Woody Allen’s Myth is His Greatest Accomplishment (response article)

Woody Allen is an enigma, an ardent nebbish who lives like royalty. He is a magician, an illusionist, using distraction and misdirection to project an idea for us to see while at the same time something else is happening. Woody Allen may be the most influ-

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ential and prolific comedic writer and artistic film director that America has ever produced. His genius (whatever that means) is the product of the Woody Allen persona, which Allen Konigsberg (Allen’s birth name) crafted, cultivated, refined, and curated over half a century, both in his public life and behind and in front of the camera. What is so interesting and even paradoxical is Allen’s ability to hide in plain sight. Even with numerous substantial biographies and his recent autobiography, Apropos of Nothing (2020), Allen’s ability to perpetuate the myth of the know-nothing reclusive schlemiel he calls “Woody Allen” is remarkable.

Fabe’s article treads on the slippery slope of trying to psychoanalytically account for the creative genius of an artist, through the lens of Heinz Kohut’s self psychological model of reparation from narcissistic wounds. Beginning with Freud’s article on Da Vinci, psychoanalysts have endlessly speculated on the occurrence and vicissitudes of genius. For Fabe, Woody Allen’s accomplishments can readily be ascribed to a deeply divided, contentious, and often abusive family life, coupled with his high IQ, propelling Allen to turn the lemons of his family mess into a fountain of comic lemonade that has served him for over a half-century. Fabe’s article focuses on his early comedic movies (psychological slapstick period), which keeps the discussion simply in the fame of turning early pain and humiliation into self-deprecating comedic gold. The article leaves out the vast body of more dramatic accomplishments, where trauma, self-torment, self-sabotage, guilt, and shame are regular front and center themes.

Allen turned to comedy because he was good at writing jokes and later telling them. He was a wise guy from early on and has stayed that way, doing things his way throughout his storied life. From mid-adolescence, he never stopped producing comedic material. His comedic personality became so overbearing it became somewhat of a hindrance when he ventured into more serious dramatic features. (Interiors [1978] is the best example.)

Can Kohut’s model, or for that matter, any psychoanalytic model, account for artistic achievement or an artist’s genius? Fabe, fortified by the abundant sometimes contradictory biographical material, leads us down the rabbit hole of Allen’s persona, the fabrication that is known as “Woody Allen,” the uber neurotic nebbish. After reading his very funny as well as defensive autobiography, it is evident that Allen had not lived any aspect of his life as a schlemiel. The character of the schlemiel is a pretense, a caricature, a

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creation for public display, and a very effective comedic device. Allen tells us in his autobiography that he was a difficult child, rebellious, athletic, defiant, and self-propulsive, despite the somewhat abusive treatment he received, which apparently did nothing to deter him in the slightest. By his mid-teens, he was writing comedy for newspapers, TV, stand-up, and then of course movies, having never been out of work. Relationally, Allen has maintained longstanding relationships with many friends (Tony Roberts, Diane Keaton, etc.) as well as an assortment of lovers that even Picasso would envy. Then as a final coda, he speaks of his stable 25-year joyous amorous marriage to Sun Yi (despite the years of controversy), plus claiming his deep loving commitment to his parenting. So it comes as a bit of a twist that at end of his autobiography, all he wants in this world (like Marlene Dietrich) is to be left alone. Really?

Ironically, Allen tells us in his autobiography that even though he has been in psychoanalysis most of his adult life, it has never cured him of anything, claiming he is determinedly shy and socially awkward. Having the most successful artistic career of nearly any American filmmaker, having been loved and loved back by the most beautiful intelligent artistic women in the world, having regularly interfaced with the world’s most renown artists and writers, then to find himself in the most adoring and successful marriage and family life, plus living a posh lifestyle where he regularly plays his clarinet and tennis suggesting if this is not being cured, we should all be so unwell.

Allen’s greatest accomplishment may be the myth of the know-nothing schlemiel, despite the unloving “psychologically wounding” parents, who makes good. That myth is way more interesting than the story of a reasonably good looking, athletic, intellectually gifted, capable, talented, self-determined, confident, and calculating young artist named Allen Konigsberg who finds success. Sure he struggled from the squabbling contentiousness of his Jewish Bronx childhood (see Radio Days [1987]), but Allen’s art and persistence is an anomaly that can’t be reduced to any model of the mind. Although Fabe’s article makes an important contribution to applied psychoanalysis, it will take more than Kohut to account for the enigma of Woody Allen.

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