I'm rather late to the fair on the Roman Polanski story. Let me, though, say this: Polanski should do some time. Behind the reluctance to agree with that in some quarters is an abominable quasi Nietzschean bunch of crap about how great artists are Ubermensch so they don't have to obey the rules of the rest of society, and that needs a rebuke.
Look at it another way. Polanski could have lived out his whole life in France, dying some day of natural causes free from any US/Californian prosecution. Is France itself a prison cell??? Hardly! It has lots of room, it has Paris, plus skier friendly mountains, some of the world's most beautiful beaches, and should he get tired of all of that ... its own Disneyland even! Not much like where he is going to be living.
So why did he not stay in France? Because he doesn't really think of himself as a fugutive, so he sees no reason why he shouldn't travel freely to accept prizes. In that sense, he is being punished not only for a long-ago horrid crime but for a very recent instance of reality-denial.
The only thing sad here is that his arrest wasn't captured on video by Dateline. This would be a great episode of Chris Hanson's "To Catch a Predator."
"Can I come in, Swiss Miss?"
[Female voice from inside] ; "Oh yes, pour yourself a lemonade, I'll be out in a minute."
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Knowledge is warranted belief -- it is the body of belief that we build up because, while living in this world, we've developed good reasons for believing it. What we know, then, is what works -- and it is, necessarily, what has worked for us, each of us individually, as a first approximation. For my other blog, on the struggles for control in the corporate suites, see www.proxypartisans.blogspot.com.
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About Me
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- Born in 1958, on the western side of the Tappan Zee, vocal at once, literate soon enough, and curious always. Mastodon
3 comments:
I agree with you, but I note the irony that, while some believe that Polanski should get off on the grounds that great artists are Ubermensch, it may be his fame as an artist that landed him in prison after all these years. Would the authorities have pursued a case against an unknown person who had fled the country decades ago?
It's an odd case. Certainly he deserves punishment, and apparently would have been better off accepting the sentence imposed at the time. His status, of course, is irrelevant. But the cost, which must be enormous, is disturbing, and the victim (Gore Vidal recently referred to her genially as a "13 year old hooker") apparently would rather that it would all just go away. Is showing that the arm and memory of the law is indeed long worth it, in this case?
I guess that's as "genial" as Gore Vidal gets.
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