In my view, Chinatown (even though the ending leaves me feeling off) ranks alongside Star Wars and Rocky as one of the best movies of the 1970s. It earned Roman Polanski his second (of four) Oscar nominations for Best Director (and deservedly so).
He also raped a 13- year-old girl and has been much in the news lately since his arrest Saturday in Switzerland on an “arrest warrant stemming from a sex charge in California“.
I don’t have much to add to what a number of bloggers and pundits have said, highlighting the double standards of those Hollywood types who want bygones to be bygones and are outraged by the arrest. My friend John Nolte sums it up:
Pleading guilty to unlawful sex with an underage girl — the drugging, raping and sodomizing of a 13 year-old — isn’t stopping Hollywood from ginning up an indignation campaign over the possibility of fugitive director Roman Polanski being held accountable for his crimes. Yes, these are the values of those who control the most powerful propaganda device ever created. Which begs a question: If his unspeakable deed doesn’t meet the standard, what exactly would Roman Polanski have to do in order to become a pariah in this town … I mean, besides vote for Sarah Palin?
Read the whole thing. Somehow if you’re a great artiste, some Hollywood types contend, you should be excused for such indiscretions. Sorry, but no.
Yes, Polanski is a great artist, one of the most gifted filmmakers of our time. He also raped a 13-year-old girl. The one does not excuse the other. He’s been accused of a serious crime, should be tried in a court of law and punished severely if found guilty. He pleaded guilty to the charge and fled the country before his sentencing. He should be punished severely for this anything but minor infraction. [Thanks to my readers for alerting me to the error in the original.]
But, even that conviction will not diminish the quality of his work. He won’t be the first gifted artist convicted of a crime. His august cinematic stature does nothing to diminish his wrongdoing.
UPDATE: About those Hollywood types sympathetic for Polanski’s plight, Roger Simon writes:
The only “suffering” Polanski had to endure in all this is he had to live in Paris instead of Beverly Hills. Quelle tragédie.
The mess is metastasizing and seems to be headed for something extremely dangerous for the entertainment industry (or part of it) – the further alienation of the audience. These filmmakers are more than ever lost in their own narcissistic bubble, unaware that the public does not share their sympathy for Polanksi. (Even in France, according to a poll in Le Figaro, the public was seventy percent against him.) This was in evidence on the conventionally liberal HuffPo where the readership in the comments was in rebellion from its elite “leaders” on this issue. In the real world, people do not have great sympathy for child molesters. As we know, they don’t even have much sympathy in prison where they are the lowest of the low, the so-called “short eyes.”
I didn’t know the Swiss had the b@ll$. Good for them!
Polanski can probably buy O.J.’s jury.
In addition to Polanski, I think Victor Salva is also a scumbag who should never have been given a job in Hollywood again (let alone allowed to make films that fetishize violence against teenage boys), but at least he actually served some (not enough) time.
In Hollywood, drugging and sodomizing a 13 year old girl is no impediment to respect and adoration; neither is raping an 11 year old boy like Salva did. But if you disagree with gay marriage, your career is finished.
I am deeply sorry that I saw Frantic. I had no idea at the time that it was a Polanski film, nor did I even know who Polanski was back then. Had I known I would never have seen it. I will never watch another Polanski film again.
And I’m sorry, while I admit it was the only of his films Ive seen, the movie was utterly forgettable — indeed, I dont remember anything about it, other than Harrison Ford was in it.
As for those who defend the child rapist — if you can defend a child rapist, you can defend anything! You are a vile excuse for a human being, and its no wonder people with values wont vote for the Democrat party. I’m not saying all Democrats are immoral, but the party tolerates the most degraded repugnant immorality there is.
And as I understand it, Polanski’s fate now rests with …. Barack Obama. He has been arrested, and whether or not he is extradited depends entirely on Obama’s State Department. If they want the extradition, they will get it, if they want Polanski to walk, extradition will be denied.
If Polanksi walks, you can blame Obama.
Umm, sorry Dan, but from what I’ve been reading, Polanski *was* tried in a court of law and *was* found guilty. It’s his sentencing, that he skipped out on.
People often forget that. It makes Polanski’s defenders all the more grotesque: they are whining in favor of a man who is guilty in every meaningful sense – legally, officially and by his own admission – but who then refused to even submit himself for a sentence (which could easily have been lenient), much less serve a sentence.
I just googled ‘Polanski guilty’ to be sure, and Wikipedia describes Polanski’s case this way:
If true (and I have no reason to think it isn’t), that would make Polanski 100% guilty of what Whoopi Goldberg pathetically called “rape-rape” a couple days ago. But it often happens that the criminal pleads guilty to a lesser offense. So did Polanski. He pled guilty to statutory rape – even though he had, apparently, committed a full-on “rape-rape”. Having pled guilty before the Court and been duly convicted, it was his obligation to show up for sentencing and pay his debt to American society. That’s what he skipped out on.
P.S. The fact that “Hollywood unites” (as some observers have put it) to defend Polanski tells me that “Hollywood” feels a strong sense of personal identification with Polanski; in other words, that in Hollywood, drugging and raping 13 year olds must be a fairly common occurrence. Sickening.
