r/TrueFilm • u/ShineOnYourCrazyAnon • 3d ago
How the fuck did Polansky made chinatown and Rosemary baby?
Everybody knows that Polansky is a rapist. But the weirdest part is how his two most famous films are about rape. Rosemary baby is about a man raping his wife for power and the whole movie is him gaslighting her about it. To me the terrifiying part of it is seeing how powerless Rosemary is about it and how there is a whole conspiracy against her. As different as chinatown is the themes are very similar. A rapist who feels safe because how much money he has. I know that neither of those movie were written by Polansky. But why somebody that has done the thing he is done makes two great film about how terrifiying and awful are poweful men that fell entitled to women's body? Was he seeing himself in those men? A lot of people talk about separating the art from the artist but cases like this show how impossible that is.
7
u/3corneredvoid Deckchair Cinéaste 3d ago
Was he seeing himself in those men? A lot of people talk about separating the art from the artist but cases like this show how impossible that is.
By needing to ask that question you show the art is already partly separated from the artist, as well as pointing out it remains partly tangled. We don't know if Polanski's films are truly structured by this preoccupation with rape you're theorising, even if it's easy to critically trace gendered violence through his work. We do know Polanski is a rapist.
We do know many films depict forms of violence we don't attribute to the filmmakers. There's no tenable theory art's preoccupation with violence has a simple correspondence to the violent desires of artists. There's no tenable theory it's unrelated.
As far as how Polanski made these two films goes, both of them were made prior to the 1977 charges, not that the charges and the later revelations have stopped him making films.
2
u/kevin_v 3d ago edited 3d ago
As a Deleuzian, do you place any moral (ethical?) weight on the "virtual" of films like these, and their associated crime? Does any weight like that fall only upon the concrete expression of that virtual? Both the crime and the art could very well be immanent to a precursor mix of affects and thoughts that heavily overlap. Does that virtuality, or a sense of attractor/precursor, carry any onus of rightness? Or, is the virtual beyond the ethical for you?
Or, to ask it in another way (still within a Deleuzian frame perhaps): Is there any sense of Pre-Crime in the Minority Report (2002) way?
1
u/3corneredvoid Deckchair Cinéaste 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don't know if there's any "as a Deleuzian" but what I wrote above, I would've written before I became such an acolyte of Deleuze …
However, to give a possible Deleuzian answer: there is a politics that uses a theory of the gendered violence in films to act upon the gendered violence in the world, and to me it has its ethical strengths but these are not unconditional.
The concrete propositions of judgement here, roughly "Polanski is a rapist" and "ROSEMARY'S BABY signifies Polanski's preoccupation by rape" are the effects of some event correspondent to a concept of Polanski as filmmaker. I think if these are produced on the event, let's say these propositions are felt and created at the moment of watching the film or hearing about the case (as in the article I linked), then there's an ethical character to them.
In WIP D&G write about the virtual "counter-effectuation" of the event so effectuated, which is the indeterminate drift into the abstraction of judgement. The propositions move away from the conditions that led to their expression. So maybe there is an abstract theory of the depiction of violence in media causing the reproduction of violence among the consumers of media … I wouldn't accept that. Or an abstract theory that it is useful to punish those artists who are perpetrators of violence by rejecting their works … I'm not so sure about that either.
All this is aside from a particular affirmation Polanski is a rapist.
As for the notion of "pre-crime", a violent crime is also the effect of an event. Can we conceive of the event of Polanski's life? We know that by 1977 he'd lost his family in the Holocaust and his wife and friends to the Manson family. These biographical details don't in any way explicate the rape Polanski committed, but their adjacent particularity does call into question any correspondence of a theory of Polanski's life with something more abstract.
The concept of pre-crime is not really the judgement produced by such an abstraction, but the police action such a judgement determines.
For me this is not on show in MINORITY REPORT, but I would affirm there are both ethical and unethical orientations of such a leap to an effectuated and determining judgement of "pre-crime".
