Villain or Victim? What Falls Away: A Memoir by Mia Farrow Review by: Nell Beram The Women's Review of Books, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Oct., 1997), p. 25 Published by: Old City Publishing, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4022766 . Accessed: 27/05/2014 10:30 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Old City Publishing, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Women's Review of Books. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 149.130.189.235 on Tue, 27 May 2014 10:30:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Villain or victim? by Nell Beram What Fulls Away: A Memoir, by Mia Farrow.New York: Doubleday, 1997, 370 pp., $25.00 hardcover. IF ONLYIT HAD BEEN Demi Mooreand disputed:the episodes featurein the book's Bruce Willis, or any other celebrity couple not known for each mate's distinct interest in grappling with moral conundrums.Then the essence of the Mia Farrow-WoodyAllen fallout of the summerof 1992 wouldn'thave been such an ax to the cranium. The double whammy, in case you were in seclusion: news broke that filmmakerWoody Allen, actress Mia Farrow'sthen partnerof twelve years, and her twenty-year-old adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn,were having an affair;and that, accordingto Farrow,her seven-yearold adopted daughter,Dylan, had named Allen her sexual abuser,moving Farrowto end her relationship with Allen. He contended that Farrow contrived or at least prompted the allegations-an act of vengeance by a woman scorned. Who is this woman who waited to no avail for more than a decade-during which she and Allen maintainedseparate New York residences and she appearedin thirteen of his films-for the seemingly nebbishy (and arguably masterful) comedic filmmaker to agree to marry her? Most movie buffs know that Farrowhad a Hollywood childhood and Catholic upbringing,became famous in the sixties for her starringrole in TV's Peyton Place, became even more famous for marrying Frank Sinatra (he was thirty years her senior) and, after their divorce in 1968, went on a much-publicizedretreatto India, where, to her surprise,she had to sharethe Maharishi's divine attentions with the Beatles. But it was while married to English composer Andr? Previn that she began her most unconventionalenterprise: today she's the mother of fourteen children,ten of whom are adopted,nine of whom aren't white, most of whom were plucked from abominable circumstances and several of whom are disabled. Me, I have long respected her distinctive version of celebrity, but it seems Farrow's reputation hasn't weathered 1992's hoopla well, even within more sisterhood-centered enclaves. "1 think she's a doormat,"a co-workercommented when I told herI was readingFarrow'snew collaborator-free memoir, What Falls Away;a friend who, like my coworkerand myself, has feminist leanings told me she thinks Farrow is "a kook," although (unlike myself here) she admires her as an actress. Is either spin on Farrowcorrect? What Falls Away, her firstpublic ruminationson the scandalsof 1992, offers nothingto corroborate the popular "kook" hypothesis. (Even BarbaraWalterstrottedit out during Farrow's promotionalspoton 20/20 earlier this year.) If critics suspect that Farrowis compulsively adopting children to satisfy her own selfish needs (to feel loved, to have a purpose in life), then why aren't they also questioning the motives of George Foreman, Mel Gibson and Anthony Quinn, to name a few celebrities with atypically large biological broods? Ah, but that "doormat"hypothesis: it does seem an easier sell. Why, 1 was compelled to ask again and again as 1 read, did Farrowput up for so long with Allen? That in separatefits of rage he pushed Dylan's face into a plate of hot spaghetti, and twisted and threatened to break young Satchel Farrow's leg, seems to be un- appendix,which consists of the entireNew York State SupremeCourtdecision on the infamouscustody battlefor Dylan, Satchel and Moses Farrow instigated by Allen. (Farrowsees Allen's initiationof the suit as his strategyfor counteringhis image as j,4 ~ ~ ~ ~ wholly self-absorbed;she won easily on these very grounds.) Farrow tells us his volatile behavior alternated not with fatherlywarmthbut with a general apathy towards her children (including Satchel, his biological child) for the duration of their relationship-which, astonishingly, she did not dissolve completely even after she came across nude photographs of Soon-Yi in Allen's apartment. Then there's Allen's infatuation with Mia Farrowwith Lark, Sascha,Daisy,Fletcher,Matthewand Soon-Yi.From What Falls Dylan, inspiring, apparently, the girl's Away. overt anxiety in his company and in anseem as hell-bent on believing his inI explain it to my children,when ticipationof it-cries of "Hideme!" at the nocence of child abuse as many blacks are even to me it is incomprehensible soundof the doorbell.("TwiceI made him on believing O.J. Simpson's innocence of and unforgivable?...What was misstake his thumbout of her mouth,"Farrow murder,despite the profiles of our hetoes ing in me thatcompelled me to hold writes.) In one typical passage, she says thathave emerged. it all in place?... Wasn't it my own she "pulled Dylan out of the bed where It's not lost on me that no one writes an appallingdenial of the facts thatper[Allen] had been wrappedaroundher like autobiographyto solicit a reader'sdisdain, mitted him to inflict his damageon a python in Jockey underpants." but as I read her story (scandal-mongers those I love most? I could protest "Spoilsport," was Allen's retort, and beware: Allen only surfaces halfway that I didn't know...whathe was "Whatsport?Just what sport am I spoilthrough)I came to like Farrowfor reasons capable of.... I could arguethatthe ing?" the extent, as usual, of Farrow's I doubt she intended. She