All aboard for "The GASLIGHT EXPRESS"

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/hbo-s-allen-v-farrow-suggests-woody-allen-took-america-ncna1261093

HBO's 'Allen v. Farrow' suggests Woody Allen took America for a ride on the Gaslight Express

The filmmakers present the disturbing possibility that, for decades, the public has been groomed by a master storyteller and his PR machine.

the HBO series questions the familiar “yes-he’s-gross-but-Mia-is-a-crazy-liar” storyline until it dissolves before our eyes. What emerges is a ride on the Gaslight Express, conducted by a narcissistic celebrity-genius with vast resources who leads us far off the track from terrible truths.

We see Allen’s perfected storyline — that he’s just a guy caught in the snares of fate and the machinations of crazy, lustful and vengeful females — set up early on in his films.

Consider, as a teen, he was already skilled at performing magic tricks — working audiences so they would see what he wanted them to. Later, he finessed a style of conceal-by-revealing semi-autobiographical storytelling in his films and his carefully constructed public persona.

A magician can turn darkness into light. He can transform a cunning misanthrope into a lovable nebbish and, as “Allen v. Farrow” suggests, female victims into hysterical liars. He can make people believe that his allegedly inappropriate relationship with his girlfriend’s daughter Soon-Yi Previn (then a teenager, according to the docuseries) was just a happy adult love story. With the wave of a wand (and a gullible press), he can turn his partner of more than a decade into a Medea willing to sacrifice her children for revenge. In the process, he made his daughter-accuser appear the unreliable witness to her own life.

Most impressive, the filmmakers assert, Allen convinced multitudes that he has never been the aggressor, but always the innocent victim. Presto!

To pull off this audacious trick, it helps to have the audience properly primed. “Allen v. Farrow” claims the artist conditioned fans to pathological behavior by performing a narrative sleight-of-hand in his movies. In “Manhattan,” for example, it isn’t the balding, 40-ish Isaac, portrayed by Allen, who pursues a high school girl, but the teenage Tracey, played by Mariel Hemingway — just 16 during filming — who chases him.

In real life, Hemingway says she was alarmed by Allen’s aggressive behavior in a kissing scene and his attempt to seduce her after the film wrapped. But in Allen’s fantasyland, Isaac resists while Tracey insistently comes onto him.

Once you’ve swallowed this, it’s easier to digest “Stardust Memories,” where Allen’s character, Sandy, flirts with girlfriend Dorrie’s 13-year-old cousin and gets aroused by suggesting that Dorrie seduced her own father: “Long lingering breakfasts with Dad? Is this getting nauseating?”

We should be vomiting by now. We’re talking about incest. But hey, it’s just a movie. And Allen’s so endearing! He channels our romantic longings and makes us feel OK about our insecurities. He gets us. So, we have to be understanding back, right? That’s the contract audiences signed without realizing it.

Allen has another ace up his sleeve. Let’s call it the Freudian switch-a-roo. The filmmaker has spent decades undergoing extensive Freudian psychoanalysis. He is the bard of the couch — populating his work with analysts and the analyzed.

This theme of wiping away predation and blaming victims comes through not only in Allen’s films but in his real-life efforts to discredit Mia Farrow and their daughter, Dylan, when they reported his alleged activities. In media appearance after appearance, Allen questioned their sanity and motives. He painted himself not only as a model father, but a savior, only seeking to rescue Farrow’s children from their evil mother. Male psychoanalysts provided powerful ammunition.

“Allen v. Farrow” highlights a highly contentious theory known as “Parental Alienation Syndrome,” promoted by psychoanalyst Richard Gardner in 1985 to describe mothers who brainwash kids into turning against fathers in custody disputes

Though Gardner’s work is rejected by the scientific community, U.S. courts still sometimes use it to punish mothers and award sole custody to fathers accused of abuse. During Allen’s custody battle with Farrow, Gardner spoke to the press in favor of the filmmaker. Though the judge rejected Allen’s custody bid — and even ordered him to pay Farrow’s court fees — the theory took hold in the public imagination.

The patriarchy has been maintained.

The public stayed aboard this runaway train of confabulations, rolling over reported victims of abuse and the people who stood by them.

Allen continues to be admired as both man and artist. Even when he acknowledged his “amorality” and demonstrated his proclivities in everything from hooking up with teenage girls to taking “erotic” Polaroids of his girlfriend’s daughter.

The public stayed aboard this runaway train of confabulations ...