Roman Polanski is free again: A victory for art, intellectualism, European sexual mores, and French dudes with a column on HuffPo, no? Um, no—all attempts to hide a convicted rapist who fled sentencing under a pile of shiny Oscar statuettes will not fool Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I! For, as Sady explains in this excellent piece for the Atlantic, Polanski ain't the only predator to hide behind the veil of "art":

Last week, the New York Times reported that Emma Tamburlini, the daughter of artist Larry Rivers, was asking to have videotapes of herself—young, topless, fielding uncomfortable sexual questions from her father about her breasts—removed from her father's archives and destroyed. She referred to them as "child pornography." The director of the Rivers Foundation, David Joel, demurred: "I can't be the person who says this stays and this goes," he said. Nor can Emma Tamburlini be that person, apparently; the current agreement is that the tapes will be shown after her death.

Looks like some priorities are fucked up in the art world! In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady and I are totally on this! So join us as we  "sneak in a little Buttman discussion, and debate the merits of creating art while simultaneously not sexually assaulting people.

—

SADY: Hey! You know what feminist blogs haven't discussed, ever: Roman Polanski.

AMANDA: Nope. Kind of just let that one go. It's been so long, after all!

SADY: Right! If there's one thing I can say for us all, it is that a very famous dude sexually assaulting someone, confessing, being convicted and serving NO SENTENCE WHATSOEVER for this is something that we all just kind of let fade, after a certain point.

AMANDA: That, or convicted criminals who have fled the country gradually gain points for stamina. I think that's a legal thing. Particularly if they spend their 30-year European vacation doing things like making fancy movies!

SADY: Hah, yeah. This is the thing that kind of enrages, about the Polanski thing: The way so many folks were like, "but... he made MOVIES? They were really good!" And I won't deny that those were some really good movies. And that they benefited from having Roman Polanski direct them. The non-Polanski directed sequel to "Chinatown," for example, is just not so good! (Although, you know, kudos to Jack Nicholson for trying. And for not being convicted of rape.)

AMANDA: Generous points for that last detail. But like, how good do the movies have to be for people to excuse the rapist? As you pointed out in your piece, it's not like this happens all that often, but I'm betting that a lot of people would be willing to forgive people who make less than "Pianist" levels of art. Even saying that is ridiculous. THEY'RE MOVIES. Not people!

SADY: Right. I mean, if Tommy "The Room" Wiseau were convicted tomorrow, I doubt we'd be seeing these outpourings of sympathy. Although folks did rally around R. Kelly during his trial, which makes me think that the question is not how good one is, but how famous one is. If it were some random "Law and Order: SVU" directing alumnus, we wouldn't be here. But Le Cause de Polanski has always been framed as this issue of the permissive/enlightened European sophisticates/degenerates versus The Hard-Working Moralistic American People. Which is a take that's been encouraged by both sides, and ends up serving neither.

AMANDA: So there's a little bit more fame-mongering in Bernard-Henri Lévy's free-Polanski intellectualism than he'd like to admit, is what you're saying.

SADY: Oh, goodness me oh my, yes. I mean: How immeasurably has Levy's profile been raised, now that he's A-Number-One Polanski supporter in the public eye and/or the on the Huffington Post? And I'm sure he'd feel above all that, to some degree, but I don't understand why he keeps publishing on the philosophically enlightened and sophisticated HuffPo if he's not eager to get his name out there. I mean, maybe he just feels passionate about this cause, but I feel that demeans him MORE than a desire for HuffPo readership. Which is not something I say often!

AMANDA: I have several original Huffington Post nipple slips in my collection. So I'm covering this obscenity case in D.C. right now, and it's funny how the "art" argument worms its way into the legal pornography debate as well. These jurors have to decide if there's any redeeming artistic or literary or scientific value to the copious milk enemas they've viewed over the course of the trial. And so on cross-examination, the defense is asking witnesses stuff like, "And are you aware that the Adult Video News Awards are the Academy Awards of the adult entertainment industry?" "And are you aware that Buttman has won several of these awards?"

SADY: I SEE.

AMANDA: The whole thing is ridiculous. Like, I'm not against obscenity. But take the absurd "art" defense out of it.

