woody allen

But yeah I don't understand what is the purpose of those documentaries other than to serve strange instincts. Are they truly useful as a tool to better understand rape culture?

the allen documentaries? i don't think it's about "rape culture" as much as about how someone who seems normal can be a child molester

Allen was definitely what I thought of as "movies for adults" when I was a kid. My dad still had Without Feathers and Getting Even and I read them at a pretty young age and thought they were funny but I probably didn't fully understand.

He was such a touchstone of what was "a great director" for a good part of my growing up.

Woody Allen: makes nine movies in a row about wanting to fuck teenagers who are too sheltered to realise what a creep he is
dr treeship: "relatable, hard to imagine he'd be a creep"

Louis CK: releases seven hour-long monologues about how he's a pathetic creep with a tiny dick and his body is visually unappealing, but ppl should just let him bust near them bcz men gotta have it
dr treeship: "relatable, hard to imagine he'd be a creep"

Bill Cosby: talks repeatedly about how the greatest dream of every man is finding a substance with which you can drug unwilling women in order to have sex with them, then spends several decades insisting in public that he is an avatar of morality and anyone who ever speaks openly about expressing sexuality is a societal problem who ought to shut the double-hockey-sticks up, and privately cold-calling strangers to order them to shut up
dr treeship: "relatable, hard to imagine he'd drug unwilling women and then attempt to gaslight the public for decades about it if they ever speak out, in order to reinforce his image and frighten other women away from speaking out

I suspect each of them simply had the confidence of living in a society that shames victims and protects abusers, far more than that they were consciously creating fake non-abusive aspects of their personae as a stalking horse

someone who seems normal

citation needed

well, woody knew better than to make a movie about molesting a 7 year old. i think the point is that woody and ck seemed to reveal "the worst" of themselves. i think that was a way of concealing that there was actually more to the story.

like, what allen has done is far more than "being a creep."

sic you're being too harsh to treeship on Cosby at least, while those are aspects of his career that are well known now, his whole thing in the 80s and 90s at least was all about being wholesome and innocuous

Here's the trick: I don't know about Cosby's work, but Allen and CK were highly relatable because they were misogynists.

with both Woody and CK a huge part of what made their art transgressive (and popular i think) is/was their willingness to challenge social mores and boundaries about sexuality - how and when we talk about it, what we're willing to own up to, what behaviors are and are not acceptable. in that respect it shouldn't surprise people that they weren't, in actuality, maintaining their own boundaries of acceptable behavior and respect for others' humanity. Cosby is way way more nefarious imo

I watched the Cosby Show every week like everyone else and have seen the spanish fly bit now in reference to him being a rapist, but it's not like stand-up was big on TV back then, I remember my uncle having one of his records but I never saw him as a stand-up, I don't think people were relating to him as anything other than Heathcliffe Huxtable.

And relating goes both way, when you believe someone is just like you, it’s hard to imagine that they would do something horrible.

right. with allen and ck what i connected with was the self-deprecation. these were guys who weren't very sure of themselves, and they turned their weaknesses into strengths, making fun of themselves. the misoyny in allen's films is obvious in retrospect but wasn't what i saw when i was a 15 year old. i don't think it's what i related to.

there is a whole article in the new yorker about ck's self-deprecation and hatred of the body. the author compares him to nikolai gogol, and says that he is pushing through self-hatred, toward misanthropy, and onto the other side, to a place of sympathy. his work was very beloved and people saw it as humane. it is a falsification of the past to say that everyone saw it as misogynistic at the time, as dr. sic seems to suggest

The majority of that self-depreciation comes from how women view and act with them as men.

Allen had been publicly funny as a stand-up, published writer and latterly a film performer/maker for nearly 20 years before "40-yo man fucks teenager" became part of his work, and much of that work was about sexual screwed-up-ness at whatever age he was at the time. And American mainstream film was largely in favour of teenagers fucking 40-yos until, approximately, last week: the extreme naif that Hemingway plays is what read as the larger red flag than her age.

