Thank You Shakesville

Melissa says it so well...

Roman Roads

Horrifying to read the newspaper coverage of the arrest of Roman Polanski. Now if people want to claim he was innocent, they are welcome to do so. Instead several papers have pieces claiming that while he was guilty he should not be brought to justice because (1) he makes great films, (2) he has experienced other suffering in his life or (3) because he has paid for his crimes by living overseas for many years to avoid prison.

If any of these are to hold any weight someone needs to clarify exactly what the exchange rate is:

(1) Can I punch someone of my choosing without punishment given that my Edinburgh show got a five-star review?

(2) Can I punch someone of my choosing without punishment given that I had an eating disorder in my teens?

(3) Can I punch someone of my choosing without punishment as long as I take two weeks holiday in the south of France straight afterwards?

Worse still some people are claiming that he shouldn't be brought to justice because the crime was somehow "not that bad". Points raised include (1) the fact that the victim has said she doesn't want to go to court, (2) the allegation that she was "sexually experienced" and (3) the implication that the rape committed was only "statutory rape", i.e. that she consented to sex and that therefore the rape was only a rape on "technical grounds" because of the age of consent. Well:

(1) The victim gave statements immediately after the event and Polanski pleaded guilty so it would be easy for the judge to rule that she needn't go to court, there is no reason they couldn't sentence him in her absence. The point of the law is not to make victims feel better, although it may be hoped that in some cases it does. The point of the law is to punish those who commit crimes.

(2) Are we really still in the 21st century believeing that a woman who has previously had sex cannot be raped? Of course not. And since she was 13 at the time she hadn't previously had sex - she'd previously been raped.

(3) Firstly this is not someone a few weeks away from being legally old enough to consent. She was thirteen. The law has an age of consent for a reason. If people feel the law is wrong they should campaign to change the law, not ignore it. But secondly, and most importantly of all I think. This was much more than statutory rape.

There is a good piece in the Independent by (dare I say it) Dominic Lawson pointing out that he drugged her with the drug quaalude mixed into champagne and also that the claims of consent from the victim are very flimsy...

Here's the transcript of victim's original statement (warning: not for the sensitive reader):

"Q. What did you do when he said, 'Let's go into the other room'?
A. I was going 'No, I think I better go home', because I was afraid. So I just went and I sat down on the couch.
Q. What were you afraid of?
A. Him.... He sat down beside me and asked if I was OK. I said 'No'.
Q. What did he say?
A. He goes 'Well, you'll be better'. And I go, 'No I won't. I have to go home. He said 'I'll take you home soon'.
Q. Then what happened?
A. Then he went down and he started performing cuddliness... I was kind of dizzy, you know, like things were kind of blurry sometimes. I was having trouble with my coordination... I wasn't fighting really because I, you know, there was no one else there and I had no place to go."
Q. Did he ask you about being on the pill?
A. He asked, he goes, 'Are you on the pill?' and I went, 'No' and he goes 'When did you have your period?' and I said, 'I don't know. A week or two. I'm not sure'... He goes, 'Come on. You have to remember'. And I told him I didn't.... and right after I said I was not on the pill... and he goes... and then he put me – wait. Then he lifted my legs up farther and he went in through my anus.
Q. Did you resist at that time?
A. A little bit, but not really, because...
Q. Because what?
A. Because I was afraid of him."

That is not consent.

Following The Story

What a stupid NYT headline today! Happily Married, but still a Stalker's Perfect Target. Err, don't you get it - stalking is a crime, a crime of harassment and intimidation. It is not an expression of love. No-one changes their mind about stalking because their victim is married.

It's also a crime in which the majority of perpetrators are male and victims female. The world does not need a remake of Fatal Attraction, the first one was misogynist enough.

Journalism or What?

Sick bags ready ... I'm sure Angelina Jolie is a wonderful actress/human being/lover/whatever. But could this BBC article read just a teeny bit more like a review of a press conference and a bit less like a a eulogy? How about some journalism for a change?

If I was a Graffiti Artist...

