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Roman Polanski won an Oscar after pleading guilty to drugging and raping a 13 year old girl. Look at all these vile people applauding this villain, who couldn'

Roman Polanski won an Oscar after pleading guilty to drugging and raping a 13 year old girl. Look at all these vile people applauding this villain, who couldn't accept his Oscar because he fled the country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXnNOBj26lk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXnNOBj26lk In some ways I think we may have over responded (Aziz Ansari is not Harvey Weinstein), but it was shocking what behavior people were excusing from the powerful even in recent decades.

enriquto 6y ago
> Look at all these vile people applauding this villain Acknowledging the artistic talent of a villain does not make you vile. Not at all. Imagine a clearer example. Imagine that somebody is on a life sentence convicted of a murder that they have commited. Do you think that this person has the right to write a book? Can this book be sent for participation at a literary contest? Can it win? Does the jury that gives the prize condone the killing perpetrated by the winner? Are they vile?
- spoonjim 6y ago
  Yes, I would applaud such a scumbag and would hope my friends did not either.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  I can see why this might be considered debatable, but I firmly agree with the parent comment here. People who do vile shit should not be celebrated at all. To me, it's a requirement: if you want to be considered a person of great accomplishment, then you should be an upstanding citizen. I also think that celebrating vile people is a reflection on the "jury" here as well. If I discover someone celebrates the works of Hitler, Stalin, Mengele, Saddam Hussein, etc, then they are definitely knocked down a few pegs in my book. I wouldn't go so far as to call them vile on that alone, but I definitely question their moral compass.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Ghandi?
  - doitLP 6y ago
    Sounds nice. But in the real world all humans are both sinners and saints at the same time. Good luck being the one with the power to decide what an upstanding citizen is. This is cancel culture in a nutshell. There’s a reason “don’t meet your heroes” is a saying. The problem is not appreciating the good works of someone who has also done bad things —- the problem is when we assume prima facie that just because someone is celebrated for one thing, that they are an upstanding citizen in all other areas of their life. There would be a lot less Harvey Weinstein’s in the world if our fallible human herd mentality didn’t elevate someone to sainthood because they were a bigshot in one aspect of their life.
    - ALittleLight 6y ago
      I'm reminded of this quote which I once saw on lesswrong.com The Sophisticate: “The world isn’t black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It’s all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else.” The Zetet: “Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view . . .” —Marc Stiegler, David’s Sling It's true that "all humans are both sinners and saints at the same time" - but it's absolutely not true that all, or even most, humans have done something as bad as raping a child (to say nothing of the other people mentioned in the parent comment). This kind of sentiment is appropriate when considering the kinds of mistakes or sins that all humans commit, identifying the grey areas that people are consistently in. The existence of grey areas does not mean that somethings aren't black and others aren't white. I think, in this case, we can clearly see that what Polanski did was very bad and worthy condemnation and not "Who among hasn't..."
      - randomsearch 6y ago
        This sounds like an ungenerous interpretation of the parent. They are saying - all humans do good things and bad things. You are attacking the argument - all humans are the same. Those two assertions are totally different.
- vkou 6y ago
  You can recognize the art, while condemning the artist. That's the post-war treatment given to studies of hypothermia that came out of Nazi Germany - because the means by which those studies were conducted was by putting Jews and PoWs into barrels of ice water, and measuring how long it would take them to die. You recognize the results, while condemning every single person involved in the methods.
  - duskwuff 6y ago
    That research is highly controversial within the modern scientific community. Many scientists reject its use on ethical grounds; others reject it over concerns about its scientific validity. (The Nazis weren't especially precise in their experimental methods.)
- fredophile 6y ago
  Your example is missing some key points. Imagine if instead of serving that life sentence your murderer fled the country before sentencing. Also imagine that instead of writing books by themselves all of their books are co-authored by other famous authors. Should you be spending your money on books that were written by a fugitive? Would it be wrong to judge their publishers and co-authors for collaborating with a fugitive?
- varjag 6y ago
  No need to imagine. There was a historic precedent of a convict writing super popular book about their personal struggle.
  - trulyme 6y ago
    Or about Wild West (Karl May).
- trhway 6y ago
  >Acknowledging the artistic talent of a villain does not make you vile. depends on the way of the acknowledgement. If the movie is the best - you give the Oskar as that is the rules of the game (though you can also follow the example of many professional associations like say doctors and lawyers who completely exclude criminally immoral people, talented or not, from their ranks. Movie industry not doing it is already a kind of a tell about the industry's ethics.), yet you definitely don't have to applaud and celebrate. Applauding and celebrating is what makes you personally vile and supporter and validator.
- asdff 6y ago
  I mean it doesn't, but you have to look at this in the broader context. There are always more talented people than there are prizes/awards/jobs to be had. Just give the award to any of the dozens and dozens of just as qualified people instead and avoid the controversy. This is almost like holding a museum exhibit celebrating Hitler's art career——profoundly tone deaf at best, and normalizing that sort of behavior at worst.
  - 199X 6y ago
    Its the Oscars!, you need the opposite of a broader context. Just give the award to the most qualified and avoid the controversy.
- GuB-42 6y ago
