Anything For The Sake Of Art
September 29th 2009 18:40
Roman Polanski, the seventy-six year old French/Polish Academy Award winning director of such films as “Chinatown,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” and the “Pianist,” was arrested in Zurich, Switzerland on September 26 for failing to show up at his arraignment after being convicted thirty-two years ago for having sex with a thirteen year old girl.
There is no doubt that Polanski is brilliant at what he does; the three films listed are some of my favorites, but would I have been in favor of his having sex with my daughter when she was thirteen? Not on his life; he’d be long dead right now. Over one hundred of Hollywood’s luminaries have signed a petition calling for Polanski’s release. Among them is Woody Allen, equally brilliant as a director and equally sexually deviant and predatory, a father who had sex with and married his adopted daughter. Now, there’s a ringing endorsement for Polanski to show to the Swiss court considering whether or not to grant bail while it considers extraditing him to the U.S.
Another signer of the petition and endorser of Polanski is the Spanish film maker Pedro Almodovar. Almodovar’s films concern themselves with sexual freedom and sexual plots. There’s nothing wrong with this as long as he doesn’t depict sex between under age
girls and adult men, and as long as he doesn’t advocate this. If Polanski was being held in France or Italy, this endorsement might go a long way towards setting him free; I don’t know if it will help him in conservative Switzerland.
French Foreign Minister Kouchner, who was working with Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski to get Hillary Clinton to drop the charges, said, “This affair is frankly a bit sinister. Here is a man of such talent, recognised worldwide, recognised especially in the country where he was arrested. This is not nice at all.” I wonder what that thirteen year old girl, now about forty-five, has to say about this; would she use the phrase “this is not nice at all” to describe what happened to her?
It seems that Polanski’s legal defense team may have instigated the arrest when they sought to have the charges dropped on the grounds that the original judge in the case may have colluded with the prosecutor and because no attempt has been made to extradite Polanski since he fled prosecution. The original judge has since died, but a new judge has refused to dismiss the original charges.
There is no denying that Polanski plead guilty to the charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. Prior to the rape, the girl was given champagne and sedatives, and then she was raped and sodomized. Polanski was given a plea deal under which he would plea guilty to the lesser charge of sex with a minor and accept a 90 day psychiatric evaluation in Chino State Prison in California. Polanski was given a 90 day delay in sentencing to allow him to complete a project he was working on, and he was allowed to travel outside the country. When he returned to the U.S., he was released from Chino after serving 42 days. But, an alleged conversation between the judge and the district attorney, the collusion referred to by Polanski’s defense team, that might have sent Polanski back to prison caused Polanski to flee to London (Polanski was a prisoner in Auschwitz during World War II).
Polanski has given liberal Hollywood a cause to become involved in. It seems that there aren’t enough worth while causes in the U.S., or the rest of the world, for the privileged to throw their support behind. Whatever happened to the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Katrina? Isn’t that a worth while task, and aren’t those people worth the effort? Too black? How about trying to do something about the devastation that is Detroit? Too black? What about the Darfur, Sudan genocide? Too black? How about a brilliant, white, sexually deviant director? Just right.
There is no doubt that Polanski is brilliant at what he does; the three films listed are some of my favorites, but would I have been in favor of his having sex with my daughter when she was thirteen? Not on his life; he’d be long dead right now. Over one hundred of Hollywood’s luminaries have signed a petition calling for Polanski’s release. Among them is Woody Allen, equally brilliant as a director and equally sexually deviant and predatory, a father who had sex with and married his adopted daughter. Now, there’s a ringing endorsement for Polanski to show to the Swiss court considering whether or not to grant bail while it considers extraditing him to the U.S.
Another signer of the petition and endorser of Polanski is the Spanish film maker Pedro Almodovar. Almodovar’s films concern themselves with sexual freedom and sexual plots. There’s nothing wrong with this as long as he doesn’t depict sex between under age
girls and adult men, and as long as he doesn’t advocate this. If Polanski was being held in France or Italy, this endorsement might go a long way towards setting him free; I don’t know if it will help him in conservative Switzerland.
French Foreign Minister Kouchner, who was working with Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski to get Hillary Clinton to drop the charges, said, “This affair is frankly a bit sinister. Here is a man of such talent, recognised worldwide, recognised especially in the country where he was arrested. This is not nice at all.” I wonder what that thirteen year old girl, now about forty-five, has to say about this; would she use the phrase “this is not nice at all” to describe what happened to her?
It seems that Polanski’s legal defense team may have instigated the arrest when they sought to have the charges dropped on the grounds that the original judge in the case may have colluded with the prosecutor and because no attempt has been made to extradite Polanski since he fled prosecution. The original judge has since died, but a new judge has refused to dismiss the original charges.
There is no denying that Polanski plead guilty to the charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. Prior to the rape, the girl was given champagne and sedatives, and then she was raped and sodomized. Polanski was given a plea deal under which he would plea guilty to the lesser charge of sex with a minor and accept a 90 day psychiatric evaluation in Chino State Prison in California. Polanski was given a 90 day delay in sentencing to allow him to complete a project he was working on, and he was allowed to travel outside the country. When he returned to the U.S., he was released from Chino after serving 42 days. But, an alleged conversation between the judge and the district attorney, the collusion referred to by Polanski’s defense team, that might have sent Polanski back to prison caused Polanski to flee to London (Polanski was a prisoner in Auschwitz during World War II).
Polanski has given liberal Hollywood a cause to become involved in. It seems that there aren’t enough worth while causes in the U.S., or the rest of the world, for the privileged to throw their support behind. Whatever happened to the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Katrina? Isn’t that a worth while task, and aren’t those people worth the effort? Too black? How about trying to do something about the devastation that is Detroit? Too black? What about the Darfur, Sudan genocide? Too black? How about a brilliant, white, sexually deviant director? Just right.
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