6B
Thursday, October 24,1996
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Outback films creepy
Scary depiction attracts city folk
By Ted Anthony The Associated Press
NEW YORK — In last season's paranoid thriller Nowhere Man, protagonist Tom Veil, having beaten back the latest offensive in the all-encompassing conspiracy against him, would shuffle dejectedly into the sunset with only his duffel bag and his gumption.
This was no metaphorical sunset of optimism, though. Dusk fell on a rather malevolent horizon of spacious skies and amber waves of grain — an uneasy landscape where small towns hold secrets, the hills have eyes and Main Street is filled with unsmiling, unemotional potential enemies.
Television in recent years has moved away from depicting the American outback as friendly, wholesome heartland and smiling farmers. Instead — be it the X-Files, Picket Fences, Nowhere
Man, Twin Peaks—the 1990s version of Grover's Corners and Bedford Falls has become an apt backdrop for stories about paranota, conspiracy and the supernatural.
"Your average urban audience thinks, 'Be careful when you go out into the sticks, because you never know what's waiting for you out there,' said Richard Allen, a TV script writer and assistant professor of television at Texas Christian University. "People think there's scary stuff going on between the exits on the highway."
For television, this is more of a resurgence than a new idea. It dates to the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Route 66, The Outer Limits and especially Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone all profered desolate images of rural areas.
Serling had a real love-hate relationship with the areas outside cities. One episode, A Stop at Willoughby, featured a beleaguered urban commuter who watched from his train seat as he passed an idyllic small town. Finally, he decided to get off at that
stop, with interesting — but ultimately happy — consequences.
Route 66 often put its protagonists in remote areas populated with shadowy threats.
today, in a re-visitation of that metaphor, many new shows are playing on extra-urban suspicion. In Twin Peaks, David Lynch created one of the weirdest small towns imaginable, and Picket Fences offered Rome, Wis., as a sort of lightning rod of odd circumstances.
The portrayal of rural areas plays to the stereotypical expectations of city folks, which are the target viewing market.
"I think the idea of open space, non-centered space, is what they're playing on — the imagination of extraterrestrial life," said Al Luloff, a rural sociologist at Penn State University. "The other-world thing is much easier to believe in those places. It makes sense to film where there are trees, mountains, lakes, dramatic scenery and less populated areas."
By Douglas J. Rowe The Associated Press
Director defends Collins
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Neil Jordan musters a tired laugh when confronted with the criticism his Michael Collins has received.
That's because he finds it all a bit tiring.
"I don't mean any harm," he says, laughing again,
this time a bit ruefully.
Before coming here to promote the movie, Jordan caught flak from British politicians concerned about sectarian tensions in British-ruded Northern Ireland and from British tabloids suggesting his film gives comfort and support to the Irish Republican Army.
Meantime, his movie was deemed best at the Venice Film Festival, and Liam Neeson's performance in the title role nabbed best-actor honors.
Jordan figures certain segments of the British press don't want any aspect of the Irish experience made into films.
"There's nothing I can do about that," Jordan says. "Yeats' poetry was written about the same period. They don't call Yeats an apologist for the IRA, do they? Yeats was a very strong Republican in his day."
He also thinks that part of the problem between Ireland and England is that any attempt to examine certain facts always gives rise to kinds of hysterical positions, he said. So historical integrity was important to him in this movie.
The 46-year-old Irish director-screenwriter maintains it is a fair representation of the period between 1916 and 1922.
"Even very, very conservative historians would say that. They would argue with certain details and things that I've done. But with regard to the broad shape of the movie, of the story, I don't think any could argue it's pejorative or propagandist," says Jordan, whose last film was Interview With the Vampire.
His new film presents the short career of the man who led a guerrilla war against the British to create a free Irish republic. It follows his life through his reluctant negotiations with Great Britain, the resulting partition of Ireland, the civil war that stemmed from that division, and his death in an ambush at age 31.
Jordan concedes that while histories should be balanced and comprehensive, films don't lend themselves to those traits.
So Jordan focuses on the emotion, particularly among Collins, his best friend (Aidan Quinn), the woman they vie for (Julia Roberts) and their moral dilemmas. He takes some liberties with the facts, combining three real people into the double agent character played by Stephen Rea.
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1996 recipients of the W.T. Kemper Fellowships for Teaching Excellence. Pictured left to right, Front row: Beverly Davenport Sypher, Robert Rowland, Mehrangiz Najafizadeh. Middle row: Marilyn Amey, Amy Devitt, Marylee Southard, Joane Nagel, Robert Klein. Back row: Burdett Loomis, Paul D'Anieri, Greg Shepherd, Bozenna Pasik-Duncan, Stanley Lombardo, Craig Martin. Not pictured: Christine Arguello, Dr. Cheng Cho, Donald Lien, Dr. Norman Martin, Nancy Peterson, Dr. George Varghese.
Teaching has its rewards.
Teachers are rewarded in small ways every day, but not often does excellent teaching and advising receive a formal recognition. That's why the Kemper Fellowships were established. This year, and for the next five years, twenty University of Kansas teachers will receive the recognition they so richly deserve Plus, they each receive $5,000 to spend as they see fit. No strings attached.
Commerce Bank is proud to recognize the University of Kansas' commitment to excellence in teaching. We know that all Kansans rely on our state's universities to instill wisdom, insight and good judgement in our future leaders.
We salute the 1996 Kemper Fellows and all the KU faculty who continue to make significant contributions to Kansas' future.
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