WTF, 31 years later . . .
by Harley
When we were 13, my friend Kris Hermanson and
I discovered a movie called Fearless
Vampire Killers, also known as Pardon
Me, but Your Teeth are on My Neck. The combination of horror, humor
and vampire seductiveness enchanted us. As did the stunning cinematography.
As did the younger of the fearless vampire
killers, Alfred, played by the filmmaker, Roman Polanski.
I immediately tracked down everything on Polanski
I could find, which was a total of 2 books: The
Cinema of Roman Polanski (film criticism about foreign films I had no access
to in Nebraska) and Helter Skelter by
Vincent Bugliosi--my first true crime read. When Chinatown hit the theatres, it became the favorite in my high
school “let’s skip chemistry and go to the movies” club.
One day I was called in to my counselor’s
office, not for skipping chemistry, but because, improbably, I’d aced my SAT’s.
“Where do you want to go to college?” he asked. “The world is your oyster.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” I said, and showed him the
college catalogue I’d found in his outer office. There, in a full-page color
photo, was Roman Polanski, visiting guest artist at the NYU film school. Was
that a sign, or what? “I’m going to NYU,” I said. And despite my counselor’s deep
reservations about my college-choosing criteria, by 1977 I was attending NYU’s
School of the Arts, in the same ratty building as the film school.
Roman did not visit NYU that year. He was in
L.A. at the time, feeding champagne and a Quaalude to a 13-year old girl, and raping
her.
I hate saying that. I’ve heard about this
case for years--who hasn’t?--but I didn’t know details, I wanted to believe
there were mitigating circumstances, two sides to the story, good reasons for
him to flee the country after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse
with a minor. I wanted to not think about it at all.
Until last week. 31 years after fleeing the
country, Polanski was arrested in Switzerland, awaits extradition, and once
more, I can’t stop reading about him. Only now there’s no shortage of stuff:
tv, newspaper articles, blogs, transcripts.
The transcripts are the grand jury testimony
of the child, and are not pleasant.
The multiple tragedies in Polanski’s life,
the horror of the Nazi death camps and the Manson family, everything that came
before 1977, as well as what came after--the judicial and perhaps prosecutorial
misconduct that culminated in him fleeing the country--don’t change the fact that
he was a 43-year old man having sex with a little girl. No statue of
limitations applies here because Polanski was already charged and convicted.
That the victim long ago made peace with
this, that the perpetrator has apparently not committed any other crimes in the
years since, is good news. But nothing else is. If this were theatre, it would
be Sophocles on a bad day.
What scares me the most is the very public
public reaction. You, TLC readers, can not only spell & punctuate (once
you’ve had coffee), you express widely differing opinions without racism, venom,
and creepy expletives. Elsewhere in the blogosphere, people are attacking
Polanski, each other, bloggers, the victim, the victim’s mother, the nations of
Poland, France, and Switzerland, liberals, conservatives, feminists, Jews,
artists of all sorts (esp. Jackson Pollock and Pablo Picasso), judges, lawyers,
Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson’s victims, Michael Jackson’s victims’ mothers,
and of course Hollywood. Throw in a couple of Holocaust Deniers and it has the
makings of a real party.
I’ve no idea how this
will play out, but here’s what I wonder. With all his genius, the dark corners of
the soul he explores, the poor and the powerless he gives voice to, how could Polanski
be blind to the pathos of a little girl wanting to be in French Vogue, far too young for sex and
champagne and a man 30 years her senior--a man who used for his own needs, as
if her childhood was of no consequence, as if her “no” had no meaning.
That’s what I want to know. That’s the part
of the human condition I want illuminated.
Harley