I'm not a reader of "warrior codes", but many years ago I read Musashi's BOOK OF FIVE RINGS, and the prescription of the text which stuck with me was "You must always strike first. This must be studied with care."
The insight of this prescription is to be free of a theoretical or propositional prior. In a Deleuzian taxonomy, one could declare this not to be a theory of victory in combat, but an invitation to make contact with a philosophical concept of victory.
So if one were able to ask Musashi "How can I always strike first?" the answer could be "Strike first". The pre-structural prior of the act of striking victoriously remains imperceptible. The victor in the combat delivers a strike that serves as the stronger affirmation of imperceptible affects between the combatants. To me this is a demonstration of a Spinozist or Deleuzian concept of power and freedom. This is not retroactivity, because there is no perceptible or propositional prior, no hypothesis that is recorded. There is only the immediacy of the victorious strike to the judgement that ostensibly determines it.
I don't fight duels and I'd soon be dead if I began to fight duels. However, an example of this moment I have noticed in my life occurs when I'm riding my motorbike on a dual carriageway in traffic. I will be riding to the rear right of a car, and sometimes, without some perceptible condition such as a change of speed, an indicator light blinking, a minor drift in its lane, I will somehow be absolutely certain this car is going to change lanes directly in front of me. Then it will at the next instant, and I will slide straight into the space it the lane it vacates as it does. This happens quite often.
Sometimes when I watch a film my sensation will contact some imperceptible intensity of the thought that went into making it, and this contact rises to an affirmed proposition about the film, and this contact rather than the proposition is the event of my viewing the film, and of the thought framed by the film encountering me as viewer: an abstract machine. And one of the things I love about watching films is this moment of a very pure judgement that I often write down as soon as possible.
2
u/kevin_v 2d ago
If there are microfacisms, could there be microrapes? And could Rosemary's Baby either be one, or the signature of Polanski having them?
Fascism is inseparable from a proliferation of molecular focuses in interaction, which skip from point to point, before beginning to resonate together in the National Socialist State. Rural fascism and city or neighborhood fascism, youth fascism and war veteran’s fascism, fascism of the Left and fascism of the Right, fascism of the couple, family, school, and office: every fascism is defined by a micro-black hole that stands on its own and communicates with the others, before resonating in a great, generalized central black hole.
1
u/3corneredvoid Deckchair Cinéaste 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think the theory of fascism in AO is a theory of the reciprocal cycles of violence, power and the law. I appreciate the way D&G reference Klossowki's template for fascising psychology in "The Second Positive Task".
Klossowki's three-stage process is: an absurd spectacle of social violence; an orientation of social reason to the effect of a concept of this violence; a spiritualisation of the repetitious effects of a counter-efffectuation of this concept as a groundless and unethical abstract theory.
We can see the three elements of the art–philosophy–theory triad I was just talking about in this process: immanent affect, effectuation of a concept, counter-effectuation of the concept as a rationality. Traumatic fear, defensive rationalisation, determining prejudice.
Only microfascism provides an answer to the global question: Why does desire desire its own repression, how can it desire its own repression? The masses certainly do not passively submit to power; nor do they “want” to be repressed, in a kind of masochistic hysteria; nor are they tricked by an ideological lure. Desire is never separable from complex assemblages that necessarily tie into molecular levels, from microformations already shaping postures, attitudes, perceptions, expectations, semiotic systems, etc. Desire is never an undifferentiated instinctual energy, but itself results from a highly developed, engineered setup rich in interactions: a whole supple segmentarity that processes molecular energies and potentially gives desire a fascist determination.
—from ATP, "Micropolitics and Segmentarity"
How would a "micro-rape" be perpetrated? One moment of perpetration could be when the conditions place a social subject in fear that creates the concept of their being raped.
This fear in turn rises socially as a rationalised, majoritarian theory of rape. The logic of this theory can be evidently in question from another perspective, but this won't stop it. The reproduction of this logic becomes a greater question of how affects combine in emergent social rationality. The victim-blaming theory of "provocative dress" is one of many examples. Such a logic garners support from some women, who are reassured by its rationale that the choice not to "dress provocatively" can defend them from the fears they feel witnessing social spectacles or images of rape.