SADY: Right. I mean: That's the thing. Like the Tamburlini/Rivers case that was being reported earlier this week. In that case, you could maybe make a more convincing argument for "artistic value" — an Artist, Recognized As Such, was coercing and pressuring his daughters into participating in uncomfortably sexual video shoots! For his Art! — but we're still not assuming that Art has the right to involve harm to actual human beings in the process of its creation. A person coerced and pressured his daughter into sexual activity, to which she objected. In the case of "obscenity," which is always tricky — even Dworkin didn't fully support banning porn under "obscenity" laws — the Art question can be brought up in defense, however. If it was relevant for Joyce, it's relevant for Buttman, sad to say. Which is what's so infuriating about this: Often, as in the Max Hardcore case, what's being prosecuted is sexual abuse of performers. And then people are like "obscenity laws are unconstitutional; why didn't these performers bring their cases to court?" Whereas if they did, as sex workers, they'd be slut-shamed and devalued and wouldn't stand a chance of winning.

AMANDA: That's true. The tricky thing is when there is legitimate abuse of performers (as in the Rivers case) and then the dissemination of the work in effect constitutes more abuse. Which, again, in any of these cases, the art argument only serves to obscure the issue, right? Are you producing these works with full consent and participation of everyone involved? Or are you abusing people, and filming that? In either case, it doesn't really matter to me if there's zero artistic value there or if it's fucking Shakespeare abusing his kids for "art.”

SADY: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, I think our conception of Artist as Special Person who is obliged or privileged to Stand Outside Of Societal Norms is useful, in some respects. In the respects that you can't just send D.H. Lawrence packing because he uses the fuck-word a lot, or you can't shut down Mapplethorpe because he's showing these queer BDSM images. But it's abused so easily by folks for stuff like the Polanski case, or the Rivers one — the Polanski case being even more indefensible because SEXUALLY ASSAULTING THAT GIRL HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF HIS MOVIES — to argue that These People Can't Be Held To Normal Standards.

AMANDA: Right. It also ends up being really elitist, or in Polanski's case, both elitist and celeb-focused. Like, hey, what if I'm a really shitty artist who works with queer BDSM imagery?

SADY: And I have to admit, most of my off-the-top-of-the-head associations with Artists who we have to Defend Against Charges of Obscenity because they're just outside the norm have to do with very famous men. Kathy Acker, maybe? But maybe not. I don't recall court proceedings, but that may just be the result of insufficient Googling.

AMANDA: Yeah. I mean, the art test is a really fucked up standard for obscenity law in my opinion. Like things we determine to be “good” and things we determine to be “bad” just balance each other out, naturally? And I think the Polanski case is some sort of bizarre extension of the logic—that if art is good enough, it can make anything tolerable. And maybe if Polanski starts making really shitty movies, everyone will have to be like, "Alright, lock him up," on principle.

SADY: Right. And it might just be a case of removing the quality of the art from the equation: Like, if we're testing whether the art in question is "obscene," that can apply to any kind of art with any kind of behind-the-scenes process. As a person who watches the extremely sophisticated Bravo program "Work of Art," I know this. BUT, if we make the question whether the creation and distribution of the "art" (????) objectively has to harm in order to be produced, we can actually legislate on the level of production, not content. And no-one will ever be able to say that this glorious painting made with the entrails of their Gramma deserves serious consideration ever again. I mean, yeah, we should protect "artists" against petty common morality charges. DUR. But "please don't rape anybody" isn't petty. Nor, sad to say, all that terribly common.

Photo via Jacob Freeze, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.o

Jaclyn Friedman is, in short, a feminist rock star. She is the executive director of  WAM!: Women, Action & the Media. She edited the incredible Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, and continues the work of dismantling rape culture in her weekly pro-sex column. She writes as compellingly about taking off her shirt for fun as she does her college sexual assault. And she has been fucking under these conditions for nearly 20 years.

Fucking while feminist presents a peculiar set of challenges for the pro-sex single. How do you talk rape culture on a first date while still managing to get laid once in a while? How do you find the feminist guy who won't self-flagellate to the point of unfuckability? How do you avoid dying alone, basically? Friedman agreed to talk to me about establishing a feminist fucking litmus test, the art of locating non-douchey sex partners online, and the secret perks of fucking a feminist.

Sexist: So I was eating dinner with my boyfriend the other day and I started talking about my opinions on rape kits and shit, and I realized that I could probably never talk about this stuff on a first date with someone I had never met.

JF: And if you were me, you would go the a first date, and he would ask, "So, what do you do?" My online dating profile says that I’ve written a book and I’m writing another one. So they ask about it. And then literally ten minutes into a first date I’m talking about rape culture.

How does that usually work out?

JF: The way I hope it will work is that they ask these initial questions before we meet in person. So then they can go offline and collect their thoughts and then respond to me. My profile says I’m a feminist. So a lot of people who would be really scared off by me, we don’t get very far. When the whole Polanski thing was going down, I had this big argument with a guy about Polanski. First date. And last one.