has literally world I had occupied with him for a protestations. fainted from boredom while accompanyquarterof my life was so utterly ing friends on shopping expeditions; she removed from any otherthatit was UT AN UTIER DOORMAT? It's simply hoped Soon-Yi wasn't serious aboutwantimpossible for me to envision a life too difficultto reconcilethis verdict ing to become a model because"thevalues for myself beyond it.... I could tell with the impressionone gets of Farin that world are all screwed-up";and she my childrenall this, but no explanarow before Allen came along. Consider keeps us abreastbothof whatshe is reading tion seems adequate.In the end all I that she didn't renege on her commitment (Plato,the BhagavadGita, Dr. Spock) and can do is accept my shareof responto complete her work in Rosemary'sBaby, the statusof the cardboardbox containing sibility, and hope they can find it in the career-makingfilm she sensed it would her beloved encyclopedias as she traipses their heartsto forgive me. be, to placate Sinatra-hardly a lightfrom house to house, page after page. In (pp.259-260) weight adversary-who was miffed beshort,her values will be recognizableand cause the project was running overtime. And what of the man she loved? Surely her priorities familiar to ordinaryfolk(He dispatched a lawyer to the set with it's a red flag to us all when someone who heresy in a celebritymemoir. divorce papers.) Shortly after her split turns fourteen kids of diverse parentage And Farrow has the writerly chops to from Previn, Farrow adopted Moses, a and skin color into a family is perceivedas compete with other memoirists on the child with special needs, a move thatmight more of a loon than is someone who gluttedscene these days. I was particularly suggest more than a modicum of self-suf- famously logs no responsibilityfor ripping impressedby a braveparagraphthat, with ficiency and independence.And "on prin- this family apart.Thatthe heartwantswhat a nod to legendary shrink-addictAllen's ciple," she "neither sought nor received it wants has been Allen's defense for lack of accountability,challengesthe prac,any alimony" from the wealthy Previn; seducing Soon-Yi. If he truly pursued tice of psychoanalysisfor its absence of a Farrowdoesn't elaborate,but one assumes Soon-Yi (with whom he's still romantical- moralframework.Therearesome abstractsexual equality is the implicit principle. It ly linked) because he was unableto control noun-ladenpassages, a smatteringof senseems it's only when Allen is on handthat libidinous impulses thathis well-honedin- tences italicized for effect, but they're she becomes said doormat. Yet her tellect conceivably told him to check, then amply offset by deft touches of comic uncapitulationisn't withoutlimits: at the ex- is it such a leap to imagine that he might derstatement and by quiet, spare and pense of her relationship,as Farrowwould have been unableto stuntan attractionto a evocative sketches, most resonantly of tell it, she believed her daughterDylan. seven-year-old girl like Dylan? What ex- Farrow'skids. What somewhat mitigates my fury at actly are Allen's boundaries? This is Farrow never became the Carmelite her until-then naivet? and self-deception Farrow'squestion as well. nun she had longed to be, nor, by the end is the fact that she sounds every bit as of WhatFalls Away, did she become the irate with herseif as 1 am with her. Far- IS IT POSSIBLE that we still don't believe "out" feminist I'd longed for. Although row admits to feeling lingering guilt for some men are capable of egregious she laments her political and social unenhaving encouraged her kids to hope that sexual crueltyto kids, thatwe still have lightenmentuntil her first exposure to the Allen would one day respond to them a built-in blame-the-motherimpulse, or writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., she with affection; to hitting Soon-Yi in both? My gay male friend who majoredin later tried to make up for it with action: anger after learning of the affair; to women's studies and my consciousness- she protestedthe Vietnam War alongside having, against better judgment, signed raised mom, among others, hearing that I Vanessa Redgrave, and she used her papers attesting that Allen was a fit was readingher book, warnedme thatFar- professional clout to assist in getting a father in order to facilitate his ultimately row has an ax to grind;why didn't they say bill passed in Congress in 1977 that alsuccessful adoptions of Moses and Dylan the same aboutAllen five years ago, when lowed American families the option to in December 1991. (We're also privy, I was watching his version of the story on adopt more than two children from overvia the appendix, to the fact that the 60 Minutes,or last winterwhen I was read- seas. Nowadays her demeanor, perhaps a judge concluded that Farrowisn't a fault- ing John Lahr's piece on him in The New last vestige of a Catholic girlhood, is less parent.) Given this self-chastise- Yorker? Could it be that Allen, whose demure if occasionally giddy-you've ment, it can't be said that What Falls films' popularityhasn't suffered critically undoubtedlycaught her act by now-but Away is a campaignfor the author'ssaint- or commercially since the scandals, has don't be fooled by this middle-aged or victimhood: inoculated himself against lasting public woman with the laugh and face of a kid: enmity through his moralizing, endlessly in her modest way, Mia Farrow is-if Why did 1 stay with Woody Allen romantic, quasi-autobiographical sensi- names must be called-a humanist first, when so much was wrong?How can tive-guy film incarnations?White liberals doormat second. The Women'sReviewof Books/ Vol. XV, No.1/ October1997 This content downloaded from 149.130.189.235 on Tue, 27 May 2014 10:30:36 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 25