Television
Terzian, Philip
Wagner, the' writer-director of Moment by Moment, does it as she gives in, the movie caves in. If Moment by Moment is consistently, relentlessly, throughout her whole movie. ...
...Like the first twenty minutes of Saturday Night Fever, the court, or the studio, and television has grown to be obviously first twenty minutes of this film, when Strip is trying to pick up titillated by the administration of entertainment shock...
...Vestigial signs of something with more dealing with moral complexities, does not quite know what it shape to it appear at certain moments, as when Trisha's rela- has gotten into...
...Whatever once worked for them though they were afraid of contamination...
...If Moment by Moment is consistently, relentlessly, throughout her whole movie...
...It used to be regarded as a social keep custody of her problem...
...Hollywood...
...The networks makes it easy for us to believe he must be a junky going seem to operate on the premise that so long as points of view through "cold turkey...
...tionship with "Strip" ends the way it began, during a phone It is interesting, now that the networks have begun to look at call from her husband...
...One methods they used to reserve for athletic events and "The might assume from the tele- Andy Griffith Show...
...The two lesbians were a stand and to please the galleries, always a dangerous course...
...this movie...
...This, of course, is justice of a sort...
...On Madison Avenue, in rally, the child was taken away, and we were left once again trendy cocktail chatter, in the precincts where chicness and with the sad spectacle of society principles sometimes join forces in unholy alliance, the netimposing its principles on works are being cheered, for they have learned to pander by people who know better...
...beyond the scope of the networks...
...the ex-husband was a Bible-reading And in so doing it has chosen to embrace the worst elements of child-molester...
...In all instances, really, and it takes society's outcasts (homosexuals, hoodthe characters were out lums, etc...
...Here there ct often used the clever expedient of combining the two on are only four things she can do, acting not being among them...
...And there are one or two nicely ambig- certain moral debates, and demand a certain maturity of their ous touches...
...For me, so television has taken its cue...
...They even build a sand castle and throw bottles with messages in them into the ocean...
...He plays this role just the way he did the ones in Saturday Night Fever and Grease-as a kind of man-child, cooing with OHN MORLEY once wrote that "those who treat politics and heavy-lidded Italian sexiness half the time, and whining ado- morality apart will never understand the one or the other...
...It suffers from the same failing as it has gone from being the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name Saturday Night Fever...
...aside from occasional glimpses of Wagner's intentions like Homosexuality is an example...
...All attitudes hustle (or Hustle) each other, but nothing about genuine feel- about it-from Anita Bryant leftward-have had their day in ing...
...When audience, how times have changed...
...Television Then there's the scene where "Strip" and Trisha have a moment of truth in her California hot tub-By Love Possessed played on a porn-flick set...
...NOW, MORAL ISSUES Whether Travolta has any acting talent is still impossible to HOMOSEXUALITY AS CHIC MALADY, ETC...
...imagine they were somehow imposed on the station, rather one night, a low, tracking camera on her feet is accompanied than bought from it, and at a very substantial price...
...soft, vulnerable creatures...
...The networks have always recoiled from it as tend to be Johnny One-Notes...
...It and her (lesbian) VALUES serves to show that conventional morality is a lot of nonsense, lover...
...Well, it is not so simple as PHILIP TERZIAN 16 February 1979: 83...
...But as soon know, I happen to be gay," has become an intermission line Commonweal: 82 with which we are wearily familiar...
...She sighs...
...Morality, or any consensus about She pants...
...understand it...
...of Central Casting, the That, indeed, is how far television has been willing to go to sort of propaganda we illustrate its moral points...
...Producers under censure...
...tell...
...the husband's lawyer was a fat redneck...
...Furheterosexual landlord's inability to come to mature grips with thermore as we have learned, success in its usual form is a an allegedly homosexual tenant...
...lescently the rest...
...It has sought at the same time to take casually associate with repressiveness...
...The coach has rejected all malady...
...the clearest example of morality gone awry is a CBS program As with race, dec- called "The White Shadow," which debuted at midseason...
...opinion that has employed the more sophisticated promotional And Flannery O'Connor's 'Letters.' techniques and, in the realm of ratings, come to assume that might makes right-which, in many instances, it does...
...There are certain complex issues-homosexuality, racism-that may hinge on things about this film which mark it as the work of Robert morals...
...In the past, television Although Wagner was unable to give the performances of preferred to be be moralistic in matters about which there isn't Ton-din and Travolta any direction, the weakness of Moment much argument-lying, cheating, robbery-and to avoid by Moment may not be entirely her fault...
...So patina of one whose success on the playing field, or in this far as television is con- instance the court, can be transferred with slight adaptation to cerned, homosexuality life itself...
...now it is a good way to raise a laugh, and morally son, who was growing defensible at that...
...the same untouchable coin...
...to put the matter into perspective...
...that, and perhaps television ought to think twice before going about these things than their fundamentalist adversaries, and much further on the commercial message bandwagon...
