'Ihe UPEI SUN,'Ihursday,March 16,1978, page 16

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A FEW, Mon: wonn’s 'ABOUT MR.GOODBAR

_cyp_ In a famous sequence of photographs we are allowed

to watch a young woman die. You prdaably saw the pictures: the rescue at— tempt that failed. A fif- th floor fire escape, fire- man looking very brave, smoke billowing behind. 'Ihe photographer is shoot— ing one frame every fifth of a second with a motor- driven Nikon. The first picture shows the fireman, the woman clutching her child on the fire escape.

V A ladder is only a few

feet away. As the struc- ture tears loose from the building in the second,

we see the mother and child sliding into space. Catch them. In the final frame: death in action; the in- sane, soundless terror of violent death, everyone's atavistic nighmare fear of failing. Her face is frozen, her arms outstret- ched, twisted, one tenth of a second from the pave- ment. She does not want to die. They are not ple— asant pictures.

When they appeared on fron pages, the public sound and fury surprised even editors, used to es- timating public reaction and seldom far wrong. "Invadjng the privacy of death. " "Cheap sensation- alism. " "A tawdry way to sell newspapers." These are only a few.

"looking for Mr. Good— bar" reminds me of those photographs. Still pic- tures of a woman dying.

It is, as they say,‘ "grip- ping" and "riviting". It is also unpleasant, em- barassing and pointless

in the extreme.

How much of the above quoted (and of my. own reac— tion) is squeamishness and/ or puritanism? Nora Ep— hron, writing in Esquire defends the fire escape pictures on grounds that "death is one of life's main events. . .they deserve to be printed because they're great pictures, breathtaking pictures of something that happened."

Fair enough. And fair, too, for newspaper cover— age of the first death of 'Itaresa Dunn. Judith Ros— sner's novel, the unrec- ognizable 'source' for the film, is more interested in motive, psychology,

the life that bred the death. But to recreate sensational violent death on film, simply for its own sake (or should I men- tion a r:x-ncfit motive?) is

beyond bad taste, beneath criticism. \ ,

Like the deaf mute child— ren "Mr. Goodbar" strug- gles to "say something" and pretends thereby to relevance. "We all need someone who won't blame us," says the sister, but everyone in Teresa's life does, sooner or later, and her quest is for those who don't — her Mr. Good- bars. Ultimately, of cou- rse, she finds one who blames her more than any— one. That's it. Isn't life ironic? Except that the film is not about life, it's about death, and th— ough, as Ms. Ephron syas,

death is apart of life,. it is never exclusively so.

The film medium makes us see by careful use of em— phasis and selection, yet director Richard Brooks gives every incident equal weight, equal time, so that he may as well be shooting stills, three per second. Dying with a dying fall. He may think his technique constitutes re— alism: it adds up only to pointlessness.

I can find no raison d'etre for "Mr Goodbar ex- cept of course, the near— universal morbid fascina—‘ tion for the ways and me— ans of violent death. We bought several million copies of Helter Skelter to read, for the hundredth time, how Sharon Tate was stabbed to death. "True Detective" type magazines

I

The # 1 best-selling novel is'now a movie. ‘ ~

mom; "0“,- MILGMDIDBAR

[IDOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR 8mm DIANE KEAle

TUESDAY WELD WILLIAM ATHERTON RICHARD KILEY RICHARD GERE mummy. FREDDIE FIELDS

sell hundreds of thousands every month. son of Sam received more column in- chés in the New York dail- ies last summer than any- thing since the presiden— tial elections.- Politi— cians might. envy his cov- erage. I always read the "crime." Sectim before the "world affairs" in my weedly newsmagazine. And it isn't just death; not release or catharsis or feeling glad it happened to scmeone else. (How many people do "you find who are avid readers of obituary columns?) ~ Death and violence. Violence and death. An irresista- 9 ' . '

«my C ».

"noun-I nut-sum “mum "(IDS Ml: ION

ble song and dance team, they find a clandestine audience in most of us.

, It is suggestive, per- haps symptomatic, that, fourteen years after the fact, thousands pore over the smallest details of the killing of John Ken— nedy; that 81% of'Ameri— cans are not satisfied by the explanation of his death. Explanation, mind you. How did it happen? I hope his suffering was small. Tell me every de- tail for I've got to know it all. And do you have a picture of the pain? ‘ wrote Phil Ochs, sometime before he hung himself in his room last year. It is something more than .sug— gestive to purchase a copy of the Sapruder film of that day in Dallas and to run again and amin the

instant Kennedy's brain

is blown apart, as Freddy Prinze is reported to have done, until he put the gun in his mouth and tried it for himSelf. It becqres a pornography of violence; meaningless, repetitious, soliciting, Vicarious i ‘ pleasures from those who would like to pull the trigger or vicarious'em- pathy from the curious who-wonder what the bullet feels like. ' Death and violence, violence and death. '

Mr. Goodbar, I think 'ap-g peals to these insticts: elements of the circus sideshow, wish fulfill- ment, voyeurism, curiosity, a’ taste for the bizarre, z, and, like dutiful sheep, ' we line up and pay our money to see pictures of the pain. We to watch pictures of this woman die knowing exactly what we

'- will see (even themonks

in the Tibetian Himalayas must know the plot of "Goodbar" by how) . 'Ihere is obviously an irate de- sire to see such things. ' Sobe it. Butwl'atI ob- ject to, nay revile, is the blatant exploitation of this desire, the mani— pulation, the using it as an excuse, by those who perpetrate mass culture in this society, to glor- ify the, new Holy of low level Life: death, sex‘ and'violence. .Richard Brooks is a pioneer, first to achieve the consubstan— tial unity of the ooprophi- lic father and the cata— mite son in a picture wholly mencmbered with sense, meaning or "redearr‘ ing social value." He'll probably make a million. The question of where the representation of death or violence 'or the act of copulation, all un- deniable facts of exists-r nce, goes beyond art in- to the realm of pornogra— phy has been debated since Shakespere put Glouches- ter's eyes out on stage in "King Iear". Violent? Very. Necessary? The an— mer, I think, is that Shadespeare makes of Lear's life and death a testa- ment to the nobility of the human spirit. Brooks doesn't even try. He cares less about the life of Teresa Dunn. And he makes an .ugly two-hour photograph of her dying - guttering, falling,~ her human eyes screaming to , us Out the horror of her death. '