PrintSeeing the same film with different eyes
Chris Adamo's article, "War of the Worldviews" told us that Hollywood leftists hoped we'd see the new Speilberg movie in an anti—Administration way. But most people seeing it think differently.
This is reminiscent of something I read a long time ago concerning the Soviets. This story, as best I recall, comes from Harry Golden's books (For Two Cents Plain, Only in America) about his observations on life in America, books popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I see they still sell them at online booksellers today.
When the Soviet propagandists in the 1940s wanted to show how bad life was in the US, they gathered peasants in a hall for a special showing of the movie "The Grapes of Wrath." Party officials, figuring that dramatic depiction of the poverty of the Great Depression would paint an ugly picture of life in America, were shocked to find out that the peasants viewed the film differently. All the massed viewers wanted to comment on was that each poor Oakie had his own private small car or truck to take their family on a their migration to California. The Soviet propagandists had to stop showing the film, because the peasants all wanted to live as well as the poor in the United States.
Jack Kemp 7 31 05
