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Woody Allen’s Jailbait Lover: ‘When Mia Was There, We’d Talk About Astrology, and Woody Was Forced to Listen’

Posted on | December 19, 2018 | Comments Off on Woody Allen’s Jailbait Lover: ‘When Mia Was There, We’d Talk About Astrology, and Woody Was Forced to Listen’

Babi Christina Engelhardt in 1977.

Everyone is trying to get their minds around the Hollywood Reporter‘s lengthy profile of Babi Christina Engelhardt who, at 16 years old in 1976, became Woody Allen’s lover (allegedly). Perhaps the most shocking revelation, from the 21st-century feminist #MeToo perspective, is that the former model and actress refuses to think of herself as a victim:

Like others among her generation — she just turned 59 on Dec. 4 — Engelhardt is resistant to attempts to have the life she led then be judged by what she considers today’s newly established norms. “It’s almost as if I’m now expected to trash him,” she says. . . .
She’s proud of her teenage self as an up-by-her-bootstraps heroine who successfully beguiled a “celebrated genius.” Even now, she holds herself largely responsible for remaining in the relationship as long as she did and for the frustration and sorrow that ultimately came with the liaison — one in which, by her description, she never held any agency. (Most experts would contend that such an uneven power dynamic is inherently exploitative.)
Even with hindsight, though, she’s unwilling to indict Allen, who declined to comment for this story. “What made me speak is I thought I could provide a perspective,” she offers. “I’m not attacking Woody,” she says. “This is not ‘bring down this man.’ I’m talking about my love story. This made me who I am. I have no regrets.”

In point of fact, it was the teenage Engelhardt who initiated the affair, boldly dropping a note with her phone number on 41-year-old Allen’s table in a Manhattan restaurant, and if “most experts” condemn the “uneven power dynamic” involved . . . Well, it was the 70s, man.

When the #MeToo crusade roared to life last year with the destruction of Harvey Weinstein — who certainly deserved to be destroyed — there was a brief moment when Weinstein attempted to defend himself: “I came of age in the ’60s and ’70s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different. That was the culture then.” And indeed, considering that Weinstein entered show business as a rock concert promoter in the 1970s, at the absolute nadir of rock-and-roll decadence, it’s not difficult to understand why he thought he could get away with his predatory behavior. Stories have emerged of musical legends like Led Zeppelin and the Eagles partying with jailbait groupies in an era when nobody within the rock-and-roll subculture blinked twice at a 15-year-old girl with a backstage pass. Nobody in that scene thought of teenage groupies as victims of an “inherently exploitative power dynamic.”

Question: Why this Nietzschean obsession with sexual power?
Answer: The decline of religious morality.

Don’t argue with me. Don’t get me started. Once upon a time, sexual behavior was judged by a morality that involved the word “sin” and, under that standard, willful sinners — those who deliberately engaged in fornication — could not plausibly claim they were victims. No Christian minister of my acquaintance would assert that 16-year-olds are incapable of knowing the difference between good and evil, and if Babi Engelhardt chose to do evil, she was responsible for the consequences. New York laws regarding age of consent might make Woody Allen a criminal, but Babi Engelhardt did not consider herself the victim of a crime at the time, and refuses to rewrite the past to claim victimhood now.

Abandoning the clear distinction of right and wrong — “Thus saith the Lord” — inevitably leads us into the morass of moral relativism, a consequence Shakespeare once poetically described:

Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong —
Between whose endless jar justice resides —
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, a universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce a universal prey,
And last eat up himself.

When “right and wrong . . . lose their names” we may all become victims of our own appetites, “universal prey” of that “universal wolf.”

So it was in the 1970s, in the wake of the Sexual Revolution that attacked our society’s ancient ideas of right and wrong. As someone the same age as Babi Engelhardt, I think back to my own youth and the girls I knew in high school who went partying in Atlanta discos before they were even old enough to drive. Back in the day, when the drinking age in Georgia was 18, it was possible for a 15-year-old girl with a fake ID to run wild in the nightclub scene. If she was good-looking, and physically mature enough to pass for 18, the bouncers and bartenders weren’t going to scrutinize her ID closely enough to tell it was her older sister’s license. Such behavior was sufficiently common that it was taken for granted, and I suppose we could also discuss the fact (which was universally acknowledged among teenage dopeheads back in the day) that no good-looking chick ever had to pay for her dope. If a chick wanted to get high, there was always some dude willing to supply her with marijuana, LSD, Quaaludes or whatever, and it was no secret what she was expected to provide in exchange for this. A girl I went to school with became the longtime girlfriend of the biggest cocaine dealer in Atlanta and, so far as I know, she has never complained that she was the victim of an “inherently exploitative power dynamic.” But I digress . . .

Whose interests are served by abandoning old-fashioned morality in favor of a Nietzschean obsession with power? This serves the interests of our decadent elite, who trust in their wealth and high status to protect them, so that their sins and vices will never be exposed. How frightening it must be for them to see all the careers and reputations destroyed by the #MeToo movement. If you never had wealth or fame, you can congratulate yourself on your comparative safety, since there is no real incentive for exposing the misdeeds of the poor and obscure.

Woody Allen’s reputation has been toxic ever since he married Soon-Yi Previn, the Korean orphan who had been adopted in 1978 by Mia Farrow and her then-husband, conductor André Previn. Farrow had been 21 when she married 50-year-old Frank Sinatra in 1966; he divorced her two years later and Farrow was still only 25 when she married Previn, then 41, in 1970. Farrow is something of a collector of children. Since 1973, in addition to giving birth to four children of her own, Farrow has adopted 10 children, three of whom are deceased. Farrow became involved with Woody Allen four years after he started dating Babi Engelhardt and (of course) they had threesomes:

Despite the initial shock of jealousy, Engelhardt says she grew to like Farrow over the course of the “handful” of three-way sex sessions that followed at Allen’s penthouse as they smoked joints and bonded over a shared fondness for animals. (“When Mia was there, we’d talk about astrology, and Woody was forced to listen,” she laughs.) . . .
“I used to think this was a form of mother-father with the two of them,” says Engelhardt. “To me, that whole relationship was very Freudian: how I admired them, how he’d already broken me in, how I let that be all right.”
As for Farrow, she explains, “I always had the impression that she was doing this because he wanted it.” Engelhardt recalls when the story broke about Allen’s relationship with Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn (now his wife of nearly 21 years). “I felt sorry for Mia,” she says. “I thought, ‘Didn’t Woody have enough ‘extra,’ with or without her, that the last thing he had to do was to go for something that was totally hers?’
“He had groomed Mia, trained her, to put up with all of this. Now he had no barriers. It was total disrespect.”

Now, keep in mind that Farrow started dating Allen after he had already been dating Engelhardt for four years. Marijuana and “three-way sex sessions”? No problem! And hey, let’s talk astrology, because what else do you expect two women to talk about when they’re having a ménage à trois in a Manhattan penthouse with a famous film director?

Babi Engelhardt says Woody Allen showed “total disrespect” toward Mia Farrow, but what did Mia ever do to deserve respect? She’d already been divorced twice before she hooked up with Allen, and was apparently OK with marijuana and group sex. When someone is scraping the bottom of the barrel, living an immoral life of illegal drugs and sexual perversion, they should not be surprised to be treated with “total disrespect.”

Mia Farrow is just white trash and so is Babi Engelhardt. There is nothing admirable about either of them, and the only thing praiseworthy about Engelhardt is that at least she doesn’t claim to be a victim.



 

Category: Celebrities

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