Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
From a reader:
Hi Sars,
Have you watched the Roman Polanski doc on HBO yet? With your interest in true crime, I wondered if this one appealed to you.
…
As much as they tried to make him very sympathetic in this doc, I still don’t know why people aren’t outraged that he sodomized a 13-year-old. I understand that the judge had his own agenda (the real focus of this documentary) and that Polanski was also treated poorly when Sharon Tate was murdered. I get the era, I get that the young girl was more experienced than a 13-year-old should be, but I don’t see how any of that excuses what Polanski did…I’m fairly certain the girl wasn’t prepared for sodomy at such a young age.
And finally, I’m curious where you rank artistic vision vs. crime. I know they are two separate issues, but why is Hollywood (and France) so determined to pat him on the back?
After I watched it, I kept wondering what your take would be on him, his crime and how he should be regarded.
I try not to be judgmental, but he just pisses me off.
The Roman Polanski Question is actually half a dozen questions, every one of them studded with thorns. Does the trauma a man has suffered in the past excuse him from consulting the same moral compass as the rest of us? Does society have different rules or ideas of justice for the rich and famous? Whose social mores apply to a European living on American soil — Europe’s, or America’s? How responsible is an adolescent for his or her own actions? Can we approve of and enjoy an artist’s work if we consider him a reprehensible human being?
Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired is concerned primarily with explaining why Polanski fled the U.S.; the movie concludes that the judge assigned to the case had more interest in his own PR profile than in serving the law or the well-being of the victim. (I would ordinarily call her “the alleged victim,” but I don’t think anyone disputes at this point that Polanski did it, including Polanski.) When it became evident to Polanski that the judge had decided to break his word regarding the sentencing recommendation, Polanski bailed, not to avoid punishment generally (he had already served a short stint in Chino as of that time, and never failed to cooperate with authorities…although said authorities report that he seemed puzzled as to what he’d done wrong) but to avoid improper harassment by that particular judge.
I don’t disagree with that conclusion, and neither did the California courts, which at the request of defense counsel removed that judge subsequent to Polanski’s decampment — and neither did the prosecuting attorney, who admits that he’d have bolted too, under those circumstances.
So, Polanski got jobbed by a headline-grubbing judge. Duly stipulated. As the victim’s attorney put it, even if you think Polanski is guilty as sin, he’s still entitled to due process. But as much as the film focuses on that aspect of the story, it obviously can’t separate it from every other part of the Polanski story: that he survived the Holocaust, during which his mother perished; that Sharon Tate, whom he clearly adored, didn’t just die but was murdered in the goriest, most sensational way, at the behest of one of the most terrifying criminals of the twentieth century; that the press initially indicted their lifestyle as a contributing factor and implied that Hollywood hedonism bore the blame for her demise; that he’s a great directorial talent.
Not to mention the other parts of the victim’s story: that she had apparently had sex before, had apparently done drugs before, had apparently brought the Quaaludes with her, and so on and so forth. Even if there’s some truth to those “apparently”s, I can’t see them as evidence of much besides deeply questionable, if not venal, parenting; Law & Order plots aside, I haven’t seen a whole lot of eighth-graders who take downers and mess around as a result of considered decision-making, and I only bring that stuff up because it always gets brought up, probably as a desperate attempt to absolve Polanski of responsibility somehow.
Again, I don’t think anyone can argue that Polanski didn’t do it. What people dispute is whether he’s accountable or whether it’s justifiable, and you see any number of excuses made for him for any number of reasons — he wasn’t in his right mind, the mother set him up, like that — so nobody has to accept that a talented, ambitious man, already benighted by more suffering than any one person should have to endure in a single lifetime, could also have committed such a sordid, selfish, opportunistic act. People like to have things in black and white, to reduce a situation to one line and decide how to think about it from there; Polanski forces them to hold two opposing beliefs in their heads, which is a hassle.
