Polanski Apologists in Translation
I’ve been reading a lot of justifiably angry posts about those who would defend Roman Polanski, who was convicted of raping a 13-year-old thirty years ago. I did a bit of research, trying to understand the mindset and the concerns of the people arguing against Polanski’s arrest. What follows are the most common reasons I’ve found, as well as my translation of those reasons.
Polanski is a charming, intelligent man – We should only arrest scary-looking, deranged rapists, preferably the dirty homeless types. Bonus points if they’re a racial minority. Arresting “nice guys” forces us to consider that many rapists do appear charming, intelligent … even normal! This disturbs our simple view of the world and makes us uncomfortable, so please cease at once.
The victim’s mother pushed the child at Polanski – He shouldn’t be blamed because men are helpless to resist a 13-year-old girl. Remember, rape is always the fault of the women! If we can’t blame the victim, we’ll blame her mother. Even when that girl is saying “No,” and trying to get away, men are helpless to control our urges–the male penis forces us to drug and rape the girl.
It was more than 30 years ago – Accountability comes with an expiration date, and if I can avoid taking responsibility for my actions for a certain period of time, I should be absolved of that responsibility.
The victim doesn’t want to put herself or her family through this ordeal anymore* – If I can intimidate my victim enough, I can get away with it! Note: I have a great deal of sympathy for Polanski’s victim, and I’m torn about this one. Polanski has been on the run for 32 years. I’ve read commentary about how hard it’s been for him–he couldn’t even get his Oscar, he poor man. But what about the survivor? She’s also lived for 32 years with no closure, and wants to be done with it. *My research might have fallen short on this point. See this comment thread for clarification and further discussion.
He didn’t know she was thirteen – All girls should be required to tattoo their ages in a visible location in order to protect men from accidentally raping them. Also, it would have been perfectly okay for him to drug and rape her if she had been sixteen.
Nobody would even care about this case if Polanski weren’t famous – Who cares about rape anyway?
Sadly, there’s some truth to this last one. According to RAINN, 1 in 6 women will be raped in her lifetime. (My sense is that the numbers are even higher.) Yet only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail. As a society, we don’t care. At least, we don’t care enough.
Jon Hansen
September 30, 2009 @ 11:04 am
Nobody would even care about this case if Polanski weren’t famous.
Well, no one would be defending him, that’s for sure.
Jim C. Hines
September 30, 2009 @ 11:07 am
I truly wish I could believe that, but I’ve seen way too much victim-blaming and rapist-defending over the years to believe it.
In this particular case, given the details and the evidence, I don’t think very many people would be standing up to publicly defend him, but I suspect there would still be some. Particularly the “She and her mother worked together to seduce him” piece.
Jon Hansen
September 30, 2009 @ 11:46 am
Oh, to be sure.
Steve Buchheit
September 30, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
You forgot, “But we enjoyed his movies so much, that would make us bad if we enjoyed them and he was a bad man.” And the, “He’s suffered enough” – you know, living in France, continuing to make movies.
For me, sure, there were issues with the case against him. However, he pled guilty and then skipped before the sentencing hearing. Even if a new judge says, “Time served” for the original crime, he should still got to jail for running (because, you know, that’s also a crime).
Anthony Homan
October 1, 2009 @ 3:23 am
Add to the list:
“He’s already served his time”. TRANSLATION: “42 days of psychological evaluation before sentencing sounds like a reasonable sentence to me, what does it matter that an actual sentence could never be pronounced because the defendant fled. Let’s just go with my suggested sentence.” ALTERNATIVE TRANSLATION: “I don’t understand how sentencing works”.
“The judge reneged on the deal. Polanski is the real victim here”. TRANSLATION: “The judge was criminal in possibly considering using his judicial powers to accept, reject, or modify a plea deal SUGGESTED by the DA and defense attorneys. Polanski may have actually had to retract his guilty plea and, *gasp*, go to trial to defense himself against the original 6 serious felony charges because this evil judge decided not to rubber-stamp the DA’s deal.” ALTERNATIVE TRANSLATION: “I understand plea deals even less than I understand sentencing”.
abyss2hope
October 1, 2009 @ 9:58 pm
Polanski himself contradicts the claim that he didn’t know she was 13. In a 1979 interview he said:
“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”
His own words prove the newer PR spin by his defenders to be a lie.
Martin
October 3, 2009 @ 7:07 am
Hi, how are you? I would like to ask whether you plan to write a continuation of Goblin (number one was the best pair weakest) thanks for the reply
Jim C. Hines
October 3, 2009 @ 9:31 am
Hi Martin. No plans for a fourth goblin book at this time, I’m afraid. I’m currently working on #4 in the princess series, and then I’m probably going to start on something new.