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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, October 23.1967
Sing a song of freedom
By Charles G. Masinton Assistant Professor of English
On my way to the campus last week, as I drove up Naismith Drive, I was startled by the sight of a Confederate flag draped over the front of a fraternity house. It was not the presence of the flag which called my attention to it but its enormous size; it must have been sixty or seventy feet long, and nearly forty feet high. As a matter of fact, it nearly covered the entire front of the house.
faculty forum
Normally, I would have thought to myself, "Boys will be boys," and remember that once I was also a
member of a fraternity, and admire the spunk and pluck of the quasi-Rebels. But instead I began to think that this flag may be an insult, an offense, to others who do not appreciate the boys' innocent high spirits. And I indeed remember hearing from a very good friend of mine, an associate professor in another department, that his sentiments are outraged by the display of a Rebel flag, because he fears the incipient violence of even so innocent a gesture in this day of rampant international and national violence.
One cannot question the loyalty of the boys in the fraternity; surely I do not. But does it not occur to us that perhaps ill feelings are stirred up by this flag? Why, let me ask, is the flag of a confederacy once dedicated to toppling our national government tolerated on an American campus, on the soil of the State of Kansas? Would we sit idly by and let a group fly the Soviet flag? Or the flag of the National Liberation Front? Why, I wonder, does custom tolerate (and I am well aware that custom and usage do indeed permit any practice whatsoever, anywhere in the world) the flying of the Rebel flag, when the flag of other enemies of our nation is anathema? Why, too, I wonder, is the display of the flag any different a gesture in kind from burning a draft card, singing a protest song, or wearing a swastika? Is it that we sanction some kinds of dissent, perhaps even some kinds of subversion, and not others? Or is it that a thoughtless action by these boys is felt to be
harmless, while a thoughtful action by a draft-card burner is a threat precisely because it comes after the use of one's mental faculties?
These are questions that are seriously posed and reflect, I think, a genuine interest in the freedom of expression in America, to which we in a university ought to be, without exception, dedicated. We ought to ask why this minority gesture is passed by without notice (even little notice, at any rate), when a Communist Chinese flag flying from the towers of one of the local fraternities would cause a very different response. I'm aware that the Confederacy is dead, that the flag which symbolizes it no longer has its original meaning, that the Chinese do represent a threat to our national security (or, at least, peace of mind). And I'm aware that our laws contain provisions specifically directed against Communism and not the Confederacy of the 1860's. Yet the issue of Freedom of expression still permits me to ask why we permit some people to express attitudes of dissent and subversion in this land of freedom but not others. For displaying a Chinese Communist flag would not in itself be proof of one's membership in the Communist Party, just as displaying the Confederate flag presupposes no resurgence of Southern bellicosity.
I must conclude, when I reflect on the present fates and the future posibilities of the young men now in prison because they have burned their draft cards, that it is mere chance—arbitrary, unfeeling chance—that sets them where they are and allows other young men who have expressed their loyalties, feelings, sentiments, or just youthful vitality to remain free. To think otherwise would lead me to consider whether we Americans are ourselves arbitrary, unfeeling, and maybe worse, hypocritical. Why are some young American men free, while other young American men are in prison, when perhaps they all have but expressed their personal feelings? Are those who burn draft cards as a gesture of protest against what they feel are a betrayal of what our nation represents any worse creatures than those with almost no thought blandly stand for the ostensible cause of our greatest national disaster?
Kansan movie review
'Waterhole'-a repeat
By Scott Nunley
"Waterhole No. 3" is the longest single that Roger Miller ever cut. Unfortunately, this cut is only superficial—and with satire—that's serious. Though James Coburn does tickle quite a few chuckles out of his patient, there's never any real danger of death by laughter. For a wound so shallow, the stitches are few and far between.
Director Blake Edwards is suffering from the same bug that has apparently disabled his star pupil, Peter Sellers. Both men once made superb comedies by being inventive, and both have lapsed into a sadly superbaless repetition. The mistake Edwards made in "A Shot in the Dark," he repeats in "Waterhole No. 3:" both comedies had been done before.
Edwards' first nemesis was, of course, his own "Pink Panther." Now "Waterhole No. 3" crawls out into the western badlands after "Cat Ballou," to find itself kneeling in a very long, very wide shadow. Jane Fonda's own fire blazed through her hilarious spoof, while sputtering Margaret Blye is lucky to read from one line to the next by so dull a gleam.
