We’ve now all had a chance to sit and get to know our Polanski-related rage for a few weeks. Things are simmering down, though there have been a few developments, the latest one to break my heart being that Emma Thompson signed The Petition. There go my fantasies of her beating on the signatories with an umbrella, mouth set in firm disapproval.
The whole thing has left me with a profound sense of exhaustion. Though, truth be told, I am not, in some ways, nearly as angry with Polanski as I feel I should be. In the last couple of years, I have had a lot harder time signing up for rage-fests against individual rapists. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not about to launch into some mealymouthed remarks about the Holocaust and forgiveness and time and what the victim wants and “oh I loved Chinatown.” (I didn’t, anyway.) I do think Polanski’s background is relevant, but not to the question of responsibility per se. I think it is relevant insofar as it reveals profound suffering cannot guarantee recognition of the humanity of others. I guess we already knew that, but it’s a thing we don’t talk about because it’s so much easier to throw people in jail and forget about them. If only they were the aberrations we pretend they are.
No, it’s the rest of the Polanski-supporting world I really can’t stand. I’m mad at them because they are artists, and because silly thing that I am, I expect more of artists.
The explanation for that is complicated, but here goes: when I was fourteen or so, a friend of mine who was getting into spirituality asked me what my religion was. I was raised in the United Church of Canada, which is not so much of a spiritual organization as it is a community one, and after a moment of thought, I told her: “I think my religion is art.” Pretentious? Yes. But in a way it continues to ring true. To me there is something richer about a good movie or novel or painting that just doesn’t exist in abstract thought and philosophy. When the end of the world comes and I am on the run from my impending doom, I will trade all my philosophy books and Bible and Bhagavad Gita and, hell, even my MacKinnon, for copies of Fugitive Pieces and Synecdoche, New York and Six Feet Under.
These treasured stories are the things that remind me the universe is large and funny and tragic and ultimately worth being in even when I am at war with it. They are the things that speak across ages and oceans. I read East of Eden a few months back and was shocked at how familiar Steinbeck sounded; the experience of that one book made him a person instead of a Name To Be Capitalized, a plaque on the wall, something to name one’s cat to impress one’s friends.
I talk a big game about gulfs of experience. I believe in them too, of course. I just think we can get overly enthusiastic about our ability to bridge them. But I am still enough of a universalist to think we ought to be able to be touched by each others’ suffering. A moment of recognition can make up for a lot of mistakes – you can be Don Draper, primo misogynist number one, helping Peggy Olsen by telling her, “You’ll be shocked how much this never happened,” and for that second you are in the trenches with us, and what an important second it is, too. I think of artists as trying to recreate these moments, of getting down in the dirt with the rest of us, trying to know – and to tell others – what it felt like.
But whatever comes next, I’m going to remember this Polanski episode as a crucible for my feeble romanticism about what artists do. I think I’ve forgotten that my love of a work involves leaps of faith for me, but not necessarily for its creator. Because you know what bothered me most about The Petition? It was the incredible lack of imagination on the part of its signatories. It was the fact that they wanted to vote on a situation they didn’t fully understand, and even worse, that they wanted to pretend that said commitment was just a function of their Love Of The Arts. I’ve never understood the high-mindedness of this sort of thing, as though art had some purpose above and beyond its creator and audience – as if it were, in a sense, above humanity. As though it were something separate and apart from our responsibility to each other.
See, to put it very bluntly, I always liked creative work best when it is noting that the World Is Complicated – but I never thought that the complication ought to operate in favour of those who harm other people. I never thought that was what this entire enterprise of telling each other stories was about. I thought we were doing it because it kept us from getting too far away from each other.
I thought we were doing it because of sentences like this one, by Jenny Diski in the London Review of Books,
I was neither dazzled nor drugged into sex when I was 14 – I was embarrassed into it.
Or Latoya’s:
Rape is only four letters, one small syllable, and yet it is one of the hardest words to coax from your lips when you need it most.
