{"id":761,"date":"2018-02-04T22:20:51","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T03:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/?p=761"},"modified":"2018-02-05T07:38:56","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T12:38:56","slug":"__trashed-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/2018\/02\/04\/__trashed-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Jordan Waterwash: Sylvia Plath vs. Woody Allen"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about Woody Allen recently\u2014mainly <\/span>Annie Hall<\/span><\/i> and the relationship artists have with their work. I love <\/span>Annie Hall<\/span><\/i>. I love the characters; I love the colors; I love Annie. The way Woody Allen builds a sepia-toned world around Annie and Alvy\u2019s intimate understanding of one another is truly masterful.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I hate Woody Allen and nearly everything he stands for.<\/p>\n

Accusations of Allen as an abuser have been circulating for as long as I\u2019ve been alive. He infamously married his ex-wife Mia Farrow\u2019s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi, in 1997 after having an affair with the 21-year-old a few years prior. The affair broke up Farrow and Allen\u2019s marriage.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other allegations against him are even more sinister. One of Farrow\u2019s adopted daughters, Dylan, accused Allen of sexually assaulting her when she was a child. <\/span><\/p>\n

The only thing about <\/span>Annie Hall <\/span><\/i>that really gets me is the scene where Alvy takes <\/span>Ariel <\/span><\/i>by Sylvia Plath off of Annie\u2019s bookshelf and says, \u201cSylvia Plath. Interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college-girl mentality.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I read <\/span>The Bell Jar<\/span><\/i> for the first time in the beginning of January and this pithy, biting line colored my whole reading. The novel traces the life of a young woman called Ester who struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts. Though the novel isn\u2019t biographical, Plath\u2019s own mental health problems can be seen in Esther.<\/span><\/p>\n

My mind raced at the thought of disrespecting Plath on accident, to succumb to the \u201ccollege-girl mentality\u201d Allen so artfully weaved into my subconscious, despite my own experiences with mental illness. I know how unromantic Sylvia Plath\u2019s suicide is because I know how unromantic mental illness is. It\u2019s ugly and it sucks and there\u2019s no better way to put it. <\/span><\/p>\n

Still, I can\u2019t bring myself to hate <\/span>Annie Hall<\/span><\/i>. When I think of Annie with her ginormous khaki pants and her lanky limbs, I think of myself; in her I see everything that I see in Sylvia Plath, and I understand her. But what would Annie and Sylvia think of me supporting a film made by a man like Woody Allen?<\/span><\/p>\n

Art\u2014with a capital \u201cA\u201d\u2014exists on two planes: in the mind of the viewer and in the hands of the creator. Woody Allen crafted <\/span>Annie Hall <\/span><\/i>just as Sylvia Plath crafted <\/span>The Bell Jar<\/span><\/i>. Their hands molded two pieces of Art I adore, but their hands were calloused in different places and from different things. Allen is unquestionably morally corrupt, but it\u2019s <\/span>my <\/span><\/i>own enjoyment of his work that I can\u2019t reconcile.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan Waterwash is a senior Creative Writing and Renaissance Studies major. She thoroughly enjoys Victorian literature and singer-songwriter\/mastermind Tom Rosenthal. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about Woody Allen recently\u2014mainly Annie Hall and the relationship artists have with their work. I Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reflections"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1136,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions\/1136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}