ism and malice.”

COMMERCIALISM AND

HYPOCRISY

Press made ‘cruel spectacle”
of Bergman- Rosselini affair

MILLIONS OF words have
been spewed out about the love
affair of Ingrid Bengman and
Roberto Rossellini and the net
effect on the five people involved
—two of them children—has been
the equivalent of a public mas-

“sacre,

Emerging clearly from the
enormous publicity has been one
fact: that Miss Bergman, despite
all her wealth, has not been able
to free herself completely from
‘the oppressed position in which
capitalism places women. Here
is a woman to whom capitalism
apparently gave everything
enormous. wealth, fame, respect,
‘freedom from subservient position
accdrded the vast majority of
women.

But when a crisis came in her
‘fe, as it comes to many women,
She was held up in full public
view, her life pilloried and torn,
her attempt to reconstitute her
life and achieve happiness mock-
ed and attacked, her husband and
daughter, ll-year-old Pia, lacerat-

_-ed emotionally by the cruel public

spectacle made of their lives.

It then was revealed that Miss .

Bergman, far from being a liber-
ated woman, was an investment.
She was worth millions and this
investment had to be protected,
‘no matter the cost to the five
people involved. The money put
into Stromboli had to be preserv-
ed and, if possible, a profit achiev-
ed. Any future films she might
make had to be guaranteed fi-
nancially on the basis of notor-
jety, instead of art.
* Ee eee

depths by the cruel publicity,
which has torn love out of her
young life. Every effort is made
to preserve for the child the love
of both father and mother.

* * *

A FINAL WORD should be
said of the extreme hypocrisy ex-
hibited by that self-appointed
guardian of the world’s morality
—the Vatican. In the case of
Charles Chaplin, whom the Vati-
can hated politically, it organized

MISS BERGMAN was made to _

bear the full brunt of capital-
ism’s great hypocrisy. Women
every day have children out of
wedlock. This great wreck of the
family is ignored by the press ex-

cept of occasional sensational sex

series. Instead the case of Ingrid
Bergman is given the full treat-

ment, as if it were a great rarity
and the break-up of families not
an everyday event under capi-
talism.

Instead of understanding and
help, capitalist society offered

Miss Bergman only torture, hy-

pocritical sermons, commercial-
The whole weight of this at-
tack turned on Miss Bergman as
‘a woman. All her wealth wa not
enough to shield her from the
official capitalist ideology of male
superiority. The baby born out
of wedlock was not Rossellini’s
baby, but Miss Bergman’s baby.
No responsibility was placed on
Rossellini; if anything his role
“was written to reflect eredit and
giamour on him,
With all her wealth and posi-

tion, when it came to the crisis,

Miss Bergman was revealed to

have less freedom, less ability to
~ achieve happiness, than any wom-
an of the Soviet Union, the Peo-
_ ple’s Democracies or China, Any
“Soviet woman has a status far

“3 Superior to Miss ‘Bergman's.

- These. personal crises occur al-
sb under socialism, But there the

whole community intervenes to

try to save the, family. If these
efforts fail, then the members of

the family are surrounded with
all the love and sympathy. that

a society can lavish, and they

are all helped to restore their
lives happily.

In a socialist aig no 11+
"year-old Pia stands on _the edge _

of the glare, lacerated to her very °

a boycott of his film, Monsieur
Verdoux, which caused its virtual
banning in the U.S. and in all
Catholic dominated countries.

But in the Bergman-Rosselini
case it has carefully attempted to
protect the assets of the director.
Could ‘it be that the Vatican
wants to protect the films about
the Catholic Church, including
the Holy Year film on St. Francis,
which Rosselini has agreed to
make for the Vatican?

GUIDE TO GOOD READING

‘ally ~repeated success

CHEAP PROPAGANDA

Comic strips become
a cold war business

WHEN THE COMIC strip crossed the Atlantic from Germany ~
50 years ago it was no more than a harmless novelty with a streak of
cruelty. Parents welcomed an effective means of keeping the chil-

dren quiet.

Since then, strips have become a multi-million dollar business.

In the U.S, they appear in«daily
papers with a total circulation of
1,500 million a week.

To fill the leisure hours of Sun-
day, the readers of America’s
Sunday papers scan 2,500 million
strips. Every month 18 million
comic books are sold. In fact,
of course, the majority are no
longer meant to be funny, but
romantically exciting.

When a character in Terry

'and the Pirates talks about “Iron

Curtain country, with labor
camps crammed with people
from the overwhelmed cities of
Europe” the purpose is quite

clear and serious.

Indeed, the Gospels themselves
have long ago been passed
through the dope machine to
emerge as adventure stories in
the Sunday supplements.

’ * x *

TWIN APPEALS of the Amer-
ican comic strip are wish ful-
filment and escapism.

In place of the opium addict’s
dream the strips offer the etern-
story of
the “super” man with whom that
frustrated adolescent, Mr. Aver-

‘age American, can identify him-

self.