One doesn’t have to exclude the other, though. You can feel great sympathy and sadness for Polanski for what he’d gone through in his life prior to the late seventies, but also think he’s a piece of shit for having sex with a 13-year-old who for several reasons could not give meaningful consent. You can think he’s a legendary director (I don’t love his movies, myself, but for reasons unrelated to his personal life), but also hope fervently that you never wind up seated next to him at a dinner party. You can think that perhaps Tate’s murder is the reason he couldn’t relate to women his own age anymore — the 13-year-old is not the first underage girl he’d consorted with; he’d had a relationship with Nastassja Kinski, aged 15 at the time — and not consider it an excuse, and you can acknowledge that Europeans may consider themselves more “sophisticated” in their thinking about the relationships between powerful men and teenage girls, but not agree with that thinking yourself, or not think it’s sophistication, but rather a refusal to take moral positions that are inconvenient socially.
Because the fact is that, as arbitrary as statutory-rape laws might seem at times, and in spite of the fact that sometimes, maybe you can excuse a guy on the grounds of ignorance — a 13-year-old can seem physically like a grown woman, she lied about her age, whatever — Polanski should have known better. He did know better. To claim believably that you don’t know the difference between a woman’s body and a teenager’s, or a woman’s attitude towards a man who is seducing her and a teenager’s, you can’t have had much experience with women. Like, you have to have had almost none.
Times have changed since ’77, and a girl back then may have had different socialization re: her response to something like that, but Polanski was more than three times her age, and had had a wife. He had had many girlfriends before and after said wife. He had received the mother’s permission to take the girl off alone. A man in his forties gets the okay from the mother and he still thinks it’s appropriate? He still thinks this is a girl who’s mature enough to make her own decisions regarding drug use and intercourse? I don’t care how badly your wife’s murder fucked you up; she’s thirteen, and you just talked to her mom. List all the reasons you like; look down your nose at American attitudes towards sex all the livelong day. I do it all the time. Americans are uptight about sex, and hypocrites besides; this case should not be used in support of that view. Thirteen! No excuse. (I believe Polanski admitted that he knew the girl’s age in the first place, so this line of reasoning is immaterial; I’m saying that if he’d claimed otherwise, he’d still be full of shit. I suppose we can give him, like, half a point for copping to knowing she was 13, but then it’s immediately deducted times a thousand for his whole, “…What?” attitude.)
The fact is also that Rosemary’s Baby is a great movie. It isn’t a great movie because he survived tragedy; it isn’t not a great movie because he caused one.
People are outraged that he raped a 13-year-old, but some of those people can keep that apart from his artistic output; other people can’t. Still others don’t give a shit either way. I can see thinking that this documentary uses too many of his friends, and refers too often to his tragic past, to avoid accusations of favoring or excusing him; it’s not my opinion that it wants us to draw a positive conclusion about Polanski in general. And I haven’t.His artistic output doesn’t lessen the seriousness of the crime, or make him more eligible for forgiveness or leniency; neither does the stupidity and carelessness of the victim’s mother. Nothing does. It cuts both ways, though, and the standing ovation Polanski got at the Oscars surprised me — not least because of the snotty pouting that greeted Elia Kazan a few years earlier; I guess it’s okay to sulk at a guy who named names, because that put Hollywood people out of work, but if you rape some no-name, all is forgiven? I don’t know enough about Kazan to say, but that sure looked like a self-serving industry double standard from here — but if the ovation is for the work, well, there you have it. (And you have to wonder, too, how many voters went against him on the basis of his exile…and how many people in the audience waited to see what everyone around them would do before deciding to clap.)
France’s take on Polanski is for France to explain; I get the sense that the French press considered the charges a bunch of American prudery at the time, and Polanski is on the record as concurring with that assessment, which is mighty convenient. His current wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, is thirty years younger than he; as far as I know he didn’t begin courting her at an untoward age, but her relative youth suggests to me that if there is a pathology here, it is probably not America’s.
