Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version nyu B notes v1.5 12/10/84; site acf4.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!acf4!lwe3207
From: lwe3207@acf4.UUCP (Lars Warren Ericson)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: More more PROC
Message-ID: <1110011@acf4.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Apr-85 21:44:00 EST
Article-I.D.: acf4.1110011
Posted: Thu Apr 18 21:44:00 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Apr-85 01:35:54 EST
Organization: New York University
Lines: 50

[]

Here is another response, mailed to me and not posted.  Since our "mail" is
not smart enough to compute workable return paths (neither am I), but
our "notes" does know its stuff, I will reply via post.  Hence, i.e., there
you have it, and here it is:

. From: harvard!panda!genrad!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!csl!munro 
.     (Paul Munro -- UCSD Inst. for Cogn. Sci.)
. To: sdcsvax!dcdwest!ittvax!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!
.     cmcl2!acf4!lwe3207 (Me)
. Subject: Re: Purple Rose of Cairo
. 
. I think you are being unfair in your assessment of PROC.  Wife beating is
. a fact of life that WA uses to impress upon us the misery of Mia Farrow's
. character's existence.  He does not make light of it at all.  Your problem,
. I think, is that you want to categorize the film as light entertainment
. and therefore subject to certain arbitrary restrictions regarding 
. issues that are politically or emotionally volatile.  I must disagree
. with your criticism on two counts: (1) The film is not a comedy in the
. sense of the Three Stooges and (2) It is valid to make use of a tragic
. set of circumstances in fiction provided that the situation is handled
. sensitively.  Are you happier seeing a filmmaker use a banana peel to get
. the audience to laugh at someone's pain and humiliation than seeing one
. use wife-beating to provoke sympathy?  Would you object to the same sort
. of treatment in literature? 

My response:

Woody Allen's best movie was Sleeper.  Truly good.  I even named a cat after
this movie.  It was inventive, funny, visually interesting, and prior to
the refining-out of all other creative details beyond the shtick.

This creative history is identical to that of Kurt Vonnegut.  Some pretty
good stuff, kind of fun, original in its time, which was then refined and
refined until you could see that all Kurt Vonnegut would really have to
say after a certain point could be summed up in the following sentence
(paraphrased from Breakfast of Champions):

	"See this:"				*
	"This is my picture of an asshole."

I don't really care if he is on or off of his shtick.  But it distresses me
to see people going on about the subtle sensitive ironies of the auteur at
his finest moment when really all he is doing is plodding along the same
dull track, with a few plot devices to distract people from the
repetitiveness of the message.  The essence of my apparently Politburo-like
prior messages was to attempt to express some of what might be missing in
Woody Allen's picture of reality, and to say why it is interesting and
important to be able to notice that he is going around in circles.