‘Allen v. Farrow’ Lets Dylan Farrow Be More Than a Survivor

It’s impossible to express the amount of bravery Dylan Farrow has demonstrated through Allen v. Farrow. HBO’s four-part docuseries has systematically sifted through what is sure to be one of the most traumatizing experiences of her life with a fine-toothed comb. Not only has the documentary asked Farrow to repeatedly discuss her alleged abuse on camera — a monumental ask for anyone — but it has also publicly released videos of Farrow when she was at her most vulnerable point in life, discussing the abuse as a child days after it occurred.

With her truly staggering strength and honesty, Farrow has done so very much for survivors everywhere. But there is another gift Farrow has given women, survivors, and the world at large. In Allen v. Farrow‘s final episode, this woman who has been attacked on nearly every stage has given us the gift of hope through the story of her own family.

It happens disturbingly often. After a survivor comes forward with his or her story of abuse, they forever become tied with their abuser. It’s an especially gruesome problem if that abuser happens to be famous. In many ways, it’s another way to add salt into a wound from a society that’s turned that practice into an art. It’s also that very reason why Dylan Farrow’s quiet moments with her husband, child, and mother Mia Farrow feel so revolutionary.

Allen v. Farrow doesn’t quickly state that Dylan Farrow now has a husband and child, a dismissive take too few docuseries even think to grant to their subjects. It gives her the room to tell her own storybook romance. For one of the few times in her far too public life, Farrow is allowed to show her own story, on her terms.

“I was going on The Onion for satire purposes, and I saw they had a dating site powered by OK Cupid. And I’m like why not? Maybe I’ll find someone funny,” Farrow’s husband Sean explains. “I put this ultra, very honest profile on there saying I’m a geek, you can take me out in public, I shower I promise. Within the first day I got this really surprising message from this really smoking hot girl with this burgundy bob and this cute little chin and it was like, it said, ‘You didn’t mention you were a cute geek.”

As Sean talks about their first conversation, the camera captures Farrow covering her face in embarrassment. She later explains, “It was like the first and last time I ever flirted with someone.”

“But you knocked it out of the park,” Sean shoots back. “That’s a win.”

This story about how Dylan Farrow met her husband is small. It has little to do with the reason why her name has been plastered across headlines for decades. And that’s the entire point. In this moment Dylan Farrow isn’t portrayed as a victim, survivor, or a daughter of celebrities. She’s just a woman blushing as the person she loves tells a sweet story. In this tiny moment, she’s a person rather, than an object.

Allen v. Farrow continues this delicate thread of humanity as it shows Farrow and Sean playing with their daughter. “The second I found out that I was having a little girl, I was overjoyed but I was also terrified. There are moments when I look at my daughter and I see little like flickers of little Dylan and I get what my mom did for me, how hard it was,” Farrow explains to the camera. “There’s so much that I’ve been through that I’ll never be able to fully explain. I think the best gift that I could have given my daughter is that she has a really wonderful father. Honestly sometimes when I watch my daughter and my husband together, I actually get a little jealous. But it’s bittersweet because I know I’m paying it forward.”

Dylan Farrow doesn’t owe us this raw honesty. After what we as a society have taken from her while calling her a liar, the very idea she could ever owe us anything is absurd. And yet Farrow offers us another glimpse into her life when she’s at her most vulnerable. This time she isn’t a scared little girl averting her eyes from her mother’s questions; but a strong, confident woman unafraid to look her fears and insecurities in the face. In this moment she is living in defiance of us, in defiance of the trap society places on survivors that forces them to live in the shadows of their abusers. It’s another act of bravery, and one just as important to survivors as the reckoning caused by the Me Too movement.

Despite what headlines and public opinion have declared for years, Dylan Farrow is more than that scared little girl. She is a mother, an author of a successful young adult novel by the name of Hush, a wife, a lover of silly Onion articles, and a woman capable of understanding the intense sacrifices her mother has made for her as well as of forgiving the attorney who chose not to take her case to court. Dylan Farrow is more than a survivor of Woody Allen. That Allen v. Farrow has allowed her to be a fully developed, complex person is revolutionary in and of itself.

Watch Allen v. Farrow on HBO NOW and HBO Max