Or the hundreds of other examples I could cite to the people who signed that petition if I thought it was, in the smallest way, worth my time.
What is it about this kind of testimony that the signatories of The Petition find unimportant? In my imaginary dialogues with them I know they will tell me that I am being polemical, that it was a long time ago, that this is a political witch-hunt that ratifies American puritanism. To which I am all too tempted to reply: that’s so easy to say when it didn’t happen to you. It’s so easy to rationalize not treating the subject with the seriousness it deserves.
And that’s all I want really. I don’t care if Polanski goes free. I really don’t. I would happily let him live out his life in luxury if I could trade his freedom for a culture in which it is unquestionable that youth and fear are reasons enough for men not to sleep with you, let alone penetrate and sodomize you after you said no. I would trade his freedom for a culture that imagined itself in the young woman’s place before it even got around to thinking about him. I would do it in a heartbeat. Because even if he is tried and found guilty and locked up forever, the rest of us get to live in a world where people find it appropriate to set out their opposition to such “incidents” and “episodes.” And that, that is the thing that makes me want to find my own chalet in the mountains and disappear into exile. That is the thing that makes it feel like all the feminist blogging and the victim’s crisis centers and the demonstrations and the mass liberation movements in the world will never change a damn thing. There will always be a Petition someone can justify signing, and it will keep sweeping the rest of the world under the rug, leaving only traces of what happened for the rest of us to excavate.
PSoul, at the risk of sounding harsh, did you really ever, once you got to be an adult, believe that artists were better people than the rest of us? Sexism, bigotry of all kinds, white privilege-you name it, you can find it in the lives and work of so many artists we love and admire. We Jews have to accustom ourselves early on to finding anti-Semitic words and characters and plot lines in works we read and study and prejudice in the lives of their creators. Then it becomes a question of how much we can stand and where we draw the line. Beethoven was an anti-Semite but no more or less than everyone around him. Wagner took it too far, at least for me. See how it goes? Chaucer? Surprise, surprise. Evelyn Waugh? Enough already.
This circling the wagons business with the petition is a manifestation of insider/outsider behavior. The signatories are convinced that, regardless of the circumstances of the rape, no one can understand what it’s like to be a celebrity unless they are one. And they’re letting their clubiness and self-interest crush their sense of morality. It’s disgusting and disappointing but ultimately unsurprising. You do have to wonder a lot, though, about what would impel any woman to sign this thing. What consequences did they fear if they didn’t sign? Or are they really that stupid?
I have a brother in the movie business and he once said about actors, “Just because you work with them doesn’t mean you have to eat with them”. He also says that anyone who gets into the movie business in a prominent position-actors and directors included-and then complains about the price of fame is a hypocrite, since that’s exactly what they sought in the first place, admit it or not.
I’m with mischiefmanager. And I also think some of those people signed the petition because they think that they shouldn’t have to conform to any rules because they are ARTISTS and if they need to be transgressive (even if it means drugging and raping a child) then it’s OK because it feeds their ART.
I don’t think I said anything like I “believe[d] that artists were better than the rest of us.” I think I said I thought of them as engaged in an enterprise that, as I describe above, would predispose them to being sympathetic. I am not talking about big-movie Hollywood here either on this petition; I am talking about people who tend to stay on the fringes of Hollywood, and do make what I would consider to be “good” (sure, subjective) art.
But… thanks? It’s fine to disagree of course, but I do take exception to your implying my view was childish.
Pedimd: I actually am not sure they do think it’s transgressive, which is the craziest part of it all.
PSoul, I’m sorry if you inferred that I was putting you down; I certainly didn’t mean to do so. It’s hard to accept that the people you admire can be so short-sighted, foolish, ugly, whatever. And it happens over and over again, even to us adults. I mean, Emma Thompson? Really? That one hurts.
