Okay sharps, you've peppered me with a host of questions and a large dose of paternal disapproval because I disagree with your opinion.
So let's look break it down to:
1) my critique of Polanski and others of his generation of filmmaker artists who used the patriarchal power structures of the film industry and fame to groom and molest children and teenagers
2) your continuing minimisation of female voices where they contradict your patriarchal male socialist heroes.
First of all, technically Polanski is a convicted
hebephile, and accused paedophile. Hebephilia is for pubescent children, as when he anally, orally and vaginally raped a 13-year-old.
Renate Langer also accused him raping her when she was 15. Another woman called "
Robin" accuses him of "sexually victimising" her when she was 16.
Charlotte Lewis said he "forced himself on her" when she was 16. In a
1983 interview with Clive James, you can hear Polanski himself admit he liked young girls and agree it was "only a matter of time" before he got caught (around 42 minutes in) and that now he "makes sure it's legal".
However
Marianne Barnard, the Californian artist, accuses him of sexually molesting her on a Malibu beach when she was ten, and pre-pubescent. I believe she is credible, so therefore believe that Polanski is a paedophile in all definitions of the word.
Polanski's corruption was not only personal, but systemic in the European (and American) film industry at the time. Of course I have seen Polanski's "Chinatown" and been beguiled by it. I also cried at the end of "Death in Venice", where Visconti depicts the death of a man in love with the young boy Tadzio. (The young actor, Björn Andrésen, was 16 at the time and Visconti forced him to visit gay bars and submit to the attentions of older men even though he was straight.) And Pasolini's masterpiece "Salo" featured the abduction of 18 teenagers and their systematic sexual and physical abuse and eventual murder to "depict the decadence of Mussolini's Fascism". And then there was Louis Malle's "Pretty Baby" featuring Brooke Shields as a 12-year-old child prostitute...
You see where I'm going with this? In re-examining the career of prominent British paedophile and molester Jimmy Saville we learnt that he organised every aspect of his personal and professional life around creating access to his victims. If you look again at the making of many of the great arthouse films of the 1970s you can see the same pattern.
We used to joke about a French middle aged director getting 10 million to do a film about a 15-year-old falling in love with a middle-aged film director. And then of course during shooting the 15-year-old would have an affair with the middle-aged film director. At times, film budgets for European films seemed like procurement money.
So yes, I believe Polanski is/was a paedophile. And yes, it was systemic in the industry, as it was in the different patriarchal power structure of the Catholic Church. And yes, many of the men were Communists (like Visconti and -sort of - Pasolini) and Socialists, who believed the young flesh they abused was inconsequential in light of the more important artistic and political questions they were exploring.
Now, since you've been liberal with your views about my way of thinking let me have a coffee and then look at your continuing minimisation of female voices where they contradict your patriarchal male socialist heroes.
