OPINION
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Polanski Judge Wise to Resist Whitewashing
Director's bias skews media narrative
By Matt Cantor
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Posted Feb 19, 09 10:25 AM CST
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(Newser)
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The judge who refused to throw out Roman Polanski's rape conviction Tuesday—unless he agreed to come back to the country to challenge it in person—was right to resist the whitewashing of Polanski's crime, writes Bill Wyman in Salon. The movement to rehabilitate the acclaimed director was based on last year’s documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which casts Polanski as a tragic, Byronic figure and the judge as a self-promoting womanizer who committed judicial errors.
Director Marina Zenovich, “like many other chroniclers to the stars, seems to have been blinded by her contact with Polanski.” She could as easily have shown him as a “child-sex predator who drugged a 13-year-old girl; ignoring her protests, had sex with her; and then anally raped her.” The widely praised film stays “detached” from the victim as it “subtly undermines her”; it omits the worst in Polanski and the best in the judge, Wyman writes.