Friday, November l4, i969 the film’s viewpoint lies in the tact that it is taken from the very culture that it is critically examining. Schlesinger shares Virtually all of the basic as sumptions and values that de~ fine the middle class culture whose dynamics he so severely Criticizes. Because of the cru cial and central concessions that Schlesinger makes to m' clle class ideology, he is in- capable in principle of accom» plishing what he tries so hard to accomplish. Let me be more specific. Midnight Cowboy is essential- ly a liberal film, It sees its world through the spectacles of a liberal social worker, with all the values oi Anglosdxon ra~ tionalism and purltanism that go along with this way of per- ceiving the world, There is a need to explain everything. Joe's proclivities are explained in a series at unnecessary and aesthetically oltensive flash» backs, showing no one ever paid any attention to him as a Child, how his mother and grandmother always had other people around, people who dis- tracted them from giving little Joey the attention and affection that every little Texan needs. With this piece oi pseudorpsy. choanalysis, we now know why Joe really embarks upon his quest. His aspirations make sense now in a way in which they would not have made sense had we not been told of his boy- hood traumas. But all this is quite unnecessary. Having as we do a much proiounder grasp at what makes American Cul- ture work than does the liberal caseworker. we understand pep fectly well why Joe should in vest his ego in these glittering illusions. Given the values that have permeated our environ- ments since our childhood days, it is neither unnatural nor in need of special explanation why Joe does what he does. The kind of rationalism to which I am objecting goes hand in hand with a certain sort of value judgment that is as- sociated With buritanism. Thus, we are offered, implicitly or explicitly, normative explana- tions of homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, and kindred phe- nomena. How artificial and re moved from reality Midnight Cowboy seems compared even to certain secondrrate European films, in which for example, he- mosexuality is simply accepted as one of the bases of the film, The clearest and most strik- ing examples of the kind of thing I am trying to call your attention to is the sweetness and softness and sentimentality that underlies most of the dialogue. subliminally voicing the cen- tral assumptions of the liberal caricature of humanitarianism that defines American attempts to deal with social problems. There are really no nasty char- acters in this lilm. indeed, the central message oi Midnight Cowboy is that basically all of us are alike; we are lonely, pa- thetic, and in need of love: El- SCARLET AN D BLACK canor Rigby as Everyman. All You Need is Love (all together now), Underneath. we are all looking tor the Love that makes the world go round. We really have common needs and Share common goals and aspirations; it only we could set aside our piddling diiiereiices and pursue what we share in common (cf, the letter of Miss Miriam Smith in a recent issue of the S 8: 3). Thank God that some of us see through the sham of this ruling class propaganda. it is the sale ient feature of the contemporary world that many of us adhere to values that are fundamentally incompatible with those oi the liberal establishment. This very fact by itseli illuminates a great number of social, polit- ical, and economic phenomena that are unintelligible apart from it. To insist that brother ll. Rap Brown and mother Dean Rusk really share the same as pirations deep down is to throw into hopeless confusion one's en- tire conception of the Black Li- beration Movement. The same point holds of a small but grow- ing number of students and their mentors, both faculty and administrators. The WerAre-All- Alike