8 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
8 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
Why artists defend Roman Polanski
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<p>In 1977, Roman Polanski drugged, raped, and sodomized a 13-year-old girl. When he believed a sort-of-plea-bargain was about to come unstuck, he took it on the lam. He lived the high life in this self-imposed exile for thirty years, until busted in Switzerland recently. Now various of the usual suspects on the right wing’s enemies list are campaigning to block his extradition.</p>
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<p>There’s a good deal of perplexity being expressed about this, and some predictable chuntering from right-wingers about lefties being moral degenerates. But this flap isn’t really about politics at all — it’s much simpler than that. It’s about people who think of themselves as “artistes” reserving themselves a get-out-of-jail card when <em>they</em> feel like behaving like repellent scum of the earth, too.</p>
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<p><span id="more-1267"></span></p>
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<p>I could claim to be an “artiste” myself, even leaving out the computer programming and the writing; I’m a capable musician who’s done session work on two records, and I’ve composed songs that other people have sung. So I understand the temptation artists feel to position themselves as a breed apart to whom ordinary rules should not apply by reason of their specialness. Who wouldn’t want some of that immunity, if they could claim it?</p>
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<p>If you want to make that argument, Roman Polanski makes a great stake in the ground — not in spite of the heinousness of his crime, but <em>because</em> of it. If even a child-raper can invoke the all-purpose artiste excuse for scumminess, than the merely ordinary transgressions of artistes become trivia to be airily dismissed. And if the Polanski case becomes a “teachable moment” whereby people can be talked into feeling like boors or philistines for even <em>thinking</em> that artistes should be held to civilized standards of behavior, so much the better!</p>
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<p>None of this is more than tenuously connected to leftism, and I have to say the the right-wing efforts to gin up indignation on that score sound quite contrived and stupid to me. This dispute isn’t about politics, it’s about privilege — not just whether Roman Polanski is above the law, but about whether his defenders can claim to be too.</p>
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