Roman Polanski should be thankful that he is not a rugby league footballer or an FM radio announcer. As a director of high-end motion pictures it seems he is subjected to a far different set of moral values than other human beings.
Polanski has recently been detained in Switzerland with the expectation that he will be extradited to the US in order to face charges of having had sex with a thirteen year old girl, charges that have been outstanding since he fled the US over 30 years ago. The nature of his actions is in the public domain; the charge (of which he has pled guilty) is really a very sanitised version of a predatory and abusive crime.
There has been outrage surrounding his arrest. Not outrage that he has evaded justice for so long, but outrage that he has been arrested at all. Polanski has received support from various Hollywood identities along with the French culture minister. Whoopi Goldberg is quoted as describing the incident “was not rape, rape”. Columnists have pointed to the genuine tragedies of Polaski’s life as being mitigating factors in the way in which his crime should be considered. This piece by Lynn Bender, a psychologist with a long history in Lifeline a public telephone counselling service, illustrates that perspective. Certainly, his exposure to the Holocaust and the fact his wife was murdered while carrying his unborn child raise immense sympathy toward him. But the degree to which they may mitigate against his culpability for his crime are a matter for the courts and their informed medical advisors, not public opinion.
Albert Mohler has written an insightful http://www.albertmohler.com/2009/10/03/morality-hollywood-style/ that seeks to reason through the response to this situation.
In Australia we can consider the situation with Bill Henson, who takes nude photographs of children. His photographs were defended by the arts community on the basis that they were ‘art’. Kyle Sandilands, who hosted a radio segment in which a girl was hooked up to a lie detector (and, ironically was probably lied to), was attacked as little better than a child abuser. Andrew Johns, a former rugby league player who some years ago participated in a group sex encounter with a willing young woman who later regretted her actions, was forced to stand down from the media and coaching positions that he held. Polanski violates a thirteen year old girl and has avoided legal accountability for 32 years but has ‘suffered enough’. (Just to be clear I don’t think any of these actions are morally defensible.) The traumas that Sandilands endured during his upbringing seem to invite only derision. Sandiland’s traumas do not come anywhere near Polanski’s, but then neither does his crime.
Some may have thought that the level of public anger to which Henson, Sandilands, Johns and The Chaser television satirists have been subjected represented a new public morality which represented a reversion to older, more stringent standards. But the treatment that some have sought to provide to Polanski and Henson shows that it seems to be a morality subjectively applied by people of certain classes or situations.
This is not universal. There are those from every station who have condemned these situations in the strongest terms. Yet the highest proportion of those who are prepared to defend Polanski, Henson and The Chaser seem to come from the art, culture, performance and intellectual communities. The higher proportion of those prepared to defend Sandilands and Johns come from what could be generalised as the lower more popular classes.
The condemnation of Sandliands and Johns seems to indicate that they are not considered members of the artistic/intellectual classes (which would be obvious to anyone aware of Sandilands and John’s performances over the years). Condemnation of Henson and The Chaser was made at a popular level with the above mentioned groups mostly concerned about censorship. (Interestingly, in death Michael Jackson transended this divide with both the upper and lower classes seemingly willing to set aside his, at best, bizzare behaviour with children.)
This is not to say that the art/intellectual groups control our attitudes or public discourse. The strength of the push-back against Polanski or Henson is proof of that. But our society increasingly looks to these groups as leaders and the shapers of thoughts and attitudes. The guest list for Kevin Rudd’s 20/20 Summit (remember that?) shows their appeal. Yet their attitudes are vastly different from the mainstream, and often at complete divergence with the basics of a biblical worldview.
It will be interesting to see how our society deals with its fascination with celebrity while also dealing with their calls for standards to be applied to them which often they will not apply to everyone.
As we seek to maintain and promote biblical standards in our culture it helps us to know what standards others are seeking to promote, and why.
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