What’s my take, then, “on him, his crime and how he should be regarded”? How he “should be” regarded is going to depend on who’s doing the regarding, but he’s a celebrated director and an occasional predatory shitheel. You can certainly consider one when you talk about the other, because he’s both, and discomfort with that dichotomy is appropriate.
My take on whether the documentary itself is worthwhile: absolutely.
Tags: documentaries ethical dilemmae movies Roman Polanski short dudes TV
I second the vote for the documentary – I’ve caught it on HBO a couple of times this month, and it definitely draws you in. It’s done very well, and I think it’s well worth seeing. I was completely oblivious to the farce of a trial he received, and the publicity whore he drew as a judge – his decision to leave the country when and how he did makes a lot more sense to me now.
However, I have a really, really hard time accepting that what he did was okay, or is somehow mitigated by other factors like his personal circumstances or artistic accomplishments. My niece just turned eight, and I kept thinking that Polanski’s victim was only five years older than my niece. I also believe that it had been my child, I would have gone after him with a shotgun, and left the damn courts out of it.
Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown are both great films, and I can appreciate them for their artistry. I haven’t seen any of Polanski’s later works – and after watching the documentary, and hearing his own words describing what happened with the victim in California, I don’t know that I ever will. Yes, he’s brilliant, but he still victimized a child, and whatever his personal circumstances, he was an adult, he knew it was wrong, and he did it anyway. I’m not inclined to give him a pass on the crime based on either his fame or the tragedy of his childhood or the loss of his wife.
Europe is a large continent with a lot of countries. I did a quick straw poll at work on a 43 year old man with a 13 year old girl and the comments ranged from “paedophile” to “I’d put a knife in his heart if she was mine” to “pervert”. No-one I know would think it’s ok or that the Americans are puritanical for being shocked/appalled.
But even leaving her age aside – it was rape. He raped a 13 year old girl and still received a standing ovation from Hollywood. Says all you really want to know about the people who make up that industry.
Is watching and enjoying his films considered “giving him a pass” though? I think that’s the dilemma with any celebrity who commits any sort of crime. If you buy their CDs, or their movies, or tickets to their games, you are contributing to financially supporting their careers, so does that imply that you support or excuse their criminal actions?
I agree with you, Sars, that it’s difficult to abhor a person’s criminal or immoral acts, yet still consume and enjoy their professional work. I think it is easier to say “This person is evil, and I don’t want any part of him in my life at all” and just avoid the products of his work. But I don’t think that just because it’s easier means it’s the wrong choice. Perhaps that reaction is instinctual in human beings, the origin of “shunning” practices which seem to be found in all cultures to some extent or another, and in some primate species as well.
The documentary is fascinating, and seems like a tentative step – a test to see if America is ready to forgive RP and let him back into the country. I keep going back, over and over, to the fact that it is well-documented that the 13 year old said NO. It doesn’t matter if she was ‘experienced’ with drugs or sexually active or a product of her generation (whatever that means) – she said that she said no, repeatedly. End of story.
Yes, some of his movies are brilliant, but like Woody Allen, and um, Michael Jackson – I just have a hard time separating the art from the man.
Interesting questions.
In 1974, when I was 15, I had an affair with a 40-year-old married man who had 4 children, two of them older than I was. At the time, I thought I was awesomely cool for being attractive to a grown-up. By the time I was in my 30s and thought about it, I wondered just how fucked-up that guy had been, and kinda wanted to time-travel back and cut his balls off. I mean, how pathetic is that? I was pretty…womanly at 15, I’ll grant you, and wasn’t a virgin, but fer chrissake!
So, at the time, I didn’t think much of the Polanski sitch. It didn’t seem so much different than my own situation–she was only 2 years younger–and I still thought the whole thing was cool. In retrospect, of course…ew. Polanski clearly had/has some major therapy issues, shall we say, and the girl (and her MOTHER!) did/do as well. I’ve never looked at Jack Nicholson the same, either, by the way.