Pseudo-scientific fantasies, in-
volving  space-ships and  non-
existent planets, provide sooth-
ing escape from the unpleasant
realities of daily life. eae

There is a continual harping

on the “super” theme. Superman,

Super Woman and Super Rab-
bit compete for popularity with
ever more prodigious feats of
strength. They are always suc-
cessful. They can do anything in
the world—except think.

In the US., of course, €ven
the supermen pf the new myth-

Two novels by British writers

THOSE WHO read the novel
or saw the film, How Gireen Was
My Valley, and remember Rich-
ard Liewellyn’s earlier more

_promising works with pleasure,

will find his latest novel, A Few
Flowers for Shiner (Macmillan),
a great disappointment.

The book is a somewhat in-

credible tale of a British private
“in Italy who takes a truck trip

_in order to place some tribute on
“the grave of his fallen buddy.
Other passengers on the truck,
picked up during the trip, are
a GI deserter and an American-
born Italian princéss. The things
that happen to them in real life
happen only in Hollywood, where
reality is now something to be
avoided as “un-American.”

It might be presumptious to

urge Llewellyn to return to his
Welsh locale for. his material, but

it is surely not improper to sug-
gest that he needs

the spirit
which that locale evoked in his
earlier work.

jel

totally. unreal.

IN HIS Set Free Barrabas
(Harper), Ivan Roe, a young

British novelist of considerable

talent, has drawn some sharp

portraits.

The noyel tells the story of a
young revolutionist who returns

to his native Mediterranean isle

after long years asa political
prisoner. The revolutionist, Dan-
Maroc, comes to guide a
new revolt, is betrayed by a
cowardly adherent of his cause,
ultimately is fatally wounded.

The bare bones of the plot

convey little of the author’s nar-
rative and stylistic gifts. Port-

raits, as of the cynical police
captain Rupil, the local priest,

Father Aldo, and an insensitive
foreign correspondent, are sharp-
ly and effectively drawn, :
On the other hand, Roe’s al-
legorical
presumptively saintly revolution-
‘ist and the doubt-ridden though
politically reactionary priest is

STANTON
Barristers, Solicitors, Notaries
SUITE 515, FORD BUILDING, 193 E. HASTINGS ST.
(Corner Main & Hastings Sts.) ‘MArine 5746

& MUNRO

conflict between the —

50 thousand sale
goal for pamphlet

FIFTY THOUSAND copies is”

the announced objective for sales

of Tim Buck’s The Yankee Occu-_

pation of Canada, a vest-pocket
pamphlet priced at three cents.

Indicating the ready response
this brightly written pamphlet
has met, orders for 18,000 copies
have already been received, 2,500

of them from B.C., where it is on

sale at the People’s Coopérative
Bookstore, 337 West Pender
Street, Vancouver.

cold war propaganda.

ology are not entirely disinter-
ested.

Volto, the man from Mars with
magnetic hands, for instance, is
careful to confess at the end of
each amazing exploit that what
makes him a little more capable.
than the next man is Grape :
Nuts—apparently a popular Mar-
tian breakfast food.

Each “comic” book usually in-
cludes an advertisement in which
some muscle-bound giant offers |
the reader a Body Like His in
five easy lessons costing only
one dollar.

And a sidelight on the: average —
age of American comic readers
is provided by an advertisement —
in a publication called Kid
Komics offering a patent medi-
cine making for a “Slimmer,
Lovelier You in Just 30 Days.”
All the “satisfied users” quoted
are married women.

Birth of a comic strip charac-
ter takes place at a conference
of big business executives.

g * * *

A “CODE of the Comics” is
applied to ensure that no power-
ful section ‘of opinion is offend-
ed. A psychologist is on hand to
advise just what effect the new
strip will have on the public
mind.

And the new “super” character
evolved by a handful of unknown
men may exert more influence
on the American mind than half
a dozen universities. f

For some years America’s com-
ic strip syndicates have been —
working hard to conquer new
worlds for the American substi-—
tute for culture. At give-away
prices editors have found it hard
to resist temptation, and Ameri-
can strips, in 30 languages, ap-
pear in more than 1,000 news-
papers outside the U.S.

American comic strips have
long dominated Canadian daily
papers and national weekly pap-
ers like the Toronto Star Week-
ly and the Montreal Standard.
Now the US, is driving to dom-
jnate British and Australian pap-

‘ers ‘with comics which are. be-

coming thinly disguised mediums —
of Wall* Street domination and

’ \

In pre-war years, scores of
European editors, hard-pressed tO
turn out attractive publications:
on budgets that allowed little for
pictures and features, printed —
reams of Nazi propaganda of
fered as cheap services. The U.S»

‘with its propaganda-laden comico

strips, is taking another leaf out
of Hitler’s book. |

FATHER DUFFY

from Kilmore, Ireland, and New York City

*

SPEAKS
Ys ee

THE AUDITORIUM
(Denman and Georgia Streets)

SUNDAY, MARCH 12, 3.00 P. M.

: Donation Invitatio:
PEOPLE’S CO-OP BO Herowe
337 West Pender Street, Vancouver

EVERYBODY WELCOME
VANCOUVER PEACE ASSEMBLY —

‘PAcrFIC TRIBUNE — MARCH 3, 1950 — PAGE 10 —

t