Read the transcript of this Point of View
Rex Murphy Point of View
October 1, 2009
The Roman Polanski arrest in Switzerland has called out some of the best minds on the planet. The artist, as very many people seem compelled to refer to the director of Repulsion and the Fearless Vampire Killers, has whole hordes of the very best people in the flim world recoiling in horror that he’s being asked to – finally – stand before a court for what he did 30 years ago to a 13 year old girl.
W G – why isn’t this woman on the Supreme Court -- does us all a service by declaring it might have been rape but it wasn’t rape-rape. What ever happened to No means No. I guess it wasn’t, in Whoopian terms, a No-No.
I’m not sure myself how she got there – but then most of us do not have Whoopi Goldberg’s brain-brain. But if a brain-brain of that capacity says it wasn’t rape-rape then you can bet the farm-farm and throw in the windmill-windmill that it wasn’t rape-rape.
Now how rape-rape is different from rape is something to torment the wits of a far finer mind than mine, but let that pass.
She said all this on the View. Most people don’t watch the View, it being a kind of cheese-grater for the functioning intellect.
Enough. Here are the undisputed facts. Polanski, 44, forced a 13 year old girl, after feeding her champagne, and then drugging her, into multiple sexual acts. Now to most people’s mind-mind that’s rape, but thanks to the View’s resident legalist, we at least know it wasn’t that other horrible thing rape-rape --- which is probably the worst crime there is, right after …. you know, murder-murder. Murder-murder and rape-rape.
Enough. This is pure Hollywood stupid on a one-night stand with Hollywood arrogance. Over a hundred Hollwood big shots and assorted European film types and one French philosopher are outraged that Polanski is finally being hauled back before the courts he fled. The philosopher pleads that the triple rape was just a “youthful indiscretion” Polanski being a stripling of 44 at the time. Stay away from philosophy kids. It’ll ruin your mind. Others plead the sanctity of “film-festivals” – as if the private-jet, ego-strutting and red carpets of of a film market was a cross between the Wailing Wall and the Vatican. Pam Anderson goes to film festivals.
Woody Allen, auteur of Crimes and Misdemeanours has come out in support of martyr Polanski, auteur of Rosemary’s Baby. I guess if your defenders are the logician Whoopi Goldberg and let’s keep marriage in the family Woody Allen, it’s case closed.
Debra Winger says the “whole art world will suffer” if Saint Roman of the Underaged Quadaludes is brought to justice. Well, let us all cry several rivers.
The international film world – or a good part of it – has lost its mind over this. If they think enlightenment is defending the perpetrator of a triple assault on a 13 year old girl, they are dumber than the majority of their own movies --- and that’s not just stupid: it’s – thanks Whoopi – stupid-stupid.
It’s not that they’re divorced from reality. They have never had a relationship with it in the first place.
For The National, I’m Rex Murphy.
