Weekend Deaths

Tennis great Althea Gibson died over the weekend.

''Her life was very difficult, but she broke down a lot of barriers and doors and made it easier for a lot of us,'' eulogized Martina Navritilova, who's broken a few barriers of her own.

Film director Elia Kazan died, too. Whether you think he was a rat for giving testimony to HUAC or not, he directed a number of great movies and plays.

A couple of years back, Reason published an interesting article on how Hollywood has ducked treating life under communism in the way the subject demands.

Comments

[Jim Walsh]

I remember watching the Oscars' Kazan tribute a couple of years ago, and being truly impressed when Warren Beatty stood to applaud. Whatever Beatty's politics, my regard of Beatty the man grew by leaps and bounds that night.

[Phil]

. . . the big reason why Hollywood doesn't make those kind of pictures, which is that life under communism was a mixture of boring and horrible, and no one would ever go to see a film about it.

Whereas the life of a now nearly-forgotten journalist who was a shill for the Soviet Union was so exciting and important that everyone in Hollywood had a role or cameo in it and it won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director.

If people go see Holocaust movies, why wouldn't they go see movies about life under Communism?

[Zathras]

I'm just getting sick and tired of reading about all these people dying. They'd better just knock it off.

[Channeling Uncle Joe]

Amazing that even now there are those who don't pine for the good old days in the workers paradise before it was co-opted by dirty rotten couter-reveolutionaries who will be the first up against the wall when the true workers heros rise up, oh yes!.....

....oh excuse me (aside to waiter) sure, the tofu-berrie blended, pad thai uhm with the free-range chicken right? ok . erm uhm, ....

now, where were we? oh yes! When the true heros return we will liquidate the running-dog conterrev... I mean educate our mis-guided comrades in the errors of their ways with true marxist-lenninist compassion.

=)

[Jean Bart]

Well, there have been some movies about the USSR and communist Eastern Europe. I recall the movie about the folks who ballooned over the Berlin Wall for example. Also there have been several movies that treated one period or aspect of Stalin's life of later; though they are all independent US films or European in origin. Russia itself has produced some very good films about the USSR.

I think one of the best recent films that deals with the USSR is a French film titled "East/West." It concerns a doctor of Russian origin who re-emigrates back to the USSR in the early 1950s with his French wife and child; apparently the USSR at the time promised many emigres that they might return home to re-build the "motherland," etc., and many waxed nostalgic and otherwise felt a need to do so and went. Anyway, upon arrival most of the emigres are tortured and then shot, and then it deals with the doctor and his family's struggle to make it in 1950s Soviet Russia.

[Jean Bart]

BTW, if even half of what was protrayed in the film is true (as it is based on a true story), then its one of the more startling demonstrations of human courage I've ever seen.

[joe]

HUAC and McCarthy were some bad dudes, with a lot of power behind them. I can't hate anyone for not being strong enough to stand up to them. What would any of us do with our careers and freedom being threatened like that?

What I cannot countenance are people who willingly assisted them in their efforts, who cheered them on, like Ronald Reagan narcing on members of his own union in order to advance his political career. I'm not sure where Kazan fits in this scheme, though.

[nm156]

I'm with Zathras: I'm so fed up I'm going to kill the next celebrity that dies.

[alkali]

The linked article on "how Hollywood has ducked treating life under communism" is interesting but misses the big reason why Hollywood doesn't make those kind of pictures, which is that life under communism was a mixture of boring and horrible, and no one would ever go to see a film about it. Even unusual or shocking events (e.g., the Katyn massacre, the famine in the Ukraine under Stalin) may not be good material for a Hollywood film.

[Cisco]

Alkali, that is not true. There are pretty amazing stories of life under communism. Daring escapes, political intrigue, surrealism, you name it. There is even material for sleazy, action-packed, cliche-ridden b-flicks. Just to stay with the two most obvious examples:

Party meetings by Stalin were bizarre drunken parties. Uncle Joe put on some music and forced people like Nikita Khruschev and Vyetcheslav Molotov do dance cheek to cheek.

After Lenin's brother was executed by the czar's regime, he swore *vengeance*. (Also, his school teacher was the father of Kerensky, the man he would later toplle.)

And the list of great cinematic moments just goes on and on, from shoe-banging during a UN session to a whole revolution inspired by Lou Reed.

[nm156]

Seriously though, the most telling quote comes from Kazan himself when he said, "Better that they should be hurt a little, than that I should be hurt a lot." What a cowardly little shit. He may have been a great film maker, but he was a lousy human being. Ptooey

[Elmo]

A good movie about Stalinist russia was "Burned by the Sun"....

BTW, I suppose Kazan ought to have stood with his er, comrades, in the same way cops are expected to cover for their misbehaving breatheren. What's a dead peasant, er, suspect more or less?

There *were* many folks working in Hollywood who *were* active members of the Communist party - which *was* directed by muther russia. These folks actively lied about conditions and activities going on in the workers paradise, producing propoganda peices to the benefit of the USSR.

Now, what exactly ought the response have been? Communist doctrine advocated the violent overthrow of existing orders. The USSR was not our friend and Stalin surely viewed the USA as his systems chief threat, much like the Mullahs of today; merely by existing and living in the way we do, we underscore the failure of their own systems.

A relativly small number of people heavily infuenced by and advocates of (and no few agents of)a system hostile to the US produced media that was extremely influential - not much TV, no internet for news or views of the larger world. What sane policy planner would not be worried? An ostridge?

Maybe Kazan was a coward more interested in making movies and saving his own arse than anything else but Hollywood was full of cowards of a different sort - those so eager to get into movies that they were willing to compromise their values and bite their tounges when they knew what was going on and hid it rather than face ostracism from thier 'comrades'.

Sheesh, movies and television today abound with social engineering projects thinly veiled as entertainment. Say, perhaps the very vacuity and shallowness of it all is the intended outcome...

[joe]

The answer to speech, Elmo, is more speech, not government suppression of ideas they don't like.