It’s interesting to see all the theories as to why the reactions to this story have not been unanimously condemnatory of Polanski. (Rich celebrities circling the wagons with “who’s next?” thoughts of their own closets, etc.) For me, trying to understand why it’s even open to internal debate, I find that it’s because I tend to place Polanski in the historical context that his art has earned. Bottom line, I think he should be punished. But I had to debate with myself to reach that conclusion. If you put Polanski in perspective with other great artists, over time the art survives far longer than the terrible things they may have done to other people in their lifetimes. Picasso, Joyce, whoever–reading the biography of many a great artist is largely an exercise in prurient voyeurism. One of the thoughts that crossed my mind in my internal Polanski debate was something like, "THEY got away with shit . . . " but then the thought couldn’t complete itself. So . . . does that mean I think HE should get away with shit? No. Does that mean that, given time travel or whatever, the great artists of the past who were also assholes or even criminals, would you go back and punish them somehow? I don’t know; probably. Does this make Polanski’s story largely one of timing? Who knows.
Anyway, as I have these weird debates with myself, I realize that the one element that seems increasingly to be missing from them is the victim. Since the victim is still living, and the criminal is still living, and therefore still subject to human justice, then yes I agree he should be punished the same way that any other such criminal would be punished.
But it’s kind of a sobering thought: the works of Joyce, of Picasso, of Polanski–they’ll survive well into the future. Their victims will continue to fade into obscurity. So this is a rare opportunity, perhaps, to get the crime on the official record, and not wait for it to “come to light” in some future biography, where it will always be subject to debate.
Do you have a link for Gaiman? I’m not doubting you (Gaiman comes across as a decent man and he has a 13 or 14 year old daughter himself), but I hadn’t heard that he’d said anything about Polanski. He hasn’t mentioned the subject on his blog. I’d be curious to know what he had to say.
Well I just hope none of the assholes standing up for Polanski come out in support of Obama during the next election. The GOP plays the guilt by association game better than anyone.
Another component in the whole deal of entertainment celebs supporting Polanski is, in the specific cases of the *non-*Americans in the crowd, the very common attitude that American penal law is excessively vindictive in orientation (in some countries the utter maximum sentence for any nonlethal crime, even forcible rape, is 15 years tops, and from there you get time off for good behavior). I can understand their feeling that way because it’s what they know and there’s no other frame of reference, but that does not absolve Polanski from facing the music: he could have always appealed if he thought the judge was just trying to make him an example. Heck, I could imagine his having served only a short part of his sentence before the INS said, “look, we’ll just kick you out, don’t ever come back here” and then he’d be able to get on with his life save for not being able to return to the US.
ETA: And yes, I too believe far too many of his supporters convince themselves that in truth all that happened was a “mere” statutory offense.
Obviously, there’s a difference between a play about something, and doing it for real, but I do think Ensler is being just a tad hypocritical in that she wrote a play which romanticizes and glorifies the statutory rape of a child by a woman, but excoriates the same act she depicts as positive when it’s performed by a woman as an atrocity when perormed by a man.
She claims that play (which is insufferable, pretentious shit, in my opinion, but that’s neither here nor there) was based on real stories from real women, so presumably she exploited a real victim and romanticized a real crime for her play, which does imply a philosophical double-standard when it comes to the gender of the perpetrator.
She’s right in everything she says about Polanski, but she’s the wrong person to say it.
It’s not the same act. We can agree that having sex with a teenager who has given invalid consent is bad, but having sex with a teenager who didn’t give consent at all is worse.
Worse, yes, but she didn’t even present the statutory rape in her play as bad at all. Would she have had no problem if Polanski’s victim had consented (to whatever extent a 13 year old can consent)?