Polanski’s “Dreyfus”

May 16, 2012 By 21 Comments

Whatever its attitude toward fictional Jews, Hollywood targets the real ones who live in Israel with many Hollywood Jews going out of their way to rip the Jewish state. Harvey Weinstein is a typical Hollywood Jew – more interested in Jew as analog for Palestinian than Jew as continuing focus of world anti-Semitism.

It will be interesting to see whether Polanski is cut from the same cloth. At the very least, he will probably push his own self-centered approach to Dreyfus, likening Dreyfus’ persecution for his Jewish heritage to his own “persecution” for child molestation. Nobody is coming after Polanski because he’s Jewish. They’re coming after him because he had sex with a 13-year-old girl. But to Hollywood, that’s not rape-rape.

Only Hollywood arrogance and self-centeredness could turn the story of  Dreyfus, a story of monumental  Jew-hatred – the same Jew hatred that led to the Holocaust – into a personal tale about child molestation, or a metaphor for broader victimization for various minority groups. Missing the point is a Hollywood specialty.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.  

Pages: 1 2

Filed Under: Daily Mailer, FrontPage Tagged With: , , , ,
About

Ben Shapiro is an attorney and writer and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, and author of the new book “Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How The Left Took Over Your TV” from Broadside Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.

  • BS77

    I liked Polanski's film The Tenant…in which he plays the main role….of a man living in a nightmare …perhaps it is autobiographical in some way.

  • ManMan

    This article is asinine. On the basis of zero evidence, the Holocaust survivor Polanski is denounced as antisemitic, The Pianist is ridiculously claimed as Holocaust-soft-pedaling for following the protagonists memoir, Polanski is lumped ideologicially with a Hollywood community he lived in from 1968 through 1977, a brief window in his life a long time ago, and the prospective Dreyfus film is declared an allegory of his own legal battles. None of these statements have any basis in fact, its just a screed, and I say this as someone who is not a Polanski supporter, and as an avowed hater of antisemitism in all its forms. If you want to look to a film that softpedals the Holocaust and excoriate its cowardly maker, look to Schindler's List rather than the Pianist.

    • HoR_Emperor

      Um… what?

      If you are not a Polanski supporter, why are you leaping to his defense here? And your claims for yourself are meaningless — on the Internet no one knows you're a dog.

  • Schlomotion

    Imagine being a famous movie director with a half century resume of making successful films and having a little 28 year old twerp in a beanie trying to pan your movie for a lack of Jewishness. This is like complaining that baby chickens raised in concentration camps were harmed in an epic remake of the Iliad because someone ate eggs during the production.

    The "Center for Study of Popular Culture" is not dead.

    • HoR_Emperor

      Oh look, its an anti-Semitic troll.

  • jacob

    So far, I haven't seen a single remake worth watching and I don't believe Polanski's remaking of the "J'ACCUSE"
    played by the late PAUL MUNI will ever come close to it…
    Wait and all of you will see…

  • tagalog

    Well, in fact Zola was a bit of a Leftist. J'Accuse was printed in a left-wing journal, Georges Clemenceau's L'Aurore.

    Who's going to play Dreyfus?

    I agree that Polanski is a child molester, a criminal, and a fugitive from justice. He also has made some fine movies, including Repulsion, Knife In the Water, and Chinatown, among others. It just goes to show you, as Paul Johnson has pointed out in intricate detail (in his book Intellectuals) that artists and intellectuals don't always live the most praiseworthy lives. Oh well, to paraphrase Shakespeare, if true justice were done, who would escape a whipping? By the way, I also thought The Pianist was overblown and phony about the piano-Nazi sequence.

  • AntiSharia

    Being a good artist doesn't give someone a pass on behaving like a human being. Polanski, if there were any real justice here, would be dragged back in chains to face charges and then be sentenced to a very long time in prison.

    • Questions

      How about a short jail sentence? Nobody is excusing his offenses, but crime requires proportionality. And as an aside, Polanski's 2010 movie, "The Ghostwriter," is a masterpiece.

      • Larry

        Getting a 13 year old girl drunk, drugging her, and then raping her is a vicious crime of the highest standard. Long jail term is extremely appropriate. Add to that flight, and Polanski's coffin should have rotted out by the time it came out of a prison.

  • PhillipGaley

    In the way that, BADNESS transcends racial extraction or even, religious affiliation, "Hollywood Jews going out of their way to rip the Jewish state." would better reading as: "Hollywood [bad people, folks, creeps] going out of their way to rip the Jewish state."

    Accordingly, "It will be interesting to see whether Polanski is cut from the same cloth." I think, should intend to say that, of course, Polanski is cut from the same smelly and threadbare cloth.

    And, "They’re coming after him because he had sex with a 13-year-old girl." fails inthat, it blinks the facts showing how he did that.