But, yeah, I think it’s still possible to love the product and scorn the producer. My father refused to watch “Playing for Time” because of Vanessa Redgrave’s relationship with the Palestinians, but that wasn’t an issue for me. I can separate Ginger Rogers from her right-wing Commie-hating ideology. I can do the same with Redgrave (especially because I think her heart was in the right place, although the dancing with the AK-47s was a bad idea), Polanski, and anyone else. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna watch the PR interviews. Doesn’t mean I’d want to meet them.
The Kazan/Polanski thing is trickier. I don’t think it’s politics versus sex (or morality). I don’t think it’s putting co-workers out of work. I think it was putting co-workers, friends, colleagues in danger of imprisonment and potentially ruining their lives. The people who named names caused real damage to the lives of others, often people who’d only flirted briefly with Socialism in the 1930s and then tossed it aside. Polanski’s damage was a lot more localized: one young girl, and himself. Is the life and future of one young girl less important than that of a bunch of screenwriters, actors, and directors that most of have never heard of? Of course not. But, in Hollywood, I imagine, there’s a “it could have been me” that resonates more with the Kazan story than the Polanski–very few of them being 13-year-old girls.
I haven’t seen the documentary. I don’t want to get into a discussion of European morals vs American morals–although, personally, I would find it hard to believe that Europeans would applaud sex with a 13-year-old girl. I don’t want to hear Polanski’s words justifying the act itself. I don’t want to find him any creepier than I already do, thank you. I haven’t seen his recent work (although “The Pianist” is in my Netflix queue), but his personal flaws won’t keep me from doing so. I sure as hell never want to meet him, though.
@Jennifer: I should have been more clear in my European-vs.-American-morals explanations, but it’s sort of the same thing as with the “the girl had prior experience with sex and drugs” argument — I don’t think it’s worth much as a defense, but it does seem to come up frequently when people are trying to find a reason/excuse for what Polanski did. “Oh, well, he’s *European*.”
I think it’s more about the ’70s, and one man’s fucked-up approach to relating to women, than about Europe vs. the States, but you do hear it when the topic comes up, that European attitudes about This Sort Of Thing are a bit more flexible.
I have to disagree – the “it was different, it was the seventies” just holds no water for me. It was rape then, and it’s rape now. And as an aside, talking about a relationship as teenager with an older man is one thing entirely – it’s disturbing, but not really relevant. This was not a relationship, this was a man sodomizing a drugged 13 year old who has gone on the record saying that she said no.
Anyone remember that Gerard Depardieu has admitted to raping girls (perhaps it was just one, I don’t remember) while in a street gang as a teen? Whatever happened to THAT particular bit of French history? I never hear that mentioned in his rave reviews for “The Count of Monte Cristo” or the like.
The ’70s argument doesn’t hold any water for me either; my point was that, if you’re going to blame the behavior on something, that seems like a more likely root cause than a European sensibility. Whatever you blame it on, it doesn’t absolve Polanski himself of responsibility, which is the central issue. Were there factors that you don’t typically see that may have influenced how he acted? Sure. Does it change the fact that he raped the girl? No.
When I talk about possible *reasons* for his behavior, I hope it’s clear that I don’t view them as justifications. I’m just talking about the subjects that always come up in connection with the Polanski case, not espousing any of them.
There appears to be a good possibility that the rape scandal connected to Depardieu may actually have resulted in a translation error from the french. It seems there was a statement that he “participated in” a single instance of rape in a train station, which may have been a bad translation of “witness to” a rape in a train station. There is also a separate quotation from the actor claiming to have misspoken, himself, in stating he had “plenty of rapes, too many to count” when what he intended to say was that he had plenty of sexual experiences. A web search of “Gerard Depardieu, rape” gets a few clarifying results.