  If the book is really good, I'd say the villain should be applauded. I would applaud Hitler and recommend Mein Kampf to everyone if it was good (it is not). It doesn't excuse the murder, but I think talent should be rewarded, doubly so if the person is a villain. The problem with most criminals is that we can't think of them as other than criminals, and it is a vicious circle because it drags people deeper in the world of crime. We should give a message such as: you have been sentenced to 10 years, if you have a talent, use that time to develop it, and you can use it to have a good life after you get out. Just look at the other guy who won the literary contest while serving a life sentence, just because you did bad things doesn't make you can't get recognized for all the good thing you can do. I've seen work mentioned as the magic bullet for rehabilitating criminals. Not as a punishment but actually useful work. And if the criminal in question has a particular talent, that should be taken advantage of.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > I think talent should be rewarded, doubly so if the person is a villain Why doubly so, it is literally rewarding the bad behavior? A person that does not abuse people should be rewarded as much as those who do abuse them. And it seem to me that current culture or at least culture last twenty years was rewarding abusers more then non-abusers or their victims. And it just leads to more abuse.
    - GuB-42 6y ago
      I am not saying that we should double the reward for villains, but that it is twice as important. Everyone should be rewarded the same way, otherwise, sure, it rewards bad behavior and we don't want that, we don't want to excuse the bad behavior either. But you rise an interesting point about victims. A criminal shall pay damage to the victims, and a successful author can do it. A worthless thug or someone perceived by society as such can't, not just that but he will continue to be supported by society for as long as he lives. The reason I think society today is more "lax" towards criminals is that we focus on rehabilitation. That's the only way for criminals to repay their debt to society. We used to have them do slave labor, but modern society doesn't need slaves, it needs skilled workers. We can also kill them all, but that's extreme and carries a whole lot of other issues.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Whenever discussing Polanski's late career and the acclaim or scorn he has received, it must be mentioned that the girl in question has (later, when she grew up) expressed that she does not wish that Polanski be prosecuted or further punished by the industry.
- draw_down 6y ago
  Yep, nobody wants to talk about that. She even has gone further, and denounced the people who wish to use her trauma to score political points. Nobody cares -- her trauma is important only insofar as it is useful to them. They think it belongs to them, not her.
- ohashi 6y ago
  He still raped a 13 year old. Why is anyone trying to defend or excuse his behavior? I don't care if Jesus came back from the dead and forgave him, it's still not OK.
  - willcipriano 6y ago
    May I also add it's very common for victims of this type of abuse to make statements like that, particularly if they are abused as children. A sort of Stockholm syndrome takes hold and they begin to empathize with their rapist and feel bad that they face punishment for their crimes. Don't take that statement as a report on his innocence but rather a compliment to his well practiced grooming skills, if anything its evidence that this probably wasn't the first time.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      I urge you to read her own remarks. She does not sympathize with Polanski, and she would not feel bad about whatever he experiences. But she finds it an act of violence against her, an opening of the wound afresh, when third parties opine on the case.
boh 6y ago
Foucault, Satre, Derrida, Barthes literally went on record supporting sexual relations with children (see link below). The idea that something can be so valuable (like art) that it's worth the ethical costs elicited by their purveyors is ridiculous. Ethical behavior doesn't counter creativity (neither should the opposite be true). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of_consent_laws?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of...
- iguy 6y ago
  I'm not sure that the value of the art was the supposed justification. Not an expert, but I thought they were just arguing for freedom, that children ought to be free to consent to things, not just that great artists deserved a break. The ongoing Duhamel scandal makes it sound like there was quite a lot going on, in certain elite circles, everyone knew and nobody talked: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/france-begins-to-confront-decades-of-neglect-of-incest-cases https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/france-begins-...
vagrantJin 6y ago
This particular thread has quite a few knee-jerk reactions. Vile villains aside, humans generally lack a coherence of beliefs - contantly contracting themselves. Take for instance Adolf Hitler - whom we are told every waking minute was a vile scar on humanity. The most evil of evils. And yet King Leopold was arguably worse but not a single word about him. Anywhere. I doubt many nations outside Africa have even heard of him. Why is then hitler the worst of the lot? Because killing black people wasnt considered a bad, vile thing. Killing white people was and this dochotomy probably still exists. And yet, despite that - the companies and orgs that supported the Nazi's still exist, and celebrated. That's the human contradiction of which I speak. Yes, pedophile are other things than pedophiles. If they happen to be good at those things, which dont happen to be pedophilia - there is no reason why we should deny them recognition for taking humanity two steps forward, one step back.
- canadianfella 6y ago
  What the fuck.
- abhinav22 6y ago
  How do I report this post, especially the last paragraph?! Edit: Figured it out. Hope he gets banned for it
  - vagrantJin 6y ago
    I'm still here matey. While I am still here - would you care to share your POV to add something to the discussion? I don't mind being wrong.
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    Report it for what, having an opinion you don't like?
    - abhinav22 6y ago
      For saying it’s okay for pedofiles to be recognized for their other work There is disagreement on opinions and there is outright immorality.
solarhoma 6y ago
You can see Harvey Weinstein applauding at 1:17 in the linked video.

