Here’s what I wrote in “WTF Is with Woody Allen,” April 12, 2014, after the New York Daily News ran an exhaustive report on the lack of diversity in his productions:
It’s clearly his artistic prerogative. But you’d think a play [Bullets Over Broadway] that has so much to do with Harlem’s famous Cotton Club would feature more than just one token Black … as an extra. After all, even though it catered to ‘Whites-only,’ this club routinely featured the most famous Black musicians of the Jazz Age in which the play is set…
I’m sure Woody would insist that casting Whites only in this play (or in his movies for that matter) does not make him a racist. Except that this is a man who insists that seducing and then marrying girlfriend Mia Farrow’s daughter (for whom he was a father figure since she was 10) does not make him a pervert; never mind suspicions that he’s also a pedophile who molested his and Mia’s seven-year-old daughter.
WTF indeed
Even though I readily conceded that it’s Woody’s prerogative to feature Whites only in his productions, I was stupefied that he seemed utterly inured to the criticism this incited. Well, he has finally deigned to dignify this criticism with an explanation.
For here’s how he replied when asked – during an interview for the July 30 edition of the New York Observer – whether or not he would feature Blacks:
Not unless I write a story that requires it…
The implication is that I’m deliberately not hiring black actors, which is stupid. I cast only what’s right for the part.
That settles it then: evidently, it’s not that Woody Allen is deliberately refusing to feature Blacks; it’s that he deliberately writes parts that require Whites only to play them. Which of course makes about as much sense as a pedophile priest explaining his perversion by saying: it’s not that he’s attracted to adolescent boys; it’s that adolescent boys are attracted to him. In any event, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more egocentric, self-righteous filmmaker in Hollywood, ever….
But the issue for me was/is not Woody’s racial preference for writing stories about the lives of White folks who have no social, let alone personal, interaction with Black folks.
In fact, I’m on record explaining how another White comedian, Jerry Seinfeld, won fame and fortune doing much the same (i.e., portraying life in NYC as if the city were just a lily-White hamlet somewhere on the Hudson):
Many [Blacks] criticized popular TV sitcoms like Seinfeld and Friends for neglecting to feature people of color (not even as extras), despite being ostensibly situated in the very diverse New York City.
I did not buy into this quota-based criticism… Because I appreciated that both of those sitcoms revolved around the private lives of a group of ‘White’ friends. And, as shocking as it might have appeared to people who have never lived in New York City, I was not at all surprised that neither show depicted much interracial socializing.
After all, New Yorkers generally accept that, even though Whites and Blacks interact as professionals, they rarely socialize as friends. Which, incidentally, is why the belated casting of a black love interest for one of the male characters on Friends during its final season seemed so woefully contrived.
(“Just a Little Rant about ‘Desperate Housewives’,” The iPINIONS Journal, November 22, 2005)
No, the issue for me was/is TV shows and movies that portray city life today in scenes that make it seem even more segregated than city life was, well, during the Jazz Age…. But, instead of accusing Hollywood insiders like Woody and Jerry of racism for thriving on such portrayals, I think it’s better to simply boycott their productions.
Related commentaries:
Woody Allen…
Desperate Housewives…