Roman Polanski taken into custody - Page 12

Getting them drunk and drugged up is "a more loving way"?

It's the only way.

I'm not trying to psychoanalyze Polanski or anyone else, I was making a general statement about rape.

However, seeing as we're on the subject, what he did was absolutely about power. Rape doesn't have to include violence or force to be about domination. Emotional manipulation counts. Coercion using drugs and alcohol count. Using a position of power (like a teacher, a therapist or being a very famous director) to control a victim counts.

Yeah, Polanski pretty obviously thinks it's ok to have 'loving' relationships with young girls. That's about power too. Older men obsession about very young girls and women (even those over the age of consent, if they are turned on by the idea of fucking someone much younger than them) is about being in a position of power. Without derailing the thread (as in, if you actually want a discussion with me about this, take it to PM), I have a lot of experience dealing with men like this and I do know what I'm talking about.

I know you're not condoning what he did and I respect that you're putting forward a good argument, but Polanski is far from unique in the way he thinks about young women, and I think it's safe to say that it is about both sex and power.

By the way, I'm European. We tend to have a more relaxed attitude to sex and have lower ages of consent, but I don't know anyone who would fuck a 13 year old with consent or otherwise. In England the age of consent is 16, but it's generally considered pretty creepy to have sex with someone that young unless you're a teenager yourself.

Jesus, Dickson. Don't join the "shove words in your mouth" brigade. You're better than that.


If you'd watched any of the material surrounding this, you'd know what I meant. He ideally likes to carry on relationships with these girls. He doesn't want to just quietly fuck them and leave them in a ditch or something. He'd like to date them, parade them around town, and generally treat them like a regular old girlfriend.

Of course, a "simple" act of sharing some champagne and pills is a WHOOOOOOOOLE lot different with your 24 year old girlfriend vs. your 13 year old "girlfriend." Hence, the "confusion" I alluded to.


But, paint me as a "rape fan" if it makes you all feel better. You're only selling your reading comprehension skills short.

Dude, you're genuinely coming off as a lunatic. You put the word "rapist" in quotes a few posts back. If he was a frat boy who was doing the same thing, I promise you would not be talking about how "Oh, it's ok, sure he's 22 and she's entering 7th grade, but it's born of CONFUSION. Otherwise, him giving her whiskey and rohypnol would disturb me."

Oh no, I'm not painting you as a rape fan, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression. I just don't see how what Polanski did could be considered "loving". It involved subterfuge and manipulation, both with the victim and the victim's mother. It may not have been a violent rape, but it was a rape nevertheless, regardless of what his motivations may have been.

Joey never described Polanski's crime as loving. He described Polanski's psychological attitude towards younger girls as loving. Seriously, just read the post.

This is such a misrepresentation of the guy's opinion. Fucking Hell, people.

Well, then submit my offense to the English department or writing lab or whatever. You know very well I didn't put those there because I think rape isn't serious.

Yeah, I just meant that from his perspective he sees most of what he's doing as loving. That's his goal, anyway. Obviously in no way at all is what he did loving. (I guess I should say "allegedly" since his account is obviously very different, but I'm not even going there. Mostly because I don't believe it.)

His ultimate goal would be a loving companionship that is peaceful. There are a lot of "rapists" (like that, LD?) who's ultimate goal is to terrorize and very overtly assert control and power over their "victim."*


*Those quotes are there, LD, because honestly, don't they ALL enjoy it a little bit? I mean, the nerve endings and what not. You can't HELP but love it just a little. Right, LD? Right?



ETA: And with that, I'm done. We're nearing lap 247 here, and I'm a bit ashamed I re-entered the "race" here. Off to watch Knife in the Water or something to take my mind off this.

No, that isn't what I said at all. I also go on to say that I'm not launcing a defence of Polanski.

My point is that Polanski, Nicholson, Beatty and others were documented for their lewd behavior at the time. Yes that lewd behavoir included having sex with girls that were not legally of age. Polanski was brought into an enviroment in which that was treated as acceptable. He, as we know, took that a step further and decided to drug an underaged girl and have anal sex with her.

I don't see where in my original post I said that the two were equal at all. What I was doing was providing background information for his and other celebrities behavior at the time.

You're wonderfully unhinged. You put the quotes there because, for some stupid reason, you think that raping a girl with the best of intentions is a lesser crime than "real"* rape.

*See that? That's how you used it. You can go back on it now, and I suspect that would be more in line with how you feel in real life, but you're still a nut.

That's fair enough and I understand where you're coming from. I'm sorry (to anyone else in the thread I've snapped at a little as well) but this issue makes me very angry, particularly because of all the support he's getting from the film community.

Everyone loses when we resort to name calling.

Reminder: This is one of the smartest boards on the internet. Act like it, my babies.

FUCK YOU PHIL


I am joking please don't get fucked Phil

Which makes it even more creepy. Polanski obviously needs serious help.

I guess Polanski's Daycare and Dating Service is closer to reality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX41RQxKbEQ

Not at all, maybe I should've clarified my point better but I wasn't trying to equate the two, nor provide an excuse for the man.

