The film industry’s defense of Polanski isn’t going so well

The current media blow-up over the Roman Polanski case has exposed our culture’s disturbing whitewashing of the personal characters of creative people, as well as served up an entirely bizarre idea that Polanski is somehow being persecuted “for his art.”

In 1977, the director was arrested for drugging and raping a minor. Yes, he plea-bargained down to a lesser charge before fleeing the country upon realizing that his plea bargain might not actually get him off the hook for the more serious charges, and that he might actually get some real jail time, but the fact remains – what he was initially charged with was rape, forcible sodomy, and giving drugs to a little girl. This happens to perfectly match the testimony of the victim, which anyone feeling the need to defend Polanski should really read before making any further comment, because it is horrifying.

Let’s face it, everyone pretty much knows what happened here. A rich, famous, powerful man used his position and the lure of a potential career in Hollywood to entrap a 13 year old girl into a situation where she was alone with him, drugged her with booze and Quaaludes, and then raped and sodomised her. While he was doing this, she was saying no and pleading to be allowed to go home. Anyone who wants to argue this – again, read the victim’s testimony.

This should be just about as watertight a rape case as has ever existed. The victim was drugged, and still, even when drugged, clearly non-consenting. She was underage and frankly, looking at photographs from the era, barely pubescent. And the man who raped her was old enough to be her father.

Pretty straightforward, right? Who could possibly blame a vulnerable child for what happened that night, or try to excuse the behavior of the man who attacked her?

A whole lot of people can, as it turns out. The “Free Polanski!” list is a Who’s Who of international filmmaking, with some notable literary figures thrown in. Most shockingly, there are women on that list, women like Debra Winger who’ve spoken out about sexism in Hollywood before. We even got to witness the excruciating spectacle of the star of “The Color Purple,” Whoopi Goldberg, try to explain away Polanski’s actions as “not rape-rape.”

One could come to the conclusion, and indeed many right wing pundits have, that this is simply proof that the film industry is a morally bankrupt hellhole in which no one has any conscience. And it is, but not quite in the way that they mean.

Polanski is a very talented man who has made a number of truly exceptional films, about that part there’s no question. The question is what that has to do with whether or not he raped a child.

This is where things get interesting. The responders seems to break up into two main groups. The first seem to feel that great artists are by definition incapable of being awful human beings. This is patently absurd – history is full of great artists who were god-awful people. John Lennon was a musical genius, and he beat the hell out of his first wife. Gauguin was, like Polanski, possessed of an unhealthy fixation on pubescent girls, and he molested quite a few. The list goes on, and on, and on. Artists are after all people, and people are sometimes vile.

The second group is creepier than the first. This group seems to be aware that yes, Polanski is a lifelong ephebophile who in at least one case committed actual rather than just statutory rape. They’re well aware that, not long after fleeing California to avoid being charged with the rape of a 13 year old, he was sleeping with then 15 year old Nastassja Kinski. He’s had a reputation for chasing very young girls for a very long time. This second group seems to regard his child molesting tendencies as unfortunate, but forgivable. After all he’s a brilliant man, and don’t you know he’s had a hard life? Also he directed “The Pianist,” so surely that means something.

This bizarre idea that Polanski’s impressive body of work somehow excuses his lifelong tendency to abuse the bodies of very young girls comes up again and again in defenses of him, and it’s complete nonsense. It’s often accompanied by a tone of great intellectual superiority – as in, don’t you philistines understand what a great artist he is?

Yes, I understand what a great director he is. I’m a film buff, and have worked as a paid movie critic. I get why “Chinatown” was important, how brilliant “Rosemary’s Baby” was, how many people adore “Repulsion.” But you know what? He’s still a rapist and an ephebophile. The greatness of his art and the greatness of his crime do not cancel each other out.

Artists are admittedly often eccentric, and eccentric in a way that doesn’t harm others is perfectly OK. There is nothing lovably “original” about what Polanski did to that little girl, on the other hand.

In addition to the idiotic notion that artists are brilliant, tortured geniuses who must be forgiven such minor foibles as raping children, there exists in this equation a stone-hard elitism.

If Polanski’s victim had been an important person, someone of social status similar to his own, we would be having an entirely different conversation. There would still be the standard blame-the-victim nonsense that surrounds discussion of any rape, sure, but there would not be a giant chorus of important celebrities acting like the victim is simply irrelevant. What we’re seeing here is the idea that powerful, important people simply matter more than ordinary people. The film industry doesn’t care that Polanski raped that little girl because she’s a nobody, a perfectly ordinary person who is not in possession of either fame or wealth.

This attitude positively radiates from every single celebrity statement I’ve seen in relation to this case (other than people such as Luc Besson, Kevin Smith and Chris Rock – thank you for actually sounding like rational human beings in contrast to the theater of the absurd being performed elsewhere). Polanski is one of the special people, apparently, above the laws that govern peasants. How dare the legal system act as if something he did to some random girl 30 years ago was worth besmirching his reputation? Don’t you know he’s a genius?

In all of these statements the same tone of outrage can be detected. This is an outrage over the fact that anyone would even suggest that Roman Polanski, with his considerable talent, not be universally acknowledged to have far more value than a “disposable” girl, who is not a human being but rather an understandable sacrifice to the man’s personal demons. Who cares about her?

Well, sorry film industry people, but the legal system doesn’t give a sh*t that Polanski made “Chinatown.” It does not respect your arrogant assumption that you’re above the rules that govern mere mortals or your inflated sense of self importance. It does not think that great artists automatically count more than regular people. Skip bail? That makes you a fugitive, and the law will catch up with you eventually. And now, finally, it has.

The sheer mind-bending self-righteousness surrounding this situation is so over the top that it’s almost funny. Really, Debra Winger, you think that attendees at film festivals should have some sort of diplomatic immunity? If you were talking about protection from, say, being persecuted for producing films someone deemed offensive I might agree with you. When we’re talking about the rape of a child, not so much.

That’s the really galling thing about the Hollywood response to this. Polanski’s peers are trying to spin this situation as if the director is being persecuted and pursued by the law for making controversial movies, or offensive political statements, but that’s not what’s happening here. The public isn’t buying it and rightfully so. I personally will support your right to make movies as controversial as you like – in fact I’ll often go see them. But child molestation? No, I’m not supporting that, and frankly the rhetorical sleigh of hand/diversionary move you’re trying to pull here is offensive.

Roman Polanski isn’t being persecuted for his work, so his work isn’t relevant to the case. In fact, he’s not being persecuted at all – he’s being pursued because he broke the law once by assaulting a child, and then again by skipping bail. Those are the actual facts, and no amount of media spin is going to make them go away.

This is not a referendum on Polanski as a filmmaker, and so, collectively, we must ask: Do you have any idea of how out of touch, solipsistic and blindly elitist most of you sound right now, Hollywood? Because we’re in a recession, and this may not be the best time to be making yourself look like you don’t give a damn about ordinary people. Those ordinary people are, after all, your customers.