JF: I would like for there to be a set of feminist litmus tests that I could reference and use to find the right guy. Right now, I feel like I'm in an endless cycle of asking myself, "Am I willing to let this slide?" I'm mostly dating guys right now, which is fairly new for me. From my early 20s to my mid-30s I dated exclusively women and trans men. I'm not romanticizing that, like "it's so much easier with women"—let me tell you, it's not. But it's a different set of questions you have to ask. I don't feel like I can go in to these dates expecting dudes to know as much about feminism or sexuality studies or rape culture, the stuff that I live my life talking about and thinking about. I feel like I’m going to die alone if I do that.

. . . Here is what’s depressing about dating while feminist. Feminism is what I do with my life, it's how I spend my days, it's my job, it's not just an opinion I have among many other opinions. If I had a hardcore litmus test, the pool of men I could date would be so tiny. And then when you weeded out men who are gay, the men I don't find attractive, the men already in monogamous, committed relationships—really, I would never get laid again. So I do feel that I have to try to be flexible out of necessity. But if I were to end up with someone—and I do want a long-term, stable relationship with someone at some point—they would have to be feminist on some basic level. They would have to be.

JF: That would be lovely, wouldn’t it? If I could turn a man feminist with the power of my vagina? It hasn’t happened yet. . . . When I was younger, I dated mostly women and trans men. Those relationships didn’t work out, obviously, they had their own issues. But the feminist thing wasn’t as much of an issue. And the only cisgender man I’ve been in a longterm relationship was a feminist when I met him. We would have feminism arguments where I was educated by him, and vice versa. And I thought, well, how lucky I am to have found a feminist guy! And he ended up being an ass . . . in somewhat unrelated ways.

JF: I'm e-mailing a guy right now I really want to meet who used the word "heteronormativity" in his profile . . . aside from that, which almost never happens, more what I look for is. . . you know the Bechdel Test for films? It states that any good film has to have two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a guy. Well, this is my test: When I look at personal ads, I look at their lists of favorite books, movies, and music, and they have to list women in all of those categories. They don't have to have a majority of women, but they have to know that women exist in the culture and be fans of some of them. It's a pretty low bar—or it should be. I used to look for guys who don’t list Fight Club in their favorites, but I've had to relax that rule, because all dudes evidently love Fight Club. I do draw the line at Ayn Rand. It's more about avoiding red flags than anything else. . . . I also don’t respond to any guy who says they’re looking for a woman who "doesn’t have drama," not because I have a lot of drama, but because I feel like that is code for women who have opinions.

JF: If you Google me, it’s pretty obvious where I stand on the sex stuff. Whenever I end up talking about my work on rape, I also am immediately communicating that I’m a pro-sex feminist. . . . I have been with some men who are surprised that I am, shall we say, less than vanilla in bed . . . A couple of guys were shocked that I like to play various games in bed, because I'm a feminist. That's always really interesting to me. I'm always like, 'Are you kidding me? The feminists I know are the craziest women in bed you can find!" Those are the moments where I feel like a one-woman feminist PR machine. I'm instructing the world one man at a time that feminists are really fun to sleep with.

JF: Oh God. There is a type of feminist guy who is so eager to fall over himself to be deferential to women and to prove his feminist bona fides and flagellate himself in front of you, to the point that it really turns me off. And it makes me sad, because politically, these are the guys that I should be sleeping with! You know what I'm talking about?

YES.

JF: Everyone knows what I'm talking about. And some of them are even really cute! I want to say to them, "If you could be a person, like a whole, complicated person, who I feel like I could crack jokes around, then I would really like you." But they're so serious about their feminism at every moment that I don’t feel like a person to them. I feel like I'm on a pedestal, almost. I know that they're not going to disagree with anything I say under any circumstances. And I don't feel like I can make a raunchy joke about sex, because they'll be horrified. . . . I hate to be critical of our allies in any way, because we need them, but there's something about that certain kind of hyperfeminist guy that makes them unappealing to date, to me. I suspect it has something to do with our internal conceptions of masculinity, which is terrible on my part.

JF: Yes. They haven't internalized their feminism, so it’s always being externalized. And it places a lot of pressure on the women they're with. There's this very self-conscious performance of feminism. And it does sometimes feel like they want a cookie. . . .  OK, I know this is such a delicate conversation to have, but I want those guys to wake up because those are the guys I want to want to sleep with!