It’s interesting, but in some ways to my mind (legally) irrelevant that the victim, now 43 and living in Hawai’i as ‘the picture of normalcy’ has forgiven Polanski. I personally feel that a victim’s (or family’s) forgiveness is an act of irreplaceable generosity, which itself can be a part of someone’s redemption. However, when a crime is committed, punishment for that infraction is not intended as a balance for that person or persons. It is the price, the consequences of knowingly antisocial behavior. Forgiveness does not expunge the behavior. And it doesn’t legally affect punishment, except in cases where victim statements are sought and lend weight to options within a legal, existing sentence (parole, etc.).
Each sane and independent citizen of any community exists, voluntarily or not, within a social contract. Polanski breached the contract that says raping children (or anybody else) is a no-no, to be punished by a clearly defined range of possible sentences. He has not served THAT punishment, even though the victim herself says he has been punished.
Maybe “giving him a pass” was a poor choice of words – what I meant to convey is that I don’t want to support an artist who committed this crime, has never admitted that what he did was a crime, and believes that his prosecution was unjust. Yes, his trial was unfair, and he received harsher treatment than most persons similarly charged, but the actual conduct doesn’t seem to be in dispute. For a filmmaker, watching his films and supporting his movies would be supporting him, in my opinion. Sometimes I can separate the artist from the art, but I don’t feel I can in Polanski’s case. Some crimes are so upsetting that “shunning” the criminal is the easiest way for us to deal with it.
In any event, even if Polanski got a pardon from California for fleeing the state, he would still be inadmissable to the US as a felon. Even if the sentence was commuted, he would need to have the conviction expunged, and that’s not going to happen. In theory he could get a waiver of the conviction to enter the US, but I doubt that the State Department or Department of Homeland Security would be willing to grant a waiver to a convicted rapist of a child. (Sorry, my job as an immigration attorney compelled me to point that out.)
I just watched this last night and had the exact same reaction(s) you did, Sars, but couldn’t articulate them nearly as well. I just sent your post to a friend who wanted to discuss the doc with me, essentially saying, “What she said.” Thanks for a thoughtful and thorough post.
Another issue with Kazan is that he initially been a socialist and had introduced some of his theatre group to his socialism group and had been someone with whom one could be comfortable discussing socialism with. Then he later started naming names it was this pool of people he named, so I can imagine there was a lot of direct and secondary feelings of betrayal. With Polanski you pretty much knew at face value who you were dealing with.
I agree with all that’s been said…I guess my questions are these–why the heck is there such an apparent campaign to “bring Roman home”? What possible difference could it make now? Does he seriously think he’s just going to move back to Malibu and make more movies as if nothing ever happened?? My God, the megalomania and utter amorality of some of these men!
The previous comment about Woody Allen reminded me of the weird “Six Degrees of Mia Farrow” thing going on in my head too. Just finished her biography, which lead up to a few years after the Soon Yi episode and—I quite literally took every Woody Allen DVD I had and threw them out….he is reprehensible. He basically kept following her around the apartment after she found the nude pictures of her adopted daughter screaming “We’ll get married! You’ll feel better!”
I guess I just don’t get the attitude that your money and fame can short-circuit any remorse, judgment or guilt.
Personally, I’m not particularly upset by the idea of two consenting, sexually-aware and -active persons engaging in sexual activity. It’s not as though he grabbed some virgin off the street, some girl who still thought babies were brought by the stork. It’s not like the girl had only ever engaged in light petting and he went at her with a selection from the Ann Summers catalog.
To my mind, it’s more about the manipulation; the idea that she was unable to give said consent, due to drugs and drink and probably psychological manipulation (“I’m a famous movie director, doesn’t that turn you on?”) It’s not as though Polanski wouldn’t have understood where that whole situation was going to go, and he surely set things up for it to go where he wanted. That’s bad news, no matter whether the girl is thirteen or thirty.
