Reviews (April 1973)

On Books

The Right To Be Different by Nicholas N. Kittrie Penguin, 1973

What do a juvenile committed to seven years in a reformatory for disturbing the peace, a criminal given an indefinite sentence for being a “defective delinquent,” a young women committed to a mental hospital because she joined Jehovah’s Witnesses and went “into houses of all sorts of people,” and a drug addict convicted for his addiction have in common? They are all individuals who are being incarcerated by the therapeutic state as it attempts to impose its conception of morality and personal conduct.

The Right To Be Different by Nicholas Kittrie is a comprehensive catalog of the current status of the therapeutic state. As such, it provides the lay reader with a good historical/legal perspective on the continuing struggle between the individual and authority. Kittrie concerns himself chiefly with those classified as delinquent youths, mentally ill, drug addicts, alcoholics and mental defects. And he lucidly explains the conflict between the rights of the individual and the challenges to those rights by those who seek to change deviant behavior either for society’s or the individual’s “good.”

The rise of the therapeutic state, as Kittrie points out, was concomitant with the rise of environmentalist theories that the individual possessed little if any free will and that it was the obligation of the state to change the individual’s behavior to fit the accepted definitions of moral and proper conduct.

Under the therapeutic thesis, the individual is subject to societal standards of morals, health and welfare. If he deviates from conventional standards, the state has the authority to intervene and rehabilitate him. Seen from this perspective, the therapeutic power is the successor to earlier enforcers of conformity and compulsory reformation—ecclesiastical orthodoxy and the poor laws.

This, as Kittrie points out, gives authorities such as judges in juvenile cases and psychologists in commitment cases almost unlimited discretion to incarcerate individuals.

While Kittrie accurately portrays the current status of the therapeutic state and the legal and moral problems involved in giving certain authorities such discretionary power, he never establishes a firm point of view about the morality of an individual being committed, not for an act of violence against another, but for possessing a state of mind or being not in vogue with judge psychiatrists. Nor does he ever come to grips with the definition of mental illness. His conclusions thus equivocate between acceptance of the therapeutic state and abhorrence of its effects. And in the last analysis, he becomes a reformer, not a destroyer, of the therapeutic state.

Kittrie concludes his book by giving a “Therapeutic Bill of Rights” which he believes will curb the abuses, but allow the alleged benefits, of behavior modifications. Needless to say, these “Rights” cannot resolve irreconcilable conflicts. Either a person has inalienable rights or he doesn’t. Kittrie’s rights are but further justification for the therapeutic state.

For instance, take these two: “No person shall be compelled to undergo treatment except for the defense of society;” and, “Man’s innate right to remain free of excessive forms of human modification shall be inviolable.” The first right is really one of the two justifications for the therapeutic state in the first place—that society must be protected from certain deviant individuals and that these individuals must be changed to fit society’s norms. (The other justification is that society should act for the individual’s own welfare.) The second “right” is an exercise in subterfuge and is really a non-definition. What are these “Excessive forms of human modification?” Frontal lobotomies, imprisonment, sterilization, enforced drug therapy—are these excessive? And who determines what is excessive? For Kittrie, rights may be innate, but they are not inalienable.

The Right To Be Different, after its full and comprehensive explanation of the dangers of enforced therapy, concludes by justifying enforced therapy in language that only gives the illusion of protecting the individual from the arbitrary power of the behavior modifiers. For Kittrie, the right to be different is really no right at all.

Reviewed by Clark Green

On Film

The Long Goodbye

Raymond Chandler entitled his last Philip Marlowe novel The Long Goodbye because it was the longest and most complex of the Marlowe novels, and also because he obviously knew it was going to be the last of the lot. Chandler’s private-eye creation is the most durable fictional shamus: Dashiell Hammett discontinued writing about Sam Spade after the overwhelming success of The Maltese Falcon; Rex Stout can continue to write about Nero Wolfe if he wants to, but the character becomes more uninteresting as the author gets older; and, more recently, Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer is the best of today’s detectives, if only Mr. MacDonald would stop writing the same story over and over again. Chandler managed to carefully space the novels of Philip Marlowe over the years and this made the character more interesting and mysterious; from 1939 with the brilliant debut of The Big Sleep, through Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window, The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, to The Long Goodbye (1953); six novels in close to twenty years, a lasting memoriam for Raymond Chandler, one of the true princes of the private-eye genre.

