SALON

Wednesday, Oct 14, 2009 5:15 PM UTC

“He only raped one little girl”

Calvin Trillin's satirical poem is the best response yet to Roman Polanski's Hollywood apologists

By

Topics: Roman Polanski, Broadsheet,

I am sick of writing about Roman Polanski — and I wouldn’t be hurt to learn that you were sick of reading about him. But the story just isn’t going away. Since Broadsheet last covered Polanski, the New York Times published a bizarre piece in which Michael Cieply attempts to convince us that the outrage directed at the filmmaker represents, more than anything, a shift in sexual mores over the past three decades. Cieply uses Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” to make the case that, back in the swingin’ ’70s, we were totally OK with sex between teenagers and adults. (Never mind the obvious issues with using Allen as any kind of social barometer on sexual ethics.) In those days, he argues, we would see Polanski

not so much as a sexual assailant but as someone in the mold of Isaac Davis, Mr. Allen’s character from the movie “Manhattan”: that is, as a normally responsible person who had shown terrible judgment by having sex with a very young, but sophisticated, girl.

There are only two problems with Cieply’s analysis: In “Manhattan,” Allen’s paramour wasn’t 13; in fact, she was on the verge of turning 18. Oh, and one other tiny, pesky thing. The sex in the movie was consensual. For whatever reason, some writers just can’t get their minds around the fact that Polanski (say it with me, readers) drugged and raped a child.

A few days earlier, in the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Cowie, huffy that the arrest caused Polanski to miss the pair’s master class at the Zurich Film Festival, dismissed the director’s crime as one of many “depressing episodes” in the history of cinema. “Such a nice man, always in good humor,” Cowie quotes a baker whose shop Polanski frequents when he’s staying at his Swiss chalet as saying. See? Being friendly to bakers surely makes up for raping a child! And Wednesday morning brought news that Polanski is attempting to finish his current film project, “The Ghost,” from prison. (So much for the argument that locking him up will deprive us of great art.)

So, how do we respond to all these apologists? As I wrote last week, I don’t believe a boycott of all Polanski’s Hollywood supporters is necessary or would be effective. A far better response is Calvin Trillin’s satirical takedown of the pro-Polanski crowd’s self-important hypocrisy. Trillin has always been a master of comic verse, but his recent poem — headlined, “What Whoopi Goldberg (‘Not a Rape-Rape’), Harvey Weinstein (‘So-Called Crime’) et al. Are Saying in Their Outrage Over the Arrest of Roman Polanski” — really lays bare the idiocy and delusion of defending Polanski. He begins by lampooning their protestations that the filmmaker has already “been punished,” by “decades exiled from LA”:

He’ll miss the movers and the shakers.
He’ll never get to see the Lakers.
For just one old and small mischance,
He has to live in Paris, France.

The entire, short poem is must-read stuff (the lines, “Why make him into some Darth Vader/ For sodomozing one eighth grader?” are particularly inspired), but it’s the ending that drives home what’s most offensive about Hollywood’s support of Polanski — the elitist exceptionalism that assumes artists should be above the law:

Celebrities would just be fools
To play by little people’s rules.
So Roman’s banner we unfurl.
He only raped one little girl.

Judy Berman is a writer and editor in Brooklyn. She is a regular contributor to Salon's Broadsheet. More Judy Berman.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 50 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations