Blake Lively Is Very Sad About a Comedian’s Woody Allen Joke
How can you be sad in Cannes?! Ask Blake Lively.
The star of Woody Allen’s newest movie is pretty offended by a rape joke made by a comedian at a Cannes event. The French comic, Laurent Lafitte, was addressing Woody Allen when he said this:
“It’s very nice that you’ve been shooting so many movies in Europe, even if you are not being convicted for rape in the U.S.”
This is not just a joke about Woody Allen, but also likely Roman Polanski, another director who was accused of improper behavior with an underage girl in 1977. Polanski pleaded guilty to one charge of unlawful sex with a minor in that California-based case, while Woody got off in his case. Polanski also fled to France before sentencing, so he’s now unable to enter the United States. Hence, he makes all his movies in Europe now.
Actually, this joke is more of a knock on Roman than Woody. But see the parallels? Two directors, both accused of creeping on underage girls, one in France, one in the U.S. Both make a lot of films in Europe — Woody because he likes shooting there, Polanski because he has to. This is why the joke works. It’s a good joke!
But Blake Lively didn’t think so:
“I think any jokes about rape, homophobia or Hitler is not a joke. I think that was a hard thing [to] swallow in 30 seconds. Film festivals are such beautiful, respectful festivals of film and artists and to have that, it felt like it wouldn’t have happened if it was in the 1940s. I can’t imagine Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby going out and doing that. It was more disappointing for the artists in the room that someone was going up there making jokes about something that wasn’t funny.”
LOLLLLLL BLAKE! You know what else happened in the 1940s? It was way easier to get away with raping and molesting people because no one would talk about it.
I’m sure it was chill to be a wealthy and beautiful movie star like Blake Lively in the 1940s, and that’s why she’s down to return to the cultural norms of that time. But if you were a woman in any other walk of life, the 1940s sucked prettttty bad.
Woody Allen, for his part, didn’t even care about the joke, telling Variety:
“I am completely in favor of comedians making any jokes they want. I am a non-judgmental or [non]-censorship person on jokes. I’m a comic myself and I feel they should be free to make whatever jokes they want … It would take a lot to defend me.”
Whether Woody Allen is guilty of the things he’s been accused of, we’ll never know. But we’ve at least gotten to a place where we can talk about these issues openly, and that’s major progress.
