| Cimino’s Deer Hunter a ‘monumental lie’ Kicking a man when he’s down is generally considered to be the epitome of contemptible be- havior. However, when an act of similar moral character is per- formed in a cultural guise with sufficient artistic skill, and when it is directed against an entire na- tion, it can win praise and awards for its perpetrators. Such is the case with Michael Cimino’s much vaunted The Deer Hunter, a film about the Vietnam war with vastly more pretensions than genuine content. This would-be epic explores the effects of the war on_ three Russian-American _ steelworkers and on those around them. Opening in the fictitious industrial town of Clareton, Penn., much of the first of the movie’s three hours is taken up by the marriage of one of the trio on the eve of their de- parture for the army. ‘While Stevie (John Savage) en- joys his fleeting honeymoon, his buddies Mike and Nick (Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken) spend their last free weekend hunting deer. ‘‘One shot is what it’s all about. A deer has to be taken with one shot,’ explains Mike, describing a philosophy that governs much more than his attitude toward hunting. The hunt takes on great sym- bolic value as ‘Mike, Nick and their friends stalk their quarry amidst the exquisite beauty of the mist-shrouded mountains, ac- companied by the lofty strains of DE NIRO IN DEER HUNTER... violence into racism. choral music. And although the buck’s death is far from quick, Mike’s first and only shot proves to be a fatal one and he emerges as the deer hunter of the film’s title. As they celebrate their success in a bar, the hunting party’s drunken rowdiness gives way to quiet contemplation of a moody piece one of them plays on the piano. Almost instantly the audience is transported into a nightmarish battle scene in Vietnam (actually filmed in Thailand), and just as suddenly our heroes are captured by the enemy. In what is the film’s most gripping, and most viciously dishonest, sequence the three all-American boys are forced to play Russian roulette by their cruel Vietnamese captors. Mike survives his involvement in the war embittered, subtly changed, but essentially intact. He finds Stevie in a veterans’ hospital, legless and emotionally eroded, reluctant to face the outside world. But Nick, unhinged by the psy- chological torture, goes AWOL and plunges into the drug-ridden squalor of wartime Saigon. There he re-enacts his traumatic ex- perience, playing Russian roulette over and over again for money, until the film’s gripping but rather improbable climax. The Deer Hunter has already evoked conflicting reactions. ‘‘It’s an astonishing art film,’’ claims Toronto Sun critic George An- thony, obviously echoing the sentiments of, the people who hand out the Academy Awards; the film has been nominated for nine Oscars, including best picture, best director and best actor (Robert DeNiro). THE DEER HUNTER. Starring Robert De Niro. Screenplay by Derec Washburn. Directed by Michael Cimono. At the Vogue Theatre, Van- couver. Others, however, are not so im- pressed. The Soviet Union, Hun- gary, Czechoslovakia, Cuba and the German Democratic Republic withdrew their entries in the Berlin film festival after a showing of The Deer Hunter, stating that it contained ‘‘insults against the heroic people of Viet- nam.”’ The film has also been widely condemned in West Germany. “The Deer Hunter sinks to that level of racist argumentation which is part of the spice of Hollywood’s violence,’’ wrote the West Berlin daily Tagesspiegel. The term ‘‘racist’’ is not mis- applied here. The portrayal of the Vietnamese in The Deer Hunter is singlemindedly, even rabidly, negative. Early in the Vietnam se- quence a ‘‘Viet Cong’’ soldier. lobs a grenade into the under- ground hideout of a family of. defenceless villagers. The Russian roulette which the captured Americans are forced to play is not for the purpose of extracting information, but merely to amuse their Viet Cong captors whose leader is portrayed as a. sadistic recent vogue of. fanatic, the quintessential ‘‘ in- scrutable oriental.’’ Yet even director Cimino ad- mits that there is no record of the Vietnamese ever forcing captured | Americans to play Russian rop- | lette. It is merely a dramatic } device. Beyond. that, the Vietnamese | are merely props: they are seen as | depraved bettors on and partici- | pants in the game of Russian rou- | lette in the backstreet of Saigon; | faceless refugees; fawning prosti- tutes; and members of the para- | sitic South Vietnamese elite | crawling ant-like over the U.S. embassy as their totally artificia] society begins to die when robbed of its American life support system. Moreover, the film’s portrayal of Americans is less than flat- tering. Not one individual is ever shown to question the war, and no | _ mention is made of the massive | protest movement that helped force the U.S. war machine to | grind to a halt. in southeast Asia. Deer © In the end Cimino’s Hunter is a monumental lie; i¢ revives the memory of that bar- baric war while