I don't need cancel culture to tell me where I stand on Woody Allen

Hachette Book Group in the US has cancelled the publication of Woody Allen’s upcoming memoir, Apropos of Nothing. The move came last Friday after a staff walkout at the publisher’s offices in New York and Boston.

Vanessa Mobley, an executive editor at Little, Brown, one of HBG’s prestigious book imprints, responded to an enquiry from Time magazine with an automatic email reply that was widely echoed in its phrasing across all staff emails and social media posts: ‘‘We stand with Ronan and Dylan Farrow and survivors of sexual assault.’’

Ronan Farrow is the author of Catch and Kill, published by Little, Brown. The book detailed the way powerful men use their influence to silence accusers, with a close analysis of the Harvey Weinstein case. Dylan Farrow is Ronan’s sister. She was the subject of notorious sexual abuse allegations against her adoptive father Allen. Twice investigated but never charged, Allen has long been tainted by the allegations. A taint that was only heightened by his relationship with, and eventual marriage to Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.

Woody Allen's memoir, Apropos of Nothing, caused uproar at his publishing house.Credit: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Given this grubby history, who would want to go near Allen, let alone defend him now? PEN America for one, if only out of concerns for freedom of speech and an encroaching culture of censorship that seems to be on the rise everywhere. Chief executive, Suzanne Nossel, wrote: “This case represented something of a perfect storm. It involved not just a controversial book, but a publisher that was working with individuals on both sides of a longstanding and traumatic familial rupture. This presented unique circumstances that clearly coloured the positions staked out and decisions taken. If the end result here is that this book, regardless of its merits, disappears without a trace, readers will be denied the opportunity to read it and render their own judgments.

"As a defender of free speech and the availability of a wide breadth of books and ideas, we also fervently hope that the outcome does not lead publishers to shy away from manuscripts that editors think are worthwhile but that are about, or even by, people who may be considered contemptible.”

The last word, contemptible, is a quite a backhander. Author Stephen King put it another way in a tweet, ‘‘The Hachette decision to drop the Woody Allen book makes me very uneasy. It’s not him; I don’t give a damn about Mr Allen. It’s who gets muzzled next that worries me.’’ A few hours later King expanded his comments. ‘‘Let me add that it was f---ing tone-deaf of Hachette to want to publish Woody Allen’s book after publishing Ronan Farrow’s.’’

Journalist Ronan Farrow lambasted publisher Hachette for acquiring and releasing Woody Allen's memoir.Credit: Invision/AP

His caveat did not matter. King was already being widely characterised as a foot soldier for white male privilege and an apologist for paedophilia. His worries about overt, and covert, censorship were rapidly sinking into the social media mire where all that matters is a paradigm of Good and Evil.

There is only one decision to make: choosing the side you are on. Or having it chosen for you.
Such cartoon absolutes are the stuff of a new Millennial morality driven by notions like ‘‘no platforming’’ and ‘‘cancel culture’’. Its goals are to cut off voices that are sexist, racist, homophobic, plain disagreeable. What begins in the realms of decency quickly slides into mob exigencies, a faint whiff of neo-Stalinism, McCarthyism and the self-correcting ‘‘struggle sessions’’ of China’s Cultural Revolution stinking the air as this culture grows in influence with a Millennial generation slotting into their controlling roles as editors, publishers and journalists.

The sickness of needing to speak up, but never doing so, intensifies. This feeling is everywhere now. And yet we have never had so many modes of communication available to us, all the while we tremble at dissenting from the bullying narratives of our ‘‘friends" on social media. Nothing is complicated or open for indepth discussion and debate.

In 1936 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of his alcoholic failures and a lost sense of self in long and brilliant memoir essay called The Crack-Up. Fitzgerald passingly observed, ‘‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.’’

In the end, of course, Fitzgerald’s drinking and hyper-sensitivity pulled him apart. He looked at himself with an unremitting eye in The Crack-Up. It’s doubtful Allen is so harsh on himself in Apropos of Nothing. But I’d like to think as a reader, I am capable of Fitzgerald’s oppositional intelligence and ability to read between the lines, when looking at others and looking at myself. And have no need of a culture of erasure to know where I might stand.

Mark Mordue is a Sydney writer.