Chinatown & Roman Polanski | Art vs Artist 

I can’t remember who said this but I love this quite that says artists should be no more moral than the average plumber.

It definitely is worth talking about anytime his films are brought up , for me I can watch films or consume media from people I personally hate especially considering in films lots of other people worked on the final product not just the writer and director

Thank you for this; not many have done a covering on Chinatown, irrespective if you really reviewed it. Polanski is a terrible terrible man, if u can even refer to scum as such, and yet he’s another ‘artist’ who’s talents enable him to such a large platform which is something I hate because like u, Chinatown is one of my favourite pictures ever. I’d advise that any good film you see, you disconnect yourself with the character because every ‘greatest film oat’ entry has at least one creep, and that is with no exaggeration. To consume art is to appreciate what it is, and wtv external factors lie, we take it as an amplification or decline in its quality- Like Chinatown; Nicholson & Dunaway are both controversial, and have had interesting allegations of their own- it’s lame, but “that’s Hollywood”

You should read "Death of the Author." He isn't speaking about how 'good' a piece of art is or whether we should celebrate or enjoy any one piece of art. He's talking about things like deriving theme, interpreting metaphors and any other subtextual meaning of the work. In those aspects, he believes understanding them based solely on the authors conscious intention limits the interpretative potential of the work. There are several reasons for this that are outlined (that's basically what the lecture is about.) Again, you should read Death of the Author.

20 minutes without nearly saying enough about either element. But good on you for covering a masterpiece by a POS. Will check out more to see how you grow.

Instead of Rosemary's baby you can always watch Hereditary. Its basically the same thing (with some differences)

Polanski did change the scripted ending forever pissing of Robert Towne one the greatest script writers in this decade. Evelyn and her daughter were supposed to live and escape. Think there was supposed to be a rare LA snowfall.

👍🏼

Back when Faye Dunaway still had a career.

@4:08 Groves.

Well, Dude, at least you follow Barthes to the letter - your author intent is alive and well throughout this entire video but me thinks the lad doth protest too much... Is it so important we know your moral stance on this elocuted through such subjective language? How are we to take any of your arguments seriously when you lack sobriety and composure give an objective criticism? (I'm going to be horribly ageist here...I, alas, shall always be older and wiser than thee [at least until I die], so I will chalk it up to your youth)? I don't mean to be harsh, merely rigourous...given time and thought I bet you'll make a darn good critic. To be sure the ethical difficulty of Polanski is complex and an ethical conundrum when viewing his films, but we are now a culture supersaturated in the magical thinking of 'talismanic immanence' ie; that - to use Barthian terms - the 'text' of a work is not not 'merely' imprinted in form and some aspects of the content with the psyche of the artist (as Barthes might argue - so, you see, his work isn't really 'pretty much useless') but that it contains the very animus of evil of that artist: hence cancel culture and the like is not really about no longer feeding capital into the hands or legacy of an artist who has 'betrayed us' (REALLY? Betrayed? Such an infantile reaction...but this is a word some people use) but of eradicating the animus of evil from the circuit of power.

You are going to have to stop consuming the world's best art based on this. Everyone is terrible.. artists most of all. You should never forget Gauguin... Celine.. Polanski... Socrates.... Bacon.. Tterrible people make art which makes you pause... Time to pause.

You seem at times to condemn the underage with the majority age out of hand, whether or not drugging the underage person was involved. I was just trying to understand if you had a blanket "ew" reaction to, say, a 14yo having a relationship with an 18yo, or with a 21yo? What if it were 1966 when the majority age was still 21yo: would you "ew" a relationship between a 14yo and an 18yo out 19yo then? Does context matter? Are you morally outraged by Polanski's criminal attack on the girl, or the fact that she was a minor? I brought up the relationship that I knew of bc I used to think that majority age adults having a sexual relationship with a minor was fully taboo. Then I learned of this relationship between two people I knew very well and for a time I couldn't wrap my head around it. Many men and women who have power seem to consider taboo, even forced relationships with the young or weak to be one the "perks" of their position in life. It goes on in politics, business, religion, education, law enforcement, and yes even in the arts. It's a poor reflection on people's upbringing.

Freidfood, what do you think of a 14yo girl that has some sort of relationship with her 30yo teacher, and later, when she's of legal age, marries that teacher, and they go on to have two kids and live happily ever after to a happy old age. Is the teacher a pedophile? Should the teacher have been jailed, or worse, as you implied?