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well, the trick is that there wasn't much of anything in terms of lengths gone to in order to find polanski. there was no investigation it seems--there was a purely administrative transfer of information from one bureaucratic level to another. no manpower was devoted to finding him. that's what i think is the underlying problem here: he's been a high-profile figutive from the united states for 25 years or so, has made alot of films, has been easy to locate--but no-one's tried within the judicial apparatus. as i understand it, the last time he was almost nabbed was at another very public festival in israel where he had gone to accept an award.
so it's obvious that the reason he was arrested was that the police in switzerland found out about the publicity. maybe they have a news-scanning software that looks for names of folk with interpol warrants out for them. maybe running that software is all investigation of these things amounts to.
and maybe that's the issue--someone like polanski reveals the fact of the matter, that it is entirely possible to go underground and stay there, that it's entirely possible to live quite publicly for a long time and not be noticed by law enforcement--but the mythology about law enforcement requires that you believe the contrary. you need to believe that the Law is Drawn to the Guilty. you need to believe that the Law Protects you--because if that's the case, then the state by extension protects you and the political order for which it operates, of which it is an expression--that protects you (and not simply itself)....
that's another reason this bit of theater is interesting.
ideological drama. gots to love it.
but again, this is really not about what polanski may or may not have done in 1972 before he split the united states. it's about the fact that he split the united states rather than serving a sentence.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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