Weighing In: The Polanski Petition and the Semantic Divide
Right now, I’m supposed to be doing two things: 1.) Recovering from a heinous case of the flu, and 2.) Writing up my TIFF reviews. Instead, I’m caught up in the anger and confusion of the Polanski arrest and subsequent petition for his release.
It’s a horrible position to be in. To feel vindicated that he finally got what was coming, and yet also to see why the petition has merit. It’s awful to watch people get caught up in the mob mentality of baying for his blood and wanting to be a part of that, too.
For the record, I would like nothing more than to see Polanski strung up by his balls while a rabid skunk gnaws on his face. Rape is rape. Rape of a thirteen year old is rape. There’s none of this “rape-rape” distinction bollocks. Rape is rape is rape and should be punished as such. Have I said rape enough that you’re starting to get the picture? Or do you need the added bonus of drugging and sodomy? As if one violation weren’t enough.
The fact of the matter is that Polanski should have been arrested and put to work in the salt mines years ago. Without a canary. But that’s not what I’m seeing the backlash against. Well, not solely.
There’s a little matter of the petition.
Le cinéma soutient Roman Polanski / Petition for Roman Polanski
For some bizarre reason, the list of signatories is a large, practically incomprehensible block of text with no indication of exactly how many people have signed. That’s not the issue. The issue is that of the names on there, some of them are people many of us admire (Tilda Swinton, Pedro Almodovar, Alfonso Cuaron, Natalie Portman, just to name a few), some are people whose name we see on that list and think Well, of course he’d be there (Woody Allen, anyone?), and some of them are people who the North American-centric people haven’t heard of and would have ‘no problem never supporting again because they’re nobody Europeans’. (Paraphrased and not sourced because I got incensed and closed the window after reading that quote. Ass.)
I have seen in so many places people lashing out at the people who have dared to sign the petition: They support child rape! They’re no better than Polanski himself! They all must be pedophiles! They want to see your children raped! How can they support such a monster?!
How can we ever watch a movie with/by [X] again without knowing that he/she supports such a despicable pervert?
The answer is, simply, you don’t have to.
The petition is nothing to do with what Polanski did. I admit, I was shocked when I, having not read the petition itself, saw all those names of people I admire coming out in support of freeing Polanski. I felt nauseous thinking about all those movies I’d never be able to watch without a twitch at the back of my mind pointing out all the assholes on the screen.
Then I read the petition.
I have always said that anyone who turns to Hollywood and Celebrities for political or legal information and opinions are Dumbass Morons. If you want information, look it up your damn self and don’t rely on some pretty mouthpiece to tell you what to think, because if there’s one thing clear about the spotlight: it makes you dumb.
The petition is poorly phrased and, in places, completely misleading. It has information that should not be in a formal petition which skews the message into a bad place. It is, in short, a fairly terrible petition, semantically speaking.
The petition, when read without the overwhelming urge to flay Polanski and rub salt in his wounds, is not about Polanski at all. It’s about the arrest, not who or what the arrest was for. It is very simply, about the fact that filmmakers need to be able to go to film festivals to present their films without worrying about political backlash from any number of directions.
The fact that Polanski was the first filmmaker to be arrested in such a way is damning for the cause and presents a slippery slope for any other filmmaker who may be presenting a film with an undesirable view of his or her home country, political or religious factions, or any number of subjects or reasons.
If you replace “Roman Polanski” with “Salman Rushdie” a majority of people would be all over that petition like white on rice. He wrote a book, he fled the country. The only difference is that his life literally was in danger, and he didn’t have a poorly worded petition on his tail. (Also the lack of rape in his story.) My argument stands.
If Salman Rushdie had been arrested in a neutral country and extradited back to a place where he would face the death sentence, this petition would stand as is.
But, there are two things I’m seeing a lot of people get caught up on. First, is the second paragraph:
His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.
Calling ‘rape’ a ‘case of morals’ is just plain stupid. Admittedly, this comes from a Western background where, ideally, rape is Just Not On. (The facts and statistics that point out that that this just isn’t true for anyone except women are cause for another post, which I am absolutely not qualified to write.) In what seems to be an effort to not make the petition about the fact that Polanski plead guilty to a rape charge, the writer of the petition has highlighted the fact.
