Is Roman Polanski finally going to receive the blackballing from the arts community that he has long deserved? The film director has been expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (home of the Oscars), “in accordance with the organisation’s standards of conduct”. Bill Cosby, recently found guilty of aggravated indecent assault, has also been expelled, while Harvey Weinstein was ejected in 2017.
Polanski’s expulsion, which he’s appealing against, comes as a welcome surprise. I, for one, have come to think of him as “the A-list Savile who got away”. Since fleeing from the US in 1978, while awaiting sentence for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old actress, Samantha Geimer, Polanski has lived and worked freely around Europe. There may have been incidents here and there – a couple of months’ jail time after a failed extradition request from the US; a public protest outside his career retrospective in Paris – but Polanski continued to be feted and rewarded, winning a best director Oscar in 2003.
Then there’s the other kind of freedom that Polanski has enjoyed – the lack of censure, even sympathy and petitions, from rich and famous creative peers. Forgive me if I misrepresent the pro-Polanski rationale, but there were times when the general theme seemed to be: “He made some great films/ It was so long ago/ He paid the price by being a fugitive from America, so does it matter that he sexually assaulted a child?”
Back on Planet Sane, however much you rate Polanski’s work (and I do), and however sympathetic you feel about him not being allowed to visit his celebrity mates in Los Angeles (I don’t), his assault on a child mattered. What also mattered were the double standards periodically swirling up from the dumber corners of the global artistic community. While the (admittedly far more numerous) crimes of Jimmy Savile were condemned, people tied themselves into artsy liberal knots over Polanski. It’s as if sexual assault suddenly becomes less criminal and devastating when it’s committed by an acclaimed film director, rather than a creepy British radio DJ in a stained tracksuit.
What could only be described as a “creative food chain” attitude to sexual crime – it doesn’t count as much if talented people, whose work you like, do it? – was not only bewildering and disgusting, but also dangerous, setting a precedent for ugly Hollywood attitudes, or at least entrenching ones that were already there.
Indeed, the straight line from what Polanski was allowed to get away with and, years later, what the likes of Weinstein thought they were allowed to do cannot be ignored. Those who gave Polanski any sympathy or support over his “persecution” should probably also congratulate themselves on helping to embolden predatory entitled characters such as Weinstein. So, bravo to the Academy for belatedly crying “cut” on Polanski. As for his numerous apologists, perhaps we could rustle up a slow handclap from the stalls.
• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist
