Confession to everyone reading this: I am a Roger Ebert
fan. Though he occasionally said and did
things in the critical world which leaned toward the ridiculous, he had some
great opinions and is a childhood idol of mine. I still have him on my
Rss feed, and when this article about the Roman Polanski rape case, written by a Mister
Ehrenstein at the Fandoor.com website, showed up I couldn't resist comment.
Mister Ehrenstein's snickering "review" of
Samantha Greimer's autobiography strongly implies that Ms. Greimer was not only
asking for what happened to her, all of the sexual activity she engaged in - including an encounter with her boyfriend
directly after the rape - indicates that she made up her emotional trauma for
money. It suggests that Ms.Greimer's
autobiography - which she wrote as a way to take her narrative out of both
Polanski's hands and the police's - is a silly puff piece, tittering over
Greimer's sarcastic narrator's voice and retrofitting excerpts drawn
from the text to make it look like another simpering tell-all book. It is the
most crystal clear example of rape apologia I've ever read.
In his world view, Roman Polanski has suffered so much in
his life - he's a Holocaust survivor and the would-be mother of his child
Sharon Tate was infamously murdered along with his unborn child by the Manson
Family. Therefore, the article heavily
implies, hasn't Mr Polanski earned the right to indulge in a little underage
trim? And because it was a 'gentle'
seduction, shouldn't he be allowed to make movies in America?
I would like to direct the next few paragraphs directly to
the the writer of the article. Tell me,
Mister Ehrenstein, have you ever spent time with a rape victim? Do you know that each woman behaves differently when she is raped? No, I
suppose you don't - I suppose all and sundry are required to behave a certain
way that is completely beyond reproach, so that men like you will believe their accusations, and more importantly so
that the poor, suffering 'genius artist' that is Mister Polanski can go on to receive proper reward for his talents.
Even though those rewards have unstintingly flowed toward him since his attempted
prosecution. Mister Polanski, it is
worth noting, received Oscars well after the rape accusations were made, including a Best Director award for The Pianist. He has celebrity supporters in high places
all over Hollywood - Sean Penn to name one. He continues to make
movies which are screened and broadcast worldwide, and make the types of
pictures he wishes to make to boot. The
only true impact this decision has made on his career is that he can't enter
America and that various gung-ho LA DAs occasionally try to
bring him in on these charges.
But here is the crux of the truth, of the law. Even if Ms. Geimer was a consenting partner
in the sexual act she entered into with Mister Polanski, Mister Polanski is
still - golly gee willickers - a rapist, simply because Ms. Geimer was a child of
thirteen when she entered into the act.
You did know that the centers of logic have not yet been formed within the brains of thirteen year olds, and that a thirteen year-old has no idea how their actions will
effect them, didn't you? There are studies about that.
The thing Mister Ehrenstein has so flippantly glossed over
is that Ms. Geimer's life hasn't been a barrel of laughs since the day she
'condemned' Mister Polanski to live a life of opulent luxury in France. All of those post-rape behaviors you don't
seem to see in her behavior when she was oh, thirteen, and dealing with a
life-altering trauma manifested in her late teens, in the form of addiction and
unstable relationships. Her mother
declared that she was never the same girl again but, of course, that's probably
just heresay to get more money out of the ~incredibly sympathetic public.
Ms. Geimer, meanwhile, has had to live under the umbrella of
these accusations for years and when she finally - thirty plus years after the
case - dared to tell her side of the story for monetary gain she was met with yet more derision. No matter what she does, she'll be known for the rest of her life as that terrible, terrible bitch who got Polanski
banished from the US. How dare she try
to control the narrative after Mr. Polanski has, for years,
used to to garner sympathy about the mean, mean American government that won't
let him attend American festivals? Even
her equanimity about the situation, her willingness to let it go and let him
live his life, has been called into question.
What else can one do, when one wishes the smearing were over, and one
wishes they had dominion of their own words again?
Re-reading Mister Ehrenstein's article, his basic position
jumps out and states itself in the form of a simple question: how dare she have
recovered from her trauma? If she were REALLY traumatized,
why isn't she curled in a ball, hiding under a bed, sobbing her eyes out every
day of her life? How dare she not be a
sad-eyed thirteen year old for all of eternity?
It's still all about poor, persecuted Mister Polanski,
who can travel anywhere in the world, to any country, but one. I return Mister Ehrenstein's sarcasm with my
own as I assure you that my heart breaks for Mr. Polanski as he dwells in his
well-secured film world bubble, surrounded by loved ones, his Oscars, his colleagues, and his piles of money. There's a man who will
never have to struggle for his voice to be understood.
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