There have been film adaptations of all of Chandler’s books—a few successful, some other not so successful. The first actor to play Marlowe was Dick Powell, trying desperately hard to break out of the sweet-guy-with-beautiful-voice stereotype he had fallen into with the outbreak of Busby Berkeley movies. He starred in Edward Dmytryk’s film version of Farewell, My Lovely called Murder, My Sweet. It was a trashy movie, but trashily enjoyable. The next film adaptation was The Big Sleep, the second movie to star Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall; it was a much more successful movie because of the Hollywood professionalism of its director, Howard Hawks. The Lady in the Lake starring Robert Montgomery and The Brasher Doubloon (otherwise known as The High Window) starring George Montgomery followed very closely on its heels; they were two extremely mediocre attempts at the tough-guy detective story and both tremendous flops. James Garner next played the invincible detective in a neglected movie called Marlowe, based on The Little Sister, which had an excellent screenplay by Stirling Silliphant but lackluster direction by Paul Bogart.

Now Robert Altman has made The Long Goodbye into a movie with Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe (that must be the worst piece of casting since Clark Gable played the Irish poet Parnell). The screenplay is written by Leigh Brackett, the woman who co-authored the earlier The Big Sleep with William Faulkner and Jules Furthman. And yet the movie doesn’t look so much written as it does improvised. That is one of its main faults.

Altman’s last movie was Images starring Susannah York. It was one of the most visually inventive movies ever made. However, The Long Goodbye is a visually small, visually insecure film. It captures the chic glossiness of California mainly because of the excellent shading of Vilmos Zsigmond’s photography, but the camera doesn’t seem to know what to concentrate its eye on and this can only be the fault of Altman. He planned this to be the last of the Philip Marlowe movies by having Marlowe commit murder; but in another way, he has murdered Marlowe himself by completely denigrating the character and the story-line itself. The film has some shocking and beautifully executed scenes but the total structure of the film is haphazard. A detective film should be thoroughly prepared before shooting begins so that the movie can speed along at a rapid and precise pace; the audience should never be allowed to lose interest. Instead, Altman’s film flounders in its own supposed spontaneity and inventiveness. We become disinterested as it rambles along on its own disjointed terms.

Elliot Gould’s portrayal of Philip Marlowe is a sad one indeed. It has been a long time since Gould has made a movie; in fact, he hasn’t made one since that disastrous collaboration between him and Ingmar Bergman, called The Touch. Gould has never been very successful in anything dramatic or emotionally high, and Long Goodbye is certainly no exception. He has a comic face and a comic voice; each vocal intonation and facial grimace he makes seems to be aimed at comedy when we know he is desperately trying for something serious. Altman and he have worked together very successfully in the past, namely in the movie MASH. But their collaboration here is one of pure frustration.

Reviewed by Cary Leiter

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean

I felt outraged while watching The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. How could such a great filmmaker like John Huston, who only recently directed Fat City (a very fine film), have made such a crude, cheap, vulgar movie? I left the theater feeling dirty all over as if I had been dipped into a mud-bath and left there for two hours.

Walter Brennan was the first to play Roy Bean in William Wyler’s charming 1940 movie The Westerner, also starring Gary Cooper. Because of Mr. Brennan’s wonderfully schticky performance (or maybe in spite of it, depending on how you feel about Walter Brennan), he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Huston has chosen Paul Newman to portray the deranged Judge who ruled West of the Pecos—“the Hanging Judge,” as he was commonly known. The choice was a fatal bit of miscasting: Newman is too conventionally handsome; he tends to play it cute, whereas Brennan, who has always been the perennial old man, was rightfully dull-witted and nasty. Huston’s film is devoid of charm and wit; and it practices the worst cardinal sin of any cheap, crude, vulgar movie. It is downright boring! Of all the cheap, crude, vulgar movies I have seen, I have never seen one that has bored me—until now.