Yes, he’s past a trial. He pled guilty, and admitted to “rape-rape”, to use Whoopi’s term, in explicit detail. That is now beyond question.
Hey, Whoopi–it Polanski was a Catholic priest, would it be “rape-rape?” Were all those abused kids just being mean for bringing up 30-year-old charges against sweet old Fr. O’Brien? And all those plantation owners–did they “rape-rape” the 13-year-old slave girls? Or did I miss the point of The Color Purple?
Being a talented artist does not make you a moral person. We have seen this through the centuries. What bothers me so much is the fact that our ‘intellectual elites” are completely unwilling to admit this.
They feel that since they like his body of film work, he should be excused for the worst crime – sexually abusing a child.
btw, I read on Ann Althouse the list of movies made in recent years that really push the envelope on deviant sexual relations, mostly with underage kids. So it’s not just Hollywood turning a blind eye, it is Hollywood desperately trying to make the inexcusable – acceptable and normal.
Someone at Moonbattery spotted the following at San Freakshow’s Folsom Street Fair, a booth offering Fetish Tots: S&M gear for small children.
Hollywood. Where felonies won’t impact your potential for getting a job.
Its disgusting how many people are defending this guy, even for the “sake of the victim.” If he really cared about her being rung out by the media (as the CNN article tries to make it seem) he would have served his sentence and just been done with it.
The reason I don’t believe Michael Jackson was a pedophile and Roman Polanski is: Jackson faced a trial by a jury of his peers who heard the evidence and acquitted him. Polanski admitted the rape and ran away. There is a difference.
Ash, just from curiousity: Do you also believe O.J. didn’t murder Nicole and Ron Brown? After all, O.J. “faced a trial by a jury of his peers who heard the evidence and acquitted him.” Is the concept of a jury basically knowing that the guy did it, except that “basically” isn’t good enough for a conviction under our Constitution, on your radar? Jackson jurors stated after the trial that that was exactly how they felt about Michael’s crimes.
Dan: Check out this column from Salon (!) which nails it:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/09/28/polanski_arrest/
VtheK: Never heard of Salva before. Sounds like a real putz that deserves to be strung up by his gonads.
If we don’t trust the jury system for Michael Jackson, what’s the point of bringing Polanski back?
Other than being acquitted in a very public trial, what could Jackson, or anyone, do to prove he or she is not a pedophile?
Please watch The Children’s Hour and get back to me.
Can’t make head nor tail of that. But since you mention Jackson’s jurors again, and seem to place great stock in them: Why don’t you believe the ones who said publicly that they basically think he did it, they just couldn’t bring themselves to convict?
You leave me no choice but to take that as a “yes” to my first question and a “no” to my second. (I.e., that you think O.J. didn’t kill Nicole and Ron Brown; and that it is not on your radar that a jury could basically conclude the guy did it, yet still vote against convicting him.)
P.S. Now,, to answer to your own question:
Answer: Nothing. There is a saying, “You can’t prove a negative.” Each person who cares about a given criminal issue must use their own judgment to review the evidence and reach their own conclusion. Just because you think O.J. didn’t do it, M.J. didn’t do it, etc., doesn’t mean I have to (or should) agree with you.
Again, what’s the point of putting Polanski on trial then?
So, Ash, a guy can rape a child, admit to it, skip town before sentencing and it’s all good with you?
Well its’ certainly good enough for Jody.
Ash,
I appriciate your defense of Michael Jackson. However, being aquitted does not in and of itself equal innocence, William Ayers being the most risible example. People are going to have their perceptions even if the legal system shows otherwise. Look at Mumia. He’s going to get a pardon in the last days of the Obama administration and has defenders, even though he’s never deinied killing the man.
I think Polanski should be ripped apart by dogs. You’re the one who thinks a trial would be useless.
Re: Jackson–honestly, has no one seen The Children’s Hour, one of the classics of gay cinema?
In America, jury trial is the means by which *society*, or *the law* if you prefer, reaches an official conclusion as to whether the individual should be deprived of rights – that is, jailed.
In the case of O.J. Simpson, the weight of evidence and logic is overwhelmingly that he did it. Yet the jury decided that, as an official and social matter, and at that time and for that crime, O.J. should not be subject to sentencing, i.e. should not be stripped of his rights. It doesn’t mean “he didn’t do it” and it doesn’t mean that I personally should walk around thinking “he didn’t do it”. OK?
I can’t believe I have to explain this.
Now for what I came to say: Big Hollywood has a rundown on the reactions to Polanski over at HuffPo:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cftoto/2009/09/29/huffpo-goes-all-in-to-defend-polanski-readers-revolt/
It seems that a surprising number of Puffhos are on what I should consider the ‘right’ side of this: in other words, condemning Polanski.
The NYT turns on Polanski: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/opinion/30wed4.html?_r=2
The government of France turns on Polanski: http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSTRE58T4ZM20090930
Kirstie Alley turns on Polanski: http://twitter.com/kirstiealley/status/4498421378
All of the above, tipped by HotAir.
Yes, Roman Polansk is a big time scum. Even if you believe that bygones should be bygones (and I don’t), the fact is that he had been committing a crime for over 30 years. He is a fugitive from justice. He should receive an additional sentence for that.
Roman Polanski is guilty of abusing a minor and he really deservers to be in jail.