I completely agree with you-it’s beyond my understanding how artists can be so wise and be so able to enlarge our understanding of the world, and yet be such small people in ways that really do matter.
“I do think Polanski’s background is relevant, but not to the question of responsibility per se. I think it is relevant insofar as it reveals profound suffering cannot guarantee recognition of the humanity of others.” THIS.
“I don’t care if Polanski goes free. I really don’t. I would happily let him live out his life in luxury if I could trade his freedom for a culture in which it is unquestionable that youth and fear are reasons enough for men not to sleep with you, let alone penetrate and sodomize you after you said no. I would trade his freedom for a culture that imagined itself in the young woman’s place before it even got around to thinking about him. I would do it in a heartbeat. Because even if he is tried and found guilty and locked up forever, the rest of us get to live in a world where people find it appropriate to set out their opposition to such “incidents” and “episodes.” And that, that is the thing that makes me want to find my own chalet in the mountains and disappear into exile. That is the thing that makes it feel like all the feminist blogging and the victim’s crisis centers and the demonstrations and the mass liberation movements in the world will never change a damn thing. There will always be a Petition someone can justify signing, and it will keep sweeping the rest of the world under the rug, leaving only traces of what happened for the rest of us to excavate.” And here, you’ve encapsulated all the feelings I’ve had about this story and rape culture in general far better than I ever could.
Emma Thompson? I just don’t know.
“I would trade his freedom for a culture that imagined itself in the young woman’s place before it even got around to thinking about him.”
This post makes me want to cry. It’s exactly the way I have been feeling lately. I don’t want to be associated with this world anymore.
This is an amazing post.
“It was the fact that they wanted to vote on a situation they didn’t fully understand, and even worse, that they wanted to pretend that said commitment was just a function of their Love Of The Arts.”
THIS.
I have a lot I want to say about this, but can’t at the moment take the time to express it. But thanks for writing this.
*Major, publicly-recognized, well-paid* artists often do show clearly by their behaviors to the public that they believe they have carte blanche to break not just bad rules but very, very good rules too. In this they are identical to politicians and religious leaders – ironically enough, seeing that artists so often claim to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from those other powerful good-rule-breaking folks. “Glamorous lifestyle” is a pitfall into which all sorts of self-aggrandizements and rationalizations pour. From fur coats to rape to paedophilia, “glamorous” public figures have exactly the same moral obligations as do the rest of us: to resist evil and to stand up for the vulnerable and helpless of whatever species. As a sexual-violence survivor, I personally HATE POLANSKI’S GUTS. My compassion is reserved for his VICTIM.
I’ve been exposed to more of my idols (and their clay feet) more than most people get to be in my profession, so very early on I sensed the “otherness” and priviledge they often feel is their right because “they are closer to the divine” just because they create art. We are all given gifts of creativity – it takes a very self-aware and gifted human to realize that it doesn’t make one BETTER than the rest. Especially when our culture trumpets otherwise and hoists their pimply asses on pedestals.
Thanks for an interesting read, PS. The question of how an artist makes great art (ie. universally resonant) is endlessly fascinating to me. I used to think that an artist must be blessed with great empathy in order to communicate universal truths, but the more I encounter great art and artists, the more I believe the opposite is true.
I had an epiphany recently when I saw Tarkovsky’s The Mirror for the first time. It is an autobiographical film about his childhood in Russia, told without the usual narrative arc – in images more than words (well, traditional dialogue. There is a lot of his father’s poetry in it) – and yet I found it intensely personal; it evoked precise emotions from my own childhood in rural England. Memories and feelings of that time came flooding back to me, and yet the time frame, social/political environment, family experiences were very different from my own.
It made me reconsider whether the stereotype of the tortured artist might not be true – that they are, by definition, difficult, selfish, impractical and somehow cut off from the ‘real’ world. Because to be great, maybe artists really do have to be so ruthlessly self-absorbed that they don’t have ‘space’ to consider the thoughts and feelings of others (hello, Polanski!) I would argue that true talent lies in an ability to access one’s own psyche and successfully communicate it to others; that universality is a side-effect of doing this to a very high standard, if you like.
