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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, November 15, 1968
Distrust hurts charity
Political campaign contributions, tax statements and general frustration could all be reasons for the goal shortage in the United Fund drive, Jack Landreth, Fund chairman, said earlier this week.
However, he admitted that his committee chairman had estimated 80 per cent of the refusals they received were attributed to the Ballard Center Fund.
Many cited a distaste for the Center's director, Leonard Harrison's views on black power and his arrest last month in Wichita on charges of assault and kidnapping as a reason not to contribute to the Fund.
For some, this was just an excuse not to give, Landreth said. Others seemed convinced Harrison might use United Fund money to further black power causes instead of helping the underprivileged.
The United Fund has never been organized to solicit from students although a few students volunteered this year to collect donations from some of the residence halls.
The Fund's goal was originally set at $129,956 but yesterday Landreth announced the goal had been reduced to $11,000. "Perhaps the goal was just too high," he said. But last year the Lawrence community broke all previous records with $128,404.
Landreth touched a now familiar card when he said that citizens of Lawrence as well as the rest of the country suffer from a general frustration this year.
But it's sad that the frustration has to be vented upon a charitable fund.
The refusal of citizens to contribute at all to the Fund because of suspicions about the honesty of Leonard Harrison is an especially discouraging aspect of the frustration.
The Ballard Center, located in North Lawrence, is a community center for the poorer, predominantly black section of town. It especially benefits children and youth with Head Start programs for pre-school youngsters, books and activities for older children and equipment such as typewriters for self-help and tutoring for older students. The center is a self-help program designed to educate and improve the underprivileged of Lawrence.
It is truly disheartening that so many Lawrence citizens distrust their fellow men so intensely that they will bypass all the beneficial aspects of the Ballard Center to concentrate on prejudice against its director. Besides this, because of one prejudice they have refused to donate to any of the other charitable organizations.
This year's fund drive has displayed the surlish temper evident in not only Lawrence citizens but of much of the nation.
"Unless we can be absolutely sure our money is used just for what we deem proper, we won't give at all." seems to be the attitude.
"Play ball our way or not at all," the nation seems to be saving.
The United Fund is over for this year. For charity's sake, hopefully the temper of the times will improve by next year.
Alison Steimel Editorial Editor
'We'll cure you, even if it kills you.'
Paperbacks
JARRETT'S SHADE, by Frank Yerby (Dell, 75 cents)-A new one in the lusty, busy school. Yerby starts this one in 18th Century Scotland, takes it to London, and then to the Georgia wilderness. A handsome hero, sword fighting, a sailing ship, a great manor in America, and many beautiful women. Wow.
★ ★ ☆
'Goat' similar to Greek tragedy
THE STATUS CIVILIZATION, by Robert Sheckley (Dell, 60 cents)—No, children, this is not a new sociological attack on American society. It's science fiction, about an earth of the future when society ejects all who fail to conform. Hmmm. Maybe it IS an attack on American society.
by LINDA FABRY
Viewing the Experimental Theatre's production of "Song of a Goat," an African drama, is a rewarding and thought-provoking experience, regardless of how much you know about theater. For even those of us who have been frequently exposed to this literary form, find that when it comes to African drama, we are as "illiterate" as the person who never goes to see a play.
"Song of a Goat" is not "foreign" to an American audience as one might expect it to be. Although the culture and myths of African society seem strange and different to us, we find something very familiar in the form and structure of this drama. It is truly reminiscent of Greek drama, of works such as "The Oedipus Cycle" and "The Orestia," two surviving Greek trilogies. Like "Oedipus," "Song of a Goat" has an oracle, a crippled one who is similar to the blind seer in "Oedipus." And "Song of a Goat" also has a prophetess, like the tragic Cassandra in "The Orestia" who no one will listen to because they think she is mad. And also like Greek drama, in "Song of a Goat," the audience is told of violence by a narrator, but never witnesses it. Catharsis, the purging of emotions which the Greeks sought, is also the end result of "Song of a Goat."
"Song of a Goat" is indeed a tragedy after the Greek tradition. It is the story of Zifa, a fisherman left impotent after the birth of his first child, who is hopelessly torn between the old values and customs of his society and the new ones just beginning to emerge.
Kansan Movie Review
Stumbling ending ruins 'Game'
by SCOTT NUNLEY
When "The Game Is Over" is good, it is very rich in the lush imagery of physical love. But when "The Game Is Over" is bad, it is a crashing bore.