enriquto 6y ago

> Look at all these vile people applauding this villain Acknowledging the artistic talent of a villain does not make you vile. Not at all. Imagine a clearer example. Imagine that somebody is on a life sentence convicted of a murder that they have commited. Do you think that this person has the right to write a book? Can this book be sent for participation at a literary contest? Can it win? Does the jury that gives the prize condone the killing perpetrated by the winner? Are they vile?

spoonjim 6y ago
Yes, I would applaud such a scumbag and would hope my friends did not either.
mywittyname 6y ago
I can see why this might be considered debatable, but I firmly agree with the parent comment here. People who do vile shit should not be celebrated at all. To me, it's a requirement: if you want to be considered a person of great accomplishment, then you should be an upstanding citizen. I also think that celebrating vile people is a reflection on the "jury" here as well. If I discover someone celebrates the works of Hitler, Stalin, Mengele, Saddam Hussein, etc, then they are definitely knocked down a few pegs in my book. I wouldn't go so far as to call them vile on that alone, but I definitely question their moral compass.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Ghandi?
- doitLP 6y ago
  Sounds nice. But in the real world all humans are both sinners and saints at the same time. Good luck being the one with the power to decide what an upstanding citizen is. This is cancel culture in a nutshell. There’s a reason “don’t meet your heroes” is a saying. The problem is not appreciating the good works of someone who has also done bad things —- the problem is when we assume prima facie that just because someone is celebrated for one thing, that they are an upstanding citizen in all other areas of their life. There would be a lot less Harvey Weinstein’s in the world if our fallible human herd mentality didn’t elevate someone to sainthood because they were a bigshot in one aspect of their life.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    I'm reminded of this quote which I once saw on lesswrong.com The Sophisticate: “The world isn’t black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It’s all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else.” The Zetet: “Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view . . .” —Marc Stiegler, David’s Sling It's true that "all humans are both sinners and saints at the same time" - but it's absolutely not true that all, or even most, humans have done something as bad as raping a child (to say nothing of the other people mentioned in the parent comment). This kind of sentiment is appropriate when considering the kinds of mistakes or sins that all humans commit, identifying the grey areas that people are consistently in. The existence of grey areas does not mean that somethings aren't black and others aren't white. I think, in this case, we can clearly see that what Polanski did was very bad and worthy condemnation and not "Who among hasn't..."
    - randomsearch 6y ago
      This sounds like an ungenerous interpretation of the parent. They are saying - all humans do good things and bad things. You are attacking the argument - all humans are the same. Those two assertions are totally different.
vkou 6y ago
You can recognize the art, while condemning the artist. That's the post-war treatment given to studies of hypothermia that came out of Nazi Germany - because the means by which those studies were conducted was by putting Jews and PoWs into barrels of ice water, and measuring how long it would take them to die. You recognize the results, while condemning every single person involved in the methods.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  That research is highly controversial within the modern scientific community. Many scientists reject its use on ethical grounds; others reject it over concerns about its scientific validity. (The Nazis weren't especially precise in their experimental methods.)
fredophile 6y ago