This is not a pleasant thought, as it does play into the patriarchal notion of ‘great’ art and ‘great’ artists; that fewer women qualify, since we are bought up to spend so much time thinking of others. And yet, when I think of the women I regard as great artists – Jane Campion, Patricia Highsmith, Georgia O’Keefe, for eg. – they do tend towards the unconventional.
And just to add, I am NOT defending Polanski, nor any other ‘artist’. Also, I do not think of them as being special human beings – it’s just I think that part of the psychological makeup of an ‘artist’ is selfishness. And I mean Polanski here; I don’t necessarily regard the idiots who signed that petition as artists – they are just celebs, acting like unthinking sheep. Entirely different thing altogether.
@Diziet_Sma: That’s not flying. You don’t get to opt out of basic morality and consideration for other people because you have talent. Unconventional is one thing, being an asshole is another.
Celebs and artists do this stuff because they can. Their adoring public lets them get away with it and their peers, who are thinking “there but for the grace of God”, help them cover it up.
Part of the psychological makeup of every human being is selfishness. Most of us learn to temper it. I bet artists can too-if we raise our expectations of them.
@mischiefmanager: You can’t MAKE a person how you want them to be, unfortunately.
For me there were some highs and lows in Pilgrim Soul’s commentary.
First, let me state that to get my overall take on the Polanski story, see- http://dankprofessor.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/on-roman-polanski/
First, I think the following statement was quite shallow-
“some mealymouthed remarks about the Holocaust and forgiveness and time and what the victim wants and “oh I loved Chinatown.” (I didn’t, anyway.)”
I do not know what is mealymouthed about referring to Polanski’s past experience in the Holocaust or to refer to the murder of his wife by the Manson gang. In any case,there of those of us who refer to Polanski’s background and have no interest in CHINATOWN.
Then the author states-
“I do think Polanski’s background is relevant, but not to the question of responsibility per se. I think it is relevant insofar as it reveals profound suffering cannot guarantee recognition of the humanity of others. I guess we already knew that…”
Yes, I would hope that we all know that human suffering generally leads to more suffering,
abuse to more abuse, etc., etc.
And
“No, it’s the rest of the Polanski-supporting world I really can’t stand. I’m mad at them because they are artists, and because silly thing that I am, I expect more of artists.
But I am still enough of a universalist to think we ought to be able to be touched by each others’ suffering.”
But don’t you see that some of these artists and others such as
myself are also touched by the suffering of Polanski.
Touched by each others suffering? Are you touched by Polanski’s suffering? Do you want him to suffer some more by locking him down in a cell?
And
“See, to put it very bluntly, I always liked creative work best when it is noting that the World Is Complicated – but I never thought that the complication ought to operate in favour of those who harm other people.”
But see to put it very bluntly, you are operating in favor of those who want to harm Polanski. You may consider it a righteous harming, but it is still a harming. Whether you call it justice or revenge, you apparently want to harm Polanski. And if such is the case you will be part of the group that you condemn for harming people. If you have your way, as I say in my essay, the likely escape for Polanski from the harm of others is via suicide.
Oh, dank. Are you seriously trying to suggest that the harm I might impose by not caring over much if Polanski is imprisoned (for an act he admits he committed) might be equivalent to the harm he committed in raping someone?
I think you suffer from poor reading comprehension skills if you cannot see from the above that I can, quite easily, sympathize with Polanski’s suffering. I simply don’t think it negates what he did – which is apparently what you think.
In any event, no one here is interested in this kind of rape apologism. The people reading and writing on this website are survivors of the harm you seek to minimize by your arguments. Your kind of reasoning is not only lazy and obtuse, it isn’t welcome in this forum. Thanks for visiting, but don’t come back.