...I can see me doing this!! Ha ha ha.

Watch Julia Juggle!

Is there a section in our national press's guidelines where it says any woman with a job and children must be described as "juggling" their lives? Julia Roberts doesn't use the word herself but the BBC feel the need to add it in for her. Where is the glossy magazine for men "who juggle their lives". I hate the word, it sounds like these women are in a constant flap and don't really do anything well. Men of course are never asked how they "juggle" fatherhood and work, because it's implicitly accepted that fathers don't actually DO anything to look after their children - unfair on men and women.

Note to all jobbing journalists - unless you work for Circus Entertainment Monthly, please stop using the work "juggle". Thank you.

Rick Pickings

Winterval is a great time for watching a lot of TV. Mr Cru and I have had a relatively quiet one but it did give me the chance to see a few films. The usual soppy festive nonsense in most cases - I don't want to spoil the ending but Santa does get all the presents to all the good little boys and girls just in time after all. And some good stuff like Atom Egoyan's moving The Sweet Hereafter. But of course there was also some rubbish. Step forward Rick.

Rick is the story of a nasty man who gets his just desserts. So far so good. What he does wrong is be rude and unpleasant to people. His just desserts are - well taxis won't stop for him (bad) and his daughter gets raped and murdered (very bad). But it just left me wondering about whether the daughter got her "just desserts". I mean early on in the film she does log on to a saucy web chat-room, oh and she wears a low-cut dress, she also drinks alcohol. But then she gets RAPED AND MURDERED. So there's a nice moral message for us all at Christmas: Don't act at all sexual if you don't want to be murdered... (And yes I know it's based on Rigoletto, but it's heavily interpreted and just because it was acceptable then - which it wasn't in a lot of cases - doesn't make it acceptable now).

Another one for my list of the worst films of all time.

Funny Ha Ha

Great article in the LA Times about roles for women in comedy films.

This Would Be Funny If...

...it wasn't so frightening. Some idiot called Stewart Dimmock has decided schools can't show An Inconvenient Truth to kids because it doesn't present "both sides of the argument". What argument? Anybody with half a brain can see human activity is heating the planet up. The humour though is in this BBC story on the subject, titled "Gore Climate Film's 'Nine Errors'". Scroll down to the bottom and there's a link to another story "Flood Legacy: the devastating effects of this summer's flooding"

The Guerrilla News Network has done the leg-work on this one. What I can't seem to find out though are which of the mega-polluters are paying for his campaign. Anyone got any idea? Both funding groups - Scientific Alliance and Straight Teaching say they accept corporate donations but they don't list major donors. I'd like to know who exactly is paying to set the agenda our kids are taught, and I bet we'd be horrified if we knew.

Speaking of Al Gore though I really hope he gets the Nobel Prize and then decides he will run for US president after all. I suspect the world may genuinely end quite soon if he doesn't...

Door-to-door Atheism

http://view.break.com/185806 - Watch more free videos

My Least Favourite Movie Of All Time

Over at Alternet Katha Pollitt seems to have found a real stinker.

Personally my nomination is:

(SHOW ME THE ATROCIOUS SCRIPT!!) Jerry Maguire

I actually left a first date with a guy I quite liked just to get out of the cinema to avoid watching any more of this awful film. In it Tom Cruise leaves his confident business-woman fiance who is bisexual (eww!) and offers him a threesome (guys hate threesomes apparently!) and sets up with his single-mum secretary (don't worry she's widowed, not divorced! Unlike Renee Zellweger who plays her...) who lives with her sister (childless, divorced and super-miserable). There's a scene where Tom and the secretary are out on the town and you see the divorced sister at a "divorced women's club" (are there such things? I find none on Google, possibly because divorced women are able to participate in normal society and don't need a special club) sat around complaining about their ex-husbands (if there were such clubs would they do this? couldn't they go drinking or join salsa classes?) and then sat alone smoking (evil! evil!) in a darkened kitchen while ms. widowed laughs with TC in the driveway.

Any more nominations?