American Apparel to Woody: We’re Sorry (and We’re Parodists)
American Apparel is apologizing to Woody Allen after he filed a $10 million lawsuit against the trendy T-shirt monger for its unauthorized use of an image of him dressed in Hasidic garb on a pair of billboards.
“We deeply admire Woody Allen as a filmmaker and an inspiring social and political satirist,” the company said in a press release. “We sincerely regret offending him in any way.”
But, given that words are cheap and lawsuits are expensive, American Apparel also tried to cover its tuchus from legal standpoint, claiming that the billboards featuring the image of Allen (filched from his film “Annie Hall”) were not, in fact, intended to sell underwear, but were rather “meant strictly as a social parody.”
The question, of course, is what aspect of society, exactly, were the underwear-purveying parodists parodying?
Could it be, given that an American Apparel rep had originally told the Forward, “Woody Allen is our spiritual leader,” the billboards were an ever-so-ironic commentary on the company’s own social and spiritual shortcomings? But that would be more satire than parody.
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