Princess and Prince Harming with a noose around their neck, gently twisting in the wind on a gallows pole of our imagination. Woody Allen is the unlikely bourreau, the bespeckled anti-hangman with his obliquely absurd message on love after pulling the lever or flipping the switch of execution:
“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But then, one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness”.( Woody Allen, Love and Death, 1975)
Allen has amassed a fortune on the psychoanalysis of love manifested on screen, yet is still searching within the ruins of suffering for some shred of optimism, a hope that love can stand without crutches and a respirator. Nonetheless he soldiers on, caught in a crossfire between the Biblical conception of love, that of compassion and self sacrifice and the distance and remoteness in the Hellenistic presentation where God delegates the heavy lifting to Zeus and company. A passive-aggressive relation, perhaps at the core of Allen’s comic neurosis and semi-tragic overtones.
Frida Khalo, The Two Frida's, 1939
Aristotle, the Greek phiosopher believed that the soul is the human’s g-spot for happiness, and that love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies”. The theoretical conception breaks down considering the representation of God according to the Greek philosophers:
” In contrast, the God of the Greek philosophers, according to this reading, takes no interest in human affairs and is entirely immune from suffering. This deity cannot be influenced by anything external. It is useless to pray for it, except for the psychological benefit of moral exercise. Being incapable of feelings and emotions, such a God is also incapable of love and care.”( Paul Gavrilyuk).
According to ”The Father of Woodstock”, Artie Kornfeld, the only time Woody Allen ever sang on a record was a registration of the Kornfeld composition, ”Chicken of the Sea”. Fortunately, after fleeing from falling whales, Allen also recorded ” I’m Thru With Love” in his film, ”Everyone Says I Love You”. I’m Thru With Love was a hit song of 1931 made immortal by Marilyn Monroe’s interpretation in Billy Wilder’s comedy ”Some Like It Hot”.
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