JF: . . . What happens to me that drives me up a tree is this: The guys who respond to me and are like, 'You’re awesome. You’re kind of a hellcat." They think it's cool and kind of bad-ass that I'm outspoken and passionate about things. They think that’s really hot. They’re into it. But then when that outspokenness gets applied back to them, it’s suddenly game-over. You know the idea of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl? She's light, and quirky, and she has no inner life of her own, and just there to serve our hero’s development and erotic interests. I sort of feel that I get cast in these dudes' narratives as the Hellcat Dream Girl, there to prove how bad-ass they are because they’re dating such a bad-ass woman. They think it’s cute or sexy. But when I use that smart, outspoken bad-assery to challenge their own perspectives, it’s suddenly not sexy at all. It happens when they say something that I disagree with, and I act like a person and not someone that is playing out their particular fantasies.

It’s happened to me a million times . . . they want it as a trophy. "Hey, look at my bad-ass girl." They don’t want to deal with me as a person. It follows this pattern where it usually comes from a person who seeks me out. They try to seduce me. They think I would be an accomplishment to conquer or something. They seek me out and try to get me interested in them, and then I am, and then they flee. . . . I feel like the same thing happened with the guy I dated for two years. He liked the idea of being a guy who would be with someone like me, but ultimately it turned out that he wanted someone who wouldn’t challenge him as much, a person who was easier and quicker to sweep away. I got evidence of that when, within three months of breaking up with me, he was dating a 23 year old who lists her political views on Facebook as "moderate."

JF: Oftentimes I wonder what the people who know me professionally would think about the compromises I make when I’m dating. I wish this were a live conversation where other feminists were weighing in. I’d like to know what other women are doing. Am I making the right compromises here? Should dating require these sorts of compromises? Is there any tactic that produces better results? . . .  I feel very unsure about what the best way is to live my politics and have a sex life. I really feel in the weeds about it. But it's something I think about all the time, and I don’t feel like I have the answers.

Photo by Anh Dao Kolbe

The 76-year old film-maker, who was unable to attend the awards ceremony because he is under house arrest in his Swiss chalet, sent a pithy acceptance statement via his producers, saying: "Even if I could be there I wouldn't, because the last time I went to a festival to get a prize, I ended up in jail."

Some critics will argue that Polanski won the festival's "Silver Bear" award for best director solely based on the artistic merit of his film, the Ghost Writer, and not at all in order to exonerate him in his 30-year-old sex case. Polanski, apparently, is not one of them, as he continues to dangerously conflate his duel roles as famous film director and famous accused rapist.

To Polanski, the international justice system that has forced him to remain under house arrest until his case is resolved has intentionally victimized him as an artist, thereby denying the world the honor of celebrating the cinematic genius of Roman Polanski. In reality, Polanski didn't "end up in jail"—oh, what a passive victim he's played in this whole charade—because he showed up to receive accolades for his achievements. He "ended up in jail" because he failed to show up to receive punishment for his failures. Polanski isn't allowed to travel to Berlin because it's likely he will slip authorities and never return, like he did last time, and not because a bunch of sore federal governments just don't want poor Polanski to have a nice time for being such a swell director.

The international justice system, actually, is unconcerned with Polanski's creative output—it is exclusively concerned with Polanski's criminal history. In Roman Polanski's world, this singular view of the law is a travesty against art. And so, Polanski attempts to turn winning an award for a movie into a defiant act, a statement against all the critics who would criticize him—not on the basis of his art, but on the basis of him having sex with forcing sex on a 13-year-old and skipping town.

Making great films and sexually assaulting minors are not mutually exclusive activities. This obvious truth has yet to sink in for Polanski, and it probably never will. In Polanski's sad, ski-chalet-confined world, his cinematic gifts should be enough to set him free. Under this strange karmic equation, the benefit a film like the Ghost Writer provides to Berlin Film Festival judges like Werner Herzog and Renée Zellweger somehow balances out the harm Polanski caused to a 13-year-old girl in California 30 years ago. It's unclear whether Herzog, Zellweger, and the festival's other judges chose Polanski as Best Director out of political solidarity or pure artistic appreciation. If it's the former, the decision to honor Polanski sends the bizarre message that making a great film is not as important as making an incoherent political statement regarding your personal problems.

Thanks to Alyssa Rosenberg for pointing to the new trailer for Roman Polanski's upcoming film, "The Ghost Writer." As Rosenberg notes, the movie looks extremely silly, from Kim Cattrall showing up with some sort of non-specific accent, to a sign for the "Fisherman's Cove Inn" ominously swinging in the wind, to Pierce Brosnan acting as blatantly evil as he can possibly get away with. There is a silver lining here, however.

Finally, we've got the perfect rejoinder to one of the most common Roman Polanski defenses out there—you know, the arguments Polanski defenders throw out in order to justify not prosecuting a convicted rapist who skipped the U.S. to avoid serving time for his rape. That argument is this: "But Roman Polanski made the Pianist!" And if Polanski had been forced to actually serve jail time for bedding a 13-year-old, the argument goes, perhaps the fabric of time would have been irrevocably torn, resulting in the Pianist never been made, or something!

