"Fortunately, the courts discharged me every time after they understood what I had done"
About this Quote
It lands like a wink in a police station: the kind of line that turns repeated arrest into a punchline and, more importantly, into proof of concept. Alain Robert, the self-styled French Spider-Man, isn’t bragging that he beat the system so much as pointing out how neatly his stunts slip through the cracks of it. “Fortunately” reframes legality as luck, not morality; he’s not claiming innocence, he’s claiming legibility. Once the courts “understood what I had done,” they let him go. The implicit argument is that intent matters more than spectacle: he’s not stealing, not vandalizing, not hurting anyone. He’s climbing.
The subtext is a quiet negotiation with authority. Robert’s entire brand depends on transgression that reads as art, or sport, rather than threat. This sentence performs that framing in miniature: I look illegal until you get the story. It’s PR disguised as memoir, smoothing over the fact that urban free-soloing is still a forced confrontation with public safety, emergency services, and property rights. His choice of “discharged” is clinical, almost administrative, as if the state is simply processing a rare but harmless phenomenon.
Context matters because Robert’s climbs are made for cameras: landmarks, glass towers, national icons. Courts aren’t just venues for punishment; they’re part of the narrative arc that validates him as a mischievous folk hero rather than a criminal. The line works because it asks us to share the judge’s viewpoint: once you really see it, you can’t help but admire it.
The subtext is a quiet negotiation with authority. Robert’s entire brand depends on transgression that reads as art, or sport, rather than threat. This sentence performs that framing in miniature: I look illegal until you get the story. It’s PR disguised as memoir, smoothing over the fact that urban free-soloing is still a forced confrontation with public safety, emergency services, and property rights. His choice of “discharged” is clinical, almost administrative, as if the state is simply processing a rare but harmless phenomenon.
Context matters because Robert’s climbs are made for cameras: landmarks, glass towers, national icons. Courts aren’t just venues for punishment; they’re part of the narrative arc that validates him as a mischievous folk hero rather than a criminal. The line works because it asks us to share the judge’s viewpoint: once you really see it, you can’t help but admire it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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