Village Squire, 1980-04, Page 34P.S.
Once upon a time...
KEITH ROULSTON
Once upon a time a long time ago there
was a magic kingdom that existed in the
movies, in books and on stage.
It was a kingdom where the poor were
those who were in such reduced circum-
stances that they could afford only one old
faithful servant, that they had to make do
with clothes that were in fashion last year
but out this, that the beautiful daughter
had to pass up going to the ball.
Now in actual years this time was not so
long ago. Many people today can still
remember when such people were common
in our entertainment industry. In terms of
the way things are today, however, those
fairy tale days seem light years ago.
Those were the days of romanticism in
books, on stage and on the screen. The
heros were heros. The villains were villains
but they still played by some kind of rules
of conduct. Sex was a chaste kiss and
violins.
Books dealt with the upper middle class,
the drawing rooms and gardens. Plays of
the era of Ibsen and Shaw and Wilde took
place in beautiful rooms filled with
expensive furniture. Movies might take
place in the dusty western town out it was
an idealized west without the shabbiness
that was really a part of pioneer days.
Somewhere along the way someone said,
"This is ridiculous. People don't really live
like this. We need to show the reality of
life." And so realism came to books, the
stage and movies. I'm not somebody who's
studied the subject to find out what exactly
was the turning point. I can think of nitty
gritty reality in books like John Steinbeck's
The Grapes of Wrath, the tale of the
poverty of the Okies of the Depression
PG. 32 VILLAGE SQUIRE/APRIL 1980
dustbowl years, trekking across the U.S. to
the promised land of California only to find
more poverty and hatred. On stage
Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller dealt
with new realities of human frailty. The
screen started getting out of fancy dress
and into the gutter of life.
The reaction against this romanticism
was of course healthy. It was silly to ignore
the realities of life. People, the real people
of 98 per cent of the population, didn't live
in drawing rooms. People did have
problems. They drank too much, they
gambled too much. People did have sex
before marriage or with people other than
their marriage partners.
Now it seems that things have swung the
other way. There's a new "reality" in
books and movies and on stage that to me,
anyway, is as phony as the old romantic-
ism. I was reading an article on an up and
coming playwright the other day and he
said that he wanted to write about the real
things in life so he deals with sex and
violence and drugs in his plays. This is
reality?
In the old days sex was something that
was a strong undercurrent that never
surfaced. It was a driving force even then
but it was kept discreetly hidden.
Premarital sex was out. If a couple did
succumb to temptation they (or at least the
girl) would undoubtedly come to a bad end.
Movies would show a couple kissing and
then fade off as the string section built to a
crescendo to the pounding of the waves on
the beach or a moonlit landscape. Even
married couples, for heavens sake, slept in
twin beds.
When reports on the real sexual habits
came out, the Kinsey report and all, we
were in for a shock. Reality showed that a
disturbingly high number of people did
have the kind of sex that was permissible in
society. Over the years the participation in
sexual activities outside marriage as shown
by these surveys has grown. Yet judged in
terms of the "realities" of life as shown
today in movies, books and plays and
television one would be shocked the other
way around. The surveys show that a
minority but still a high percentage of
women, for instance, don't have sex
outside marriage. You'd be hard pressed to
prove it from works of fiction. In fact if you
are a writer who wrote about a couple
being virgins on the wedding bed these
days you'd be laughed out of the office of
your editor or producer.
Homosexuality just didn't exist in
works of fiction a few years ago. Look at
movies, plays, etc. today and you'd swear
that every second person on the street was
gay.
Writers like to deal with people who are
down and out, alcoholics, drug addicts,
prostitutes, misfits of all sorts. Even the
people of middle-class background turn out
to be psychological or emotional cripples.
Now writers (and directors and pro-
ducers, etc.) must go for the dramatic
things in life. Telling the minute by minute
happenings of the daily routine of a high
school teacher isn't going to have people
lining up to see a movie or buy a book. Yet
it seems to me that the arts are as far from
telling about reality today as they were in
the romantic period when everybody was
dressed in fancy clothes. The pendulum
has swung from the wealthy to the down
and outers, from the well adjusted to the
misfits and in the swing has completely left
out the 90 per cent of the population that
isn't either at the bottom or the top.
People know the old romantic figures
weren't real. Do they know the same about
the new "real" figures? If they don't how
may the real world be affected by the
"reality" portrayed in the movies, books
and on television and stage?
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