This was the argument preferred by the hundreds of Hollywood luminaries who signed a petition for Polanski's release: "Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison." In other words: Roman Polanski makes good movies (just like we do!). Give him a pass.

If The Ghost Writer is half as bad as the trailer, it looks like it's time for the free pass to be revoked. Now, an appropriate response to the "But he made the Pianist" argument might be this: Well, if Polanski had been kept in prison last year instead of being whisked away for house arrest at his Swiss ski chalet, where he reportedly finished up work on The Ghost Writer (presumably to ensure that that dramatic musical swell behind ominously-swinging sign was synced up just so), then—my God!—maybe somebody else could have made this movie, someone who wouldn't cast Pierce Brosnan in it. Plus, Polanski would have actually served his time for raping someone. And everyone wins.

Lessons learned from 2009’s high-profile rape cases.

This was the year of the armchair rape analyst (ARA). If you’ve never run into such a person, here’s a job description: While men across the globe generate allegations of rape, ARAs are charged with casually dismissing the problem from the comfort of their living rooms. They sit back, stroke the chin, and plant gray where black and white work just fine.

ARAs have a field day when high-profile alleged rapes surface in the media. Though they always concede that “no means no,” in such cases it’s not always clear who said what. The ambiguity allows ARAs to decide matters of consent based on the suspect’s skill on the football field, the victim’s blood alcohol level, or the presence or absence of a rope.

BEN ROETHLISBERGER
Verdict: He could have sex with any woman he wanted.

“Most girls would feel lucky to have sex with someone like Ben Roethlisberger.” That’s what a Harrah’s Lake Tahoe Hotel and Casino rep allegedly told Andrea McNulty, a hotel employee, when she reported that the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback had raped her in his room.

When McNulty filed a civil suit against Roethlisberger this summer, Big Ben’s fans assumed the armchair position with one foolproof excuse. After all, “He could have sex with any woman he wanted” functions outside the realm of facts.

Fans said that same thing when Kobe Bryant was accused of rape: “Kobe Bryant doesn’t need to rape any woman. They would gladly throw themselves at him,” wrote one supporter. And Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock: “It’s not like he had to make somebody have sex with him,” said Up Records owner Pete Ritchey. “He could have sex with anybody he wanted.” And magician David Copperfield: “I hardly think he needs to rape anyone, surely there is plenty of willing participants out there,” wrote another ARA.

So: Every woman in the world chooses her sex partners based on how far they throw footballs, how many Bukowski references they can work into their indie rock records, or how effectively they can make shit disappear. Actually, simple name recognition is enough to make any woman want to fuck you. And another thing: Men rape women only because they can’t get sex anywhere else.

These assumptions aren’t just wrong. They’re dangerous. Let’s think of another reason why a man might rape a woman: because he assumes that he can have sex with anybody he wants. He has a recognizable name, and every woman wants to fuck him. At that point, why bother to gain consent? He’s famous. The consent is implied.

ROMAN POLANSKI
Verdict: Oh, what could have been!

When Roman Polanksi was finally arrested in Switzerland over his 31-year-old guilty plea in the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl, the arguments in Polanski’s defense began to stack up like so much snow in the luxury Alpine village of Gstaad: The 76-year-old Polanski is a victim of America’s puritanical sex laws; having survived both the Holocaust and Charles Manson, the man has suffered enough; he didn’t know she was 13; Polanski is genial and intelligent, nothing like a rapist.

But the most absurd excuses in Polanski’s defense enter a Twilight Zone of rape apology, where the real price for raping a child is not serving time in prison but rather depriving the public of a couple of great movies. These excusers are loath to imagine a world where cinematic geniuses are forced to craft brilliant films without raping anyone along the way. What if, by systematically putting its convicted rapists behind bars for years at a time, the United States has denied the world more Pianists?

I have seen The Pianist. It is not worth raping a child over. Entertainment industry luminaries disagreed. Swiss erotic photographer Otto Weisser had this to say upon Polanski’s arrest: “I am ashamed to be Swiss, that the Swiss is doing such a thing to brilliant fantastic genius, that millions and millions of people love his work,” Weisser said. “He’s a brilliant guy, and he made a little mistake 32 years ago. What a shame for Switzerland.” Hundreds more—including Woody Allen, Natalie Portman, and Pianist star Adrien Brody—added their names to a petition demanding Polanski’s release that painted Polanski as the victim: “Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison.” After all, if Polanski were forced to serve time over the child he raped, maybe he never would have made the Pianist, Adrien Brody’s career never would have taken off, and the world would have been deprived of Adrien Brody’s turn as “Bloom” in the Brothers Bloom. And that’s the real tragedy.