    Also, "That’s not rape-rape." is a quote of minimization and denial of Polanski's deed, voiced by that one hideous woman who is a part of "THE VIEW"—it's on YT; just now, I forget her name, . . .

    And yes, in so many instances and varying ways—for what few shows I have seen growing up, as I did, without TV—missing the point of life, appears to be a Hollywood specialty, . . . though, whatever they come up with from their self-imposed swill, they appear to be pretty darned proud of it, . . .

    And yes, correct societal treatment of crime requires proportionality, and for the awful punishment in the hereafter to be avoided, he would much better in an appropriate treatment here—not now more than simply to mention the shame to be seen in the larger Society for our failure in that matter, . . . and yes, his offenses are thus far, largely excused, . . .

    But in again going over the Dreyfus affair, so shocking, and such an indictment against "the good ol' days" and "the loveliness of Paris", it occasioned me again to recall how that, history's pages but record, one single and long death grapple in the darkness, between old systems and The Word, Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on an administrative throne, yet that scaffold sways the future, and beyond the dim unknown standeth G0D within the shadow, keeping watch above His own, . . . And, officer Dreyfus, all though years imprisoned, . . . and though our path be rough and steep as would make angels weep, still, G0D will keep His own, . . .

    • Jules

      PhilipGaley above posts: "Also, "That’s not rape-rape." is a quote of minimization and denial of Polanski's deed, voiced by that one hideous woman who is a part of "THE VIEW"—it's on YT; just now, I forget her name, . . . " <<

      You mean the same overrated & under-talented woman on "The View" who extenuated Michael Vik's abuse of dogs and dog-fighting sport as "part of his culture;" thus, implying it was excusable.
      Well, then stoning women in Afghanistan and cutting off their tongues in Yemen, and hanging homosexuals in Iran, etc., "is part of the culture' and must be taken into account to understood "where they're coming from."

      Factor this and the "rape-rape" defense into Polanski's plight & flight plan and voila, Holy Shi'Ite.

  • H&R_ Barack

    "D" for debauched.

    de·bauched [ di báwcht ] 1.immoral: unrestrainedly and immorally self-indulgent.

  • Ghostwriter

    I suspect that both Alfred Dreyfus and Emile Zola will be spinning in their graves because Polanski wants to use their saga to justify his molestation of a thirteen-year-old girl.

  • H&R_ Barack

    If Polanski wanted to be really provocative and mesmeric,, he would have depicted a

    "story of an obscure French soldier who was wrongly accused of joining the front line."

    NAH!

    • johnnywoods

      Viva! the "surrender monkeys":)

  • Larry

    The real kicker in the Dreyfus saga is that he actually was a German spy, but the mob who went after him didn't know it, merely used that as an excuse to hound him for being a Jew.

    • Atikva

      What a lot of BS!

    • Ghostwriter

      Well,there's ample evidence to prove he wasn't a German spy. He was tried simply because he was a Jew. A convenient scapegoat for anti-semites for their hatred of Jews.

  • Atikva

    “The Pianist had several soft stereotypes of Jews in it, including guests in a café checking whether their gold coins are genuine; meanwhile, the film soft-pedals the brutality of the Germans – in the film’s climactic scene, the main character is let go by a German officer who is converted to kindness by the character’s piano-playing.”

    This has nothing to do with “soft stereotypes of Jews”. Mr. Polanski did not invent them. These are facts described by Władysław Szpilman himself in his book. He saw what some of the customers did when he was playing piano in a café, and he was, indeed, helped during the last days of the war by Wilm Hosenfeld, a German officer later recognized as a Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

    We shouldn’t be afraid of the truth. Some Jews were selfish and not all German soldiers were monsters during WWII – so what? it's not like selfishness and compassion were never part of human behavior before.

    The real wonder is that the Jews are strong enough and generous enough to acknowledge these facts and act accordingly.

  • Chaim Paddaman

    Roman Polanski apologist Jean Melkovsky writes in the Los Angeles Times. " All the existing documents emphazise: Outstanding maturity and sexual experience of the Polanski rape victim. He is not a peadophile. The offence occured as a isolated instance of transient poor judgement. Melkovsky blames the physical maturity and willingness of the victim. Peadophiles argue that their victims asked for it, and got it. It is common knowledge that should a child present with promiscuous and provocative behavior, the minor will be classified as a vulnerable child, thus placed on a register for vulnerable children, and protected under statutory laws. It is amazing how the liberal elite tend to ignore the ethics of statutory laws when it suits them. Roman Polanski took advantage of such a child. Roman Polanski is not a great man, he is a very sick man. Melkovsky can smear the victim as much as he/she likes. It won't wash. The Hollywood's peadophile syndicate can continue with their attempts to rebrand his image and smear his victims……………………