Woody Allen, American Apparel and "Sleazy" Photos



(image via nymag)

We preferred Woody's earlier, funnier eccentricities. Nowadays his Freudian slips are more than just embarrassing, they are psychologically revelatory and downright creepy. His quixotic war against American Apparel continues. But what does this over loud lawsuit by a by all accounts reclusive film director say about il maestro? From the New York Post:

"In a deposition for his $10 million suit against American Apparel, filmmaker Woody Allen called the hipster clothing company's products 'low-end' and their ads 'sleazy,' 'adolescent' and 'infantile.'

But the clothier, which plastered an unauthorized shot of Allen on billboards in New York and LA, fired back yesterday by demanding records showing whether his 'highly publicized sex scandal and custody battle' involving ex-girlfriend Mia Farrow and her adopted daughter Soon-Yi -- Woody's wife -- had affected his earnings."

Here's where things get psychologically interessant. We cannot fail to note that Woody Allen has some experience with erotic photos of underage women. You see, Allen's relationship with Mia Farrow unravelled when he left erotic Polaroids of his now wife Soon-Yi Previn -- she: 21; he: 56 -- on a mantelpiece (Averted Gaze).

So he knows a little something-something about erotic Polaroids of young women.

Unfortunately, Allen is not making his criticism aesthetic. Instead of writing a critically insightful review in ArtForum magazine, Allen has brought his editorializing about American Apparel's erotic Polaroids into the legal arena and thus into the pop-cultural marketplace. And in those photographs that Woody has studied with feverish determination, the young women are clothed only by the thinnest of Freudian slips (The Corsair sips a peppery cognac).