CK acted his fetish out in public, making sexual inadequacy and mimed masturbation a major part of his work. It seems that he was sincere in expecting people to find this relatable, and the immediacy with which ppl realised it was him when blind items began appearing in 2012 show there was no fooling. It's far more horrifying that Dave Becky hasn't been cancelled yet (the Golden Globes were two days ago!) than that some audiences are still happy to pay CK.

I don't have enough of a handle on Cosby's rewriting of his persona from stand-up to movie star to TV paterfamilias to judge how much of any of them were crafted as a cover, but he was drugging and raping women through each phase of his career, from the 1960s on.

xps

Cosby as Cliff Huxtable presented himself as ambassador to Blackness. Dizzy Gillesie, B.B. King, the family dancing to "I Got the Feelin'" and "Nighttime is the Right Time," allusions to Zora Neale Hurston -- for a Latino in Miami, I can't separate my experiences with these artists from learning about them from The Cosby Show. He made rather a show of his smarts -- the last credit refers to "William H. Cosby, Ed.D."

sic you're being too harsh to treeship on Cosby at least, while those are aspects of his career that are well known now, his whole thing in the 80s and 90s at least was all about being wholesome and innocuous

yeah idk, maybe if you watched his sitcom or saw him in TV commercials. if you saw his book in every hospital and newsagent, had only seen him talking in a bit of Uptown Saturday Night or Mother, Jugs & Speed on TV. and knew the Eddie Murphy story from someone bringing the tape to a school camp, wholesome Cosby might seem like a fake cover for someone trying to impose control on others.

Yes Cosby had that spanish fly joke in the 70's but there was absolutely nothing else that would have led the public to believe he was capable of the shit he pulled.

He made rather a show of his smarts -- the last credit refers to "William H. Cosby, Ed.D."

I worked with Bill Cosby on fat Albert. He had two of the writers write his PHD thesis.

- Sam Simon (@simonsam), Dec. 17, 2014

sic you're being too harsh to treeship on Cosby at least, while those are aspects of his career that are well known now, his whole thing in the 80s and 90s at least was all about being wholesome and innocuous

yeah idk, maybe if you watched his sitcom or saw him in TV commercials. if you saw his book in every hospital and newsagent, had only seen him talking in a bit of Uptown Saturday Night or Mother, Jugs & Speed on TV. and knew the Eddie Murphy story from someone bringing the tape to a school camp, wholesome Cosby might seem like a fake cover for someone trying to impose control on others.

― grab bag cum trash bag (sic), Tuesday, March 2, 2021 4:09 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

a vast majority of people didn't know about all that shit and just knew him from commercials and the sitcom

like maybe fat albert was as far back as it went, and that was certainly far more well known than anything you're talking about

Being an annoying, scolding social conservative is one thing. Cosby was obviously that. But i think it’s a stretch to think that people in the 90s or whatever should have known he was a serial rapist.

There are different forms of badness.

i mean my first exposure to Cosby was on Picture Pages, teaching math to preschoolers while interacting with an animated marker. then graduated to the Huxtables and Ghost Dad. it's absurd to claim that in the pre-internet era his general audience was or should have been aware of the red flags in his behavior and story

Mine too.

totally

the cosby show, family ties, cheers, night court block on NBC thursday nights was like insanely popular in an era when network television still ruled everything in the U.S. all that other shit, uptown saturday night, mother jugs and speed was like so so so far out of what most people knew about

i feel like we're arguing whether more people heard of "jump" by van halen or "jump" by aztec camera

Considering how Allen continued to thrive long after the Soon-Yi Previn scandal it's fair to ask if people knew about Cosby would it have triggered anything.

i have literally never heard of mother jugs and speed until right now

Cosby was a regular on talk shows, where people would have seen his stand up.

important to note that the Cosby Show's prime was in a pre-Simpsons era where sitcoms were way more wholesome and formulaic - not far removed from the time where actresses routinely got booted off their shows for getting pregnant. someone like Charlie Sheen couldn't have come within 100 miles of a network sitcom back then.