Roger Vadim's latest hymn to his new wife, Jane Fonda, concerns an oedipal romance in which blood proves thicker than lust. "Phaedra" exploited this classic triangle for tragic power, but in Vadim's mechanized passion the truly Greek blast of confrontation is reduced to the rusty squeal of giant gears slowly coming to a corrupted stop.
Vadim's first hurdle was his source, Emile Zola's "La Curee," from which he unfortunately retained the depressingly dehumanized ideology of the Determinist. With his actors in the grip of this mechanical philosophy, it is only surprising that Vadim achieved any feeling of life and spontaneity at all.
The second hurdle surgically separated Vadim's Oedipus from the more memorable tragedies. Without an important relationship between the husband and the wife, in a blaise modern atmosphere, the "incest" of stepmother and son is woefully pale. Instead of fire, we have innocent fun. Instead of furv. calculation.
The aristocratic father plays baron with his family, demanding meaningless obedience from them and drilling into the rialistic kisses of his son the unshakeable sense of Family Duty.
The student son is busy playing at life, masquerading in various disguises and hiding behind facades of pop art and neo-Orientalism. (Unfortunately, he begins to include his attractive stepmother into the exuberant play activity.)
The mother is robbed of even the dignity of degradation: her affair with her stepson is only
The coldly feudal Baron cannot dismiss his wife's infidelity or endanger his only heir. The father is a dehumanized victim of his own nature, all those precisely-cracked breakfast eggs, and the conclusion of "The Game Is Over" becomes a tired victim of this naturalistic predictability.
When all this beautifully studied, and actually rather harmless, activity begins to grow too serious, the "Game" draws to a close. Sadly, the better four-fifths of the film closes with it.
At this point the audience has been given enough data concerning the human machine at work here to accurately predict its next set of functions.
But if these hurdles of philosophy and passion trip up the movie, they certainly do nothing to detract from another outstanding example of Claude Renoir's brilliantly lush camera work. Or of the outstanding performances from the entire cast.
Slowing, slowing, slowing, the long anti-climax "winds its inexorable way" to its unhappily unavoidable conclusion.
another in a series of casual adulteries. Her soul (like her fair-fair skin) is not only still spotless but intrinsically un-spottable.
In fact, Vadim even manages to rescue bits of his dreary ending with exciting visual images of costumed dancers and the lonely collapse of the wife.
Vadim's final point is clear, of course. "Games" that start out harmlessly enough soon end and more serious relationships emerge from the social chaos of the innocently broken rules.
"The Game Is Over" is generally a beautiful evening's entertainment—but not a great film in its crippled stumbling to a creaky halt.
In the old society a man's wealth was measured by the number of children his wife bore and he was an outcast if he had only a few children or none at all. And, according to the old ways, if a man was impotent, as we know Zifa is, it was acceptable for him to let his wife sleep with another man just to have a child.
The oracle, spouting the mores of the old society, suggests to Zifa that he do this, but Zifa cannot accept it. And when his wife commits adultery with his brother Tonya, Zifa tries to kill his brother. However, before he can kill him, Tonya hangs himself much like Jocasta in "Oedipus," and Zifa, in the manner of a true Aristotelian tragic hero, also commits suicide. Thus there is a catharsis for the audience just like there is in classical (Greek) drama.
Judging the performance of the all-Negro cast of "Song of a Goat" is a difficult job for any critic, mainly because the majority of the cast are inexperienced actors who have had their first and most likely their last appearance on the University stage. Unfortunately one of the sad things about theatre, especially college theatre, is that it trains few Negro actors. Theatre at the University of Kansas is still "lily white" except for maybe one "black" show a year. At any rate, most of the cast were able to overcome their inexperience and present rather good performances.
Horace Bond, an actor with great potential, was excellent as Zifa. In fact, watching Bond, one couldn't help thinking that he was too good for the rest of the cast. Bond had one tremendous hurdle to overcome in the person of Janet Williams who played his wife Ebiere. Miss Williams was terribly amateurish and high-schoolish, making it very difficult for Bond, as well as the other cast members, to react to her. Veda Monday, as Orukorere, the prophetess turned in a quite remarkable performance considering she had never acted before. At times she was a bit "too much," however, overacting is much easier for a director to correct than its opposite. And Dvegnaude Browne, as Zifa's brother, turned in a thoughtful and moving performance.
All in all, "Song of a Goat" is an interesting theatrical experience. It was a bit boring at times, especially the beginning, but it is the kind of play that should be seen just because it is different. Just as music is a common language for the people of the world, one realizes that theatre is too.
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