...Most evidence in the real world belies hepatitis as the chic it, but television goes on anyway...
...It knows something about how people to the Lifestyle That Can't Keep Its Mouth Shut...
...It has become, in (female) with stylish clothes and a frizzy permanent...
...Television has turned from cowardice vised spectacle that morality to a reckless advocacy, and periodically congratulates itself doesn't represent experience so that with its awesome persuasive power it can now do well by much as caprice, and that the doing good...
...glittering illusion, particularly when it involves comNot long ago ABC broadcast an archetypal dramatic treat- promise-and it nearly always does...
...This is a favorite theme of television: moral redemphas . supplanted tion through athletics...
...is that moral controversies have much greater implications Originally Wagner's script may not have been so soft and than political campaigns, and it is probable that television, in fluffy as it seems now...
...Indeed, the leader of the ratings, John Dean) and that a man who has been a Professional Athlete "Three's Company" (ABC), partly revolves around a foolish knows the value of everything and the price of nothing...
...If that dog had known what he was getting into, he'd have toughed it out with the ASPCA...
...Entitled " A Question of Love" it was the The players are all juvenile delinquents, and in the tashion story of a lesbian and of "Welcome Back, Kotter" (ABC) they have turned juvenile her courtroom battle to delinquency on its head...
...The irony by disco sounds...
...Much of "The White Shadow," as with up in a household "Kotter," is given over to setting up stuffed shirts for their shared with Mother CULTURAL well-deserved pratfalls...
...Stigwood, who also produced Saturday Night Fever and It is worth noting that, while moral controversies have Grease...
...The coach, to analysis, acid uncriti- begin with, is an ex-Professional Athlete, which gives him the cal analysis at that...
...Lily Tomlin, on the other hand, is clearly Television has usually preferred to ignore both, and has in capable of acting, though not in a turkey like this...
...After verly Hills matron who is disaffected with her marriage, and that, moment by moment was the only way I could get through "Strip" (John Travolta), a teenage runaway who picks her up...
...When it turns out that what we saw are loud and ubiquitous, and have acquired a certain popular was grief and fear over the killing of a friend, we have to go appeal, they can be examined from their own absolute vantage through the same change of attitude toward him as Trisha...
...Of comedies have been immune from the introduction of a lovable course, to do so would end the show, but it is meant to homosexual whose demeanor and state of mind are meant to demonstrate that Ambition nearly always grows Blind (look at seem perfectly natural...
...She squeaks...
...As Trisha hunts for "Strip" in L.A...
...What is curious is that the networks seem to believe that so long as an attitude is promi- COMING: Saul Maloff writes on the nent and habitual, it acquires, at least by repetition, a kind of criticism of Philip Rahv and Wilfrid Sheed...
...Political advertisethey do over and over, which may be the reason we get a ments are usually sandwiched between so many official disreprise here of Travolta's pavement-pounding opening to claimers and protests of indifference that the viewer might Saturday Night Fever...
...respectability...
...Natu- an odd way, a victim of the sixties...
...But point...
...The morning after she begins sleeping with him, she finds him outside with a stray puppy he's adopted, as a companion for one she owns...
...You Trisha and getting nowhere, are ironic and likable...
...Like Trisha, we don't trust "Strip" at first...
...In the marketplace of ideas it looks to the 'Critics' Choices' for Religious Book Week...
...And she klinks, from all the it, is a kind of political decision, so they believe, and'therefore chunky silver jewelry she wears...
...Naturally, the partisans of homosexuality have been rather smarter...
...Their relationship has just about every cliche in it known to COLIN L. WESTERBECK,.JR...
...With a convert's bigotry, Wagner at one point shows him doubled up with pain in his television has rushed into controversy with all the fervor and room, because she gives us no context for this scene first she righteousness that moral trendiness commands...
...ades of sexual bigotry The story of a white basketball coach at a predominantly black are being atoned for by high school, it contains in its modest format nearly every an abundance of current TV platitude about social behavior...
...The only thing in this flick that feels heavier than become a fair subject for treatment, politics remains largely Travolta's eyelids is Stigwood's hand on the tiller...
...Needless to say, in all media, this, the film shows us little...
...Few situation offers to make more money or take a more glamorous job...
...ment of the subject...
...what the people who made it think love is like, it's no wonder At the bleeding, throbbing heart of Wagner's picture is a the only thing that comes off in their picture is a little aggravaMay-September love story about Trisha (Lily Tomlin), a Be- tion, bitterness and disappointment at the beginning...
...Unfortunately, where moral controversy is confuture is nothing but a lonely cerned, the problem is bigger than the networks' capacity to battle against intolerance...
...the moral argument: the opinions that will delight those circles lesbian's lawyer was a slick, tough public interest practitioner least likely to understand moral complexity...
Vol. 106 • February 1979 • No. 3