To further what James was saying -- and I say this as one of the anti-Polanski people -- Beatty, Evans, Nicholson, Hopper, Bogdonavich, et al, are/were just as unrepentant about their actions as Polanski is. This doesn't make it okay, but that shit was pervasive. I just think that there's a really ugly side to a lot of the seventies era of filmmaking that doesn't get talked about because the movies were so good.

I'm reluctant to lump in their sexual proclivities as "an ugly side" to filmmaking, though. There's the craft, there's the industry, and there's the lifestyle.

This is all true, but to lean too heavily on it might make it seem like what Polanski did is really just a matter of degrees. (And I say this as someone who once made the exact same point that James is making on this board, but now sees some big problems with bringing it into the conversation at all.)

This lax attitude can begin to explain the fact that these guys were having consensual sex with underage girls, but nothing more. While there are all kinds of problems with this, number one being that underage girls can't legally (or, arguably, intellectually or emotionally) grant consent in these situations, I can see how the environment might make this behavior seem acceptable. After all, not every minor who's had sex with an adult suffers longstanding emotional damage. It's the same thing with rock groupies of the era. They were largely underage (although generally a bit older than a barely-teenage 13), and many of them, by their own accounts, came out relatively unscathed.

But what this lax attitude does not begin to explain is flat-out, not-of-the-statutory-type rape. The environment may have fostered his understanding that a consensual relationship with an underage girl was appropriate, but that's where it ends. To harp on the environment too much can (if unintentionally) connote that Polanski is guilty of having sex with an underage girl (but, hey, everyone was doing it!) rather than raping an underage girl.

Allow me to be a dick and problematize your otherwise excellent point - having sex with an underage girl is always rape. Because, as you said, they can't consent. I don't know exactly what my point is, but I thought it needed saying. Now I'm going to get the hell out of here before I start yelling.

"But he seems to do it in a more loving way."

Yeah, yeah, I know you are not promoting or excusing rape, but damn ... what a quote.

What if she's your cousin and you marry her?

Then you must have great balls of fire!

Is it though? Forgive my misunderstanding of US law but wasn't Polanski charged with Sex with a minor, which is a different charge from Rape?

I don't care about legal terminology here. He had sex with another human being against her will. He raped her. The end. in fact, I'm pretty sure they call it "sex with a minor" to underscore how super-bonus rapey it is to have sex with a child against her will.

Christ.

Satiatory Rape is what I beleive he is charged with, correct?

I'm real nervous 'cause it sure is fun...

Still this! That's December 14th and it's worth finding if you can get a copy. You'll probably have to go to a library, which will make Miss Z happy. Also, there are a number of great links earlier in this thread that are worth checking out, plus, you get a side of Phil-Brad-Doug-Luca one-liners and witty banter.

I found this too, from one of my first postings in this thread:

And yet, I suck at the track.

He plead guilty to "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor" (the California equivalent of "statutory rape") but this was based on a plea bargain arranged by the girl's attorney in an effort to preserve her anonymity. The original charges were likely far more representative of what actually occurred according to the girl, which is flat-out rape by any definition of the word.

At the risk of getting the stank from this thread on me again, I just wanted to piggyback on Zooey's point by saying that despite the per se nature of the statutory rape charge (meaning that any adult who engages in a sex act with a minor is criminally liable, regardless of mistake in age or any "consent" given), the law isn't blind to the circumstances of a particular crime. Prosecutors like statutory rape when it's available because of its efficiency, but there should be no implication that it's "different" because it's not "rape" (which would be disingenuous to say anyway).

Sentencing guidelines will allow for the judge to consider all of the elements to decide whether certain stuff like, oh, say, drugging the victim, aggravated the nature of the act. It's the system's way of allowing for a conviction to be more than a rubber stamp.

So the point is not what "crime" he committed necessarily, but how the punishment should be meted out commensurate with his conduct, which is the point of criminal laws in the first place.

Christ.

Apologies, my post made it seem I was being confrontational when I wasn't. It's the problem with law that it starts throwing up tricky questions like that. In the eyes of the law Polanski isn't a rapist. It's not what he's been charged with afterall (Even though he was in the start).

You'd call what he did Rape, and I'd certainly call it rape. But in the eyes of the law he isn't. I'm not saying I agree with it but it shows how hard it is to deal with shades of grey within the law.

Post withdrawn.

I just...It's like...I mean....

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Yeah, long story short (and this is what my post was about last night): He's a rapist under California law. There's really no shades of grey about that whatsoever.

Guys when is rape rape I don't know anymore

Godammit Jake you're making it really hard to not call you a rapist!

Yeah of course I know he's a rapist. I'm just amused by the (Very thin) legal distinction between the two. Like was said above, it's just a more classy way of saying rape.

So, not to throw fuel on the fire, but is there anyone here that genuinely believes that Polanski was the victim that 'Wanted and Desired' painted him as? I know the doc got excellent reviews, and though I found it pretty distasteful (Not least of all for the thinly veiled attack on his victim) I'm sure there are some people that came away with a different understanding of the case.

In layman's terms, I've always figured rape is when you want to fuck someone and they don't want you to but you do anyway.

But it's probably more complicated than that.

Well, according to Whoopie Goldberg, there's rape, and then there's rape-rape.