new censorship and witch-hunt. Witch-hunt was a term also used in the late 1980s and early 1990s regarding some claims of child sexual abuse, including claimed satanic ritual abuse.