Roman Polanski, to whom laws need not apply
Me against my brother. Me and my brother against our cousin. Me, my brother and my cousin against our neighbor. Me, my brother, my cousin and our neighbor against the stranger.
-Syrian proverb
Roman Polanski is out of jail. In 1977, he raped a child, pled guilty and then fled the country before his sentencing hearing. Last year he was arrested in Switzerland. Now, however, in part thanks to tactics from his lawyers, Swiss authorities are refusing the U.S. extradition request and releasing him.
There is, rightly, outrage in many quarters, across typical political boundaries. However, in others there is rejoicing. One thing I found most revealing about the entire Polanski case was the total divide between how his artistic and film colleagues viewed his arrest, and how everyone else did.
Kate Harding did an excellent roundup of film and artist support for Polanski. It's considerable, with over 130 film types who want him released from prison and view his crime (and over 30 years of refusing to pay for it) as no big deal. And privileged-among-the-privileged artist/philosophe Bernard Henri-Levy rallied a similar group of artists to oppose Polanski's detention as a "common terrorist" (I would have preferred "common rapist" but the choice of words, especially "common" is revealing).
Interesting in this argument was the focus on Polanski's genius, his artistic talent and status, with the implication that this, in some way, was to balance or overwhelm the crime he was accused of (and pled guilty to) and faced punishment for.
The reality is this: Polanski, and his supporters, are part of a professional tribe, and they feel bound to defend members of that tribe, no matter how heinous the crime in the eyes of others. Furthermore, if members of the tribe are particularly talented at their chosen pursuit, they are given a free pass, because their fellows equate talent with virtue.
But the film industry, and Polanski, are far from the only ones. More, below the cut.
Let's take, for example, the police. When cases of brutality emerge, outsiders are often surprised by how, nearly unanimously, cops line up behind their brethren, no matter how terrible their acts.
They shouldn't be, at least not as much as they are. There's a scene from the much-lauded HBO show The Wire that illustrates this perfectly, when a gangbanger decks a cop who's arresting him. Now, the officer who comes running is Kima Greggs, one of the most virtuous characters on the show. She's ethical, smart and driven to protect and serve in a way many of her colleagues aren't. When the viewer sees her bolting to the fight between the housing project resident and a "hump" detective whom she despises, one might first think that she's rushing in to break up the fight.
One would be wrong.
When it comes down to it, Kima is a cop, and so is the hump, and any problems they have end the second someone who isn't a cop threatens their tribe. This is what many people fail to realize about police brutality and misconduct. Most cops actually aren't that nasty. Most generally do their jobs fairly well. But they're all too willing to protect their own when they fuck up badly or beat someone who's not part of their group.
That's one reason I think The Wire rubbed many the wrong way. There are plenty of good cops (and bad) depicted in the series, but few of them make a reference to larger loyalties or ethics. No, whatever sense of right and wrong they possess, the cops are a tribe, and regard themselves as such first and foremost, to the point where the damage to the larger community remains unaddressed except by a few wise minds.
They're far from the only ones. Back in the late '80s, the libertarian wit P.J. O'Rourke wrote the brilliant political text Parliament of Whores. The best part of the entire book was an eerily prophetic chapter on the drug war. At one point, O'Rourke sat down with an upper middle-class friend to discuss the situation, and discovered a vital insight about how deep the tribal instinct runs:
He said, right on cue, “My kid got busted for selling heroin.”
“Oh, Christ,” I said, because my friend's kid is a good kid— a spoiled and self-destructive brat, maybe, but a good spoiled and self-destructive brat, not mean or anything. “Is he OK?” I said. “Did you get him out on bail all right?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said my friend. “He's staying with his mother.”
“Well, what's the prognosis?”
“I've got about five lawyers and three psychologists on it,” said my friend, “and what we're trying to do is, you know, get him off the 'punishment track' and onto the 'treatment track.' They figure if he pleads down to simple possession, they can get him into a halfway house or maybe probation, because he's got a couple of priors.'” (Interesting how twenty-five years of hipness in America has taught ordinary middle-class parents like my friend a vocabulary once known only to cops, criminals and criminal lawyers.)
My friend and I talked for awhile about drug therapy and whether it was better to send the kid off to East Butthole, Minnesota, to dry out or put him on methadone or cut his allowance or what. And it wasn't until I'd hung up that I realized what we'd been saying. My friend's kid didn't need to suffer any consequences, not serious consequences, anyway. After all, addiction is a sickness and he needs treatment. Besides, he's got personal problems and comes from a broken home. It's not like he's a criminal or anything. If he were a criminal, he'd be poorer and darker skinned.
My friend's kid lives in a well-padded little universe, a world with no hard edges or sharp surfaces. It's the Whiffle Ball again. The kid leads a Whiffle Life, and so does my friend and so do I.
If you're wondering why crack carries such a heavier penalty than cocaine, that's why. There's a particularly powerful tribe that likes it that way because its own scions need rehabilitation, not punishment, for their transgressions.
To some degree, like many bad habits, this is based on something very human and eternal. If my best friend or sibling is in a fight, for example, I'm likely to charge in without considering the circumstances surrounding the altercation. They're close to me, I have some reason to trust them, and whoever is attacking them isn't as close. All of us against the stranger.
There is also the fact that those of us who devote ourselves to practicing a particular talent tend to associate virtue, however unconsciously, with that ability. If you're a good writer, you want to be a great one and are thus more willing to associate those who have achieved greatness in your field with something good (because you want to achieve the same). I think this is behind the reason why Polanski gets a bye from filmmakers of all stripes and affiliations. It's the same reason why cops tend to find cause to defend one of their own when they do something terrible ("he's good police, he busted that case X years ago") or upper-class parents when their child becomes a drug dealer ("he's a good kid").
Of course, many of the old tribes, based on blood, have decayed over the years, and grander loyalties, to law and nationality, were supposed to replace them. This meant that instead of tribal vengeance, a larger authority (the law/state) was supposed to deal with matters of crime and punishment.
But that's changed, as the national loyalties fray under the pressure of an increasingly globalized world, and states have proven to have their own tribes within. People seeking family turn to those of similar profession or tastes, and the old lines reassert themselves with surprising rapidity. Me against my brother. Me and my brother against my cousin... The cycle goes on.
Whether it's Roman Polanski or a beat cop, however, to have any hope of true justice, the Tribal Exemption must fall at some point. The fact is, every time this happens, someone else, the raped, the beaten or those unfortunate enough not to have five lawyers and three psychologists, look out at the results and think this ain't fucking justice. They turn elsewhere, perhaps to their own tribe, to have some sense of retribution. Nothing good comes from endless vengeance, and the second tribes cease to have some higher force to rein them in, that's what runs rampant.
I've heard often that the future is more tribal than today, and that this is a way to replace a sense of community lost in an earlier time. Perhaps, but it's worth being aware of community's dark side. If the Tribal Exemption rules then, sooner or later, we're all a target.
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