Megan Garber, May 4, 2014<\/p>\n
The Academy, in a move that comes approximately 41 years too late, expelled the director; he now says he\u2019ll appeal the ruling.<\/p>\n
In March of 1977, Roman Polanski was arrested in Los Angeles for charges emerging from a sexual encounter he had had with Samantha Gailey, then 13 years old<\/a>: The 43-year-old Polanski, she said, had given her champagne and a quaalude<\/a>, and then had raped her. Polanski, in response to the charges, eventually struck a deal: He pled guilty to a blanket count of unlawful sex with a minor. In exchange, he had hoped, he would move on with his life in Hollywood.<\/p>\n Polanski, since then, has existed in a kind of limbo: of social status, of legality, of celebrity, of morality. And also of geography: Just after he struck the bargain that would allow him to retain his freedom, Polanski learned that the judge in the case had had a change of heart and would reject the deal. To avoid direct punishment for the crime Gailey had accused him of, Polanski fled to Paris, and has lived in Europe ever since. All the while, however\u2014because Hollywood is a place that is also a dream\u2014he has continued to make movies. He has continued to win awards. He has continued to be, even in awkward absentia, a member of Hollywood\u2019s woozy elite.<\/p>\n In 1981, Polanski was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director, for Tess<\/i>.<\/p>\n In 1984, he published his autobiography, Roman. <\/i>In it, he teasingly referred to girls as being \u201csexy, pert, and thoroughly human\u201d and to appreciating Gstaad, Switzerland, on the grounds that the city is populated with \u201chundreds of fresh-faced, nubile young girls of all nationalities.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2003, he won the Best Director Oscar, this time for The Pianist<\/i>.<\/p>\n Polanski, through all this, has retained the most basic avatar of breezy impunity: his position as a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has been one of the people charged with determining the films that constitute the best of what American cinema\u2014as a business and as an artistic pursuit and as, the Academy is fond of suggesting, a matter of humanism itself\u2014has to offer. Which is also to say that, more practically, he has been one of the people who shape what American popular culture chooses to see and to celebrate in its entertainments. For years, there Polanski remained: a reminder of who loses when celebrity is pitted against decency, and a testament to Hollywood\u2019s great capacity to say one thing about itself and mean, in the end, quite another.<\/p>\n Until, that is, this year. On Thursday, the Academy announced<\/a> that it had expelled Polanski, along with Bill Cosby\u2014making the two men only the third and fourth people to have been ousted from the organization<\/a> over its long history. The first was Carmine Caridi, of The Godfather<\/em> movies, who broke AMPAS rules by sharing a copyrighted movie screener with a friend. (The friend proceeded to share the screener with everyone else, via an upload to the internet.) The second was Harvey Weinstein, expelled in October after an emergency meeting of the Academy\u2019s Board of Governors. Weinstein was cast out, the organization said in a statement<\/a>, \u201cnot simply to separate ourselves from someone who does not merit the respect of his colleagues, but also to send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over.\u201d<\/p>\n The elephant in the screening room in all this, of course, was Roman Polanski. The Academy may have spoken of the evils of willful ignorance<\/em> and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior<\/em>; there, though, all the while, was Polanski. There, all the while, were the other women\u2014a second, and then a third, and then a fourth\u2014who would follow Samantha Gailey in accusing Polanski of assaulting them as teenagers. And yet, at the same time: There were the award nominations. There were the glittering trophies. There was the crowd in the Kodak Theater in 2003, erupting into cheers when Harrison Ford announced that Polanski\u2014unwilling to reenter the United States, on account of the rape charges\u2014had won the Best Director Oscar.<\/p>\n Thursday\u2019s announcement is the most basic\u2014the most tragically minimal\u2014gesture the Academy could make. There are no congratulations to be had here, only the scant satisfactions of an extremely belated decision. And Polanski, tellingly, will be appealing the ruling<\/a>; the director\u2019s lawyer told Vanity Fair<\/em> on Thursday evening, \u201cWe want due process.\u201d (He added, without a note of irony, \u201cThat\u2019s not asking too much of the Academy, is it?\u201d)<\/p>\n The news means that Polanski, who has long been a symbol\u2014of hypocrisy, of complacency, of the friction-filled path to even the smallest realizations of justice\u2014is now a symbol in another kind of way. His shamefully belated ouster suggests that, perhaps, the Academy\u2019s actions might be edging ever closer to the Academy\u2019s words: The era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over<\/em>. Cosby\u2019s expulsion, after all, came when it did because of a news event<\/a>: A week ago, on April 26, the actor and comedian was found guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand. The Academy, in other words, had a specific incitement to remove him\u2014if also belatedly\u2014from its ranks.<\/p>\n Polanski, however, represented a murkier proposition. His criminality had long been known; it had simply been overlooked. The man who pled guilty to the rape of a 13-year-old has been defended<\/a> by the likes of Martin Scorsese (\u201cPolanski\u2019s films have influenced me as an artist all these years and his terrible political situation has been something we have all had to suffer through\u201d), and Debra Winger (when someone like Polanski is arrested, she argued<\/a>, \u201cthe whole art world suffers\u201d), and Quentin Tarantino, and also\u2014most passionately<\/a>, most vociferously, most ironically\u2014Harvey Weinstein. Polanski was \u201ca great artist\u201d and \u201ca humanist,\u201d Weinstein insisted. And \u201cwhatever you think about the so-called crime, Polanski has served his time.\u201d<\/p>\n