The Screening of America

...Religion in the movies raises many important questions...

...Indeed, the opposite would seem to be the case...

...The line he draws between irony and cynicism seems to depend on a personal sense of what is funny, however...

...Order is applauded in Lean on Me, when Morgan Freeman as principal Joe Clark takes over an anarchic Paterson, New Jersey, high school...

...Stand and Deliver reasserts the value of teaching itself in a portrait of an impassioned math teacher in a tough, largely Hispanic, California high school...

...Dick Tracy seemed merely a vehicle for paraphernalia, and Canby calls the action-adventure movies of the summer such as Total Recall and the sequels Die Hard 2 and Robocop II "Grand Guignol for the new age...

...O'Brien speaks in his preface of the need for "works that broaden conversation about our culture and values...

...O'Brien's easy and accessible style made me feel as if he were an especially well-informed member of a group of friends at a Chinese restaurant,dis-cussing the movie we had all just seen at the neighborhood theater...

...For example: Alan Parker's decision to make heroes of the FBI and neglect the African-American community in Mississippi Burning completely undercut the film for me...

...The Screening of America is a fine example of such articulate moral concern...

...His book addresses that need by providing an opportunity for "people who go see movies for fun, escape, or enlightenment to reflect on what they have seen...

...O'Brien's discussion of The Last Temptation of Christ is especially thoughtful...

...What are movies now anyway...

...In my view, the fact that some people indulge in moralistic, intolerant discussion of the relation of the arts and social values is the last reason to stop discussing this relation intelligently...

...Sports films such as Bull Durham and Field of Dreams speak to the idea of "winning" and what it means in life as well as sports...

...After pointing out the cliche teachers in comedies such as Fame, Breakfast Club, Porky's, and Summer School, O'Brien moves on to more serious portrayals of education in Stand and Deliver, Dead Poets Society, and Lean on Me...

...silence about the relation of art and values may only be counter-productive...

...As America faces the nineties, it may be that the main reason that we have to fear the imposition of a narrow, intolerant moralistic values agenda is the absence, or silence, of a morally concerned, pluralist one...

...O'Brien is particularly interested in the values movies embody-an element many critics avoid, he says, for fear of appearing narrowly moralistic...

...Even when I disagreed with particular judgments on individual films, I found O'Brien's arguments stimulating...

...O'Brien goes beyond the obvious in his analysis of each one...

...I would add one small detail-the film was not banned in Ireland and in fact the Irish reacted much more calmly than did Americans...

...Under the heading "Irony," O'Brien categorizes humor as a response to disillusionment...

...He chooses to organize his book around themes such as work, sports, home, environment, heroines, justice, and religion that have shown particular development in the last decade...

...Mary Pal Kelly In a summer when Vincent Canby's discussion of current films was headlined "And Now at a Theatre Near You: A Skyrocketing Body Count," Tom O'Brien's book The Screening of America: Movies and Values from Rocky to Rain Man is especially welcome...

...O'Brien, however, points out that many young people have only a vague notion of those years and the film is a useful place to begin their education...

...Discipline is not the enemy of enthusiasm," Freeman announces, instituting a policy of toughness...

...O'Brien maintains that movies, often in spite of themselves, "embody powerful social myths...

...Films with this theme provide rich ground for the kind of insightful discussion that marks the book...

...While not neglecting the aesthetic element of movies, O'Brien is more interested in the assumptions behind movies and how films fostered and reflected an evolution of cultural values during the 1980s...

...Pain and terror don't have to be understood, merely enjoyed as entertainment...

...O'Brien asks...

...Intentionally-or not, "in blockbusters or flops, in message films or sexploitation in Wall Street, or one of Freddy's nightmares- myths, half-truths, and value judgments emerge from all kinds of films whatever their artistic quality...

...O'Brien, at each himself, begins with "Teaching...

...Neither film, O'Brien points out, deals with the effect lack of money has on education...

...moral concern...

...Like the plays of violence, rape, murder, and suicide produced at the old Theatre du Grand Guignol to titillate decadent Parisians, these vehicles of mayhem seem to be intended to evoke visceral sensations in jaded and desensitized audiences...

...Robin Williams is a "proto flower child," who, while he awakens his prep students, may not actually teach them much...

...Such discussions are needed...

...He points out that Dead Poets Society assumes an essential opposition between order and freedom...

...In his discussion of work, O'Brien shows how movies such as Wall Street, Working Girl, Gung Ho, and Tucker reflect "our culture's confusion over the value of hard work...

...Hollywood usually has trouble with the complexity of the issues it raises...

...But what exactly is entertainment...

...Still, O'Brien's discussion of the reasons for the storm surrounding the film underscores a principal aspect of his thesis...

...The chapter on teaching is a good example of the rewards of The Screening of America...

...O'Brien sees a neotraditionalist trend reflected in "Home Movies" such as Parenthood and Moonstruck, but he also sees this renewed interest in the family as an "attempt to make sense out of the past and to reconcile the diverse heritage left by the fifties and sixties...

...He sees in these films a reflection of "our uncertainty about how to solve some of the basic problems of American education...