As for Lévy, he's carved out his little rape apology corner on HuffPo since Polanski's September arrest. In his latest missive, Lévy attributes the success of his position to "the generous access provided by Arianna Huffington and her staff." Later, Lévy calls the Huffington Post "Arianna's journal in the United States."

Sorry to burst your French intellectual bubble, Lévy, but the Huffington Post is no finely-curated journal, access ain't hard to come by, and your rambling rape apology posts don't qualify as scholarship. Face it: You're spreading your screeds on a blog, just like every thirteen-year-old with a LiveJournal password. And this particular blog? It will publish just about anything. Like this:

Oooor this:

Or, here's an appropriate selection:

But I could see how Lévy could have become confused. After all, his own French intellectual journal has lately devoted the majority of its online ink to defending Polanski ad nauseam. Currently, the top three stories on La Règle du Jeu are pro-Polanski essays. It's not exactly a culture of relevant intellectual debate, over there.

In his letter to his supporters, Polanski implores Lévy to share his message with the world. "I would like to be able to answer all of [my letters]. But it is impossible: there are too many," Polanski wrote. "Do you have any suggestions as to how I could reply? Perhaps in your journal, La Règle du jeu, which has supported me from the very first day? Perhaps you could disseminate these few words I'm sending you? I don't know. I'll leave it up to you."

And the answer came from on high: Yes, Roman Polanski, you can dump all of your insights onto the Internet, along with everybody else. We've got a little bit of room between a Stephanie Pratt boob shot (no nipple) and Alec Baldwin's own men's-rights fan mail. You're going to fit right in.

Bernard-Henri Lévy seems to think he's writing scholarship. Actually, "Arianna's journal" has made way for Lévy for the same reason it's dedicated space to nipple slips, high-res photos of celebrity wrinkles, and Alec Baldwin's ramblings: Celebrity tabloid fodder gets clicks.

French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévi is back to explain why Roman Polanski ought to be released from prison already. Add this one to the long list of Polanski defenses: Polanski is a human!

Lévi writes for the Huffington Post:

Time is passing. And Roman Polanski is still in prison, goes to bed and wakes up in prison, sees his wife one hour a week in the visiting room of a prison—all while his 11 and 16-year-old children, when they have the courage to go to school, have to confront the gaze of friends who have heard at home that the dad of the little Polanskis, the man everyone fluttered around vicariously via their children, the parent of a student that they were exhilarated to recognize on TV the night of the Césars, was ultimately a criminal, a rapist, a sodomite, a pedophile.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/for-roman-polanksi_b_336126.html

Roman Polanski, the argument goes, is just like you and me. He has a life! A wife! Children! A César award! Okay—maybe Roman Polanski isn't the ideal stand-in for the Rapist Everyman. But film accolades aside, Lévi's point is that Polanski has been a very visible and productive member of society in both his professional and personal life. The implication is that happily married men can't simultaneously be criminals, good fathers can't also be rapists, and international award-winners can't find the time to prey on children.

Our tendency to strictly separate the categories of "rapist" and "human" is something we're going to have to deal with again and again once we really start dealing with sexual assaults and the people who commit most of them—people with lives, wives, and children, if not Polanski's fame and fortune. It's not going to be easy to expand our idea of "rapist" to encompass otherwise upstanding members of society, but I think the continued media attention on Polanski's case will help us get there. If the public is willing to believe that one of the most celebrated film directors in the world is capable of rape, maybe they'll also be willing to consider less sensationalized rape cases with an open mind.

Photo via Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary, Wikipedia Commons

I'm totally with you on the child rapist excuses, Gainor. I'm a little bit less with you on the Late Night womanizer excuses. Remember: just because a man's legal relationships with consenting adults happen to be aired the same week that a notorious child rapist was arrested does not mean that the two incidents are related. And I'm really not with you on the mainstream media's Olympics "excuses," which amount to Katie Couric announcing, "Despite a high-powered, star-studded U.S. appeal from Oprah to the Obamas, the Olympics are awarded to Rio.”

Which is worse: Hollywood filmmakers excusing child rape, or Katie Couric alliterating on "Oprah," "Obama," and "Olympics"? To Gainor, it's pretty much a draw!

"Turn on any network last week and you saw famous people making excuses. It didn’t matter if it was Hollywood morons defending a rapist, David Letterman pretending he was a victim for treating his staff like a harem, or Barack Obama denying responsibility for the failed Olympic bid," writes Gainor. "It looked like some nightmarish recast of an awful 'Family Circus' cartoon with all of the major characters shouting 'not me' with their hands fully in the cookie jar."