John Milius has written a sophomoric script, full of juvenile puns and aphorisms. His script for Jeremiah Johnson, based on Vardis Fisher’s book Mountain Man, was an empty one, but it still had a certain amount of control about it—maybe because he wrote it in collaboration with Edward Anhalt, an already long-established scenarist. Milius, left on his own, obviously doesn’t know when to stop; his sense of humor is warped.

I thought that by now Huston had gotten over his penchant for being a jokester, on-screen as well as off. But no. The film is one long dirty joke and deserves mention for only four things: Ava Gardner, as Lillie Langtry (the one and only true love in Roy Bean’s life), who has aged gracefully and now has a haughty grandeur about her; Bean’s mistress played by an adorably facile newcomer named Victoria Principal; and Jacqueline Bisset, as Bean’s illegitimate daughter, who lends the film its one degree of radiance.

Reviewed by Cary Leiter

On Music

Long John Silver

Jefferson Airplane (RCA)

Some things get better with age. Unfortunately, Jefferson Airplane isn’t one of them; in fact, they are over-ripe. Jefferson Airplane has become unbalanced without Marty Balin (who founded the group) to counter Paul Kantner’s thunderous rock and roll fantasies, Jorma Kaukonen’s guitar and Grace Slick’s oblique lyrics. Nonetheless, their tenth and latest album, Long John Silver, does have some good material on it.

The title cut is a rollicking song with swaying lyrics and a rolling guitar to back them up. “Long John Silver ring in his ear; he’s the hero, make that clear… Sailing around the Caribbean, robbing kings with his talking parrot. . . He’s seen a thousand countries, they’re all the same; some men crazy—some men sane; but all men ruled by a flag or a game…”

The next cut, “Airee (Gang of Eagles),” shows Grace Slick’s famous voice and her unique lyrics—she also wrote the music. “Airee” is a heavy song, heavy because Paul Kantner’s bass adds drive to the music and underscores Grace Slick’s intent. “He’s got no reason to hide; he’s got no laws to cross; he’s got no master…”

Poppa John Creach, the violinist and a relative newcomer to Jefferson Airplane, is given a lot of time on Long John Silver. Unfortunately. His violin work is limited and tends to all sound the same; he relies heavily on a full bow and it makes his music sound like it is being sawed out. And it is. Still, on “Airee,” the violin couldn’t be better suited. One other place it stands out because it fits in so well is in “Milk Train.” In fact, except for the violin, the song is rather bland. Songs like “Milk Train” and “Alexander the Medium” and “Eat Starch, Mom” show the intellectual bankruptcy of Jefferson Airplane. They seem to have run out of steam.

Since Jefferson Starship: Blows Against the Empire, Paul Kantner’s solo album and Jefferson Airplane’s seventh group endeavor, much of Jefferson Airplane sounds the same. For one thing, Paul Kantner has found his niche. “Alexander the Medium” (from Long John Silver) has almost the same melody as “When the Earth Moves Again” (from Bark). But “Earth” being the original, is so much better; it is among Paul Kantner’s best. It is a human as well as a driving rock myth. “In golden Hannibal Carthage days marching on to Rome/Knocking on the door and finding nobody home there. Rome she cut our armies down and left them in the snow/So now I go to where I come from, now I go home to the sun.”

“When the Earth Moves Again” opens the Bark album which is packaged in a paper bag. Except for “Thunk” by Joey Covington (their new drummer who moved over from the Grateful Dead), Bark is the last Jefferson Airplane album which is consistently good. Besides “Earth,” Paul Kantner also ends the album with “War Movie” another rock sci-fi adventure with libertarian overtones. “In nineteen hundred and sevenrty-five, all the people rose from the countryside. To move against you, government man. Do you understand… The laser way won the day. Without a single living sole going down. The government troops were circles in the sun gun found themselves on the run—from our nation.”

