...oh, that one stings.
Although the recent arrest in Switzerland and subsequent rebirth of the media frenzy has me jumping on the bandwagon to comment, I had already heard of the Polanski case a few years ago. It was the first thing my mother brought up after I praised The Pianist.
What I can't understand is the Hollywood wagon-circling around this self-confessed child diddler. I knew Hollywood types were in a neo-liberal bubble, but how could they so grossly misjudge public opinion on the matter. Sam Mendes, Whoopi Goldberg, Wes Anderson, Monica Bellucci, Martin Scorsese and Salman Rushdie (that's the one that stuns me) are just a few heavy weights publically declaring their support and petitioning Polanski's release. Signateur Woody Allen wasn't a shocker. He's probably just glad it's not him in the hot seat this time around. Novelist Richard Harris went to bat with the media on Polanski's behalf. I couldn't help regarding him with disgust: he claimed Polanski never seemed to fear travel around the world, never acted as though he were side stepping extradition. So that leads me to conclude either Roman is a sociopath or Harris is an idiot. I'm thinking the latter, because if Polanski were so at ease with travelling freely, why did he never visit Harris in his native England? Oh, right. Because they would have extradited his French ass with relish.
The arguments for Polanski's case seem to center around four things: he's European (ergo, supposedly comes from a society where statutory rape isn't a "big deal"), the victim no longer wants the case to go through, he's suffered major tragedy in his life (the sympathy vote), and, basically, he's a brilliant artist. They also claim he's too old to go to prison. Funny. I thought they still prosecuted Nazis for their crimes, and they're not exactly in the spring of their lives.
Many people don't understand that Samantha Geimer (the victim, now in her 40s), settled with Polanski for an undisclosed sum out of court after he fled. She also probably doesn't want to be the main attraction for the media circus a second time, though I'd say that's inevitable. The European sociology and his status as an A-lister are hogwash defences. And yes, he was only convicted of statutory rape (perhaps only a 6 month stint in jail) because he pled down to it (the incident was in fact originally classified as rape-rape, Whoopi). His fleeing Californian jurisdiction compounded the matter.
The tragedy thing I can sympathize with to a degree; he lost his mother to the Holocaust and his pregnant wife to the Manson family. However, the main point is, if we as a global society let Polanski slide, we're not only insinuating that morally we do not object to rape across the board, we're opening a can of worms. What's to stop the next child rapist from arguing that, "If Polanski went free, why should I be held accountable? How is that just?".
The law is the law. And as a French Minister articulated, after they reassessed what it would mean to back up their famed citizen, "No one should be above the law."
P.S. You rock Switzerland.