Strike one.
Filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians – everyone involved in international filmmaking – want him to know that he has their support and friendship.
There is absolutely no cause for this to be in the petition. Given what the petition is actually about, the arrest and extradition from a neutral country, and not about the crime itself, then the support and friendship of the filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians – everyone involved in international filmmaking** is absolutely irrelevant.
Strike two.
Had this petition been launched with any case other than Polanski’s, it would have had the potential to unite the filmmakers of the world against improper arrests and the potential for them to be used as censorial acts.
Unfortunately, we got Polanski. And instead of being able to unite against potential censorship and the danger future filmmakers may find themselves in, we get to rage at Tilda Swinton for daring to put her name to a petition that doesn’t know it’s arse from a hole in the ground.
So, while I agree that Polanski should absolutely face justice and serve his time, I cannot condone the arrest under the circumstances. It’s a paradox of Schrödinger’s proportions. And that, of course, can only lead to an angry, brainsore mob.
**(So, technically, that includes me. Thanks for asking. DENIED. See: Nads & Rabid Skunk)
Sci-Fi Necrolepsy: I was only a little bit dead.
I promised myself I wasn’t going to go on and on and on about what I don’t like on film, and focus on the things I do like, but the mental rant I keep returning to when I’m wandering about doing nothing things is the concept of death in Sci-Fi (as a genre).
Sci-Fi’s relationship with death is disturbing. The fact that any character who’s killed off for some reason or other can just be brought back and carry on as though nothing was wrong sucks any emotional impact out of any dangerous situation the characters may be put in. I find myself unable to worry about the main characters in most Sci-Fi beyond a simple ‘oh, how are they going to get out of this one?’ which usually develops to ‘oh, that’s how they got out of that one. Hey, wow, I have solitaire on this computer.’ This is usually due to the fact that, if they do die, they’ll most likely be back in some form or other, or, if they’re main characters, they were never really in any danger to begin with.
As a viewer, I tend to develop attachments to my favourite characters. It’s what we do; how we interact with the shows on more than just a passive level. These attachments (relationships, not in an erotomaniacal sense, perhaps?) are what keep me invested in the show and its relative success. As I stated in a previous entry: Movies are a one night stand, Television is an abusive relationship. The emotional highs and lows are what keep me coming back to television time and time again. If I can’t get those emotional highs and lows because I can never really worry about the welfare of the characters, then the entire thing becomes a moot point and I’m essentially watching sexless porn. (My, those actors are pretty, I wonder what ridiculous situation they’ll be put in next. Ho hum.)
Occasionally, character resurrections are done well within the context of the piece. I’m thinking mostly Buffy* (s1, pretty lame, but s6 dealt with it well), and Alien: Resurrection (sure, the movie was average, but the resurrection was handled relatively well, plus: Dourif and Perlman, ftw). I’m sure there are others, but these are the ones my brain has, inexplicably, decided to focus on. Anyway, the reasons these resurrections worked? Because they dealt with the ramifications of bringing someone back from the dead, something which a lot of Sci-Fi doesn’t really do.
Take, for example, the Stargate universe. Characters are yo-yo-ing in and out of this and other plains of existence, blown to itty bitty pieces and cloned, misplaced, found under a rock on a distant planet covered in cream cheese and doing the hula. (Okay, maybe that last one’s an exaggeration.) The deaths in these series ultimately mean nothing. If the characters can just pop back into the canon with minimal fuss, then it’s the sci-fi equivalent of stepping out of the shower and finding out it was all just a dream. It really feels like I’m being cheated out of an emotional response. If I can’t mourn for a character (yes, yes, fiction, stfu), then what’s the point in feeling anything for any of the characters?
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy watching the shows (well, I enjoy Sheppard and McKay, and they have the least likelihood of anything bad ever happening to them, see: guano loco fans having the writers guts for garters, then deploy the plot armour, allons-y Alonzo), but I can never really get past it being like a coffee table book; pretty and an excellent conversation starter, but not really having any lasting impact unless it’s thrown with great force at a dissenter’s head.