James Coburn is a fine, versatile actor—at his meanest in the original 'Magnificent Seven' and at his smoothiest in "Our Man Flint." What he's asked to do in Waterhole," he's done before and done better. Here his material is so flat that it almost seems he cast the role of straight-man by mistake. Even under these conditions, however, Coburn can produce some kind of laugh a minute. For many audiences, that's sufficient.
But it is really second banana Carroll O'Connor who steals the guffaws as Cole, the sheriff of Integrity. The funniest scenes of the film involve Carroll riding his mule, or falling gracelessly from it. His long-suffered, grizzly grimace and his refreshing understatement bubble effervescence into this tastelessly flat waterhole.
The film's best lines go to a beautiful (if mature) Joan Blondell and to some poor nameless settler. Says Joan in the midst of a playful brother brawl: "Hey! This is a home, y'know! It ain't just a House!"
Says settler from the window of his dustbowl shack: "Get the hell off my lawn!" Cast and crew should got while the gitting was good.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY kansan
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"Dean, I Think You've Let The Dragon Out Of The Bag"
Letters to the editor
To the Editor:
Violence in 'Bonnie and Clyde'
To make a categorical rejection of its violence, however, is to miss the main thrust of the movie. (One coed did just that when she said, "Things weren't really like that," as a Hooverville was projected onto the screen.) One can expect and understand a certain group of viewers classing "Bonnie and Clyde" as the "sickest of all sick movies," but it seems to us that such a judgment is based on an inadequate notion of the movie.
Re Dennis All's letter of Oct. 18: To enjoy the discomforting realism of "Bonnie and Clyde," the viewer would have to be a blood-brother of the Marquis of Sade.
Both Bonnie and Clyde are depicted as pathetic products of their environment; they are obviously not tragic. Mr. All's assertion to the contrary notwithstanding, they don't "just happen to find bank-robbing a whole lot of fun." Faceed with hard times and their combined prospects adding up to nothing, they take up bank-robbing as one course left for them to make a mark on society. Bank robbing leads to murder and the bank-teller does bleed. "(Bang!," splatter, drip, drip)."
The newspapers begin a sensational coverage of "The Barrow Gang" and legend is quickly manufactured, bearing only a faint resemblance to the truth. The viewer, however, is presented with the humanity of Bennie and
Clyde, in contrast to the depersonalized account of the press.
They don't "become our heroes," but we do begin to accept them as human beings. Consequently, their violent end has a great emotional impact. The violence on the screen is not sick, per se, but it represents the pathological sickness of man's inhumanity to man. Though the conclusion of the movie is savage, violent, and bloody, we should remember that it is an historical facet of the "distasteful side of life."
What conclusions can one draw from such a movie? "Things weren't really like that." Hardly. "Things were like that but don't remind me." Perhaps. But better yet, "Things were like that and we need to recognize that the Barrows and Parkers of another time, as well as the Specks of our own time, are still human beings."
While not claiming to be exhaustive, we feel that such an interpretation (contrary to what Mr. All would have us believe) more adequately represents the spirit in which the movie was made.
Harold Reese
Bartlesville, Okla., senior
James J. Bogan, Jr.
LaGrange, Ill., graduate
To the Editor:
If I may comment briefly on Mr. Dennis All's statement that the likes of "Bonnie and Clyde"
literally smeared the American public's noses in slime (?), I should like to add also that Mr. All's illustrious public had their slimy noses in such books as "The Boston Strangler," "In Cold Blood" and "The Valley of the Dolls," and thus catapulted them onto the nation's best-seller lists.
Mr. All's public, peaceful and loving as they may be, also popularized such films as "The Longest Day" and "The Dirty Dozen." (You remember those films? The Americans were "good guys.") And no mistake could have been made in billings.
Let's not, Mr. All, write off those people who led violent lives and movies, tastefully depicting such lives. Heavens, were would that leave mankind?
John Turck Wichita senior
..quotes..
Roy Archibald. San Mateo, Calif., city councilman, telling why he expects to defeat former child star Shirley Temple in a congressional election: "You can hardly imagine the Good Ship Lollipop in the Gulf of Tonkin."
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Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., commenting on the recent increase of Republican criticism of President Johnson's policies in Vietnam: "It don't sound good and it don't look good."