The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1958-08-01
BREIC-
Guess I'm
An OddbaII

Yep, | guess I'm an odd-Dall. 30 many Things In
our modern world give me a pain. | don't like the
movies. | don't like the plays. | don't like most of the
magazines and books. | don't like a lot of things
about the newspapers. And I'm afraid | would dis
like Tv if it weren't so frankly nearly nothing. It
is difficult to dislike nothing-especialy when it
doesn't much pretend to be anything.
| don't like the movies because often they are
indecent, or at least suggestive, or at least lmmodest,
they do succeed in rising to the stature of being
merely silly Am | exaggeratlng? On, l suppose SO,
but not much. Not very much.
DON'T LIKE the plays because the legimate
theater smells of decomposition. 1t is dead and un-
buried. Nobody that | can recall has written a drama
worth a tinker's dam for years. Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof'-thats about the level to which the theater
has sunk. And the theater doesn't even nave the
grace to blush for itself
The theater has become the solemn ~playthlng
of a coterie with time on its hands and boredom In
it's soul. Now and then, a beWildered visitor from
America does wander into a Broadway house, but
for the most part the audiences are a special breed
bred, you might say, for that purpose-and for that
breed the plays are produced. =
the devoteeS as they arrive for the ceremonies. they
know what to expect. They could have written the
play themselves if they hadn't been tired. The leglt
theater is a kind of club of initiates. Indeed, 1t is
a conspiracy among the authors, producers, directors,
PLAYERS and viewers.
There is an understanding among them. The au-
dience comes to hear a few naughty words, and to
watch some staged sin, interlarded with sermonlStlc
Juvenile pHllOSOpHlZluS duQ WIldL everybody AhCo ~
call social significance and compassion" A %bystand-
err feels himself growing ill at that word compass
sion.' Everybody mouths it to mean whatever they.
mean if they mean anything, which apparently they
don't.
The AUDIENCE comes prepared. The habitues
in the seats know in advance, by experience and
tacit understanding, when they are expected to laugh,
when to become luguburlouS, when to tense, Wnen 70
feel a shock or thrill, when to applaud. In the lang
uage of the boxing ring, the punches are telegraph
edit you can use the term punches for swings and
misses.
| don't like the magazines because at best they
are frothy, at worst they are indecent and impure,
and by and large they are the most emptyheaded
publications ever printed on this earth.
When they consider deep and heavy is barely
better than imbecilic, and what they mean to be light
is heavy-handedly arch and tlresome. They go IN Tor
sex but their understanding of sex is adolescent. Iney
try their hand at humor but have long since forgotten
what laughter is. And Wnen tney TURN serious uney
become prepOSterOus.
THE BOOKS mean the books that get all the
blurbing and are discussed" everywhere, and are
read by all the gumrchewing girls and bored house
wiyes-are ugh. Consider what these books DO to
minds. Compare that with the nobilities, the aspira-
tons and the doWn-to-earth goodness lnstllled into
readers by writer's of the past. Then, | think, you Will
know whatsI mean. People used to be depicted as
people. Now they are depicted as animals droonng
after one another
Our newspapers have a basic soundness. News
paper people do care about getting the facts accurate
ly for readers. But they are forgetting that men ana
women are entitled to their good names. Ihey de-
base themselves with what they call cheesecake. They
publish such lunacies as horoscopes. They are mucn
too quick to shrug off their responsibilities and take
refuge in the mindless excuse that they are giving
people what the people want. 100.
Folks who are combating pornography are dong
a great work for their country, fighting off a terrible
peril. But who is going to educate us against all the
slop and slobber that is not pornography but is dead
ly junk?