Look at what happened with One Day at a Time's Mackenzie Phillips.

And his LPs were big sellers. I don't remember the Spanish fly bit but his material was generally inoffensive.

I still like Jello Pudding.

I'd bet around the mid 80s he was among the most broadly known and liked people in America

driving in SF is still a great piece. he was a very good stand up.

"Considering how Allen continued to thrive long after the Soon-Yi Previn scandal it's fair to ask if people knew about Cosby would it have triggered anything"

probably, because unlike Allen, Cosby is black and generally people are faster to condemn a black celebrity for shit than a white counterpart (though I guess R. Kelly is an exception here)

Cosby's victims were mostly white, though, while Kelly's are entirely black

good point

fuck Woody Allen for life; i wish i had not allowed him to colonize my brain when i was a teenager.

it's disturbing to me how i totally recognized the misogyny in his movies and how i talked myself out of being troubled by it.

yea wasn't the whole thrust of Jim DeRogitis's reporting that nobody really cares about young black girls

i will not be watching the documentary, but it seems to me that twentysomethings who don't already know all this stuff which has been a matter of public record for decades are finding out about it this way and are appropriately appalled.

yes, it's one of the especially salutary points about Dero's advocacy.

I'm not arguing anyone *should have suspected* Cosby was a serial rapist, just saying it was possible for human beings on planet earth born between 1940 and 1980 to encounter his work or existence outside of a 1980s sitcom.

certainly far more well known than anything you're talking about

The (also ghost-written, like his thesis) book was the fastest-selling hardcover of all time, spent half of its 55 weeks on the NYT best-seller list at #1, and as I anecdotally cited, was popular in at least one territory outside the US. More people surely watched the American sitcom, but that doesn't make the book culturally non-existent.

(Gratified to see that article confirms my memory/impression of flipping through it: the text was so scanty that a whole designer had to be hired to spread it out through the budgeted book's length when it was delivered too late to demand revision.)

Yeah. It's difficult to explain how unfathomably popular Cosby was starting in 1986, one of the more remarkable second acts after twenty years already as comedian/actor. I swear, every Waldenbooks and B. Dalton from 1986 to 1988 had ample copies of Fatherhood.

Some relevant wisdom in this interview with, of all people, Steve Albini (the interviewer is Eugene Robinson of Oxbow):

Some folks who have gotten their tickets punched I begrudgingly still embrace for a variety of complicated reasons. Mike Tyson because he served his time, Paula Poundstone, David Letterman, and Quentin Tarantino? I somehow want to grant a pass. Louis CK, Elvis Costello, Woody Allen, and Roman Polanski I cannot. It's not willful...I just find myself much less interested in their work. Who is on your Keep/Toss list?

STEVE: I respect fighting as a trade less than you, so I was probably off the Tyson bandwagon before it got rolling. Anybody who uses a position of power, status or authority to exploit people who are vulnerable to that power, status or authority is dead to me. I don't care what kind of movies a rapist makes, don't care if other people think they're good, they're rapist movies and I'm not watching them. I have limited attention to lend to other people's art, and I get to choose who deserves it. I'll admit I laughed at Bill Cosby's humor before I knew what a monster he was. Never since. Those Spanish Fly jokes just hit different now.

I've never had a problem with transgressive art, but it sure seems like you can tell when it's just a veneer used to justify being a fucking creep. Always hated Vice, still hate it. Just a parade of gawkers reveling in whatever misery they can observe from an ironic distance. Fuck that shit completely.

Rogan, Barstool, all the anti-woke comics, just fuck them all in the eye. It's trash garbage and I want it all to fail. What if all the stupid shit your racist neighbor you can't stand said was typed up and put on a blog? Nope, still trash, still fuck it. I want them all out looking for work. Into the chipper with all of it.

I was not aware of any Costello allegations.

I'm sure it's regarding his use of the n-word when talking about Ray Charles in the late 70's.

afaik Costello was just a one-time thing while he was drunk right? or is he more Claptony than I thought?