“You may consider it a righteous harming, but it is still a harming. Whether you call it justice or revenge, you apparently want to harm Polanski.”
Yes, well, there’s this thing we like to call the criminal justice system. Long and storied history. Maybe you should look it up? So, either you have a problem with the criminal justice system and think that every single criminal should have their past taken into account when we decide whether or not to punish them for their crimes, or you think that Polanski is some sort of special case, which is logically indefensible. And this is what you were paid to teach for 35 years? But apparently you’re quite invested in defending men who abuse power over women, given the interest apparent on your site in “consensual” female student/male teacher relationships. As a female college student, that’s…um…charming. And by charming, I mean skeezy as shit.
(P.S., PS, I agree with you that optimistically the artist is more equipped with a sense of imaginative empathy than others might be but I do think there’s a question here of how many people on that list of signatories are engaged in creating art, per se, as opposed to creating media. Regardless, in the history of art there is a strong trend in the opposite direction, i.e. towards solipsism, which is more at play here, I’m sure.)
“In any event, no one here is interested in this kind of rape apologism. The people reading and writing on this website are survivors of the harm you seek to minimize by your arguments. Your kind of reasoning is not only lazy and obtuse, it isn’t welcome in this forum. Thanks for visiting, but don’t come back.”
If I ever need to be reminded why I love this place, I will come back and recite this paragraph to myself over and over. That was very very very fucking gratifying to read.
Great comments, PSoul. I felt gteat reading yours and the others until getting to the one by Barry Dank. However your dismissle of him brightened me up again.
Word, PSoul! Well said.
But just in case the Dank one is still reading:
You have got to be kidding. Are you really saying that a person who has suffered can go out and make others suffer with impunity? Are you really saying that having grown up as a child of Holocaust survivors allows you to commit violent acts on a child? Are you really saying that having had your wife horribly murdered puts you beyond accepted ethical standards? If so, you are a vile and contemptible man.
The idea that anyone could use the Shoah to justify violence on *any* innocent human being is so appalling and such an insult to the victims of the Nazis that it deserves a special condemnation. That is utterly disgusting, Dank, and Polanski and his defenders should cringe in shame for having even thought it.
And this is what I’m saying, Diziet_Sma. No, we can’t change someone’s psyche. But we can refuse to admit them into civil society. No producer or distributor should handle Polanski’s work until he submits himself to the law. That goes for every artist who acts in a morally repugnant way. For me, no work of art, however great, can justify this kind of behavior.
@mischiefmanager: Huh? You have misunderstood me. I think Polanski should be subject to the law, and should come back and do his time. Where do I say his art justifies his behavior? Do I think he’s an exceptional film director? Yes. Do I think he’s a child-rapist who should be held accountable? Yes. There is no contradiction there.
People that other themselves, or otherwise feel entitled to a special set of rules, are not artists: they are assholes.
@Diziet_Sma: “You can’t MAKE a person how you want them to be, unfortunately.” and “I think that part of the psychological makeup of an ‘artist’ is selfishness.”
So I think we’re in agreement. I’m saying that maybe we can’t change anyone’s psyche but we can make sure that they pay a price for their selfishness when that amounts to criminal behavior. I didn’t see you saying in those two posts what you say explicitly later down the thread, but I apologize if I misunderstood your stance.
Really? I thought: “And just to add, I am NOT defending Polanski, nor any other ‘artist’. Also, I do not think of them as being special human beings,” was pretty clear. But whatever, apology accepted.
PS, this was a brilliant and beautiful (if tragic) post.
Thanks for this, PS. It was relieving to read. Although I’m not famous, I am an artist, and reading all those names on the petition sent me into my own freak out. I wrote about it here: http://jessicaferris.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/polanski-god-auster-me-a-kind-of-free-association/
Now that some time has passed, this is what’s sticking with me: most artists in the world did not sign that petition.
And Emma Thompson? Appears to have had a change of heart!
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/11/emma-update.html