obscuring the re- sponsibility of the U.S. govern. | ment and military for perpetrating it. Though perhaps not in- tentionally, it effectively blames the principal victims of the war, the Vietnamese themselves, fon the inhuman character of the conflict. —Shane Parkhill Jobs and education focus YCL convention Jobs, quality education and a democratic culture were re- emphasized: as the key areas of struggle for the B.C. Young Com- munist League at the League’s annual convention Sunday in Vancouver. Thirty-three delegates (and observers from the Communist Party and the Young New Demo- crats) were in attendance at the day- long convention which adopted a political resolution, an organiza- tional resolution and a plan of work for 1979. “It was a good, optimistic con- vention that singled out where we are going,’’? new YCL provincial secretary George Gidora said. Gidora replaces Marty Smith who stepped down from the post of YCL leader after three years to take on new assignments from the Com- munist Party and his trade union. New members of the YCL pro- vincial councils include Janice Harris, Pat O’Connor, Donalda Greenwell, John Roberts, Kim Zander and Elsie Draisma. Communist Party provincial leader Maurice Rush addressed the- convention and presented a $100 New YCL secretary George Gid- ora (left) and outgoing secretary Marty Smith. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 23, 1979—Page 10° cheque toward the New Horizons fund drive. Rush thanked the YCL for its assistance to the CP over the previous year and pledged greater support to the League in the next year. The YCL plan of work pointed to unemployment as the most im- portant issue for the League and suggested a three-fold approach to the question including a campaign to protect the economic standards of young people, such as the maintenance of UIC, a campaign to win adequate job training and a campaign for the creation of jobs. The League also pledged itself to fight cutbacks in education and to win. greater accessibility to education. Traditionally, the income tax has been considered the most just of all taxes and indeed, a pro- gressive income tax is just, ‘weighing heavily on the rich, and lightly on the poor. However, it is the rich who make the laws, and it would be naive to suppose that they would leave unaltered a tax structure biased in favor of the poor. The Canadian Income Tax Act which, on the one hand, is a practically foolproof system of exploiting wage earners, is at the same time a guide book for tax avoidance by the rich. Incorporation has always been a favorite avenue to tax avoid- ance. Businessmen have used this device as a means of deducting as ‘‘expenses’’ costs which ordinary taxpayers must bear as part of their taxable income, such as automobile costs, meals, even, occasionally, the cost of their homes. \ Sie Edgar Bensen’s 1971 tax (/___— ECONOMIC FACTS By Emil Bjarnason and David Fairey Some of the 33 delegates to last weekend’s B.C. YCL convention. The dividend tax ripoff “‘reform,’’ the dividend credit has been a favorite method of tax reduction. Under the present finance minister, Jean Chretien, this has been carried to absurd extremes. It is difficult to believe, but true, that a taxpayer with $20,000 salary plus $5,000 in divi- dends will pay less tax than one with $20,000 salary only. This is the result of the dividend credit system, which requires the taxpayer to add 150 per cent of his dividends to taxable income, but then permits him to deduct one- third of this amount from his tax. In addition, he is permitted to deduct the first $1,000 of dividends as an investment in- come deduction. Here are the results: Taxpayer A: $20,000 salary only Salary Income $20,000 Less personal exemption 4,560 Taxable income 15,440 Tax 4,157 Taxpayer B: $20,000 salary plus $5,000 dividends Salary Income $20,000 Taxable amt. of dividends _7,500 27,500 less personalexemption 4,560 22,940 less; Investment credit 1,000 Taxable income 21,940 Tax : 6,661 less Dividend Credit 2,939 Net tax payable 3,727 Thus, Taxpayer B actually pays $435. less tax than Taxpayer A, precisely because he had $5,000 more income. Now, consider the case of two businessmen, both making a profit of $25,000, but in this case businessman C is a_ sole proprietor, or a partner while D operates a similar business as a company. Businessman C Total Income less exemption $25,000 Taxable Income 20,440 Tax 6,051 Businessman D Total Income $25,000 Less, paid to ‘self as salary 7,560 Company profit 17,440 Corporation Tax 4,360 Dividend 13,080 Personal Income: Salary 7,560 Dividend, grossed up 50% 19,620 27,180 Less, personal exemption _ 4,560 : 22,620 less Investment deduction —_ 1,000 Taxable Income 21;620 Federal Tax 6,501 less Dividend Credit 7,161 Income Tax NIL } The moral of this story is that our laws are made by members of parliament who are answerable to the class who put them in power — the moneyed people who dominate the right-wing political parties, pay their campaign costs, and control the media. In short, the Income Tax Act is class legislation.