https://iclfi.org/pubs/wr/47/polanski
The following article was written by G. Perrault and approved for publication by the International Executive Committee of the ICL.
The ICL’s recent political re-orientation has made our political interventions in the class struggle more effective, often exerting real pressure on reformist forces in the workers movement. In such cases, the response to our arguments is commonly to invoke an article written in Workers Vanguard in February 1978 entitled “Stop the Puritan Witchhunt Against Roman Polanski!” (WV No. 192). As the headline suggests, the article defended Roman Polanski against the charge that he raped 13-year-old Samantha Geimer (then Gailey).
Raising this article from almost fifty years ago in the context of struggles pertaining to today is a transparent way to sidestep our arguments and shut us up. However, if this line of attack is available to our political opponents, it is due to mistakes of our own making: we should not have defended Roman Polanski. Moreover, the more we were criticized for this, the more we doubled down, even dismissing clear evidence indicating we were wrong (see WV No. 1135, 1 June 2018). Our position was viewed almost as a test of faith and proof of our ability to stand up to bourgeois moral pressure.
We know that correcting our position today will not stop our critics; it is always easier to slander than to respond to Marxist arguments. But as the saying goes, when you are in a hole, stop digging. Forty-eight years later, we explain how we got it so wrong on Polanski.
The Polanski Case According to Geimer
There are cases where an underage person consciously and freely consents to sex with someone who is an adult in the eyes of the law. But this was not what happened in the case of Polanski and Samantha Geimer. In a 2013 interview with Der Spiegel, Geimer describes the events of 1977 as follows:
“I didn’t know how to stop him. I had told him that I didn’t want to go into that room. When he touched me, I said no. But when ‘no’ didn’t work, I didn’t know what to do anymore. ‘Let him do it,’ I thought, ‘and then I’ll go home’.”
She goes on to say:
“I didn’t want it. I tried to say no. That makes it rape. Did I think it was rape at the time? No. I thought rape meant physical violence or kidnapping. Then I got home and everyone was shouting: ‘You’re 13. It’s rape!’ I was really surprised.”
Geimer’s account leaves little doubt that Polanski abused his power and raped her. However, the events of that night were only the start of her nightmare. The 2008 documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired depicts how the infernal wheels of the judiciary and Hollywood press began to turn after Polanski’s arrest. The judge was first and foremost interested in his media coverage, toying with both the defense and the prosecution to make a show. This saga had nothing to do with getting justice for Samantha Geimer and made her life a living hell.
In her Spiegel interview Geimer responds to how she has been portrayed in the media and describes how she felt about her ordeal:
Geimer: “At any rate, I was never as devastated and traumatized as people claimed I was. What I still don’t understand is that if everyone felt that what Roman did was so terrible, why do they still want to see me as a deeply traumatized victim? Oh, Polanski did this to you—but why, then, aren’t you in worse shape?”
SPIEGEL: “We don’t understand that.”
Geimer: “I’m also a feminist. I understand the motives of the women who attacked me publicly. But they wanted me to feel like a victim, because only a deeply hurt victim could truly benefit them and their cause. But I wasn’t one. To this day, I don’t feel that I was a victim of Roman, but rather a victim of the public, the courts and the media. That explains this book and this interview.”
When the journalist confronted Geimer for minimizing the significance of Polanski having sex with a 13-year-old girl she explained:
“Today it’s hard to imagine what the mood was like in the late ’70’s, especially in Hollywood. Elvis Presley had married Priscilla in the ’60’s. She was 14 when Elvis met her. Woody Allen’s ‘Manhattan’ was an homage to a middle-aged man in love with a teenager. I saw a photo of Don Johnson with his later wife Melanie Griffith sitting on his lap. She was 14 when they met. The girl who becomes a woman was no taboo. The term child abuse didn’t exist. Or at least no one talked about it.…
“There is no justification. Roman should have known better. But you have to recognize that people behaved somewhat differently at the time when it came to sexual matters. Roman believed, as he said later on, that his actions had been based on warmth and affection. And you know what? I believe him. Condemning it from today’s perspective is ignoring the historical context. Nevertheless, it was shitty of him to do it, no matter what he thought at the time, and no matter how he feels today.”
Geimer’s account shows that two things were true. Polanski committed a crime. And in response there was an insane media and judicial frenzy which made everything worse. These were the years of Anita Bryant’s campaign against homosexuality and a period where the U.S. ruling class was fostering a moral backlash against the sexual revolution of the ’60s to shore up its position after its defeat in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. The Polanski scandal fit right into the atmosphere of the time.
What Workers Vanguard Got Wrong
The Polanski article in WV sought first and foremost to oppose the conservative social backlash surrounding the case. However, in doing so, it simply put a minus where everyone else was putting a plus, declaring Polanski innocent and acting in effect as his defense lawyer. One of the passages of the article that has raised the most outcry (including in the party’s own ranks at the time) is the one where Geimer’s previous sexual experience is cited as proof that the sexual intercourse between her and Polanski was consensual. This was a grotesque argument, regularly used in bourgeois courts to slander rape victims.
The question of whether Geimer wanted to have sex is never raised in the article and her point of view is totally dismissed. The disregard for Geimer went so far as to approvingly quote a statement from Polanski in which he calls her a “little whore.” In the name of fighting a puritan witchhunt, the rape of Geimer is denied and she is slandered. This is a truly reprehensible article, which has nothing whatsoever to do with defending communist morality. It will remain a stain on our history.
Why Was This Article Defended for So Long?
The WV Polanski article was defended for decades by the ICL despite its being constantly criticized, including with facts that challenged WV’s account. This insistence had much to do with the internal dynamics of our organization and how it reacted to a changing social context.
The Polanski article provoked a major crisis in the leadership of the SL/U.S. in 1978. The article’s critics were smashed and presented as capitulators to the growing socially conservative trends. This fight marked an important turning point in the history of the party, which had grown substantially in an earlier period of militancy but was now facing increasing isolation and stagnation. The party’s response to this new context was to reinforce its most sectarian tendencies. Positions like the one taken on Polanski were seen as proof that we were standing against the stream; the result was a more brittle organization increasingly divorced from living social contradictions.
For members who joined the ICL after this period, attracted by its position for black liberation in the U.S. or the fight against counterrevolution in the DDR and Soviet Union, the position on Polanski and on the age of consent (see article page 24) were often difficult pills to swallow. But they were positions which the party had elevated to points of principle and which had to be accepted to be a member. Comrades not familiar with the details of the Polanski case trusted that the party’s position was factually correct and that this was a case of consensual sex. For many it was an uncomfortable position that we hoped could be swept under the rug.
Does this mean we are changing our position out of simple opportunism? No. We are correcting our position because it is indefensible and flowed from a wrong method of approaching questions of morality. If this correction has been so long delayed, it is because we refused to simply concede to attacks motivated by right-wing political aims. But this was wrong. The bourgeoisie, echoed by left opportunists, will always use conservative morality against the workers movement. Communists do need to stand up to this, but we should not make their job easier by taking outrageous positions that purposefully shock dominant sentiments or even worse, minimize or deny the violence against the oppressed. Our position on Polanski should stand as a stark warning in this regard. Defending him was inexcusable and only served to soil our own image and hinder the otherwise legitimate struggles we have waged.