*****
This whole Polanski thing is just another example of why I try to avoid learning things about creators whose work I enjoy. I’m invariably disappointed by what I find, and I can’t ever un-learn these things. I liked reading “Lucifer’s Hammer”; but now that I’ve learned more about Jerry Pournelle, I can’t read the book without remembering that one of its authors believes that black people are genetically inferior and shouldn’t be allowed to go to college.
“Even if the sentence was commuted, he would need to have the conviction expunged, and that’s not going to happen.”
He was not convicted; he had agreed to a plea deal, in which he would admit guilt to a single charge, unlawful sexual intercourse (the original indictment was for a number of charges, including rape, drugging a minor, and so on). The movie does make it a point to say that he technically has not been convicted of the crime, because the plea was not completed and entered into the record, and no formal, final sentence had been passed down as of his flight to France. The case remains unresolved (this is the final screen of the film).
But he wasn’t convicted of rape, and the plea deal was not on a rape charge. The extradition agreement between the U.S. and France does not compel France to produce him on the lesser charge, otherwise I assume they would have turned him over.
I believe the judge considered issuing an ex post facto deportation sentence once he’d fled, but in any case, basically, his inability to re-enter the country is not about the crime or any conviction. It’s because he left.
Again: not endorsing any of this. Just telling you what the film told me.
@Joe Mama: “Personally, I’m not particularly upset by the idea of two consenting, sexually-aware and -active persons engaging in sexual activity. … he surely set things up for it to go where he wanted. That’s bad news, no matter whether the girl is thirteen or thirty.”
That’s pretty much the point. I don’t like to generalize, but no matter what her prior experience, thirteen is too young for this girl or any other to make an informed choice under the circumstances, *because* that manipulation is by definition going to work much better on a 13-year-old than it is on a 30-year-old.
And that’s why he did it. After everything he’d gone through, he wanted to be able to control the situation absolutely, and he could do that with young girls in a way he couldn’t with grown women. If you look at his intent, conscious or otherwise, that’s where it becomes a criminal act, I think — he didn’t want her that way in spite of her age, he wanted her *because* of it. A 16-year-old you happen to be attracted to because she looks 25, that’s a different discussion. But I feel like the question of whether a 13-year-old can give meaningful consent is obviated when she was clearly selected based on the fact that Polanski assumed he could cow her.
D’oh! You’re right, he fled before the plea agreement was finalized, so he wasn’t convicted. However, iIn terms of US immigration, they ask about any arrests or convictions, and even if you are ultimately acquitted of a charge, if the arrest suggests that the person lacks good moral character, they have a pretty free rein to exclude individuals from entry. I still think the same bar would apply to any entry to the US by Polanski.
While it does seem that many celebrities get a pass on the immigration bars that apply to criminal or illicit conduct (i.e., Amy Winehouse was issued a visa even after widespread reports of her using illegal substances), I think that politically, Polanski’s charges would be radioactive. Generally, persons who commit acts that would be considered sexual abuse of a child are not going to be admitted. Also, violent conduct towards another person can render you permanently inadmissable to the US. (I recall that was one of the issues that Russell Crowe was concerned about after he threw the phone at the desk clerk at the hotel. Had he been convicted of aggravated assualt, he could have been barred from ever entering the US again.)
The judge in Polanski’s case may have wanted to order deportation, but as a California judge, he had no authority to do so (that’s reserved for a Federal Immigration Judge). The immigration issues were one of the problems Polanski’s attorney had with the judge – the judge basically wanted Polanski to voluntarily agree to deportation/removal as part of the criminal case.
I think the thing that bothers me about the Kazan vs. Polanski stuff at the Oscars was that Kazan had no real choice about whether or not to name names. And once he did, he was blacklisted anyway so its not like he went without any type of punishment for his actions.
So, I feel that there is a need to separate his actions (which were under duress and certainly weren’t criminal) from his body of work. I mean he lost friends and any means to support himself in the industry and if he hadn’t named names he would have lost either his freedom or his citizenship. For people to pout that the man was finally being recognized for his contribution to the industry struck me as completely wrong.
