In the movie Getting Straight students chant "Action now," decide to strike "for students' rights" and carry signs which read "Legalize marijuana" and "Give 18 year olds the vote." They are merely working out their authority hang-ups against the agists, the squares, the older generation. Students demand more liberal parietals... like young Oliver Twist asking for more food. In Strawberry Statement one of the demands is that the university not expand so that the park (playground) will be preserved "for the kids." Just before the bust the students form concentric circles in the gymnasium and sing "Give Peace A Chance." Such extensions of the Judeo-Christian ethic prevent the radicals from offending the market.

All of this might be dismissed a? Hollywood's bright packaging and typical distortion were it not important to understand why many students ARE turning to "violence" and how these reasons relate to the motion picture medium as industry and educator.

People who take over buildings are fighting for egalitarianism: they would like a 9-5 cameraman to be paid as much as a 9-5 president of Warner Brothers. How can a Beverly Hills producer relate to that? They would like to see white people give back the red man, the black man, the yel-???v man, his land, his freedom... but then who would play the inferior enemy in the western, the war film, who would say "bwana" on safari? They would like to see sexual equilibrium. But then would could tolerate Eliot Gould's lines in Getting Straight: "She's a good scientist, lousy lay"; Candice Bergen's lines, "I didn't even feel like a date-you didn't buy me popcorn" or anonymous gems: "Women have that charming ability to adapt to whatever man they're with."

Only at the beginning of Zabriskie Point is there an attempt at honest portrayals of a handful of California radicals and militants and that was made by an Italian who saw America as enemy-not as an economic system which would allow him surplus luxury at the expense of others' poverty.

Like all others, the movie industry hires discriminately: whites over non-whites, men over women. rich over poor. It has created stars and studios to meet personal ambition and profit motivation. We wonder why the propman calls for the student radical to carry a sign which reads "Dare to struggle! Dare to win!" when in reality the sign might read "Off the pig's media!"

It was in 1935 that Paul Rotha noted:

It is primarily the industrialist and the Government official who are today making possible the development of the film by providing the all-important means of production.

Concerning films of wide distribution this is still true. It is nonsense to assume that industry and government do not project their values through the cinema or that "art-for-art's-sake" is a meaningful phrase given the operative economic vectors of production in this environment. Even Zabriskie Point. more daring than most commercial revolutionary come-ons, blew up only the old ruling class, not the new hip bourgeois "radical" who invests in the movie business.

$4.00 to see "the new Antonioni" or $8.00 to watch a needle suck "its gonna be all right, scoo-be-doo-dah" out of a groove labeled, "Revolution." In the good old days you could be exploited by Jerry Lewis for ?.75. You could buy that soothing album by your favorite folk-singer for $2.50, lean back, and soak in "We Shall Overcome."

III.

JUST A FEW weeks ago Joan Baez looked back through time to pluck an anecdote from her repertoire. She had called a press conference to plug an about-to-be-released documentary film about the trials and tribulations the Harris' (Joan and her husband David) had faced in the past year. One reporter had asked her, "Has your husband ever really been followed by government agents?" Her head was quick to nod "yes" and she said "David once had a brown Pontiac following him everywhere. Finally, when we were out in the desert. David stopped, got out, and went back to ask the driver to join us. David explained to him that if they were both going to drive to the same places, they might as well save gas and discuss why he was following us."

At a hootenanny Joan would have been asked, "Did he join you?" but as this was a press conference, the next question was "Who was he?"

"Oh, FBI, of course. Our lines are tapped all the time. I'm flattered that the government thinks we're that important."

"Why did you let Playboy interview you?", I asked.

"You mean the 'This magazine exploits women's bodies' line? Well the way I see it I've been acting like a liberated woman for so long it doesn't really matter. Basically, I'll talk to anyone; if I were to hold specific things against different ones, I'd never talk to any magazine."

Before the conference the film's co-directors passed out a publicity blurb on the new film. Nea?ly tucked in the middle of the second column were some "That's show biz" sentences: