Monday, September 28, 2009

Generous America, Scary America

Nobody is defending what Roman Polanski did with a 13 year-old girl in Los Angeles over 30 years ago. Nobody.

But this "sinister arrest" of the 76 year-old film director says more about the American obsession with sex than with the rule of law.
The arrest outraged the government of France, which has declined to extradite Polanski since he fled the United States in 1978, after a Los Angeles judge signaled he would scotch a plea agreement in the sex case. In France, Polanski is revered both as a filmmaker and as a martyr to American injustice and puritanism.

Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand issued a statement saying he "profoundly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already known so many during his life."

Mitterrand also charged that Polanski was "thrown to the lions," the Associated Press reported. "In the same way that there is a generous America that we like, there is also a scary America that has just shown its face," he said.
The victim of Polanski's sexual advances, Samantha Geimer, is now 45 years old with a family, and has been trying to put this ordeal behind her for years.
"I have survived, indeed prevailed, against whatever harm Mr. Polanski may have caused me as a child," she said at the time. "I got over it a long time ago." Geimer said Polanski had paid, and she wanted to move on and stop reliving the details of the assault every time he made headlines.

"True as they may be, the continued publication of those details causes harm to me, my beloved husband, my three children and my mother," she said.
In 1997 Geimer is quoted as saying, "He did something really gross to me, but it was the media that ruined my life." Now the US judicial system wants to ruin her life all over again.

The details of this case are well known to most, from Polanski's escape from Nazi Germany as a child, his mother's death in a concentration camp, the brutal murder of his wife Sharon Tate at the hands of the Manson family, to the publicity hungry judge who wanted to send Polanski a "stern message", forcing him to skip bail and leave the United States behind. This is a tragedy that keeps on compounding itself behind the blind and relentless search for justice at any cost to all involved.

The only real justice will be if Polanski appears in an American court, and the charges are dismissed as per the request of Samantha Geimer. Enough is enough.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Nobody is defending what Roman Polanski did with a 13 year-old girl in Los Angeles over 30 years ago. Nobody."


Nobody, except YOU, hypocrite.

Academic Naturist said...

@Anonymous -- Ummm....where exactly did he say that he's defending Polanski? I'm pretty sure he didn't.

Mike4Freedom said...

If the victim doesn't care any more, why should anyone else care?
Things just stop mattering after enough decades.

If there are no time limits, then there are criminals who did far worse during the Viet Nam war who are living out their old age in peace.

Paul Rapoport said...

Although this seems unrelated to nudism, Nudiarist has hit it once again.

Many American officials are obsessed with sex, determined to knock out anyone who doesn't agree with a very bigoted and perverted view of it that they don't uphold anyhow. Massive hypocrisy at its finest.

Nudiarist said...

I just want to add that many people in the media are making the argument that Polanski should not be tried because of his contribution to the cinematic arts. This is a crock. Nobody is above the law, no matter how talented or celebrated.

If anything, Polanski has been arrested because of his celebrity, not in spite of it.

Read the details of the original case here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski

Polanski pled guilty to engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. As part of the plea agreement, he spent 42 days undergoing psychiatric evaluation. Upon his release, he was supposed to get probation, but the word came down from the DA that he was going to serve hard prison time, and then face deportation.

Polanski was not running away from his crime - he was running away from an out of control justice system which screwed him over, and now wants to screw him over again.

Paul Rapoport said...

For a well-written different view of this:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/09/28/polanski_arrest/index.html

What Polanski did is unconscionable; the question is only what should be done now, which automatically involves a "perfectly rational justice system" (see article above) that clearly isn't that at all.

Rather than being a case of Polanski being let go because he's famous, it seems a case of going after him because he's famous, and vengeance brought by those in a system that, as I said before, has a demonic obsession with sex far bigger than any individual could have.

Anonymous said...

I couldn't agree more with the remark on America's sick obsession with sexuality!
Simone de Beauvoir once said as much.