What is actually most profound about this piece is my mention of Woody Allen, as the writer of the script for the movie, having the young Tracy say, "Not everyone gets corrupted. You have to have a little faith in people." I can remember even now her delivery of those lines, her voice so youthful and so poignant. But now the movie itself seems corrupt, the older man and the young girl. Allen himself, once the embodiment of a certain kind of urban joy, now embodies more and more corruption, most recently in his appearance in the Epstein files. Did he include himself among those who do not get corrupted, as Tracy says? Or did he know then that he was corrupted, corruptible, and wanted to offer a hopeful note that not everyone would join him in the unsavory group to which he belonged? Why did the word leap out to me back then? I think I misused it, that its full meaning was not knowable to me then. Was I just more unknowing, more innocent? Probably. I think the world I inhabited was surely more unknowing, more innocent. I had been born into the profound evils of the Second World War, but post-war hopefulness reigned in the days of my youth.
What is actually most profound about this piece is my mention of Woody Allen, as the writer of the script for the movie, having the young Tracy say, "Not everyone gets corrupted. You have to have a little faith in people." I can remember even now her delivery of those lines, her voice so youthful and so poignant. But now the movie itself seems corrupt, the older man and the young girl. Allen himself, once the embodiment of a certain kind of urban joy, now embodies more and more corruption, most recently in his appearance in the Epstein files. Did he include himself among those who do not get corrupted, as Tracy says? Or did he know then that he was corrupted, corruptible, and wanted to offer a hopeful note that not everyone would join him in the unsavory group to which he belonged? Why did the word leap out to me back then? I think I misused it, that its full meaning was not knowable to me then. Was I just more unknowing, more innocent? Probably. I think the world I inhabited was surely more unknowing, more innocent. I had been born into the profound evils of the Second World War, but post-war hopefulness reigned in the days of my youth.