Sometimes it is hard to write about something without committing the sin one wishes to write about. What follows is an example; so here goes. "Satchel had been experiencing emotional difficulties. When playing dressing-up, he wanted to be Cinderella. His father considered this to be a problem and Satchel had begun therapy with a clinical psychologist. He had his sessions at his father's apartment. It would not do for word to leak out that Woody's little boy required a shrink."
Thus an excerpt from the biography by Marion Meade of Woody Allen, reprinted last weekend in The Sunday Times; and if there is one sentence which we might all agree with it is the final one, that it would not do for word to leak out that the boy was being treated by a psychologist. That the little boy was seeing what is called a "gender specialist" is of no business of mine or yours or anyone else, yet we are nonetheless told about it. The boy concerned was four at the time; now he is 12, and probably deeply disturbed by his father's sexual relationship with his step-sister Soon-Yi. Now people all over the world know about his personal problems (if, that is, they are problems; and if they weren't, by God they probably are now).
Disclosure
So who disclosed this information to Marion Meade? The boy Satchel? Unlikely somehow. The boy's father Woody Allen? Maybe. Or the boy's mother, Mia Farrow? Possibly. Or finally, the boy's therapist? Impossible - or one would like to think so. That's part of the problem. It's impossible to say impossible nowadays.
All this is appalling enough; far worse is to come. We were then told Woody Allen is said to have sexually interfered with his stepdaughter Dylan both manually and orally. Little Dylan was about eight at the time; which makes her about 16 now. Just the sort of stuff a girl of that age wants to have talked about. What is quite as disgraceful as these revelations is that it never seems to have occurred to the biographer or her publishers - Weidenfeld and Nicholson - that this sort of information or allegation is not appropriate for the public domain. It is deeply intimate, private and personal, and would be if it were about people of any age. But to print such revelations about teenagers who must anyway be experiencing deep distress and trauma over the conduct of their parents should pass all belief. Except, of course, it does nothing of the kind: poor little Satchel, unfortunate young Dylan, are fair game to the prurient obsessiveness which drives popular culture.
What they need - privacy and protection - they cannot get. Their parents, step or otherwise, are an odd pair. Farrow is a serial adopter who gathers children the way a philatelist collects stamps. Her acquisitions include a blind little Vietnamese girl and a sickly black American child. Allen is at best an egotistical sexual neurotic, manic and disturbed. The children of such people should probably be taken into care themselves (and those who favour a liberalisation of our adoption laws might consider Farrow and her step-farrow as a warning against liberalisation). They certainly should not have their problems, and sexual and psychiatric allegations involving them, aired across the world.
Implications
Yet this has now happened: you cannot recage such suggestions, with all the pain which must follow, once they have been released. And the troubling aspect of this is that the perpetrators of this crime against two blameless children, namely the publishers and author, probably never sat down to discuss the implications of what they were doing with their disclosures: the story was all the juicier with the inclusion of such tales, and made possible by the willingness of certain people close to the heart of the Farrow-Allen family to tell all they knew.
But maybe this is what popular taste demands: that certain lives are ritually sacrificed for the entertainment of the many, rather as in an Inca ceremony. And maybe in the daily blizzard of popular culture, people will soon forget the allegations about Woody Allen and his daughter and son. That is not the point; what is the point is all the doubt and uncertainty created in the minds of those children. Are their peers nudging one another in the ribs? Are they laughing behind their backs at them? And is it possible for a child who has been subjected to such public speculations about such private aspects of their lives ever to recover?
Vulnerability
I have no idea. But where does this stop? What are the boundaries of taste and decency and regard for the vulnerability of young people and their sexuality if even "serious" biographers, never mind the tabloids, feel free to peddle whatever private details or unfounded allegations they come across? This is not a pursuit of truth, a quest for honesty, but a desire for salaciousness; and as an adult who is titillated by salacious details, I would be content with that - provided children were not affected.
They are. They will be. It is disgusting. The celebrity of the parents is irrelevant. Their children are as entitled to childhood as children anywhere. A great wickedness is being done by Marion Meade and her publishers; and we can be sure it is a wickedness which will be rewarded with great riches.
James Joyce at the L & H
In Monday's editions, the final paragraph of An Irishwoman's Diary by Jane Clare was mistakenly cut. This explained that the 100th anniversary of James Joyce's celebrated address to the L & H at UCD would be celebrated this Thursday evening, January 20th, with a re-enactment in the Old Physics Theatre, followed by dinner. For further information, former members of the society should contact Sarah Ryan at 01-7061826; fax: 01- 7061167; email: jjkelly@ucd.ie