Wonderful essay, in that Steyn has taken the soft pornography of Polanski's tortured odessy and Hollywood's defensive exculpation and elevated it into a useful discussion of substantive principles. Here, however, I do disagree, not in whether the property he's discussing is true, but to the degree of its causality.
That tension between temptation and revulsion he so wonderfully cites, is indeed what is communicated. What happens when its subject delves into depravity to express the attendant torment, is that upon repetition succumbing necessarily distills to obsession. Once there, the object is no longer to communicate that anguish but to finance alleviating the demands of the increasingly desensitized addict. Art then, necessarily devolves to distracted attention as a paean to commerce.
This effect is exacerbated when the perp is rolling in dough. The declining marginal value of money makes financing obsession not a necessity, but a habit. One cannot produce a quality product when neither art nor survival is the objective. There's your cause of Hollywood's demise.
When Mark Steyn writes, increasingly, America listens! His pen always has an edge to it, which makes his essays pithy to say the least. This bit on Polanski shows exactly what Hollywood is all about...and it “ain’t” a classic film with staying power. The so called “date rape” incidednt Polanski committed, is just as front page today, as it was 30 years ago when this rapist committed the act. Here Here, Mark...out of the park!!!
Great back-story, when will the script be done?