Kalhoun: Do you feel the same about artists who smoke pot or take drugs?
I do. I think drug use is disgusting and deplorable, and every effort should be made to rehabilitate addicts. Sexual predators, like Polanski, should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It pisses me off that he’s living it up in Europe and winning Academy Awards instead of rotting in a hole somewhere.
Artistic talent does not excuse violent crimes! I don’t care how friggin’ brilliant The Pianist is supposed to be, I’m not paying a lowlife like Polanski a single cent of my money.
The real pisser is that if you have cable TV, your money IS going to Polanski. Your monthly fee pays for all the movies they show, and they’re showing The Pianist this month (or last…I forget).
The man was charged with 5 felonies, 4 of which were dropped in exchange for his guilty plea. Before being sentenced, he fled the country to avoid incarceration. He lied to a 13 year old girl telling her he was a photographer for Vouge magazine (I think it was Vouge). As he convinced her to pose semi nude, he drugged her and raped her.
It wasn’t even a matter of consensual sex between two different aged people. On top of that, he fled the country after admitting guilt. Shortly after arriving in France, he started dating another 15 year old model. I think it is clear he had a thing for younger girls.
The man is a slimeball. I’m quite convinced of that.
Anything that helps him not be in prison, is unfavorable. Supporting his movie by watching, paying royalties, supporting the studio’s effort in promoting and producing the movie, all contribute in sending the message that the public accepts his behavior, and encourages him to continue on doing what he is doing.
If no one watched or supported his movies, refused to work with him, publicly ostracized him, he would lose his livleyhood. That would be a start. Not watching his movies is a step in the right direction.
Watching his movie, or paying to see it, supports him financially. Supporting him financially is acceptance of his behavior. The first example that comes to mind is South Africa and aparteid. People believed that to be unacceptable. Therefore they voluntarily restricted trade with those who believed it to be acceptable. Refusing to watch a movie made by a person whose behavior is personally unacceptable is the extent of what I can do. If everyone refused to see his movies, it would send the message that people no longer want to support him. I doubt this will happen, but I still refuse to watch.
If I find that any person does some action that I find abhorrent, I would boycott their work. Most times, I’m unaware of probably lots of actions of those involved in the entertainment I choose. I do watch many many movies. I have seen a Polanski movie in the past, before I learned of him and his crime. But if I suddenly learn that Jay Leno has and likes to rape little girls, I’d probably stop watching the Tonight Show. If I learn that David Letterman is a habitual speeder and thus breaks all sorts of traffic laws all the time, that probably wouldn’t influence my decision to watch or not watch the Late Show. It all depends on the severity of the action, and child rape is pretty high on my list of things that are evil.
True, not supporting him doesn’t help him get to prison. In addition to going to prison, I also think he should suffer. Being a poor, destitute man whom no one will associate with or ever deal with, again, is just a start of what I think he deserves.
Those who work with him deserve to be punished for aiding him. I don’t pity them, and revile all those who aid him in escaping justice. Not saying that the boom operator, nor even the lead actor, is keeping him from an American prison. They only aid him by allowing him to continue to make films, money, increase his fame. Considering that he should be behind bars, or at least should have served a sentence, I find that passing criminal. They help the man enjoy his life more than he deserves to, and the prospect of rewarding them for it makes me even more ill at ease with watching his movies than I was before. The film may be a masterpiece, and one need not love the artist to love the art, but I would deprive myself the pleasure of it if it meant depriving them of ill-gotten gains. And it does, in however infinitesimal a way, so I shall. Just as I would not see those who aided and abetted this known felon go unpunished, or even be rewarded for staying justice, I would not see those who allow him happiness fare well.
Let me throw in two things just to muddy the waters a little.
[ul]Would you read a mediocre book or buy a crappy album just because you were certain the author/artist was impeccably moral?[/ul]
[ul]Regarding Polanski: According to a recent interview with Jack Nicholson, what Polanski did was not illegal where Polanski is from (Whether Nicholson meant Poland or France was unclear). In fact, America is one of the few places where it isn’t legal, and Polanski has never considered himself to be American. It’s not that Europeans care less about their daughters’ welfare, but I think young children are raised a little more “street smart” about sexual matters outside our borders, and are expected to know early on not to get into a hot tub with a sleazy film director. And Americans regularly do stuff that’s really illegal in other parts of the world (particularly the Middle East and East Asia) that no one in this country would think twice about. [/ul]
I suspect there’s a link between artistic talent and depravity. They both involve standing outside of commonly-held conventions and asking “why?” It’s no excuse, but don’t cut yourself off from great art just because it was made by slimeballs. The artist’s morality is outside the art lover’s purview.
If we only watched, looked at, and listened to things produced by nice people, we’d miss out on an awful lot. The bottom line is that art has merit in regards to the artwork and the feelings it evokes, not the author. If a Polanski movie is good, it’s good. It has nothing to do with Polanski being a good or bad human being.
A brilliant artistic mind is certainly an asset in a person, but it’s an amoral one. Polanski is a genius, but that is completely irrelevant to the question of whether he’s a good person. The same would be true if the world’s leading cancer researcher was a serial killer. The one just has nothing to do with the other.
