by Chris Lombardi
This week's arrest of Roman Polanski felt weirdly unsurprising. It fit somehow with all the flashbacks to 1969 the media's treated us to this year — as that TIME cover put it, "From the Moon to Charles Manson." What will the 1970's reminiscences be like, one wondered? Maybe like this.
But who really remembers 1977? And what does anyone really remember about Polanski's arrest? I actually remember that time pretty vividly. I was fifteen years old, and in some circles at my high school, relationships with older men were all the rage. They meant we were cool, outre, too daring for dating. (Not for me, mind you, though I still hoped to grow into it.)
When the tabloids shrieked about Polanski's statutory-rape conviction, I even blithely wrote an op-ed in my high school journalism class about how such "relationships" shouldn't be illegal, even if the girl in question was 13 years old. Of course, like most opinion writers then and now, I didn't know what the hell I was talking about.
I certainly didn't know that the girl had told a grand jury that she was given Quaaludes and then raped, that she'd said no and asked to go home, that Polanski pled guilty to a lesser charge and then fled before final sentencing. My main excuse now for my blitheness then is that I was fifteen, and that it didn't last long. I've never been able to see a Polanski film. and cringed every time he won another award.
Knowing the traumatic facts of his life, from the Holocaust to the Manson murders, plays differently with me: it can explain, perhaps, but it's the opposite of an excuse.
This week, I was floored as news reports kept saying that Polanski had been arrested "for sex with an underage girl," without explaining what had happened; at the sudden movement to "Free Polanski," giving the perp what Slate's Elizabeth Wurtzel calls "a genius exception for rape." Even Whoopi Goldberg made my old mistake: "Things are different in Europe," she said, and besides "It's not rape-rape."
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Mary Elizabeth Williams
Joan Walsh
Kerry Lauerman
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Comments
Polanski is doing photo shoots on adolescent boys for a French magazine. He contacts a 13 year old boy's mother who likes the idea. He takes the 13 year old to a nearby field and shoots pictures of him in his briefs. He returns him home and a few days later picks him up to take him to Jack Nicholson's house for more photo modelling. The mother wants to be present, Polanski says no, and the mother says OK. Polanski takes him to the house and rapes him exactly as he raped Samantha Geiner....
Well, I believe that, given the stigma, the boy would've been less likely to report the rape but - had he done so, public disgust would have been greater. Also, since 13 year old boys weren't as innocent, passive or worthy of protection as girls, the public would've been somewhat disgusted by the victim and the victim's mother as well.