The debate about him is heating up, what with Whoopie calling the incident not real rape, not "rape-rape" (that set back humanity about 50 years) as if REAL rape has to have a person being beaten almost to death or something? Look, I don't know the facts and I certainly have a knee-jerk reaction to the debate on rape for reasons I don't understand (I'm a girl? I hate how every time a chick gets murdered in a film they seem to want to throw a rape in there first and linger on it, as if murder is no longer horrific enough? What IS THE POINT OF THIS!) but the original report has a 43 year old man drugging and sodomizing a 13 year old girl who yelled "no", so can we please not dispute what rape is and not act like these two were dating or in love or anything and just focus on the fact that he evaded the law and that's all that we are really dealing with here?
Ugh, it is so annoying that because the victim, 30 years later, is basically like "I don't want a trial, I want to move on with my life, please" that people want to rally around the man. As this article nicely points out--it is not up to the victim, the case is the people versus Roman Polanksi, not the victim, and he evaded a plea bargain deal for a long time and now has to deal with it?
Anyway. 43 year old weirdo drugging and assaulting a 13 year old is not what's up for discussion here. It happened. It was horrible, he admitted to a lesser charge so he wouldn't have to do harder time for raping a child. Then he bailed on the punishment for that. He's a piece of crap for that, and I don't care that he makes good movies, lots of pieces of crap are genius pieces of crap, it doesn't make them any less awful.
Anyway, sorry I came back to the blog with this, but it's been really bothering me.
On another note, Brooklyn is beautiful and gorgeous and I am thinking about joining a new gym here but it's kind of too expensive. Also I made brownies last night with a silicon bake sheet (have you tried this--amazing!) and saw Cape Fear (lame, in my opinion, and again with the rape rape rape, come on!) and have been reading a lot and working a lot and neglecting this blog a lot.
Application season is the worst.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Sorry K, but if not even the victim is calling for "justice", who will be served by this? Which "people"? Not me. I loved "Chinatown" and "The Pianist".
Chris, as K said, "Lots of pieces of crap are genius pieces of crap. It doesn't make them any less awful." The "people" served will be those who don't think rapists should go unpunished. (And sorry, fewer than 50 days jail-time doesn't count.)
K, glad you're enjoying Brooklyn--and please stop neglecting your blog! : )
I apologize, I made the mistake of thinking this was about the victim.
Well Chris, here's the thing. I respectfully have to disagree that once a crime is committed, it is actually not about the victim any more. As someone else astutely pointed out, if the victim wanted Roman Polanski dragged naked to the town square, beaten and covered in gasoline and set on fire, would we do it? No, because when he violated the victim, he violated the law. And this is about enforcing the law. Not about what the victim wants, whether you think that is right or wrong, that's how the justice system works.
Civil cases are about the victim. Criminal cases are about "the people". This is "the people" vs. Polanski--meaning the state of California.
And making great art or bad art excuses no one. You do something against the law, you get punished. Whether you're old or you had a bad life or the victim forgives you or not.
PS. As an aside, I do think you make a good point about who will be served by this. Perhaps not the victim--which feels weird, at least to me. But she wants out of this mess not because she didn't want to prosecute the first time, but because she wasn't served the first time because Polanski skipped bail, she was forced to argue for and against this for 30 years because he did not let her have her justice. Now she just wants out, I get that.
I think it's really about the message at this point, and crazily enough, who I am more disgusted by at this point are not the two parties involved, but everyone else who has come out and lied about the case (celebs, what have you) either to themselves or the rest of us. The signing of petitions asking him to be free should AT THE VERY LEAST, acknowledge that wrongdoing happened. Saying "had an affair" or "had sex" is just crap. He raped her. He raped her. He raped her.
He admits it, she admits it. So if people are going to support him I think that they would have a lot more of a leg to stand on if they took the reasonable approach of "who will this serve" as you did, because that is a valid (though I don't agree with it) point. Don't say it was cute, or European, or okay. Say it was bad, but she's suffered enough and he's learned his lesson and let him go before a judge and say that and whatever the judge says we'll all agree to go back to our corners and lick our respective wounds.
My gosh, please forgive my typing errors in the last two posts.
First one should read "I respectfully have to disagree." then the sentence should continue.
Second one should say he skipped the "sentencing", not bail. I have been staring at the computer way too long reading about this and am now typing like a madperson.
Post a Comment