Your example is missing some key points. Imagine if instead of serving that life sentence your murderer fled the country before sentencing. Also imagine that instead of writing books by themselves all of their books are co-authored by other famous authors. Should you be spending your money on books that were written by a fugitive? Would it be wrong to judge their publishers and co-authors for collaborating with a fugitive?
varjag 6y ago
No need to imagine. There was a historic precedent of a convict writing super popular book about their personal struggle.
- trulyme 6y ago
  Or about Wild West (Karl May).
trhway 6y ago
>Acknowledging the artistic talent of a villain does not make you vile. depends on the way of the acknowledgement. If the movie is the best - you give the Oskar as that is the rules of the game (though you can also follow the example of many professional associations like say doctors and lawyers who completely exclude criminally immoral people, talented or not, from their ranks. Movie industry not doing it is already a kind of a tell about the industry's ethics.), yet you definitely don't have to applaud and celebrate. Applauding and celebrating is what makes you personally vile and supporter and validator.
asdff 6y ago
I mean it doesn't, but you have to look at this in the broader context. There are always more talented people than there are prizes/awards/jobs to be had. Just give the award to any of the dozens and dozens of just as qualified people instead and avoid the controversy. This is almost like holding a museum exhibit celebrating Hitler's art career——profoundly tone deaf at best, and normalizing that sort of behavior at worst.
- 199X 6y ago
  Its the Oscars!, you need the opposite of a broader context. Just give the award to the most qualified and avoid the controversy.
GuB-42 6y ago
If the book is really good, I'd say the villain should be applauded. I would applaud Hitler and recommend Mein Kampf to everyone if it was good (it is not). It doesn't excuse the murder, but I think talent should be rewarded, doubly so if the person is a villain. The problem with most criminals is that we can't think of them as other than criminals, and it is a vicious circle because it drags people deeper in the world of crime. We should give a message such as: you have been sentenced to 10 years, if you have a talent, use that time to develop it, and you can use it to have a good life after you get out. Just look at the other guy who won the literary contest while serving a life sentence, just because you did bad things doesn't make you can't get recognized for all the good thing you can do. I've seen work mentioned as the magic bullet for rehabilitating criminals. Not as a punishment but actually useful work. And if the criminal in question has a particular talent, that should be taken advantage of.
- watwut 6y ago
  > I think talent should be rewarded, doubly so if the person is a villain Why doubly so, it is literally rewarding the bad behavior? A person that does not abuse people should be rewarded as much as those who do abuse them. And it seem to me that current culture or at least culture last twenty years was rewarding abusers more then non-abusers or their victims. And it just leads to more abuse.
  - GuB-42 6y ago
    I am not saying that we should double the reward for villains, but that it is twice as important. Everyone should be rewarded the same way, otherwise, sure, it rewards bad behavior and we don't want that, we don't want to excuse the bad behavior either. But you rise an interesting point about victims. A criminal shall pay damage to the victims, and a successful author can do it. A worthless thug or someone perceived by society as such can't, not just that but he will continue to be supported by society for as long as he lives. The reason I think society today is more "lax" towards criminals is that we focus on rehabilitation. That's the only way for criminals to repay their debt to society. We used to have them do slave labor, but modern society doesn't need slaves, it needs skilled workers. We can also kill them all, but that's extreme and carries a whole lot of other issues.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

