The basic theme of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was the nightmare of a modern virtuous society invaded and corrupted by decadent “Old Europe” style nobility, who act in ways that defy morality and flaunt the laws of society due to their belief that they themselves are beyond the reach of man’s justice. Stoker wrote Dracula at a time when England was surpassing Europe as the cultural center of the West, and his novel was a reaction to the antinomian and often blasphemously obscene art and literature of men like Huysmans or Baudelaire. Dracula in Stoker’s work represents not only the dark antiquity of Europe, where men of low character could, by nature of their birth into noble households, literally get away with rape and murder, but the fin de siècle movement’s seeming embrace of that sort of depravity and decadence.
Dracula, the noble who defied even death (and thus God in Stoker’s universe), took what and more importantly who he wanted without regard to common decency. He murdered, raped, and stole his way through the story, acting as the ultimate metaphor for the evil of Old Europe’s degeneracy for decades. Then something peculiar happened. Post-modern society began seeing Dracula not as a metaphor for the sexual predator protected by his wealth and power, but as an anti-hero rebelling against Victorian morality. There is no Humanities or Literature department, book publishing house or film studio where this is not the prevailing interpretation of the Dracula character. Perhaps those that see themselves as the cultural “tastemakers” of our society, the university professors, leftist “artists,” and the business interests that surround the arts, have vested interests in reigniting the noble-worship of Old Europe, in creating a society that believes in the noble’s exception including their privilege to assault and otherwise molest non-nobles. But anyone having been exposed to some published poet or author (and I’ve meet far too many) knows that this reimagining of Dracula, and vampirism in general, is simply another expression of these people’s misanthropic elitism.
A common expression of this elitism is also academic Europhilia, by which I mean the adoption (primarily by the left) of what they assume are prevailing opinions in Europe and the pretense of a disdain for America. Those of us on the right are mistaken to think the modern academic’s tendency to scoff at “dead White males” and their contributions to civilization as in some way Europhobic. To the contrary, academics have merely adopted two of Europe’s most pernicious and degrading philosophies outside of the idea of the hereditary divine right: Marxism and multiculturalism. So entranced by Europe’s ability to project the air of cultural superiority, the self-appointed elites here have entered vassalage with the new “nobility” of Europe.
Which brings us to Roman Polanski, hackneyed artist, peripheral character in the Manson murders, and violent rapist of children. Roman Polanski drugged and violently raped, both vaginally and anally, a 13-year-old girl. He then skipped bail and fled to Europe where the arts community there, with the open approval of the “tastemakers” here, helped the degenerate continue to work and prosper while avoiding justice. His recent arrest exposed how the people who consider themselves part of the most sophisticated sectors of American society are little more than living caricatures of the gypsies who followed Dracula, doing his bidding and aiding him in his most heinous crimes.
Even though (to her credit) racist Amanda Marcotte tried to commit herself to justice, the negative reaction of Pandagon’s readers made her temper her attacks on Polanski by claiming we on the right are only disgusted by him because we don’t understand his works. No one on the right, you see, is in reality disgusted by rape because of course we’re all rapists. This clearly says more about Marcotte and her relationship with some authority figure she sees as conservative, but since I’m not Marcotte’s therapist I’ll never know for sure. What’s important here is that Marcotte, even while braking ranks with the left, cannot stand to “lower” herself into being on the same side as those she sees as beneath her.
This is elitism in its most obvious form. Pathological, spiteful, and based largely on reinterpreting reality to make these supposed elite minds less sadly pedestrian than they are. In fact, attacking Polanski is the one thing Marcotte has done in her entire life that would set her apart from millions of 15 to 45-year-olds who even now are thumbing through their copies of Poppy Z Brite’s Lost Souls.
But since she fails to understand Polanski’s work herself (implying Rosemary’s Baby is a feminist statement against the patriarchy) I find the suggestion that we righties simply hate art thus we hate Polanski (even though we love raping children apparently) to be the kind of textbook projection those whose identities are dependent on being seen as smarter than others (but who simply aren’t) tend to throw around when they angrily realize that those they hate the most are actually those who they should hate the least.
But at least Marcotte hates rapists as well.
There are 100 filmmakers who signed a petition to “free” Polanski who clearly do not. Whoopi Goldberg characterized the violent vaginal and anal rape of a child, while she cried and pleaded with her tormentor to stop, as not being “rape-rape.” Long time Red Alerts hater and admitted pervert Robert Lindsay claims “sane” people are outraged by Polanski’s arrest. Supposed feminist Joan Z. Shore claims Polanski’s arrest is shameful. She’s a Vassar graduate from New York City who lives in Europe. John Farr claims Polanski deserves leniency, just by nature of being Roman Polanski. Farr thinks movies he enjoys should be given the same status as Classical Literature, and oddly doesn’t think the overrated 28 Day Later was essentially an amalgam of plots from Romero’s Dead trilogy stuffed into one awful movie. Movie critic Kim Morgan thinks that despite drugging, raping, and sodomizing a little girl, Roman Polanski “understands” women though she’s clarified that doesn’t mean she condones his actions. Only letting him off the hook for his actions.
I do not point out these disparate defenders of Polanski and child rape to show that in contrast to Marcotte’s views on rape apologia it is the left that produces the majority of it because this isn’t a political point. This is more of an ethnographic sketch of those Americans who consider themselves culturally and intellectually superior to their fellow citizens. No doubt there is a vast difference between Robert Lindsay, Kim Morgan, and Amanda Marcotte, which is illustrated by the slight variations in their views, but there is an overarching theme here that I would suggest makes these self-appointed elites more of a subculture. They are the American thralls to a mythic Old Europe, where a person’s corpus of work is more important than their penchant for sexual criminality. They believe in a social order in which there are nobles (themselves) and a peasantry (the rest of us) who are devalued for our inability (or unwillingness) to participate in their decades old masquerade. Roman Polanski is who they aspire to be, his victim a meaningless indiscretion for which a man like Polanski cannot be expected to suffer.
Maybe a man named Ronnie Pulaski who worked construction, but not Roman Polanski!
Considered a genius, unencumbered by morality and the complete opposite of what Americans have long considered the ideal, Polanski challenges society in real life the way Dracula challenges Victorianism in Stoker’s novel. Were they better read, they would perhaps see Polanski not as the Gary Oldman version of Dracula, a tortured loved-starved creature punished by a hostile and puritanical God, but as I see Polanski. He is like the Don Juan of Tirso de Molina’s The Trickster of Seville, sinister, spiteful and ultimately damned. But to see that in Polanski is to look past the European trappings and artistic prestige, and to see the man as equal to all others and thus worthy to be judged. This is a step these self-appointed elites cannot take, lest they admit they too can be judged by their true equals, their fellow Americans.
We have our own royalty in America, the celebrities we build up and tear down as part of our entertainment industry. But there is something seductive in the royalty of Old Europe, the idea that a person could be considered worth more than another and never really have to prove it. We all have such pretensions if we admit it, and the best of us cast off this burden to meet the world and all in it as equals, and rise and fall according to our abilities, our sweat, and our blood. Polanski represents for some the easier way, the illusion of class and worth, the comforting lie of elitism. For those who embrace that outlook there is no action too wicked to defend if it props up the lie and reinforces the artificial distinctions between us.
Especially if it happens to those of us they consider beneath them.
