Roman Polanski

[Yossarian]

Feb 13, 2009 15:02:36 GMT -4 Wol said:

Feb 13, 2009 8:31:04 GMT -4 Dr. Freude said:

And while he did have a horrific childhood, many other people in Nazi-occupied Europe did as well, and they didn't go on to sexually violate a 13-year-old. He really repulses me.

He also had recently lost his wife and unborn child under horrific circumstances. Just his WWII experiences alone did not shape his psyche.

Imo, we view Polanksi's crime thru the prism of current standards of behavior, but the 70s in Hollywood were quite different. Polanski was accused of rape in 1978; just 3 years earlier, in 1975, in the film Shampoo, Warren Beatty's character hooks up with Carrie Fisher, who was 17 at the time but looked a lot younger, and this was a popular film reflecting the sexual mores of the time, and no one batted an eyelash. In 1971 Don Johnson starting f**ing Melanie Griffith when she was 14. I'm not saying Polanski's crime is excusable, but I think he got caught when other people did not, for whatever reasons.

And as for his marriage to Emmanuelle Seigner when she was only 22, they have been married for almost 20 years.

And let's not forget dear Mick Jagger hooking up with MacKenzie Phillips when she was a teenager and cooing into her ear that he "had wanted her since she was ten." Different times. I'm not excusing Polanski (or Mick) but there wasn't quite the pedophile panic then that there is now.

[roseland]

I disagree, actually. I was a teenager in the 70's and any man Polanski's age who hit on me would have been looked upon with disgust. And I daresay, he would have been visited with some very irate relatives after the fact. Perhaps Hollywood standards are different but I'm not willing to give anyone a pass based on what Hollywood thinks is moral or immoral. The man was in his 40's and he was sleeping with teenagers. I can't think of anyone I knew that would have thought that was acceptable.

[realitybug]

Feb 13, 2009 15:02:36 GMT -4 Wol said:

Feb 13, 2009 8:31:04 GMT -4 Dr. Freude said:

And while he did have a horrific childhood, many other people in Nazi-occupied Europe did as well, and they didn't go on to sexually violate a 13-year-old. He really repulses me.

He also had recently lost his wife and unborn child under horrific circumstances. Just his WWII experiences alone did not shape his psyche.

And people have lost their spouses/children/both and don't rape children.

NO EXCUSE. Still wrong. I don't care about the "times" or his "horrific experiences." He's still an awful person who committed an awful crime and ran away from his punishment.

[Mouse]

This is a town and an era when Tatum O'Neal was regularly abused by her dad, and nobody lifted a finger to help her.

IMO, the victim's mother should be ashamed of herself for putting her child in that situation.

[Yossarian]

Feb 13, 2009 20:37:04 GMT -4 roseland said:

Perhaps Hollywood standards are different but I'm not willing to give anyone a pass based on what Hollywood thinks is moral or immoral. The man was in his 40's and he was sleeping with teenagers. I can't think of anyone I knew that would have thought that was acceptable.

I think that's the point though: Hollywood standards were different. People were pushing sexual boundaries and seeing how far they could go. These guys - Jagger, Beatty, Polanski, O'Neal - thought they were invincible and irresistible to the opposite sex. And there were parents unwilling to stand up for their daughters and protect them. I'm sure it still goes on now but not quite so openly. Can you imagine today's Jack Nicholson or Warren Beatty partying with Dakota Fanning or Miley Cyrus? No, but in the 70s those guys were openly hanging out with Brooke Shields and Drew Barrymore (and she was tiny!) at clubs and at parties sharing alcohol and drugs. If that happened so openly today, the media would be on those guys. There's no grey on that issue now but then, in the 70s, in those circles morals were being tested and negotiated - and until Polanksi's arrest those guys weren't really called on their behaviour. I'm not excusing it but I think you have to put it in context.

[roseland]

I guess I'm not sure what you mean about context. It was still viewed as wrong but perhaps not as wrong as it is in their own peer group. I think that goes on today, as well. I remember reading that book written by Heidi Fleiss' prostitutes about Don Simpson. He was apparently into heavy S&M, where prostitutes were paid a huge amount of money but basically came back from a weekend completely battered and bruised and would sometimes need to be hospitalized. One women made a comment that rich people can break the laws because they have the money to just pay people to do consensually what would otherwise be against the law. So I think there is still plenty of aberrant behavior that goes on in Hollywood that gives the stars a complicit okay to do things that the rest of the world deems as outrageous and illegal but it doesn't mean that I have to view their behavior through that prism. They know what they're doing is wrong, they just don't care.

[Yossarian]

I mean, the context of their peers. The guys Polanski was hanging out with didn't express any outrage or question his behaviour: Nicholson admitted to knowing the girl was in his house with Polanski and didn't think it was odd or anything. Even Angelica Huston was kind of "oh, well" about the whole thing. Those guys got away with a lot and it was all dressed up as liberated free love. Anything goes. I don't think that attitude extended generally to the wider community (although that was the era when NAMBLA was founded and OZ published accounts of child-adult sex) but in Hollywood sex divorced from monogamy and bourgeois values was all the go. Nowadays, male celebs can apparently getting away with beating up their girlfriends but a screwing a thirteen year old? Up the butt? I doubt too many celebs would be coming out the woodwork to defend that one.

[Ginger]

And let's not forget dear Mick Jagger hooking up with MacKenzie Phillips when she was a teenager and cooing into her ear that he "had wanted her since she was ten."

Whatever fantasies he had about her, he waited until she was a full 18 years old until he made any kind of advance toward her. Mick Jagger: Role model.

[hal9000]

Feb 13, 2009 22:21:05 GMT -4 Yossarian said:

I mean, the context of their peers. The guys Polanski was hanging out with didn't express any outrage or question his behaviour: Nicholson admitted to knowing the girl was in his house with Polanski and didn't think it was odd or anything. Even Angelica Huston was kind of "oh, well" about the whole thing. Those guys got away with a lot and it was all dressed up as liberated free love. Anything goes. I don't think that attitude extended generally to the wider community (although that was the era when NAMBLA was founded and OZ published accounts of child-adult sex) but in Hollywood sex divorced from monogamy and bourgeois values was all the go. Nowadays, male celebs can apparently getting away with beating up their girlfriends but a screwing a thirteen year old? Up the butt? I doubt too many celebs would be coming out the woodwork to defend that one.

Yeah, I always thought a reason why Polanski did and does have mainstream, successful, legitimate people flocking to work with him was because, at the time - this stuff went on all the time, and they knew it. Partying with barely teens, plying them with drugs and alcohol, going on to have sex when the lines of consent if not ignored are not even drawn? Par for the course for many these men and women.

Bear in mind that I'm not excusing these behaviours, or do I think it is reasonable, appropriate or anything of that ilk - but the levels of hedonism in the 1970s were truly mind-boggling.

[Yossarian]

Feb 13, 2009 23:09:49 GMT -4 Ginger said:

And let's not forget dear Mick Jagger hooking up with MacKenzie Phillips when she was a teenager and cooing into her ear that he "had wanted her since she was ten."

Whatever fantasies he had about her, he waited until she was a full 18 years old until he made any kind of advance toward her. Mick Jagger: Role model.

Yeah, it's a weird day when Mick Jagger is the fine upstanding citizen among his cohort.