Friday, November l4, i969

the film’s viewpoint lies in the
tact that it is taken from the
very culture that it is critically
examining. Schlesinger shares
Virtually all of the basic as
sumptions and values that de~
fine the middle class culture
whose dynamics he so severely
Criticizes. Because of the cru
cial and central concessions
that Schlesinger makes to m'
clle class ideology, he is in-
capable in principle of accom»
plishing what he tries so hard
to accomplish. Let me be more
specific.

Midnight Cowboy is essential-
ly a liberal film, It sees its
world through the spectacles of
a liberal social worker, with all
the values oi Anglosdxon ra~
tionalism and purltanism that
go along with this way of per-
ceiving the world, There is a
need to explain everything.
Joe's proclivities are explained
in a series at unnecessary and
aesthetically oltensive flash»
backs, showing no one ever paid
any attention to him as a
Child, how his mother and
grandmother always had other
people around, people who dis-
tracted them from giving little
Joey the attention and affection
that every little Texan needs.
With this piece oi pseudorpsy.
choanalysis, we now know why
Joe really embarks upon his
quest. His aspirations make
sense now in a way in which
they would not have made sense
had we not been told of his boy-
hood traumas. But all this is
quite unnecessary. Having as

we do a much proiounder grasp
at what makes American Cul-
ture work than does the liberal
caseworker. we understand pep
fectly well why Joe should in
vest his ego in these glittering
illusions. Given the values that
have permeated our environ-
ments since our childhood days,
it is neither unnatural nor in
need of special explanation why
Joe does what he does.

The kind of rationalism to
which I am objecting goes
hand in hand with a certain sort
of value judgment that is as-
sociated With buritanism. Thus,
we are offered, implicitly or
explicitly, normative explana-
tions of homosexuality, sexual
promiscuity, and kindred phe-
nomena. How artificial and re
moved from reality Midnight
Cowboy seems compared even
to certain secondrrate European
films, in which for example, he-
mosexuality is simply accepted
as one of the bases of the film,

The clearest and most strik-
ing examples of the kind of
thing I am trying to call your
attention to is the sweetness and
softness and sentimentality that
underlies most of the dialogue.
subliminally voicing the cen-
tral assumptions of the liberal
caricature of humanitarianism
that defines American attempts
to deal with social problems.
There are really no nasty char-
acters in this lilm. indeed, the
central message oi Midnight
Cowboy is that basically all of
us are alike; we are lonely, pa-
thetic, and in need of love: El-

SCARLET AN D BLACK

canor Rigby as Everyman. All
You Need is Love (all together
now), Underneath. we are all
looking tor the Love that makes
the world go round. We really
have common needs and Share
common goals and aspirations;
it only we could set aside our
piddling diiiereiices and pursue
what we share in common (cf,
the letter of Miss Miriam Smith
in a recent issue of the S 8: 3).
Thank God that some of us see
through the sham of this ruling
class propaganda. it is the sale
ient feature of the contemporary
world that many of us adhere
to values that are fundamentally
incompatible with those oi the
liberal establishment. This
very fact by itseli illuminates
a great number of social, polit-
ical, and economic phenomena
that are unintelligible apart
from it. To insist that brother
ll. Rap Brown and mother Dean
Rusk really share the same as
pirations deep down is to throw
into hopeless confusion one's en-
tire conception of the Black Li-
beration Movement. The same
point holds of a small but grow-
ing number of students and
their mentors, both faculty and
administrators. The WerAre-All-
Alike<Underneath thesis bene-
ﬁts and protects the ruling class
and the ruling class alone, by
sapping the disenfranchised of
the world of their most prer
cious perception: that some spe-
cies of revolutionary action is
the only solution to their plight,
and that at the core of such
action lies the acquistion of

 

 

 

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power. For it is by power that
the ruling class rules. In this
sense, then, Midnight- Cowboy,
with its saccharine sentimentalr
ity and case worker approach,
is a covert piece of bougeois
ideology.

This liberal bias also inter»
leres with the technical aspects
of the film. Sentimentality is
repeatedly used as a short cut
to what might have been ac~

Movie Preview:

The Shop on

By Jon Stein

This weekend's movie will be
”The Shop On Main Street." It
will be shown at 8:00 Saturday
and Sunday nights in ARH.

”The Sleeping Car Murder,"
previously scheduled for Friday
and Saturday nights, has been
canceled so that the Friday
night showing would not conﬂict
with Moratorium activities.
Because of the state of my
budget, I decided not to Show
the movie at all this week and
hope to bring it when more
students will have an op-
portunity to see it.

One of the most widely ac-
claimed films of recent years,
“The Shop On Main Street" is
the tragicomedy of two people
in Czechoslovakia during the
early days of World War II.
One is a simple good natured
carpenter who has been “Aryan
controller" (the term ”Aryan”
was used by the Nazis to signity
non~jewish descent) of a sup~
posedly profitable Jewish
dryguods shop. The other
character is an elderly widowed
proprietor of the shop, a

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complished cinematically. Note
the scene in which the bedridden
Ratsn tells Joe that he is no
longer able to walk. One has
the feeling throughout the pic-
ture, and especially in this
scene, that one is being manip-
ulated by the performers, rath-
er than being affected by them.
So, you see, bad politics means
bad art. There’s another motive
for the revolution.

Main Street

headstrong, but engaging old
woman obliVious to the war,
who cannot understand the
position of the new arrival.

Tragedy strikes when
Nazis give orders for the
deportation of all Jews. The
carpenter first risks his own life
by trying to hide the old
woman, then panics under the
excruciating conflicts of the
circumstances.

Totally without pretension,
and with two great performers
creating unforgettable por-
traits, it stands as one of the
finest films of our time.

[lpptlrtunities~

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EDITOR 0F the S&B is open
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