ment's chief of statistics] said. him for additional obligations." Other persuades many children precedents concur, such as Prince v. simply to bypass parental Danforth noted the historical and Massachusetts in 1944: [P]arents . . . counsel which would in fact be necessary legal limitations of minors: who have the primary responsibility for loving, supportive and indeed, children's well-being are entitled to the for some, indispensable. Because he may not foresee the support of law designed to aid dis consequence of his decisions, a charge of that responsibility." minor may not make an Abortion tragedies rarely are reported enforceable bargain. He may Opponents of parental consultation honestly. Media attention instead focus not lawfully work or travel dismiss the significant issue of family es on the myth of abortion as the where he pleases. . . . Persons integrity. Yet the parent-child relation hallowed panacea for women. If the below a certain age may not ship is a permanent bond, unlike that state legislatures explore the substantial marry without parental consent between an abortionist and his client, evidence that has emerged, they will and they may not vote. . . . But or between two teenage best friends. discover that the High Court's original even if it is the most important Research by Dr. Everett Worthington concerns in Bellotti were right on tar kind of decision a young person of Virginia Commonwealth University get— and pass sensible laws restoring may ever make, that assumption reveals that the anxiety and burden of parental protection to pregnant minors merely enhances the quality of secrecy in a teenager cause alienation, in their time of critical need. the State's interest in maximiz isolation, guilt, fear, depression, and an ing the probability that the deci increase in family estrangement. In Anne Marie Morgan writes from sion be made correctly and with dissenting from invalidation of Minne Richmond, Virginia. full understanding of the conse sota's two-parent notice provision. Jus quences of either alternative. tice Anthony Kennedy agreed: "[T]o deny parents this knowledge is to risk, Opponents say the decision to abort or perpetuate, estrangement or aliena FILM should be left to minors. But a 1989 tion from the child when she is in Los Angeles Times poll of women who greatest need of parental guidance and have undergone abortions indicates support." that one out of every four women (26 Critics also claim that parents will percent) "mostly regrets" her abortion. "beat, abuse, and even kill" their preg Such women subsequently experience nant daughters, but there is no verify profound grief ing evidence from states with such Adolescents in particular manifest laws. Instead, there is substantial evi confusion about an abortion decision, dence that most parents support their changing their minds frequently. daughter during an adolescent preg Abortion involves a severe double loss nancy. Worthington also found that for some adolescents: fully 17 percent after an initial period of disequilibrium, of minors who have abortions compen there emerges a more stable period of sate for a first abortion by becoming problem solving in which both mother pregnant again within one year. and daughter take steps to resolve the Opponents of parental involvement pregnancy's difficulties. laws wrongly argue that minors already In addition, a parental consultation notify parents. One study confirmed statute usually contains a bypass per that 71 percent informed a best friend, mitting a doctor to proceed with abor Dick Tracy and the while only 37 percent informed moth tion surgery without parental notice if ers and 26 percent informed fathers. In the child is in an abusive home (includ Bad Guys Hodgson V. Minnesota (1988), the ing incest). Indeed, the abuse reporhng by David R. Slavitt Eighth Circuit noted the testimony of requirement is an added safeguard for a clinic co-director: "Prior to the [pa the minor to trigger remedial state rental notification] statute, approxi intervention she otherwise may not wanted to check out Dick Tracy mately 25 percent of the pregnant have received in chronically abusive I mostly because the Disney stock women she counseled told one or both situations. As Justice Stevens wrote in had gone down four points and a parents of their pregnancy and intend 1981 in a concurring opinion for H.L. fraction on the Monday after its first ed abortion." V. Matheson: weekend's disappointing grosses of In Pierce v. Society of the Sisters, only $22.5 million. That news was not the Court upheld the rights, authority, A state legislature may rationally encouraging to investors, but I saw it as and responsibilities of parents over conclude that most parents will an indication that perhaps some of their minor children: "[T]he child is be primarily interested in the those enthusiastic reviews I'd seen not the mere creature of the state; welfare of their children. . . . might not have been altogether crazy. those who nurture him and direct his [A]n assumption that parental Even at these stratospheric levels — destiny have the right, coupled with the reaction will be hostile, dis and we're talking about $25 million for high duty, to recognize and prepare paraging or violent, no doubt the film and another $25 million or so
