Free Roman Polanski! (No, Wait, Don't)

I don't really understand the equal parts glee and anger coming from both extremes of the Roman Polanski camp in recent days. Anybody who has followed Polanski's career with any degree of understanding has known that an arrest was always possible, and that the director's choice to flee the United States back in the late 1970s meant that he would remain a fugitive until the authorities closed out the case, which wasn't at all likely. And given Polanski's move last December to have the case dismissed, it isn't really all that surprising that prosecutors decided to go in for the kill - correct me if I'm wrong, legal scholars, but isn't asking for charges to be dropped while you're still a fugitive also asking for trouble? One can have complete revulsion for Polanski's acts, admit that there were irregularities in the case, and note that there's something odd and perhaps even troubling about the timing and nature of the arrest. But the tabloids are having a field day with this, and by tabloids, of course, I mean 24-hour-news and the blogosphere. There's a distasteful elitist whiff coming from both the French authorities and the Hollywood notables who signed a petition of solidarity with the embattled director, but I also detect an equally boorish waft of anti-intellectualism and mob mentality from the seething hordes who suddenly seem convinced that anybody with any concerns over the matter is publicly advocating child rape.

I'll admit to downplaying the Polanski case for years, strictly through my own ignorance on the matter. Given the almost always Puritanical approach to sex in this country - given our national inability to discuss sexuality in any capacity other than rigidly enforced lines of moral indignation or TV sitcom punch-line punctuation - I suspected that Polanski was being hounded by authorities over a perhaps distasteful but not criminal matter. As somebody who suspects that one's sexuality becomes fully formed at a much younger age than the law books decree, and who doesn't consider every May-December relationship to be predatory, I felt I had a right to be suspicious. This all changed when I actually came across the court documents and testimony in the case, courtesy of the ever-helpful Smoking Gun. Reading the evidence always helps. The details were enough for me to switch camps and lose much of my sympathy for Polanski. The events of that 1977 evening were not a case of a love that dare not speak its name, or a passionate teacher-student hormonal exploration. This was straight up rape, of a 13 year old girl, anally violated after being drugged with Champagne and Quaaludes.

The graphic details do need to be repeated, so that the full ramifications of the case are understood, and there have been some excellent articles written in recent days that consistently return to the main talking point that this case is about child rape. Some of these articles are marred by bad prose and an over-reliance on italics, exclamation points and even (shudder) lines in all caps. And I've noticed a tendency to play the anti-Hollywood card in a manner that isn't very flattering. Arguing that Polanski hasn't suffered at all for his actions seems more than a little silly, and the claim that fellow artists are rallying around him because they're outraged he wasn't able to accept his Oscar in person a few years back seems the most willful sort of wrongheadedness.

To consider one point that's being made constantly, many are ridiculing the quite valid observation by many of the entertainment and art business that a film festival is not the proper setting for a SWAT team operation. I think part of what angers people about this argument is that it seems to suggest that art and politics (or, even more accurately, art and the law) should operate in completely separate realms - that one should be allowed to dart between legal briefs with impunity if one remembers to never stray from the protective coverings of galleries and film festivals. I would argue that the finer point to be gleaned here is that, for many, art is an intensely political act, and in many countries outside the United States (much of Europe, in quite recent memory), artists and filmmakers were in many ways outlaws within their own state. One need only think upon the numerous awards given to Eastern European and Communist Bloc filmmakers in the 1960s and 1970s, in which much of the delivered praise was a reflection on the very real physical and emotional risks such artists assumed. The possibility of such an artist being waylaid, accosted or persecuted on the eve of an opening or retrospective was always present. I think there's little hope in comparing Polanksi's situation to that of, say, Yilmaz Guney's, but I think it helps explain the severe reservations many Europeans and artists have with using a national retrospective as a backdrop for a sting operation.

But one can only have so many reservations, even with the flawed nature of the original trial and the odd timing of the arrest. If I'm made uneasy by the uninformed ranting and mob mentality of the Polanski-haters, much of the support offered up in his defense has been unconvincing at best, morally shameful at worst. I've seen apologists online and in print ranging from an almost charming naivete (he's already paid a price, isn't there a statute of limitations?) to the vilest sort of woman-hate (she wasn't innocent, what was she doing there anyway?). In a rather thoughtful editors debate on the New York Times, Jonathan Rosenbaum, a critic and intellectual I highly admire, comes off as rather dismissive of the whole deal, arguing that "many crooks...continue to go unpunished," such as figures in the recent financial meltdown, warmongers, torturers and corrupt politicians. I couldn't agree more with this point - the outrage directed at Polanski for a event involving one individual 30 years ago, especially by those with absolutely no connection or relation to the case, is a bit odd considering our collective disinterest in, to be completely partisan about it, punishing leaders who've caused the deaths of thousands of servicemembers and hundreds of thousands of civilians through deceit and misrepresentation. But I'm also wary of any move towards this sort of relativism. Put another way - why should one step out of a purse snatcher's path and allow for a clear getaway simply because one suspects there's probably a much worse crime being committed in another part of town?

I've seen articles calling for the boycotting of any director or artist who signed any sort of support petition for Polanski. Aside from the fact that I'm not sure how much David Lynch or Martin Scorsese are going to suffer from angered citizens leaving their latest DVDs on the shelf at BlockBuster, the notion that these and other individuals are supporters of child rape is rather simplistic. I'm glad that some of Polanski's fellow directors have distanced themselves from him in recent days, although if that's how you measure your boycott decision, good luck with all those Kevin Smith movies. Personally, I work hard to separate art and the individual. I know enough about economics and market forces to understand that my movie ticket or download in and of itself brings very little cash flow to the artist in question. Unfortunately, good art is not unique to good people. In fact, one might argue the exact opposite - wonderful individuals rarely make compelling art. They often make really bad art. Not to single anybody out or anything, but from all I've heard, Ron Howard is a kind, decent, thoughtful, generous man. He's a good father, a good husband, and he's probably nice to animals. He also offers up cinematic dreck that doesn't even have the heft or the smell to be labeled garbage. Alfred Hitchcock, on the other hand, was by all accounts a horrible, petty, brooding, manipulative sexual deviant who worked out his kinks on attractive young women by abusing them both on and off camera. He was also a master craftsman, visionary and artist. Sorry - that's how it works sometimes.

In other words, I'm certainly not about to print up any "Free Roman" t-shirts, but I'm also not about to return the recently issued blu-ray edition of Polanski's 1965 Repulsion, or start trash-talking Chinatown. The most level-headed argument against the Polanski defenders that I've come across is (surprisingly) Thomas Reese's analogy of a pedophile priest fleeing the country to avoid prison time, only to have the Knights of Columbus arrange for a medal or award to the fugitive priest years later. Reese suspects the outrage against the Catholic Church would be both universal and justified, and while I suspect one of his reasons for penning the article was to suggest the existence of anti-church sentiments within media culture, he makes a persuasive point.

In the end, I'm no closer to understanding the situation than I was when I began writing this entry. I simply do not see how anybody can feel good about anything in this case. A visionary artist committed a vile crime that helped destroy and disrupt at least two lives (the victim's and his own, among many others). An arrest was arranged under media lights with suggestions of Swiss complicity for future U.S. leniency. And complete strangers with opposite reasons for outrage are jostling for position and hurling accusations. What is the proper response to something like this other than sadness?