Nope, my bad! According to Gainor, it "doesn't matter" whether these people are excusing heinous sex crimes against minors, or simply refraining from speculating as to the Olympic committee's reasoning for granting the games to Rio.

Gainor's logic linking defenders of Polanski, Letterman, and Obama boils down to this: the media is failing to treat Roman Polanski like he committed a crime. The media is also failing to treat David Letterman and Barack Obama like they committed crimes. Because they didn't. I'm just going to assume that my own failure to ignore this crucial distinction designates me as a member of the liberal media. Hey, got anybody who didn't do anything wrong that requires an excuse from the mainstream media? Hit me up!

Bonus FOX News fail: "awful 'Family Circus' cartoon" is redundant. Every Family Circus cartoon is awful.

—

"But he's already paid his price, because everyone knows he's a rapist, and he can never work in Hollywood."

As Patrick Goldstein wrote in the LA Times, "I think Polanski has already paid a horrible, soul-wrenching price for the infamy surrounding his actions. The real tragedy is that he will always, till his death, be snubbed and stalked and confronted by people who think the price he has already paid isn't enough."

Ahh: "the real tragedy." Some people may be under the impression that a 13-year-old being drugged and raped by a 44-year-old man constitutes a "real tragedy." Others may contend that both Polanski and his rape victim have suffered "real tragedies" in their lifetimes. But no, there can only be one the real tragedy, and it is that people have "snubbed" Roman Polanski because he raped someone and skipped town. If only the recognition of the Academy Awards, the BAFTAs, the Berlin International Film Festival, Cannes, the Directors Guild of America, the Golden Globes, the Independent Spirit Awards, the Stokholm Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival, and dozens of other awards organizations could begin to heal that wound.

—

"But he escaped the Holocaust / his mother died at Auschwitz / His wife was killed by Charles Manson"

Talk about real tragedies: These, of course, are real tragedies. Upon hearing of Polanski's arrest, French Minister of Culture Frederic Mitterrand announced that he "strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them."

This is a fair argument—and one that can be made about many, many people convicted of crimes in the United States. A lot of the people who are locked up behind bars have endured unspeakable traumas in their own lives—sexual assault, poverty, drug addiction, gang life, homelessness, and mental illness. Why are they held accountable for their actions, while Polanski gets to be like, "Peace, I'm just going to chill in France for thirty years, try not to rape anybody else, and maybe win an Oscar. See you guys later"? It's not because of what he endured. It's because he makes movies.

But let's say, for argument's sake, that Polanski isn't getting a break because he's famous, but rather because he's had a hard life. When France decries "the ordeal" being "inflicted" on Polanski, what the country is really saying is that rape is not important because it's not as horrific as the Holocaust, and not as evil as Charles Manson. And that's a pretty fucked-up standard, oui?

—

"But he made The Pianist / Chinatown / Rosemary's Baby / Revulsion."

Congratulations, the Huffington Post's Kim Morgan: You win the prize of penning the most disgusting defense of Polanski I've read to date! Morgan prefaces her post by saying she is "not going to go into my Roman Polanski defense," but suffice to say she is "not happy about his arrest." Instead of getting bogged down by the legal gobbledygook, Morgan shoots off a blog post entitled "Roman Polanski Understands Women." Seriously.

"One should not," she writes, "take Polanski's films literally, for they are often heightened versions of what occurs naturally in our world: desire, perversion, repulsion." Okay, but how about his rape of a 13-year-old girl? Are we allowed to take that "natural occurrence" literally? Morgan doesn't directly address that question, but she does argue that Polanski's very brilliance is a product of his relationship with human "darkness":

Polanski's removed morality is exactly why he is often brilliant: He is so empathetic to his characters that, like a trauma victim floating above the pain, he is personally impersonal. He insightfully scrutinizes what is so frightening about being human, yet he doesn't feel the need to be resolute or sentimental about his cognizance. He is also, consciously or subconsciously, aware of the darkness he explores, especially in his female characters, who could be seen as extensions of himself.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-morgan/roman-polanski-understand_b_301292.html

You know what I find revolting? When a film critic prefaces her work with a disclaimer about how much it sucks that a rapist is getting arrested for raping someone, and then uses the rapiest imagery possible to applaud his film work. Nope! Sorry! Understanding Women is not a valid defense against rape. Similarly, being a really marvelous film director doesn't mean that you get to rape someone and not go to prison. Even if you made The Pianist.

Remember: making The Pianist and being a rapist are not mutually exclusive.

—

"But the girl's mother made him rape her."

