Guess Who Just Found Roman Polanski?

I'm in something of a good mood right now. Two and a half months ago, I placed a hold at my library for the DVD of Rosemary's Baby, the 1968 paranoia piece about the woman who may be carrying Satan's child. Well, someone kept it way past its due date, so I canceled the hold after two months of frustration. But today, here I sit in the library, at the computer, and I know that in about 25 minutes, when I sign off the internet, I can go and pick it up at the counter-- it's finally here!

This may be a little ironic, considering what's happened this week.

You may-- or may not-- be aware that its director, Roman Polanski, one of the most gory directors in history, was recently arrested at an airport in Switzerland in connection with a statutory rape case extending back through time into that rather regrettable period known as the seventies. And that there are protestors (I almost typed "protestants..." whoops!) in practically every corner of the celluloid-viewing globe demanding he be released.

Well, I ain't one of them. What he did was absolutely wrong, and not only wrong, but illegal to boot. It's right that he should be punished after thirty years in "exile."

But this is yet another example of a media frenzy over something that has long since past its importance. In interviews, the girl he broke the law with-- at Jack Nicholson's house, no less-- has said that while what he did to her was disgusting, it wasn't him, but rather the media, that destroyed her life.

And what's so objectionable about that interpretation? The media is a notorious swarm of vultures, swooping in and carrying off the carrion of human existence. Polanski had absolutely no legitimate excuse for behaving the way he did, but it was thirty years ago and most of the world has changed. Conservative columnists-- excepting, among others, Charles Krauthammer, but I've got my eye on that loon-- are already pouncing on yet another opportunity to admonish him for laying his wandering hands on an innocent young girl.

Hasn't the opportunity for such admonishment long since passed? He may have a spotty personal life, but I've seen his Macbeth and some of his other work, and I can safely say the man is a creative genius. Why can't we view creative geniuses for the work they produce instead of the shady underpinnings of their personal lives? The only time, to my mind, that such underpinning shadiness has been wholly reflected in work is in the 1960s affair between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor... because her swooning girl-crush nearly ruined the second half of Cleopatra.

But, for those buzzards who will pounce anyway, if you must view his career in the context of his sick crime, pounce on this, and put this in context. In 1969, his (I can't remember which she was) wife or girlfriend, Sharon Tate-- who was eight+ months pregnant-- was viciously stabbed to death by members of the Manson Family. That's nowhere near an excuse for child rape, but the man has enough demons in the past without drumming up new ones through incessant, vulture-esque criticism.

Just let him answer for the crime in the way our society intended: legally, through the system of the courts. If you must boycott his films, do it out of an objection to the content therein and not the man behind the camera. And for crying out loud, never forget the first law of vulture/human coexistence.

Be overtly stupid and you become the carrion.

Now, on to the tale of the Woodhouses and that weird night with the neighbors....