Culture Briefs

Polanski reruns

“Adding potentially damaging new evidence to the case against Roman Polanski, a British actress who worked on the director’s 1986 film Pirates has come forward to accuse him of sexually abusing her when she was 16. Earlier today, Charlotte Lewis held a press conference with her attorney, the ubiquitous Gloria Allred, and made the charges public, saying Polanski had ’forced himself upon’ her in his apartment in Paris and abused her ’in the worst possible way.’

“As to why she waited until now to say anything, Lewis said she did so to bolster the prosecution’s case against Polanski — who is still trying to avoid extradition from Switzerland — and to refute its claims that the incident involving a 13-year-old girl some four years prior to what happened with Lewis was an ’isolated instance.’ The Los Angeles district attorney’s office said it had already met with Lewis, where she had reportedly provided evidence to back her claims, but it offered no further details beyond that. Lewis is not pursuing her own lawsuit at this time, but Allred says she is ready to testify if and when the Polanski case goes forward.”

— Sean O’Neal, writing on “Actress accuses Roman Polanski of also sexually abusing her when she was a minor,” on May 14 at the AV Club

Real-keeping

“People can get irritating about their authenticity. … I hate to say that I also think of HBO’s new series ’Treme,’ which … leaves you beaten over the head every week about just how vibrantly real New Orleans is. Realer than where you live. Realer, really, than you.

“Even if you think you love the place, ’Treme’ is determined to show you otherwise. The surly street musician (who is just visiting himself, from Amsterdam) tartly informs tourists that it’s tacky to request ’When the Saints Go Marching In’ — that tune isn’t ’real New Orleans,’ apparently. In fact if you listen to any music on Bourbon Street, there are those who will tell you you’re not experiencing — again — the real thing. And if you live in the neighborhood the show is named after, Treme, the last thing you have any right to do is ask for quiet even in the wee hours, because, as Steve Zahn’s Davis McAlary character says, ’This is the Treme, dude!’ and the noise is what makes it real. …

“A main message from this sultry pageant of a show is that New Orleans is an occult matter that you can never truly ’get’ unless you’re a native or pretty close to it. The perky, hopelessly ’white’ tourists from Wisconsin with their nasal voices, the ones who get schooled by the street musician, can be taken as stand-ins for the viewer. Which makes the whole enterprise strangely unwelcoming.”

— John McWhorter, writing on “Please ’Treme,’ I Beg You — Get Over Yourself” on May 7 at the New Republic

Ignorance abounds

“[Andy] Rooney ends this with a jibe that notes his ignorance of Lady Gaga is fine, because kids are ignorant of Ella Fitzgerald. I suspect that he gives himself too much credit.

“When I was a kid at Howard, I used to go into Ben’s Chili Bowl and hit the jukebox. I always played Otis Redding, The JBs, or Sam and Dave. I knew this music for two reasons: 1.) It was what my parents played, and on long road trips their music, not mine, was the soundtrack. It’s like being black in America — I knew that part of their world in a way that they could not know mine. 2.) Hip-hop created a culture of Digging In The Crates. The notion was that digging through crates and crates of records to find a gem was something to be prized.

“Whatever you think of the music, no self-respecting hip-hop head, at that time, could ever get away with saying, ’Man, I don’t be listening to no Ella Fitzgerald!’ Your friends would have looked at you like you were crazy … I remember going into Ben’s and the old heads looking over and going, ’Son, what you know about that?’”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing on “Right on Cue” on May 11 at his eponymous Atlantic blog