This op-ed assumes you know that: Roman Polanski was convicted of “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” in ’78, in which he admitted plying a 13-year-old full of Quaaludes & booze with the intent of having sex with her in every manner possible. He pled guilty, public opinion came against the law who were going to let him off with a lenient punishment, and he fled to France, where he has lived pretty much ever since, enjoying their non-extradition policies. Upon showing up in Switzerland to collect a lifetime achievement award recently, he was finally arrested and will face sentencing for the conviction he’s been on the run from for 31 years.
I love the sense of ironic humour in how Roman Polanski was arrested for his 1977 rape at long last — he shows up to collect a lifelong achievement award, and the cuffs get slapped on. Beautiful. A crime he’s spent 30+ years evading, he’s finally going to be held accountable for. It’s existential poetry. Justice comes at last.
The reaction on the Polanski thing baffles me. Many in the public — probably because they actually KNOW the one in four people who’ve likely been raped — seem elated Polanski’s going to receive sentence for a crime he was long ago convicted for. Hollywood seems to be rallying behind their chosen director-boy.
Like Whoopi Goldberg on The View. Whoopi, in her infinite hit-the-nail-on-the-head articulate genius, said: “I know it wasn’t rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.”
So, Polanski isn’t guilty of “rape-rape”, just, you know, not-very-nice sex. Maybe he should have sent more flowers.
Apparently, if you make REALLY good art, you’re not a “bad” person, because how can your aesthetic vision be so skookum-good when your intrinsic values are so fucking heinous?
Roman Polanski, in 1978, got the fuck out of Dodge because he realized that, hey, stuffing a 13-year-old full of Quaaludes and booze, then stuffing his cock into her teeny vagina and ass, and getting oral sex coming-and-going wasn’t gonna fly in America, even if the Sexual Revolution was still going pretty strong.
Like the sick coward he is, as soon as his easy deal looked like it might be in jeopardy, after the public began reacting to the soft punishment he was getting for a plea deal, he ran. He basically admitted his guilt to the harsher charges. You don’t live abroad for 30 years because you have a difference of opinion with the border guards, okay? You fight it, and you fight it publicly. When you’re guilty, you shut the fuck up and find ways to stay out of the wrong hands.
I’d like to applaud Switzerland for doing what Canada failed to do in 1986 — helping American authorities in finally making the pursuit of justice viable in this case.
Apparently the victim wants the charges dropped. Why, because she thinks he’s paid his price? Or because Hollywood has indicted her for the last 30 years over the fate of its Golden Child director, the man who reinvented horrors with Rosemary’s Baby and tore up the screen with the ever-brilliant Chinatown? Or because Polanski paid her to shut the hell up?
And why is Hollywood so dismissive of this bullshit? Because the guy knows how to put a film together? Because illicit sex defines Hollywood? Because any female who goes into modelling or acting after the age of 13 was (and is) often EXPECTED to put out in order to be successful?
Who knows.
But it’s time that we ignore what victims want in cases with rich, intimidating, powerful defendants. When they “drop” the charges or don’t wish to file, yet it’s something like this crime here, I think we need to stand back and go, “No, it’s NOT cool that this happens on our watch. 13-year-old girls aren’t old enough to consent when filled with Quaaludes and alcohol. Anyone in his 30s and beyond should know this.” After all, we all know it’s just defendants paying victims to make charges go away. Who’s kidding who?
That aside — what makes a girl, just because she works as an actress or model at the age of 13, somehow more VIABLE as a fucking vehicle? Why is SHE okay to manipulate into sex and a grade 8 field hockey player isn’t? It’s not right. All our children deserve to be protected, and if their innocence vanishes too young through no fault of their own, we still have to protect them.
Polanski is a rape-rapist. He’s a powerful man, a fantastic director, and a rape-rapist. He deserves to pay for his crimes that he was found GUILTY of instead of being a glamourous posterboy for How To Rape A Child And Live An Exotic Life on the Lam While Being Praised Worldwide for Being a Genius.
If ANYONE deserves to pay for his crimes decades after the fact, it’s anyone who makes rape look cool.
I don’t even know what kind of a sentence I want imposed on the fucker. I might even be happy with a token 9-18 months. I just want to know he’s paying a price beyond having had to live the horrible life of an exile in the — gulp — savagery of France. All that stinky cheese and horrible wine, I just don’t know how he could do it. Jail will be a cakewalk in comparison, I’m sure.
If ever there was an instance in which the law asserted that, no, money and glamour do NOT get you off the hook in crimes, a jail sentence in the Polanski case would be the way to prove it.
The Cunting Linguist
It seems I always have something on the tip of my tongue.
Word.
Let’s be clear. She was THIRTEEN, he was THIRTY.
Obvious unbalanced power dynamic here. He took advantage of his position and cultivated his taste for young girls into a final act – the bastard must, and should be punished.
His sexual history is not a mystery, having bedded/manipulated other young starlets post rape.
I maintain, just cause’ a human being can produce significant, important pieces of art does not exclude them from the asshole club. The membership committee does not discriminate.
Welcome, Roman.
Signed with sincere thanks,
The Swiss police.
.-= Invisible G.´s last blog ..Et Tu Canada? =-.
AMEN. I also ranted about this in an entry called “Rape Rape isn’t in my Black’s Law Dictionary.” What a bastard. I read the court transcripts and that was rape, clear and simple. Excellent rant!
-R.
In fairness to Whoopi I think she was trying to clarify what it was he was convicted for and flubbed it.
I am amazed at all these people in the Arts and film industry coming out defending him and constantly referring to his body of work as if that somehow elevates him above his crime. Can you imagine if he was a plumber a plumbers union defending him?
“Ah yeah, I know he buggered that poor kid but you should see his bathroom work”
What nonsense. At the risk of invoking Godwin’s law, Hitler did some ok water colours should we all just forgive and forget him too?
This is a case of separating the art from the artist once again, I think. It really confuses the issue when a man of undeniable talent is also an all around shit-heel who thinks that the laws of ordinary non-geniuses don’t apply to him. And there are so many examples of this in film, music, and art history. This mentality causes people to say and do a lot of crazy things, like defend a guy who drugged up a young girl so he could screw her, and then hightail it to Europe when found out.
Similarly, Phil Spector, another genius, was put away for murder recently. He shot a young actress. Phil had been pointing guns in people’s faces for years. The Ramones, John Lennon, and Leonard Cohen all experienced his weirdness and downright dangerous behaviour with firearms when he produced them. But, it was sloughed off as ‘that’s just Phil’. This was in the 70s as well, of course. But, I think if charges had been pressed then, it wouldn’t have made “Be My Baby” any less fantastic. And now in the 21st Century, it still doesn’t, and I’m glad Spector went to jail.
But for years, the worth of the art seems to have served as a shield to the artist in these cases. And the mentality endures.
In this sense, perhaps this is about not killing the Goose That Lays The Golden Eggs. After all, it’s hard for Polanski to keep churning out works of genius when he’s in the Big House. Same would have been true of Phil Spector in the 70s. I hate to think how much of this type of thing went on then, how much terror and violence was excused. And perhaps now in the 21st Century, we’re more able to make the necessary separation. But, I still wonder.
Thanks for the post!
.-= Rob J´s last blog ..Rock n’ Roll and Baseball: John Fogerty’s ‘Centerfield’ =-.