So, what does it mean to be "canceled" in 2025? What’s the going rate for public absolution? In Madrid, it looks like the price is about €1.5 million, paid directly to you.
The regional government of Madrid, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to cut a check for that amount to Woody Allen, the 89-year-old director who has become about as welcome in mainstream Hollywood as a dial-up modem. The deal? Allen gets the cash to make his next movie, and in return, he has to slap the word "Madrid" in the title and make sure to get a few glamour shots of the local scenery.
They’re not even trying to hide it. This isn’t a grant for the arts. It’s a glorified tourism commercial. They’re openly hoping for a Vicky Cristina Barcelona redux, dreaming that Allen’s cinematic magic will suddenly make millions of tourists descend upon their city. It’s a bold strategy, I guess. Betting your city’s international image on a director whose primary cultural relevance in the last decade has been a public relations nightmare…
What year is it, again? Are we really pretending that an octogenarian’s moody European flick is going to have the same cultural impact as Emily in Paris in the TikTok age? Give me a break.
The Art of the Deal, and the Art of Forgetting
Let’s deconstruct the official statement, because it’s a masterpiece of bureaucratic doublespeak. The government calls Allen "one of the most multifaceted contemporary artists in the cinematic landscape." My cynical translation: "He’s a famous guy with an Oscar who was available and, more importantly, affordable." They talk about his "international renown and prestige" as an "ideal channel for promoting the Community of Madrid."
This isn't about art. It's a transaction. They're buying a brand name they think still has some juice left in it. The contract even stipulates the film has to premiere at a "festival of similar international prestige" to Berlin. They’re buying a red-carpet photo-op. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a washed-up rock band playing a corporate gig.
And offcourse, there's the giant, screaming elephant in the room. Allen has struggled to find American financing for years, ever since the sexual abuse allegation from his daughter Dylan Farrow resurfaced. Now, for the record, he has always denied it, and two separate investigations in the '90s resulted in no charges. But in the court of public opinion and studio risk-assessment, he’s been radioactive.
So is Madrid striking a brave blow against cancel culture? Are they champions of separating the art from the artist? Or are they just opportunists, swooping in to get a legendary director on the cheap precisely because he’s radioactive everywhere else? Let's be real, it ain't the first one. This feels less like a principled stand and more like finding a vintage Rolex at a pawn shop with a massive, unignorable scratch on the crystal. You get the name, but you also get the damage.
A Convenient Blind Spot in a World of Woke Scolds
What I find truly fascinating is the sheer cognitive dissonance of it all. We live in a media landscape that will produce a thousand think-pieces about ableism in horror movies, asking questions like, Horror movies have an ableism problem. Isn’t it time we found new ‘monsters’? | Kathryn Bromwich. Seriously. There are ongoing, intense debates about how portraying a villain with facial scars is problematic, or how using disability as a shorthand for "creepy" is a harmful trope. The British Film Institute will literally refuse funding to films that feature scarred baddies.
And I get it. Those are valid conversations. But the scale is just… insane. Hollywood is like a homeowners' association meticulously debating the acceptable shade of beige for your mailbox while the house next door is a meth lab funded by the city council. The priorities are completely out of whack.
We're supposed to wring our hands over whether the prosthetics on Nicolas Cage in Longlegs are offensive, yet a major European government can publicly fund a director mired in one of the most toxic and persistent scandals in modern film history, and it's just… a business deal? A tourism initiative? It’s a joke. It exposes the utter hypocrisy of so much of our cultural discourse.
This isn't to say those debates about representation are pointless. No, that's not right—they're important conversations to have. But the selective application of outrage is staggering. It tells you what the real rules are. Minor infractions against the new progressive orthodoxy will get you dragged online for weeks. But if you have enough prestige, or if you can offer a government a sweet enough deal to boost their tourism numbers, the bigger stuff just seems to... fade away. I wonder if the right-wing populist government in Madrid, run by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, sees this as a feature, not a bug. A way to stick it to the cultural elites they so despise.
Follow the Money, Not the Morals
At the end of the day, this whole thing is brutally, cynically simple. The Madrid government document justifying the expense noted that some of Allen’s past films brought in over $150 million. That's it. That's the whole story.
It reminds me of the Detroit Lions. Their front office has been dropping nearly a billion dollars to lock down their young stars, with a clear philosophy summed up by one columnist: Detroit Lions have it right: They'll keep paying young stars until 'we run out of money'. It's a refreshingly honest, if ruthless, admission of how the world works. Talent that produces results gets paid, period.
Is Madrid just applying the sports playbook to the film world? At least they’re being more honest than a Hollywood studio that would couch the same decision in empty platitudes about "second chances" and "the power of redemption." Madrid isn't pretending. They’re not championing free speech. They’re buying an asset they think will appreciate, and if that asset comes with some… baggage…
The real question is, will it even work? Is there a stampede of Allen fans just waiting to book flights to Spain? Or is this just a final, publicly funded European vacation for a director whose audience has either moved on or died out? We'll see. But my money is on a quiet, forgettable film that gets a polite clap at a film festival before disappearing, leaving Madrid taxpayers €1.5 million poorer and a whole lot of questions in its wake.
So We're Still Doing This, Huh?
Let's stop using the term "cancel culture." It's a myth. A bogeyman. It doesn't exist for the truly rich, the truly famous, or the truly useful. Woody Allen isn't "canceled." He just had to find new investors. And in a world where money always, always talks loudest, he did. It’s the oldest story there is. Some things never change.
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