Also on the album is “Third Week in the Chelsea” which is far and away the most unusually lyrical song ever written by guitarist Jorma Kaukonen who seems to prefer more electric music, when playing with Jefferson Airplane. (He also has a very acoustic group of his own—Hot Tuna). It is just too bad that Jefferson Airplane couldn’t hold it together. Perhaps such decay is inherent in any group, since group action is compromise.

When they began, Marty Balin wrote almost all of the material. However, the songs which catapulted them into stardom were two of Grace Slick’s from Surrealistic Pillow. “Somebody to Love” topped the million record mark and “White Rabbit” with its explicit drug lyrics caught on almost as well and certainly better than any Airplane single since then.

Marty Balin wrote songs about love which weren’t “love songs” and it was his touch which kept the Airplane balanced through the next four albums.

After Bathing at Baxter’s is Jefferson Airplane’s own favorite album. It is strictly acid rock, and both the music and the lyrics reflect the individuality of the members and therefore provide a unique collage. Baxter’s is strictly a mind album. It challenges anything else which is labelled “acid rock.” After Baxter’s came Crown of Creation, Bless Its Pointed Little Head and Volunteers, all followed by Starship.

Pointed Little Head is a live album and not particularly important, although the music is well-performed. Baxter’s, Crown of Creation, Volunteers and Starship represent the pinnacle of Jefferson Airplane’s achievement. From Bark on, it has been downhill all the way.

Reviewed by Mick Marotta

The Great Lost Kinks Album

The Kinks

(Warner Brothers)

What is it about the Kinks that makes them one of the most outstanding rock groups to rise to stardom? They don’t have a following comparable to those of the Stones or the former Beatles; their albums and singles rarely approach the number one position; they are not quite as musically gifted as many of their peers; and they are somewhat sloppy (to say the least) in their live performances. Yet two of their albums—Arther and The Village Green Preservation Society—were considered by many critics to be the best alums of the year when they came out.

Kinks fans must know the secret of the group’s success. They are a special breed. The closest parallel I can think of are the “Trekkies” who worship at the altar of Star Trek. Devoted Kinks fans, who often feel the need to defend the Kinks against unfavorable comparisons to other groups, believe that the Kinks should be number one—and would be, were they not denied the recognition they deserve by the tasteless boobs who monopolize the field.

The Kinks are one of the best rock groups around, in the opinion of this humble scribbler, because they entertain. Help you escape from the unpleasantness around you. They are happy, and they make you happy. Even when they get into politics—and their politics are the most consistently liberating in rock—they don’t leave you wallowing in hopeless despair or self-pity. They try to take you out of the muck and mire and tell you that it’s all right to fantasize and dream of escape and perhaps have a little fun.

Starting with Arthur in 1969, Kinks albums have played around two major themes: the destruction of individualism by warfare-welfare collectivism; and the problems and perils of being a rock and roll star.

The Great Lost Kinks Album comes chronologically after Everybody’s In Show Biz, but musically it belongs to the period just prior to Arthur—about the time of Village Green Preservation Society. Actually, the songs were all recorded back in that period, but were not released previously in the United States. The album cover, however, carries the Kinks’ themes forward by depicting a herd of lookalikes walking down a street with arrows pointing in all directions telling them where to go.

Side one is easily the stronger side and contains my favorite song on the album, “Groovy Movies.” This is a dream sequence in which Ray Davies, the lead singer, fantasizes about life as a moving picture director: “I’ll take all my vacations at St. Tropez/Thinking of all the money I made/Making groovy movies.”

Also on side one is “Til Death Do Us Part” which may have been the theme from the British series of the same name (which series formed the basis of America’s All In The Family). It’s a lively, bouncy piece about a young man dreaming about how he could serve his lover if he weren’t just an ordinary man.

And although I preferred side one, “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” on side two is just marvelous. I defy you to listen to Ray Davies trumpteting out the title line and not feel caught up in the excitement of being yourself—no matter what others think.

In summary, The Great Lost Kinks Album,” is top-notch rock. Ahd while not the Kinks’ best, it certainly beats out ninety per cent of the drek that passes for music nowadays.

Reviewed by Elton Chalmers