Whenever discussing Polanski's late career and the acclaim or scorn he has received, it must be mentioned that the girl in question has (later, when she grew up) expressed that she does not wish that Polanski be prosecuted or further punished by the industry.

draw_down 6y ago
Yep, nobody wants to talk about that. She even has gone further, and denounced the people who wish to use her trauma to score political points. Nobody cares -- her trauma is important only insofar as it is useful to them. They think it belongs to them, not her.
ohashi 6y ago
He still raped a 13 year old. Why is anyone trying to defend or excuse his behavior? I don't care if Jesus came back from the dead and forgave him, it's still not OK.
- willcipriano 6y ago
  May I also add it's very common for victims of this type of abuse to make statements like that, particularly if they are abused as children. A sort of Stockholm syndrome takes hold and they begin to empathize with their rapist and feel bad that they face punishment for their crimes. Don't take that statement as a report on his innocence but rather a compliment to his well practiced grooming skills, if anything its evidence that this probably wasn't the first time.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    I urge you to read her own remarks. She does not sympathize with Polanski, and she would not feel bad about whatever he experiences. But she finds it an act of violence against her, an opening of the wound afresh, when third parties opine on the case.

boh 6y ago

Foucault, Satre, Derrida, Barthes literally went on record supporting sexual relations with children (see link below). The idea that something can be so valuable (like art) that it's worth the ethical costs elicited by their purveyors is ridiculous. Ethical behavior doesn't counter creativity (neither should the opposite be true). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of_consent_laws?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of...

iguy 6y ago
I'm not sure that the value of the art was the supposed justification. Not an expert, but I thought they were just arguing for freedom, that children ought to be free to consent to things, not just that great artists deserved a break. The ongoing Duhamel scandal makes it sound like there was quite a lot going on, in certain elite circles, everyone knew and nobody talked: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/france-begins-to-confront-decades-of-neglect-of-incest-cases https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/france-begins-...

vagrantJin 6y ago

This particular thread has quite a few knee-jerk reactions. Vile villains aside, humans generally lack a coherence of beliefs - contantly contracting themselves. Take for instance Adolf Hitler - whom we are told every waking minute was a vile scar on humanity. The most evil of evils. And yet King Leopold was arguably worse but not a single word about him. Anywhere. I doubt many nations outside Africa have even heard of him. Why is then hitler the worst of the lot? Because killing black people wasnt considered a bad, vile thing. Killing white people was and this dochotomy probably still exists. And yet, despite that - the companies and orgs that supported the Nazi's still exist, and celebrated. That's the human contradiction of which I speak. Yes, pedophile are other things than pedophiles. If they happen to be good at those things, which dont happen to be pedophilia - there is no reason why we should deny them recognition for taking humanity two steps forward, one step back.

canadianfella 6y ago
What the fuck.
abhinav22 6y ago
How do I report this post, especially the last paragraph?! Edit: Figured it out. Hope he gets banned for it
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  I'm still here matey. While I am still here - would you care to share your POV to add something to the discussion? I don't mind being wrong.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  Report it for what, having an opinion you don't like?
  - abhinav22 6y ago
    For saying it’s okay for pedofiles to be recognized for their other work There is disagreement on opinions and there is outright immorality.

solarhoma 6y ago

You can see Harvey Weinstein applauding at 1:17 in the linked video.