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LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED for advertising and promotion —there belltower (a set-up for Nicholson's line alities for fantasy. The Kid is the identi is a kind of Gresham's law operating. about a "bat in my belfry"), have a fying figure in whom we invest our Quality can creep in to betray the huge bell fall to block the entrance to selves, the necessary mediating dreams of even the shrewdest and most the tower so the police can't come in to presence who is all appetite and, ap avaricious studio operators. help either combatant, and then, out of propriately, is almost always shown Well, I saw the film and liked it—a nowhere, produce a half dozen of the gorging himself Tracy, the hero, is lot. So much so, that I began to wonder Joker's henchmen for Batman to have torn between his love for adventure whether my judgment was still reliable. to disable or kill. Even the funnies had (yammering calls on his time and at What was I doing, responding with higher standards of coherence than tention keep coming in on the old wrist such delight — yes, real delight and that. radio) and his love for Tess Trueheart. admiration — to a piece of such frankly Michael Keaton is hardly there. What is brilliant about the film's un commercial art? Back in the 60's, He's earnest and boyish out of his derlying structure is that Warren when I first started writing about films, Batman costume (and he wears glasses, Beatty's screen persona is exactly right I recall how I used to get worried in which I had thought was Clark Kent's for this shy, troubled Tracy who is . just the same way when I caught schtick), and altogether uninteresting. fearless with villains but tongue-tied myself liking an Annette Funicello He is persuasive enough in the Batman and almost helpless before Tess. It may beach-blanket movie, for instance. outfit, but it is never explained to us be that Beatty's off-screen reputation This was at least a way of discovering why he chose the Bat symbol and enables him to play the helpless and what Robert Warshow had meant paraphernalia, what it means, why he inarticulate lover on screen (and vice when he'd said, in The Immediate isn't Moleman, or Voleman, or Rat- versa, for all I know), but it is what he Experience, that the hardest thing man, or Pangolin-person. The Joker has been doing ever since Splendor in about being a movie reviewer was to has a logical or anyway plausible histo the Grass, and he brings this bag of admit that you were there. This rather ry, rather like that of the Phantom of tricks to Tracy and turns it into pure gnomic pronouncement had made no the Opera. But the Batman business is treasure. There is no villain as terrify sense to me at all when I first encoun simply a dumb donee. ing to an eleven-year-old boy as any tered it, but later, when I came out And there's no Robin. The whole girl he's stuck on and shy about! And blinking into the late morning dazzle idea of these comics is to appeal to a this is just enough humanity to leaven and caught myself out having enjoyed certain group of (for lack of a better and enliven the comic/cartoon figure some dopey piece of celluloid, I got the word) readers. And those appropriate and turn him into somebody we can point. I had been there and had, at readers are likely to be males between identify with and even care about for a some level, responded to whatever the ages of seven and fifteen. In other couple of hours. changes on the old routines these cine- words, late latency and early puberty. That extraordinary transaction hav tasters had whipped up for me. How The buddy system is a vital reality to ing been completed, producer-director could I admit this? What standards this cohort and, so far as I can remem Beatty can then have himself a good were left? How could I continue in this ber, the only interesting thing about time, making a movie that is, from first pozzo job? the Batman figure was the "deadly to last and frame by frame, simply In almost that dilemma, I sat there duo" of him and Robin. Take that gorgeous. Batman existed in no partic during Dick Tracy, altogether enter away, and there's nothing left. ular time. There were television moni tained. I'm a lot older now and I worry Dick Tracy recognizes this underly tors to suggest contemporary high- less about standards, but I am still ing reality and plays itself extremely tech, but the cars seemed to be about sometimes suspicious of my own men adroitly to capitalize upon the potenti five years old. All the cars in Dick tal status. So, to check myself out, I rented Batman, which I am rather LIBERAL ARTS relieved to report I found incoherent, dumb, violent, uncertain in its attitude YOU'RE IMMORTAL— toward its own material, and — with ALL THE EXPERTS SAY SO the singular exception of Jack Nichol son's bravura performance — totally A Harvard professor told a Senate hearing into the controver skippable. sy over the National Endowment for the Arts that a basic Nicholson didn't play the movie but logic was being overlooked by all sides in the question of did comic turns that were parodies of whether federal tax dollars should be allowed to support art his own old performances and screen considered by some to be obscene. personae. He was worth whatever he Kathleen Sullivan of the Harvard Law School said previ got — his participation in the film and ous U.S. Supreme Court decisions had defined "obscenity" the subsidiary rights amounted reput as, among other things, lacking "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Thus, she said, a project edly to something in excess of $50 selected by a jury of the peers of the artist, as part of the NEA million—because there was no movie grants process, would by definition have "serious artistic without him. Even the old comic value." books in which Batman first appeared —from Publishers Weekly, were more intelligently plotted. You May 19, J 990 can't have your hero and villain in a
OCTOBER 1990/57
LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED Tracy are period cars — including a colors are the hues of dreams. This office receipts, just as a comparison delicious lavender Cord that Breathless isn't Chester Gould so much as Gould figure.) Beatty just made a movie, a drives around in. There is a nostalgia remembered and transformed by a Roy perfectly lovely movie, which was more for the 30's of Chester Gould's strip Lichtenstein — or, in this case, cine- than nervy. It's miraculous. and the innocence of its assumptions, matographer Vittorio Storaro. One of those films that underscored so that the grown-ups in the audience In Batman, when Nicholson ap the disappointment of Disney execu are flattered and comforted while the peared in a purple suit with a bright tives, opening the same month, was youngsters are being entertained. Such orange shirt and a metallic blue tie, we Garoico Pictures' Total Recall (it did villains as Flattop, Pruneface, and The were seeing something arbitrary and three million dollars better in its first Rodent are more fun and less trouble mannerist. The next shot might have weekend of play) in which Arnold some, surely, than Mike Milken. They his shirt and vest off-aqua. The uglier Schwarzenegger is . . . Arnold Sch were rather fun as grotesques, in part the better, or anyway the wilder the warzenegger. This time he is a secret because the subtext was that their better in a display of cheerful camp agent from Mars, or maybe not (that's villainy was a deformation of a more nonsense. In Dick Tracy, however, the the minimalist plot — I swear). I saw natural condition of virtue and decen colors are characters. The costumes this in a local theater, on opening day, cy. (Milken looks rather like Michael relate to the sets, and the suggestion is and it was an experience. We're not Keaton out of his Batman suit.) that there is a coherence somewhere, if talking motion picture art here; we're It used to be a rule of thumb that not that of the world then the more talking raw meat being flung to the when you noticed how pretty a movie important coherence of dream and beasts. Every time anybody gets kicked was there was probably something fantasy. in the testicles (which seems to be wrong with the plotting, the acting, or The temptation is to compare almost a way of saying hello) or im the directing. In those self-conscious Nicholson's work with that of Al paled or has his forearms severed, the shots in which the cowboy and his Pacino (who is Big Boy) and Dustin audience makes a kind of animal noise horse would appear upside down, and Hoffman (Mumbles). Nicholson got of delight. The plot is as irrelevant in then, as the camera pulled back, we'd more attention in Batman because this kind of picture as in a pornograph see that we'd been taken, that we'd there was nothing else to pay attention ic film, where the only object is to get been shown their reflection on the to. But Pacino and Hoffman are quite from this trio to that quartet. Here, too, surface of a pretty lake, and that, above wonderful, and what they do is in the there are trios and quartets, and superi them, correcfly oriented, was the real service of a work that includes their ors and inferiors, and the gorier the horse with the real cowboy sitting tall odd characters and draws its strength special effects the better the mob in the saddle. We were being diddled. from them. I don't think Pacino has seems to respond to it. Sch That still holds in Westerns (or would, ever been better. His menace is warzenegger keeps making jokes if they were still making Westerns), but menacing — especially when he is re ("Consider this a divorce," he says to a comicbook movie has different rules. hearsing a line of exhausted chorines in his wife as he shoots her dead with a Here in Dick Tracy the idea is to his night club. Hoffman is perfecfly machine gun), but they are only winks conjure not so much the wodd of the brilliant as Mumbles, also self- and waves to the animals in the audito funnies as the nostalgia for them. The parodying but in a way that doesn't rium, acknowledgments that we're real comics were mosfly ugly with the ever distract from the film's actual having a great time in this abattoir, colors garish and often off-register. business. And even Madonna, who is aren't we? The jokes in Dick Tracy are The film takes this dreary truth and not exacfly on my top-ten list of people good natured and actually very funny. uses it as an occasion for a flight of I'd cross the street to see or hear, is Pacino, parhcularly, has a kind of mo bizarre and mosfly breathtaking matte quite right in this, sexy and, in the end, ronic delivery patterned perhaps after shots and palette effects. The primary slighfly frightening, as she should be in some of Kevin Kline's routines in A a late-latency drama. Fish Called Wanda. Big Boy is also fond of inventing quotes from great It's my view that Dick Tracy is one thinkers: "A man without a plan is not Unabridged Books on of the great movies. That Warren a man — Nietzsche." What makes it Beatty was able to do so grand a job on funny is the earnestness, the stupid Cassette Tapes a budget as big as this (and therefore eflbrt with which he delivers such fake with such scrutiny from villains, ^•^'Columnist George Will has stated, "I go pearls. Schwarzenegger's jokes are not through a book a week using time otherwise wasted knaves, and fools) is remarkable. His straightforward but embarrassed, as in in taxis, shaving or walking!' (NY.Times) arrogance and zaniness have been well deed they ought to be. ^'•'Try listening to full- demonstrated — in Ishtar for instance. length recordings of books by the world's greatest Those qualities were his allies this time. That's the environment. That's the minds. We specialize in They kept him from worrying too History, Politics, Econ ecology. And in such a setting, Dick omics, Philosophy, Re much about what would sell, what Tracy isn't just another blossom in ligion, Social Issues, andTimeless Literature. would do well, what would bring in somebody's garden but an astonishing those teeming hordes that would be ^•'For free catalog, call flower that has managed to bloom in a 1(800)729-2665 needed to rack up that thirty-million- toxic dump. For Rent or Purchase. . . dollar opening weekend management had in mind. {Batman's opening week David R. Slavitt is a poet and novelist CLASSICS ON TAPE end brought in $42.7 million in box who lives in Philadelphia.
58/CHRONICLES
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