I tend to think art is art, no matter what type of person the artist is, so it bemuses me that I know someone who won’t listen to Sheryl Crow, not because they thing her music is bad, but because she dropped her band like a bad habit when she started to get star power. I don’t connect that to my enjoyment or lackthereof of her music, but a lot of people do take things like that in consideration.
On the other hand… I’ve never seen Hitler’s artwork, and if I did, I don’t think I could be unbiased when judging it. I guess even my view of “art, not the artist” has its limits.
Polanski in particular, I’m not sure how I feel about because until this thread I didn’t know exactly what his crime was. It happened the year I was born, and the only thing I’ve ever heard about it was " He slept with an underage girl and fled the country." That she was only 13 and raped is nothing I ever learned about before now; hardly surprising since the only other thing I know about him are that he made The Fearless Vampire Killers.
[ul]She wasn’t unconscious. She was handed what she recognized as (about a third of) a quaalude. This is sleazy enough, but it’s a bit removed from, say, slipping a Rohyphnol into her soda while she wasn’t looking.[/ul]
[ul]Would it mitigate your view of Polanski as a deflowering rapist if you knew that he wasn’t this 13-year-old’s first sexual partner, or even her second?[/ul]
[ul]My cite for the legality of seducing teenagers in France or Poland is the Playboy interview with Jack Nicholson from a month or two ago. Hardly definitive, I’ll admit.[/ul]
Exaggerating the perniciousness of what he did implies that the actual facts aren’t dirty enough.
Luckily Iam a forgiving fellow and can ignore most people’s failings. I can even understand that I have friends that I don’t really “like” but we are bound by various things. If people genuinely liked all of their friends the word schadenfreude would not exist.
That baffles me, too. Because her music is bad!
In reply to Krokodil, no. I wouldn’t read a book just because someone fit my definition of moral. But once a person makes public unsavory attitudes or commits a crime, I can’t go back to that state of naivete about their work. I can’t read Ezra Pound without a feeling of discomfort (which is okay because I don’t like Ezra Pound in any case). I can’t watch a “Naked Gun” movie and see OJ Simpson without a bit of an ick, though there is a certain pleasure in watching his character get run over by a car (sick, I’ll admit).
If the artist has already established themselves as a favorite of mine, I can often push new information to the side and reestablish my original feelings about the work. But if it’s new work, or new (to me) artist who does something nasty? I can’t force myself into a “pure” reading.
Let’s consider Walt Disney. Not really an artist or author, he (mercifully) stopped directing in 1945 and is really more of a producer/studio head than anything else after that. But everything coming out of his studio had his name on it, there was a certain house style, and Disney animation was (during his lifetime) an instantly recognizable thing to even the youngest of viewers.
The guy was a bastard.
Really, he ran a scab shop, made the lives of virtually everyone he personally knew Hell, offered to name names to J. Edgar Hoover of suspected Communists and other Anti-Americans.
But he impacted the lives of every American kid born after 1920 in a dramatic and extremely positive way. For that, you have to forgive a lot.
I read an interview with Michael O’Donoghue once (another talented bastard who needed a lot of forgiving), and he mentioned how old cars used to have amazing hood ornaments on them, and they were gotten rid of because of their potential for mauling pedestrians in crosswalk accidents, with the rationale that if even one life was saved, it would be worth it. “Personally, I think a really good hood ornament is worth four or five human lives.” Art is kinda like that.
Despite what he did, I simply can’t get worked up over it. It happened nearly three decades ago. Although the sex was coercive, there wasn’t any violence involved. Sure it was wrong, but I don’t think it’s so wrong that Polanski is beyond forgiveness.
What you read in this inteview is BS. Age of consent is 15 in France. Below that, it’s statutory rape. According to www.ageofconsent.com , it’s 15 in Poland too.
I’m not sure why the “they do/did things which may or may not have an impact on the final product but which personally bother me” argument doesn’t/shouldn’t hold weight when we’re talking about “art” but in other areas – like, for instance, shopping at WalMart – it’s considered perfectly reasonable. Why is the consumption of intangible products (such as music) different from the consumption of tangible goods in this respect?
As for Polanski, he is a fugitive from the law, lack of extradition attempts notwithstanding. Every day that he avoids being rightfully sentenced and doing the time for the crime he has admitted to committing, he is breaking the law – nay, not just breaking, but thumbing his nose at the law. We’re not talking about something contentious, like a drug violation. We’re not talking about a conviction for disturbing the peace for taking part in a political protest. We’re not talking about a jurisdictional conflict or any kind of situation in which this man was being railroaded. (His protestations about his plea deal notwithstanding.) Seeing his films provides him with real, meaningful assistance – financially – toward his continued flouting of justice.
And there hasn’t yet been nor shall there ever be in my lifetime, a film that is worth aiding and abetting the admitted rapist of a little girl.
I wouldn’t know with absolute certainty, but I don’t remember the age of consent here having changed in my lifetime. So, yes, I’m quite certain it was already 15 in 1977.
Walt Disney was never a director, before or after 1945. He was a producer and studio head.
To address the OP, no one has brought up what the 13-year-old girl says today. She is close to 40 now, and has said in print and in television interviews that she would not object to Polanski’s returning to the country, and that she opposes any further prosection of Polanksi’s case. But what does she know, hey.
