A case of morals

The list of movie stars and other celebs expressing outrage at the arrest of Roman Polanski for drugging and raping a 13 year old girl (he was 44 at the time) and fleeing justice for three decades continues to grow.

A petition in support of Polanski organized by La Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques begins this way:

We have learned the astonishing news of Roman Polanski's arrest by the Swiss police on September 26th, upon arrival in Zurich (Switzerland) while on his way to a film festival where he was due to receive an award for his career in filmmaking.

His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.

Ah yes, "a case of morals." As if he faced imprisonment for buying a bottle of wine on Sunday in a dry county, or for showing a little skin in one of his movies, or purchasing a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Rather than drugging and sodomizing an 8th grader.

Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.

By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this. The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country, where he assumed he could travel without hindrance, undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no-one can know the effects.

Sacré bleu! Don't these américain savages realize that film festivals are international cultural events, and therefore beyond the reach of laws, much less bourgeois moralité? And don't they know that Switzerland is a neutral country? (What's that, Pierre? The age of consent in Switzerland is 16? Meaning that what Polanski did would have been a crime even in that "neutral" country? Oh, Pierre, you are clearly a censorious Puritan prude, whose mind is too small to appreciate art.)

Ahem.

The signatories to the SACD petition are mostly European figures whose names I do not recognize, but they do include such Hollywood luminaries as Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, and Jonathan Demme.

Several other big names have signed the petition in support of Polanski put forth by French journalist and Huffington Post columnist Bernard-Henri Levy. Like the SACD petition, Levy's makes much of the fact that Polanski was in Switzerland to receive an award for his cinematic achievements, as if the ability to tell actors where to stand were a legal defense to rape. He also notes, quite accurately, that Polanski has himself suffered, though he does not explain how this gave the director carte blanche to prey on a young girl.

Levy also asserts that his crime would be beyond the statute of limitations in most European countries, forgetting that (1) Polanski confessed to committing child rape in America, not Europe, and (2) Polanski fled the country to avoid his sentencing, a crime for which there is no statute of limitations.

Grotesquely, Levy calls Polanski a "martyr," which is an odd thing to call someone who has spent the last thirty years taking all possible measures to avoid having to suffer for his actions, much less his beliefs. Martyrs by definition face death rather than forsake their beliefs. If Mr. Polanski believes that forcing his 44-year-old body on a barely pubescent girl whom he had drugged was an honorable act, then he should be willing to defend his actions, and face the consequences. A martyr? More like one of the lions.

Levy's petition has been signed by Harrison Ford, Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera (who should know better); Taylor Hackford (writer/director of Ray); Jeremy Irons, Sam Mendes (American Beauty); Mike Nichols (Charlie Wilson's War, The Birdcage); Natalie Portman (Harvard class of 2003); and Steven Soderbergh (The Informant, Traffic, the Ocean's Eleven movies).

[English version of the Levy petition; French version with a more complete listing of signers].

Depressing isn't it? To lighten your mood, here's Chris Rock, summing things up nicely:

John Podhoretz has some related thoughts over at The Weekly Standard, and this Mark Steyn column on Polanski is typically informative, astute, and funny.