Thoughts in Veeberland

So Roman Polanski is in the news again. He was finally arrested in Zurich while trying to attend a film festival that was honoring him.  I’ll leave his background and filmography to Wikipedia to discuss, and it’s just a waste of time for me to rehash the whole thing.  The thing that bugs me so much is the response to his arrest and extradition request.  Lots of articles are coming out now (and here, here, and here) about all the people who seem to think he should be released.  There’s the French minister who is saying authorities should his rights, and there’s this petition signed by lots of Hollywood elite saying

“It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him,”

Huh WHAT?  What makes him so special, or this “international cultural event” so special that a man should not be arrested for breaking the law? Would they have been ok with it if they let him attend then arrested him on his way home?  This seems like an absolutely horrible standard.  I will give them the fact that Polanski has had a troubled life.  First he loses his mom to the Holocaust, then the Manson’s go and kill his wife and unborn child.  These can be devastating things and I can see how they may contribute to some of his troubled thinking.  But even with this, does this excuse him from showing up in court to face the penalties of his actions?  Then you get rich quotes like this.

“You have to understand them, these poor stars. What’s the point of being a celebrity if you can’t have the women you want, whether they’re above the age of consent or not, whether they’re willing or not; if you can’t flee abroad and prosper there while our country’s justice system looks after you, circulate freely wherever you want to go to be awarded medals and charms at international festivals, and then mobilise opinion in your favour when things start to get tricky?”

So if you are a celebrity 1. Poor you, you should be pitied for your fame 2. You can have any women you want (seems a bit sexist, I thought the French were all about equality) 3. You should be able to circulate freely to be honored as a celebrity even as a criminal.

He admits to drugging and raping a 13 year old girl in the 70′s.  He was held for 42 days while they conducted psychological evaluations.  Then he’s suppose to show up for sentencing, where the judge was thinking of giving him another 48 days in prison, so he decides to skip out and run off to France.  I have never been to prison, and do not ever plan to do so, but California’s minimum sentencing guidelines at this point is 36 months for rape.  He would have had a total of 90 days.  Seems like he is getting off easy.  Why does he get an exemption, according to all these outraged fans, politicians, and Hollywood actors, from doing the simple thing of showing up in court?  Even in light of possible judicial misconduct, a new judge has agreed to resolve the matter, but all he has to do is show up in court.  Why is this so hard?  Why is everyone fighting so hard to let him off the hook?  Why does everyone think he has a right to be let off?  What has he done that is so great, so amazing, so life changing and beneficial to the world that he deserves to be above the law?

I am all for forgiveness.  The victim has forgiven him, and it seems like the current presiding judge is willing to let this go.  But can we really just him not finish up all the pieces that are required?  Roman, just get to the court, get this over with, and guess what, now you can freely travel around the world without the threat of arrest and go attend your precious international cultural events.  All you have to do is show up and admit you made a mistake by not showing up 30 years ago.

UPDATE: I just read a little commentary on Slate.  I think the final paragraph does sum things up well.

Notwithstanding the due process concerns that the Polanski case raises—which are for legal scholars, not Hollywood directors, to quibble with—if we excuse Polanski from punishment, aren’t we really saying that his life is more valuable than the life of a 13-year-old girl’s just because he happened to direct Rosemary’s Baby? Taking that to its logical extreme, we have to assume that Bob Dylan can never go to jail, even if he rapes a teenager or two, and that Picasso could not have served time for whatever felonies he might have committed in his brazen lifetime, and—well, I could go on. Where would we draw the line? Does Leonard Cohen qualify? Neil Diamond?

In fairness, comparing apples to apples, as they say, the life of a great director is probably more valuable than that of a 13-year-old girl—young ladies that age are really irritating. But if we follow this modest proposal to its logical conclusion and valorize some life over other life, then we are creating a society that was last tried out on a large and (highly) organized scale by the Nazis, who are the bogeymen in Polanski’s closet. After all, to say that Aryans are better than everyone else is not much different than saying talented people are better than everyone else. And if we make this ruling for Roman Polanski, we pretty much have to do it for everybody.