I don’t care, and I don’t think anyone else should, either, that Roman Polanski directed Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, The Pianist and other works of genius. He also drugged a 13-yer old girl, raped, sodomized and fellated her, pled guilty to all of these offenses and then cheated justice by fleeing the United States while awaiting his sentence.
Now other Hollywood geniuses are going public with their support of Polanski, like Woody Allen, who left a Polaroid of Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, naked and spread-eagled for the camera, on the living room mantle for Mom to find. (It’s in the transcript of the ensuing custody trial, which Woody lost, if anyone cares to look it up.) Although Soon Yi was underage when she began having sex with Allen, he argued that her adoption records were inaccurate, and that she was really 19. He also famously said, “The heart wants what the heart wants,” an odd confusion of basic anatomy for a genius.
If Allen, Lynch and other Hollywood pedophilia apologists believe that genius is a defense for contriving to ravish children, maybe there is hope for Phillip Garrido, the pedophile who kidnapped 11-year old Jaycee Dugard and raped, impregnated and imprisoned her for 18 years. Plop a beret on his head, dress him in an Armani suit, teach him to play the saxophone, and presto… he’s a genius! Case dismissed!
How many geniuses does it take to realize that prepubescent and teenage girls are entitled to possess their own evolving sexuality, and that no matter how curious or malleable they may be, molestation by an adult during their young, formative years can cause irreparable damage? Apparently, more geniuses than the film industry has yet to produce.
An adolescent girl who experiments with peer sex is not damaged by it in the same manner as when molested by an adult. It’s her body and her sexuality, so she is entitled to express it. In fact, when her curiosity is satisfied by her own, natural impulses, within her peer group, she generally is empowered, in spite of how disapproving her parents may be. But when the same adolescent is drugged by an older man to whom she is not attracted, and forced into adult sexual activity she neither wants nor is ready to experience, she is not empowered, she is victimized.
It doesn’t matter to me that Samantha Geimer, Polanski’s victim, is now all grown up and wants to “put the incident behind her.” I know from personal experience that forgiveness can be a trick victims play on themselves to escape the trauma reverberating in their memories. All the more reason that society should champion the victim’s cause with at least as much fervor as those in the film industry (and elsewhere) dismiss it.
I can live without another Rosemary’s Baby. But I will not live with the notion that it’s OK for an adult to act out misdirected sexual impulses with children merely because he or she can make a movie.