So, when you see this same group willing to give Polanski a handjob for being a great director even though he admitted to raping an 13 year old child and didn’t see what the big deal was-that tells me that these people have some serious issues with regard to exploitation.
Elia Kazan is attached to some of the most legendary films in Hollywood, but he coerced into naming names so he deserves no recognition. Roman Polanski knowingly drugged and sodomized a 13 year old child, felt no responsibility for it as a criminal act, but some how he should be lauded?
Ridiculousness if you ask me. Which of course no one actually did.
Sars,
Thanks so much for addressing this (I was the person who wrote the letter you posted). As I suspected, you were able to express much of what I was thinking and feeling in far clearer terms than I could…and made me feel less crazy for having so many feelings about the documentary. Thanks!
Sorry to double post, but just to add…my comment about the French attitude came from one of the interview subjects who said (and I paraphrase loosely here) something about “Polanski is so dark. He’s honorable.”
And I just about spit out my drink.
why the heck is there such an apparent campaign to “bring Roman home”? What possible difference could it make now? Does he seriously think he’s just going to move back to Malibu and make more movies as if nothing ever happened?? My God, the megalomania and utter amorality of some of these men!
I haven’t seen any evidence that Polanski has any great desire to live in the United States. He’s a French citizen living in France. I suppose it might be convenient for a director to be able to do business in Los Angeles, but he seems to be managing quite well.
I have an enormous problem with the girl’s mother, but that doesn’t mitigate Polanski’s guilt. Just because her mother victimized and exploited her doesn’t give Polanski leave to do the same.
Our justice system does take into account the personal history of criminals; I have no problem doing the same. I think human beings have enormous capacity to forgive, and if Polanski’s trial hadn’t been handled so horribly perhaps he could have apologized meaningfully, taken his punishment and we could all move on. It is the horrible stasis of the whole thing that irks.
I found it interesting that even the prosecutor was horrified by the original judge’s behavior. The power of celebrity is a double-edged sword. Polanski was helped and hurt by his notoriety.
Tangential rant: I have little sympathy for the “Europeans are so much more sophisticated about these matters” excuse, but they have a point. The barely-legal female is held up as THE object of desire here and everywhere. Yet when someone acts on it they are vilified. I’m not stating it very eloquently, but sexual images of younger and younger girls are rampant. They’re selling it hard and no one is supposed to buy? Crass analogy, I know, but it troubles me.
What made me pissed off about the Kazan situation was that it seemed to me that many old-timers with more cause to be upset were prepared to be forgiving — to understand that it was a TERRIBLE time, in which people were put to horrible, unfair, devastating choices. And everyone suffered, and everyone lived with what they did, and perhaps everyone deserved to die in peace. The people pouting were, like, Amy Madigan and Ed Harris, who came off to me like they were trying very, very hard to make it about themselves.
I don’t usually buy the argument about “you can’t judge it unless you lived it.” But I do think that when you’re rich and successful and have sacrificed very little, it’s awfully facile to sit there and show off how you are so holy and moral that you REFUSE TO CLAP, because you would have behaved perfectly in a given situation you’ve never had to confront. Even if not, what’s wrong with Warren Beatty’s response, which was to clap for the work even though he still thought the guy did wrong? It’s not up there with Jack stealing tomatoes for the common man, but it’s pretty fucking ridiculous as a way to prove that you’re firmly anti-Joe-McCarthy.
At that point, Kazan was an old man. He had been ostracized for 40 years for that choice. What the hell do you gain by sitting on your hands? Is he supposed to jump in his time machine and go make a different choice? He paid a horrible, horrible price for giving TRUTHFUL (to my knowledge) testimony about people. He ideally wouldn’t have, and I understand being angry, but the evildoers there are the people doing the persecuting. Your primary line of defense isn’t supposed to be your ability to keep it a secret what political party you belong to. Your primary line of defense is supposed to be that they can’t put you in prison for what political party you belong to, and no amount of judgment-passing by the likes of Nick Nolte makes the information-passer into the person primarily to blame for the suffering. Wrong, yes, but you are not the main problem, and I think that’s misdirected anger and self-righteousness.
