Edt] =

_REVIEWS

Dullness blunts Amerika’s thrust -

Amerika, the U.S. miniseries that has
been called entertainment by network
Moguls but branded as blatant, anti-Soviet
Propaganda by peace activists everywhere,
failed to make the waves of hostility it was

intended to create.

By all accounts, the 14 and one-half hour
35-million project caused only a few rip-
Ples with television viewers in the United
States and Canada during its seven-day run
last week.

“In a sense, the series stole our thunder,”
Said Jeff Buttle of the SFU Media Group,
an organization of Simon Fraser University
Students and faculty who sponsored two
Campus debates on Amerika and who com-
Plained to the CTV network that the minis-
€rles was political propaganda.

_ Buttle said people he had talked to found
the show “boring” and tended to say things
such as, “I’m not going to bother watching
it anymore.”

TV ratings seemed to bear those state-
ments out. By Wednesday a televised news-
Cast was reporting the Tuesday instalment
of Amerika had attracted only 26 per cent
of North America’s viewers — down remark-
ably from the 46 per cent who tuned in the
Series premiere Sunday, Feb. 15.

Frank Kennedy, a Vancouver labor
leader and a vice-president of End the Arms

Race, agreed that “people have come to the

Conclusion that the series is dull.”

Most people in North America know by
Now that Amerika, starring big-name heavy-
Weights like Kris Kristofferson and Mariel

emingway, is based on the premise that
the United States has been invaded, broken
Up politically and occupied by the Soviet
Union and its surrogates late in the 1980s.
By 1996, when the action in Amerika starts,
the country has become economically and
Spiritually depressed.

Although no one has mentioned it, the
television movie resembles in its premise the
fanatically anti-Soviet film Red Dawn,

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released two years ago. The difference
between that Cold War offering and Amer-
ika is a degree of superficial sophistication:
the dialogue in the latter is more clever, but
then, compared to the low-brow Red
Dawn, almost anything would be. Both
films, however, are cut from the same cloth.

As with Red Dawn, the Soviet Union in
Amerika has somehow disabled the United
States — the same United States that has
developed the cruise attack missile, the MX
and the Trident submarine — with pre-
emptive, selective nuclear strikes. This has
been accomplished with the aid of East
Germans and Cubans, who, in the latter
case, have already conquered the rest of
Central. America. to. become ‘Greater
Cuba.”

What made Amerika particularly out-
rageous was the depiction of the Soviet sur-
rogates as members of a United Nations
peacekeeping force. That, and the unautho-
rized use of the UN logo almost resulted in a
lawsuit, and the sponsoring American net-
work, ABC, later allowed the UN brief
spots during the ad breaks to promote the
organization’s real role in world affairs.

Ironically, it was ABC which in 1983
made waves with The Day After, the televi-
sion movie that through its depiction of a
nuclear aftermath argued forcefully for dis-
armament. The movie, praised by peace
activists and watched by millions of viewers,
prompted attacks from ultra-rightists. One
of these, Ben Stein, thundered in a column
in the Los Angeles Times that someone in
Hollywood “should make a movie about
freedom.”

Stein, a former speech writer for dis-
graced ex-president Richard Nixon, joined
with Accuracy in Media chairman Reed
Irvine in writing ABC to present “the other
side of the story” — which, according to
the neo-conservatives, meant depicting the
United States under a Soviet occupation.

Accuracy in Media, an ultra-right group
dedicated to attacking progressive ideas in
newspapers, television- and other media,
held several meetings with ABC brass
before the series was finally written and
filmed.

That information comes from Propa-
ganda Alert in Toronto, which sent it on to
the SFU Media Group, the organization
which has campaigned hard to expose the .
propaganda contained in Amerika.

Aside from holding two forums on the
series last week, at Langara Campus and
SFU, the media organization has distrib-
uted copies of a letter to GTV. president
Murray Chercover. The letter, copies of
which were also sent to the Canadian
Radio-television and Telecommunications
Commission (CRTC), told Chercover that
Amerika “fosters a paranoid view of the
USSR as single-mindedly intent on world

domination.

. “political propaganda that tells us liberal

“Moreover, the film strongly implies that
liberal political and social values are dan-
gerous to (U.S.) national security and ought
not to be tolerated. It [also] consistently
portrays women negatively,” the letter
stated. (In Amerika the aims and objectives
of the peace movement, the women’s
movement and other progressive causes are
held to blame for the moral and physical
disarmament of the United States.)

The SFU Media Group asked Chercover
to provide regular announcements during
commercial breaks that the film was politi-
cal propaganda, and to balance its pro-
gramming by “exhibiting an equally
well-financed movie on the danger to world
peace posed by American militarism, and
the positive contributions to world peace
made by the United Nations.”

Buttle, an SFU communications student
and Media Group leader, said Chercover’s
reply showed the network president did not
understand the Media Group’s requests.

“He claimed we were asking for prior
restraint — the banning of the program
— which simply isn’t true,” Buttle said. In
his letter Chercover claimed criticism of
Amerika was based on “script excerpts”
that did not give an accurate picture of the
“controversial” and “provocative” film.
Chercover claimed Amerika was not an
attack on the UN, or a “red scare.”

The CTV president also claimed that
attacks on “provocative” programs such as
Amerika would mean their cancellation in
favor of more standard, bland, non-topical
shows.

Calling Chercover’s comment “ingenu-
ous,” Buttle remarked: “Amerika isn’t
‘provocative’ — its producers are in fact
serving up a special right-wing agenda. It is
clearly a political response to counter the
effect of The Day After.”

SFU communications professor Bob
Hackett, another leader of the Media
Group, said he sees a “thematic connec-
tion” between the message of Amerika and

a medium such as the daily news. “Both —

portray Americans as ‘victims’ with the
comparison of the Soviet occupation in real
life to terrorism, to which America is sup-
posedly held in bondage.”

Hackett said he views Amerika as “par-
ticularly dangerous since it is not a carica-
ture.” The film’s relative level of sophisti-
cation, despite the ridiculous premise,
makes its appeal to “American liberalism’s
blind spots,” said Hackett.

But, he noted, the political climate today
is different from that in 1983, when the idea
for Amerika first emerged. Hackett said
programs such as the Phil Donahue show,
which has featured several “face to
face” — via satellite transmission — en-
counters between Soviet and U.S. citizens
are becoming more frequent.

: — Dan Keeton

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