Oops, nevermind, this one is actually an even more disgusting defense of Roman Polanski, also on the Huffington Post:

The 13-year old model 'seduced' by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies. The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It's probably 13 by now!) Polanski was demonized by the press, convicted, and managed to flee, fearing a heavy sentence. I met Polanski shortly after he fled America and was filming Tess in Normandy. I was working in the CBS News bureau in Paris, and I accompanied Mike Wallace for a Sixty Minutes interview with Polanski on the set. Mike thought he would be meeting the devil incarnate, but was utterly charmed by Roman's sobriety and intelligence.

So, Polanski is just a really special guy who was practically forced to have sex with that 13-year-old girl by her mother. It's almost as if Roman Polanski was raped by that 13-year-old girl. Also, no, the age of consent in California is not "13 by now," it is 16 18 (!!). By the by: the author of this little gem is Joan Z. Shore, co-founder of Women Overseas for Equality. Thanks, Joan, for your deft approach to women's issues!

"But he didn't know she was 13."

Please, Anne Applebaum. Polanski had to ask her mother for permission to shoot her for Vogue.

—

"But 13 is old enough to consent to sex"

Let's assume that, like Joan Shore and others have suggested, age 13 is old enough to consent to sex, and Polanski is merely a victim of the Puritanical sex laws of the U.S.A. If that's true, then surely 13 would be old enough to say no to sex, right? Because here's what Geimer said happened at the one-on-one Vogue shoots:

According to Geimer in a 2003 interview, "Everything was going fine; then he asked me to change, well, in front of him." She added, "It didn't feel right, and I didn't want to go back to the second shoot."

Geimer later agreed to a second session, which took place on March 10, 1977 at the Mulholland area home of actor Jack Nicholson in Los Angeles. "We did photos with me drinking champagne," Geimer says. "Toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized he had other intentions and I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn't quite know how to get myself out of there." She recalled in a 2003 interview that she began to feel uncomfortable after he asked her to lie down on a bed, and how she attempted to resist. "I said, ‘No, no. I don’t want to go in there. No, I don’t want to do this. No!", and then I didn’t know what else to do,” she stated.

That's rape, whether you are 13 years old or 14 or 16 or 44 or 76.

—

"But the American justice system is fucked up."

Granted. But if we're going to talk about the fuck-up-edness of the U.S. legal system, surely we can find a better martyr than a famous rich guy with the best lawyers in the world who drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl, struck a plea deal in order to get off with the lesser charge of "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor" (or statutory rape), and then fled the country when it looked like the plea deal may not be honored? I'm all for Polanski being tried legally and fairly. Over the years, Polanski has repeatedly attempted to appeal the case—a really cool feature of the American legal process he purposefully evaded—but he refuses to appear in court.

Excuse me while I play the world's tiniest piano, but if the American legal system is broken, the fix is not for rapists to just choose their own adventure (in this case, France).

—

"But his victim has forgiven him"

From Applebaum's column: "The girl, now 45, has said more than once that she forgives him, that she can live with the memory, that she does not want him to be put back in court or in jail, and that a new trial will hurt her husband and children."

It's certainly a relief to hear that Geimer, after three decades and a settled civil suit against Polanski, has moved on from her childhood sexual assault. Of course, a victim's should always be considered over the course of a trial. At the same time, forgiveness, sympathy, and identification with one's attacker are fairly common in sexual assault cases, and these sentiments don't make sexual assault any less damaging—or any more legal. Again, you can argue that Polanski is an example of how the American legal system unduly punishes its criminals, but until you're willing to free all the nation's sex offenders and make them promise to just keep their cool until their victims get around to forgiving them, it's not a very solid argument.

—

"But his victim doesn't want to have to relive her assault again."

Now we're getting somewhere. Samantha Geimer, like many victims of sexual assault, is justified in holding a grudge against the criminal justice system. When a rape victim decides to report her assault to the police, she's looking at years of intense police, legal, and media scrutiny. She will have to relive her assault over and over again over the course of trial and investigation. She will have her sexual history dredged up and put on display. These are all big deterrents to reporting sexual assault. But while a sexual assault victim may never personally recover from the trauma, the public scrutiny, at least, usually ends with the sentencing.

Unless, of course, your attacker is a famous movie director who refuses to be sentenced, in which case you will be forced to relive your assault: a) every time your attacker attempts to cross another country's borders; b) every time your attacker releases a new film; c) every time your attacker attempts to have his conviction overturned; d) every time your attacker does anything noteworthy. The fact that Geimer's childhood sexual assault has haunted her in the press for 30 years is a real tragedy, and one man is responsible for that: Roman Polanski.