I have disliked Amy Madigan ever since that self-satisfied display. My rant on it is here: https://tomatonation.com/?p=438
I think it’s hard for us to believe now that McCarthy even existed; he sounds like fiction. But people were really terrified. I don’t know that Nick Nolte is necessarily in any position to judge the man given that he probably would have given up half of SAG during an alcoholic blackout.
@Linda,
Very well said! Thank you!
Heh, yeah… Nolte. Come on, people.
Thank Sarah — it appears that I accidentally stole most of it from her original rant about Amy Madigan, which I didn’t even remember, but which clearly imprinted itself upon my brain to the point where I believed it was an original thought.
Re: Luna’s point about going to movies/buying concert tickets, etc and financially supporting people like Polanski, Michael Jackson, etc.
That’s why I don’t rent Polanski films and why I won’t watch another Woody Allen flick. It’s a “you vote with your wallet” thing for me. Manipulating girls and young women (and young men too) over whom one can exercise a great deal of influence/power is one of those issues is a dealbreaker for me. I choose to not financially support those artists, sports figures, etc., who do so.
“I choose to not financially support those artists, sports figures, etc., who do so.”
…That you know of. There is a LOT of really fucked-up behavior perpetrated by artists, athletes, politicians, etc. — and that’s just what we know about.
I’m not saying you’re wrong to vote with your wallet, not at all. Totally your call. But if you exclude music, literature, professional sports, et al. from your life on the basis that the creators were dickheads to a felonious or otherwise egregious degree, that’s seriously half the culture. I mean, you’d better not like the NFL, Whitman, heavy metal, or Knight Rider, just for starters.
I joke around in the GBC about famous dudes getting pulled over for DUI all the time, but…look at all of them. Yeah, it’s pathetic on the one hand, but on the other hand, you really just can’t do that. It could kill people. It has killed people; ask Vince Neil. There’s a reason it’s a scandal when it happens. We probably should be more outraged than eye-roll-y that that keeps happening, and I don’t exclude myself from that judgment. But if I’m going to register my displeasure by not consuming any of their product…there’s dozens of them.
Again, I’m not trying to influence you to take a lesser stand. Woody Allen is a fucknut. But he is far from an outlier, and I make my living in part as a critic so my ability to refuse to deal with certain artists based on fucknuttery is compromised, but even if that weren’t the case, I don’t think I would be able to apply that level of rigor to my cultural consumption, just because of the sheer volume of material I would have to turn my back on. Like James Brown…and every single song that’s ever sampled James Brown, and there are hundreds. The guy was a wife-beating, tax-evading dicksmack. And…he was James Brown.
Maybe that makes me a collaborator. I hope not. Either way, it’s an interesting discussion, in terms of where different people put the line for themselves.
I never made a conscious choice about it, but I used to love Michael Jackson’s music, and now I just can’t hear it without feeling icky. Same with Woody Allen movies. Watching him heebs me out. I just know too much. I enjoyed Polanski’s Macbeth, but I watched it 10 years ago when I didn’t know much about the sodomy situation. I don’t think I can enjoy anything else of his, now.
I realize that I am very late to this, but I think the diference with Roman is that he was caught. Period. Picasso was an asshole. Ditto with Matisse, who was fed whores who were way too young to be whores to “get his art done.” He did them before, during and after a painting with everyone complicit. It was the way things were done. And painting has a much longer history than filmmaking – a much longer history of rape and misogyny. (Rockstars are no different. What you want to bet that Mick and company have done their fair share of 13 year olds?)
If you stop loving certain contemporary artists because of their crimes, then you are also going to have to ax out at least half of art history. Most of them were total bastards.