_A dangerous social
and political effect
- 0n mass audiences...

By MARTIN STONE
Entertainment is a business.
The businessmen who promote
it, whether hole-in-the-wall ped-
dlers or executive-suite merch-
andisers, usually don’t scruple
Much about how they make their
fast buck. They manipulate pop-
ular music or magazines, stage
Shows or mass-market books, TV
or radio, night spots or movies.

Their products , increasingly
dominate the scene. The steady
diet of deliberately-measured
doses of pornography, sadistic
Violence, gruesomeness, catas-
trophe and horror can serve only
to degrade and brutalize, cater-
ing to and conditioning sick and
Cynical audiences.

Here is a partial list of films
advertised by Toronto movie
houses during recent weeks,
With excerpts from blurbs by
the more exuberant exhibitors:
Jaws, The Rocky Picture Show
_ (“a different set of jaws”), The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tor-
SO, Night of Bloody Horror, Last
Tango in Paris, The Exorcist,
_ Bacchanale (‘all the basic human

‘contains

SHOW

IMPRESARIOS

sexual possibilities”,) The Sexy
Alleycats, Street of -a Thousand
Pleasures, Diamonds on Her
Naked Flesh, Female Trouble
(“offenses that would shock the
Marquis de Sade’), Contract
Killer, Towering Inferno, Fran-
kenstein (‘“warning: this film
gory and gruesome
scenes”), French Connection II,
Bikini Bandits (“in Eroticolor”),
Julia (‘more sensuous, more pro-
vocative,. more daring than
ever”), Girls of Erotica, Truck
Stop Women (“no rig was too.
big for them to handle”, Sex and
the French Schoolgirls, Siv Anne
& Sven (“surpasses any other
European import in scope of
sexual encounters’’), Earthquake,
Old Dracula (“and this time he’s
biting off more than he: can
chew”), Charlotte (“strangely
violent, shamelessly erotic, twist-
ed mixture of sex and death”).

Unfortunately the success of
the gutter-film industry has also
inspired Hollywood’s big estab-
lishment entertainment manufac-
turers to duplicate the product,
but with more expensive writers,

ig 3
BETTER THAN S
‘THE FRENCH CONNECTION, PART IT"

directors and actors, and with
much more dangerous social and
political effect on audiences.

Audiences at the voyeurist
film circuses consist mostly of
young people who turn up, ap-
parently, for kicks. Perhaps they
also want a few hours of escape
from an unpleasant reality. But
escape into what?

Crowd reaction in movie
houses is often shocking to the
uninitiated. It can be a chilling
experience to hear loud guffaws
or giggles during scenes of wan-
ten bloodshed and brutality. Is
it possible that a whole. genera-
tion is being coarsened and de-
humanized and hyped into mind-
lessness?

For relief some young people
turn to the alternative provided
by a related medium, the stage.
Audiences here are much smaller
and usually -more thoughtful.
Many theatre companies across

Canada are working ‘conscien-
tiously to supply the need for a
variety of stage works both
classical and modern, and good
new Canadian scripts are being
produced. :

But alas, stage entertainment
is also attracting producers and
writers who, for‘whatever moti-
vation, offer us an “alternative”
theatre — even an “avantguard”
or “underground” theatre—bas-
ed on a formula that mixes deep
pern, crude sensationalism and
glib social comment. Whether it
makes money or not, it is still
commercial junk, even though
its entrepreneurs claim it’s art
and social protest.

The fall season is only a
month old and already the To-
ronto crop includes: ;

Human Remains (“a comedy
of sex and paranoia” that in-
cludes suicide, dug-up parental
corpses and a three-way sex

lust), Face Crime (in which
Stalin’s father beats the mother
and young Stalin appears only

in a kind of jock-strap), City, the -

Toronto Show (heavy on hook-
ers, homos, winos and rape on
the. sin strip), Breathing Space
(about three actors and their
hang-ups), Titus Andronicus (a
cowboy rehash of a work alleg-
edly by Shakespeare and hailed
as the most violent scare’ play

ever staged here, with multiple |

decapitation, amputation, rape
and cannibalism), Peaches and
Poisoned Cream (about an im-
moral old-time career girl sur-.
rounded by murder, madness,
perverts and pimps) and April
29, 1975 (featuring a bloody
head-on automobile crash).

What a scandalous waste of
theatre talents! What artistic
bankruptcy flaunted before au-
diences seeking a glimmer of
hope in troubled times!