Sometimes, a death will come along, and you’ll know it’s a ‘real’ death. (Spoilers: highlight to view. Yes, even five+ years later.) Anya in the Buffy s7 finale, Buffy’s mother in the episode which proved that people don’t need a musical cue to feel complex emotions, Fred in Angel, which technically isn’t a death but still the removal of a character. I’m sure there are more, but my brain is wired to the Buffy and Stargate ‘verses at the moment, strangely. The removal of these characters, without possibility of resurrection, leaves a lasting emotional impact which lingers on in the minds and emotions of the characters, making it real and painful for them, and ultimately making it real and painful for us, as the audience.
What it all boils down to, and this is my major problem, is that death is the thing, the Big Thing, which informs the way we act and react. It is what makes us fear and worry for characters on the screen and gives us that connection to them when they’re in peril. If death is taken away as being the ultimate emotional trauma (and, yes, there are other ways to put the characters and audience through the emotional wringer, but death tops the list), then how can we connect with them on all the other levels the writers expect us to?
Death absolutely must be a constant. Without it, the characters are just fighting to not have a shitty death+resurrection/return scene, which, in the grand scheme of things, sucks donkey balls with a hoover in a black hole.
*Does Buffy count as Sci-Fi? s4, maybe, but, whatever.
Movies are a one night stand. Television is an abusive relationship.
Television.
I’m sometimes appalled by how much I love television. Well, not all television; I’m not as enamoured with some genres as I am with others, I don’t particularly care about the wheeling and dealing the buyers and planners do to get the content on air (as long as they don’t sacrifice whichever show I’m watching to make way for ad content; Channel Seven, I’m looking at you), and I have very definite preferences about what I like within a show. I’m always trying to qualify what I watch and why because, ironically, the thirty second grabs for current affairs shows have me convinced that television is inherently evil. Granted, I’m not twelve any more and I don’t have to run what I’m watching past Mum (even then, her approach was that if I could present a cogent and coherent argument for why I wanted to watch something, I was allowed to watch anything. Anything.), but I still have the, perhaps bizarre, notion that watching TV will rot my brain and turn me into some slobbering, hip-jutting, gum-popping, trend-following, moron wearing a cheap, Supre ‘Girls on Film’ t-shirt without any idea that it’s a song about pornography by Duran Duran and not an assertation of feminism and support of Helen Mirren.
I prefer to think that’s not the case. I prefer to think that Television is a pit stop between here and there; disseminating ideas and information in bullet point so that I can go to a more reliable source and find out more. This is as much applicable to fictive television as it is to the news and documentaries. Actually, probably more so since I don’t rely on television (in the broadcast sense) to bring me documentaries and the news as it stands is barely a step above tabloid journalism in its current sensationalist nature: disaster! disaster! injustice! sport. weather. human interest!
It’s really not that much different from the “issues based” drama I’ve seen in my time; it takes a little longer to disseminate, but it makes the same points, but with more over-acting and fewer … well, I can’t actually think of what there’s fewer. SVU practically does panel discussions, 24 does intercuts, and most of them have intractable, perfectly coiffured hair. Dramatic television shows take on social and political issues at greater depth, and often greater (if biased, but when is anything in the media not biased?) accuracy. Why am I supposed to believe that there is any less merit in watching narrative television rather than the news?
I have no idea.
But, anyway. I didn’t actually want to get caught up in a rant about the news. At least I managed to avoid reality television; that would probably have just been a vitriolic deluge of bilious invective, which, while fun, probably wouldn’t have helped.
But, I digress.
Leadership. Television.
There are shows I watch with regularity. There are shows I watch on and off. There are shows I fell hard for in the beginning, but stopped watching for one reason or other. There are shows that annoy me, shows that I adore beyond reason, shows that make me want to put the remote through the TV screen with great force, and shows that don’t even rate a seconds pause when I flash through.
A lot of the time, it comes down to two things: writing and character. I can forgive a lot of things if its well written and the characters are owned by the actors. Sure, I’ll point out the flaws and mock them within an inch of their lives, but I’ll generally keep watching.
There are, of course, a few exceptions.