Roman Polanksi - J'Accuse, 2019
In 2019, Roman Polanski released the film, J'Accuse, a drama about the historical event known as the Alfred Dreyfus affair. In the film, a French officer is accused and wrongfully convicted of espionage. While it received critical praise, the film was seen as an attempt by Polanski to draw parallels between this falsely accused officer and his own sexual abuse case in which he was charged with drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.27 Dreyfus was eventually exonerated, but in Polanski's case, he ended up pleading guilty to the lesser offense of unlawful sex with a minor and subsequently fled the United States when the judge denied his plea.
Since then, he has garnered multiple awards for his films, including six academy awards since the case– even as accusations against him from other women have mounted. Understandably, people are offended by the notion that Polanski has continued to receive accolades for his work, and have most recently expressed their offense with organized walkouts at the Cesar Awards.28 None of Polanksi's films advocate for child predation, but the fact that he is legally identified as a child predator has overshadowed the reception of his work, ultimately resulting in his expulsion from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2018.29 The premiere of J'Accuse, however, received a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, and Polanski himself was awarded a César Award for best director. The critic, David Sexton called the film “a masterclass in how to make a historical film,”30 but the public reception of J'Accuse was more mixed than its critical reception. The film did relatively well at the box office with over one and a half million ticket sales, even as feminist groups blockaded many of the cinemas in which it was being shown.31
Given that child predation is an active choice that has clear moral and legal consequences, and given that Polanski has pleaded guilty to sex crimes, a criterion of offense that invalidates any protest of an author’s work on the basis of their identity is neither practical nor realistic. It is true that J'Accuse, like Open Casket, was protested on the basis of its author’s identity. However, one can differentiate between the cases in the sense that acquiring the label of “sex offender” depends on one’s actions, and, in that sense, is within one’s control. In Schutz’s case, she had no control over the labels of “white” and “woman.” It may be obvious to state that sexual predation is in a much more serious moral category than cultural insensitivity, but we must acknowledge that there is a moral spectrum to the violations that cause offense, and that not all violations merit the professional cancellation of the author.