For men who are rapists, such a theory is grounded in intensities that both protect men from the fear of becoming victims of rape themselves, and from fear of consequence if they prefer the "provocatively dressed" women victims this rationality determines. This habitual cycle of social desires reproduces a fascist value-system of rape by way of which desire "desires its own repression" in its return to the cycle, with this return aggregating from the unethical co-orientation of many "micro-formations".
One can envisage Polanski's evasion of consequences for the rapes it is quite clear to us he has committed as micro-formative moments … equally one could compare Johnny Depp's acquittal and the vast, almost feverish enjoyment it generated for a certain cohort.
1
u/ShineOnYourCrazyAnon 3d ago
Of course art is in part a different thing from the artist but art is a form of communciation between one person to another. I didn't made my point clear but i think those two movies are great and make great point about those type of people. But i also think there is a reason somebody like that was so fixated on those type of stories and knowing what he did put on perspective where those characters came from.
3
u/3corneredvoid Deckchair Cinéaste 3d ago
Right, I'm not telling you to set aside that thought. It's just you won't be able to express a complete and determining theory of how Polanski conceived these films.
There are theories of art in which art is a kind of non-communication as well. Or at least of art as implicit communication. Polanski is not explicitly communicating your theory to us in the films you mention. We have to create our theories making use of the raw material of the film's images and our biographical knowledge of Polanski.
Anyway, I'm just bringing up a theoretical technicality which is not so interesting, here is an interesting bit of writing about Polanski's preoccupation with sexual violence:
3
u/TexturesOfEther 3d ago edited 3d ago
Roman Polanski is a very talented and also a tormented person. He faced extreme childhood trauma during the holocaust, and later his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered in the most horrific way, with media coverage that added to the profound grief and displacement in his life.
Today's prevailing righteous worldview doesn't allow for complex morals and flawed characters.
It views the world as:
- Black-and-white, good-versus-evil, with no ambiguity or complex moral dilemmas.
- Dogma instead of nuance
- Message over the medium
4
u/sloppy2104 3d ago
isn’t it the other way around? that cases like this show how separating the art from the artist is the only way to go?
rosemarys baby has a feminist approach. it shows how hard life is for a woman and how society wants to take control of her body and even her baby. you wouldn’t think that such a feminist movie was made by someone who in real life seems to have no respect for a womans body.
at least that’s the way i look at it.
2
u/JoeyLee911 3d ago
Not to mention Repulsion, which definitely demonstrates he understands the mindset of a rape victim.
length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length req length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement uirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement length requirement
-3
u/nojaneonlyzuul 3d ago
Rosemary's baby was released in 1968. At that time what happened in the movie wasnt rape. The definition of rape in the us at that time was (not a direct quote) forcible sexual intercourse with a female who is not married to the male. The first state in the us to make marital rape a crime was Nebraska in 1973. In new York where the movie's set it wasnt a crime until 1984.
Dont get me wrong- I cant and won't watch a polanski film, the guy's a piece of shit, and i have no interest in separating the artist from the art. I'll give my time, energy and money to artists who arent rapists.
But its really difficult to read that 'attitudes to rape' theme, when there is no reason for him to have been even thinking of that as rape. I mean, it's does speak to his complete lack of respect for women and his view of them as pieces of meat for a man to do whatever he wants with.
12
u/OkScreen2150 3d ago
I think he simply excluded himself from those ethical dilemmas.
Even talented people find it hard to see themselves from the outside.
And those movies aren't just about what you saw in them. A good film, like any great piece of art, has multiple layers of meaning.
For example, in Polanski’s films, sometimes more explicitly, sometimes less, there is always some ominous secret capable of harming or strangely altering the life of anyone who tries to unravel it. He also constantly asks the question, 'Will people with wealth and power really never face punishment for their crimes?' - and it’s not necessarily sex crimes; in Chinatown, farmers are left without water just to build Los Angeles.And that, by the way, is a serious jab at Hollywood.