In the socialist world

Soviet Union .
_ MOSCOW—The planned pro-
_ Specting of the earth in the So-
_ Viet Union has been producing
_ 800d results, Academician N.
lelnikov noted in the press. He
Stated that about 4,000 mineral
deposits were prospected in re-
| Cent years from the Baltic to
_ the Pacific. Recently discovered
: big oil deposits in Western Sib-
€ria are being intensely develop-
| &d. Now the USSR annually pro-
| duces some 500 million tons of
9il, more than any other coun-
tty. It also holds first place in
© world in the mining of coal,
‘ton ore and apatites. The coun-
: try has all the types of raw ma-
ter lal and fuel for years to come.
a this mighty raw material
‘Se, the USSR doubled its in-
Ustria] production in the past
» years.

Bulgaria

SOFIA — The Sofia Chamber
- stchestra won the first prize at
_ © Versailles May International
_ .8Stival in France in 1966, and
e core the new musical dis-
| \°Very of Europe. This prize was
9 only four years after the
~€stra was founded.

cc in woday it regularly takes part
_ _. all music festivals in Bulgaria,
e coe! as in such world famous
Ba its as the Versailles May, the
Re reuth Festival in the Federal
public of Germany, in Bien-
e jasteb, Warsaw Autumn,
a Manchester Cathedral Festi-

(Great Britain), and the Fes-

tival de Son in Paris. It is con-
stantly invited to give guest per-
formances in the USSR, Italy,
France, the Federal Republic of
Germany, Belgium, Hungary,
Yugoslavia, Great Britain, Spain,
Switzerland and Japan.

The repertory of the Sofia
Soloists comprises over- 200
world famous musical works.
This ensemble was the first one
to perform many works by Bul-
garian or foreign composers
under the baton of Vassil Kaz-
andjiev, who is considered one
of the most talented conductors
and composers of the younger
generation in Bulgaria. The pro-
nounced national style is a char-
acteristic feature of his‘ works..

German Democratic
Republic

. BERLIN — More than 1.2 mil-
lion boys and girls in the Ger-
man Democratic Republic have
been awarded badges for good
knowledge in road traffic regu-
lations. During the two-month
summer vacations children at
holiday camps were acquainted
with traffic rules. Participation
this year was the highest ever.

Members of the People’s Po-
lice, teachers, parents’ commit-
tee members, and _ representa-
tives from factories have coop-
erated to provide safe school
crossings. Some 13,300 pupils
act as traffic pilots, with.the au-
thority to stop cars and buses at
crossings. Particular care is de-

voted to the 240,000 school be-
ginners.

BERLIN — The regional com-
mittee in the German Democra-
tic Republic of the Christian
Peace Conference has appealed
to United Nations Secretary-
General Kurt Waldheim to do.
everything in his power to stop
the bestial violation of human
rights in Chile and to have the
lives of those persecuted. ©

The message singles-out the
names of Communist Luis Cor-
valan, of Christian Pedro Rami-
rez, and of Socialist Carlos Lor-
ca who stand for all those ex-
posed to junta terror. —

Poland

WARSAW — The Pupil’s
Code, drawn up by the Ministry
of Education here. offers an ex-
cellent example of how benefi-
cial planning can operate under
socialism, and how the results
are democratically determined.

Look at this. When the Polish
United Workers’ Party devoted
its 7th Plenum to “youth and
education,” in 1973 it stirred
country-wide discussion on these
subjects. Discussion went on for
a year-and-a-half, involving pup-
ils and teachers, parents, as well
as representatives of civic or-
ganizations and working people.

“What is involved,” says the
ministry, “is a basic transforma-
tion of the contents and method-
olegy of teaching and training,
aimed at creating a modern
school geared to present and fu-
ture needs and an educational
system which would activate
and increase, the independence
of young people and mould civic
attitudes.

Cuba

Assistance Cuba has trade and aid agreements with many other
sociclist countries. This is the control panel of a thermal electric
station in Mariel, built with the help of the Soviet Union. A number
of non-socialist countries are now finding it beneficial to conclude

c:greements with CMEA.

FUNDAMENTALS OF MARXIST-
LENINIST PHILOSOPHY

New Edition

Updated to include creative elaboration
of Marxist-Leninist theory to
contemporary conditions.

Improved structure to facilitate use by all
levels of understanding.

CLOTH — $6.95

Progress Books, 487 Adelaide Street West,
Toronto, Ontario. 368-3550 _

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 14, 1975—Page 9