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monday, november 27, 1978
page 8
daily nebraskan
arts & entertainment
Latest movies are bloody fun for lovers of violence
By Peg Sheldrick
Hollywood has evidently decided that
red is a good color foV-thft season, because
there certainly is quite a bit of it in the re
cent releases. The big grosses come from
grossing people out. it seems. Blood is
thicker than water and commoner in many
of the newest films playing around town.
The Boys from Brazil and Death on the
Nile are two arrivals that combine shock
and schlock to tell grisly tales of murder.
Death on the Nile is a who done it, while
The Boys from Brazil is more of a why
done it. Both movies are well done but
.incredible, and both are graphically violent.
Photo courtesy of 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation
The Boys from Brazil is not, as the title might suggest, a South American musical
comedy. It is the story of the Nazi party and the efforts to thwart them.
movie review
The Boys from Brazil is not, as the title
might suggest, a South American musical
comedy. The story concerns the nefarious
activities of what's left of the Nazi party,
and the efforts of a few hardy souls to
thwart them. Dr. Josef Mengele, a war
criminal who committed atrocities in the
name of "science," now living on his own
South American fantasy island, has a
bizarre plan that involves the scheduled
assassinations of 94 65-year-old men-r
Silly story
Really, it's a remarkably silly story, the
stuff of B-movies, but it works. The plot is
complex, but the characters aren't:
Mengele is very, very bad and Leiberman is
very, very good. In case you can't keep
them straight, Mengele has black hair and a
black mustache while Leiberman has white
hair and a white mustache. In the cold
light of day, it's all pretty incredible. But
somehow, at least while you're in the
theatre, you can go along with it. The high
power cast and strong script allow director
Franklin J. Sehaffner to make this far
fetched tale almost believable.
Sir Laurence Olivier plays nice old Mr.
Leiberman wlule Gregory Peck is the snarl
ing arch villain Mengele. Olivier is utterly
lovable. Some of that is written into the
character, but Olivier adds a charm all his
own. Peck turns in a fine performance as
the fiendish doctor who tenderly pats the
heads of children he intends to maim and
murder. James Mason drops in now and
then as Seibert, Mengele's liaison with the
Nazi commanders. Like some others in the
film, he seems uncomfortable with the
German accent but manages the best he
can.
Continued on Page 9
Author contends human love is a genetic adaptation
By David Wood
On Human Nature by Edward 0. Wilson,
Harvard, $12.50
Edward O. Wilson is an entomologist at
Harvard who has excited more debate than
anyone who has ever studied bugs.
In 1971 he wrote The Insect Socieities.
Wilson explained class-structure and the or
ganically determined roles of members of
ant-hills and hives as showing a survival ad
vantage that can be seen among insects in
various stages of evolution.
Then he published Sociobiology: The
New Synthesis in 1975. In it he coined the
controversial science.
He reviewed the growing body of work
by ethologists. Ethology is another recent
field in biology, the study of entire
behavior patterns of animals. Wilson com
bined that data with biochemical analysis
and comparison, with population and
ecobiology, and evolutionary premises, to
derive methods and models for interpreting
the behavior of all animals which live with
any sense of community.
His technique, however, was somewhat
mistaken as is his conclusion. Many
debated sociobiology from the argument
that it denies human freedom by taking life
as just a playing out of characters already
written in our genes. And if identities and
responses are said to be biological, then
this science might be used to justify sexism
or racism, color and gender clearly being
decided by genes, or to justify elitism.
Aware that he approached some big
questions which in the past were accessible
only by philosophic leaps, Wilson wrote in
a chapter called "Man: From Sociobiology
to Sociology", that natural forms should
be discovered that will scientifically render
human ethics more realistically.
Last month his latest book came out.
Titled On Human Nature; Wilson has tried
the vast step up from ants and bees.
"The elements of human nature," says
Wilson, "are the learning rules, emotional
reinforcers, and hormonal feedback loops
that guide the development social be
havior into certain channels as opposed to
others. Primary mental abilities and per
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ment largely vanished," writes Wilson. "We
can be fairly certain that most genetic evo
lution of human social behavior occurred
over 5 million years prior to civilization,
otherwise surviving hunter-gatherer people
would differ genetically to a significant
degree from people in advanced industrial
nations. Modern life is only a mosaic of
cultural hypertrophies of the archaic be
havioral adaptations."
Hypertrophy, "the cultural inflation of
book review
innate human properties", is a concept Wil
son uses widely. A characteristic which was
evolved for better fitness against some ad
versity may, in cases where the same trait is
neutral to survival, develop to extremes be
cause it is disposed to respond and is not
checked by natural selection.
The social behavior of man is obviously
more difficult to cipher than an animal's;
man is the only creature with culture. It is
only man who has evolved an extensive
language and the talent of inscribing it. A
person is able to take character from heri
tages of centuries ago or continents away ; a
great person can bequeath to millions.
Cultural evolution is much more rapid
than simple Darwinian. And much of what
characterizes human nature is our intuitive
capacity to keep pace with an environment
which man changes faster than we change,
by hypertrophic questing and the plasti
city of our genetic personality. It is not
biological legacy which gives us our fine
details and our civilization.
"Almost all differences between human
societies are based on learning and social
conditioning rather than heredity," says
Wilson, guarding himself against accusa
tions of racism.
And about the genetic differences be
tween the sexes Wilson says they exist.
"It pays males to be aggressive, hasty,
fickle, and discriminating," he writes in
view of Darwinistic cost-efficiency and
gene propogation.
"In general, girls are predisposed to be
more intimately sociable and less
physically venturesome." Yet he thinks sex
roles are mostly culturally evolved.
Love, however, is a genetic adaptation,
says Wilson. "The pleasures of human sex
constitute primary reinforcers to facilitate
bonding." Love is not a cultural
convention, vogue though the notion is.
Also, Wilson interprets homosexuality
as natural. "Homosexuals may be the car
riers of mankind's rare altruistic impulses."
And altruism, a common social behavior
among animals, is in man often "ultimately
self-serving. Compassion is flexible and
eminently adaptable to political reality."
It is, like aggression, not so much what
has been called "a drive" as it is a hyper
trophy of an instinctual option.
Likewise religion in Wilson's analysis is
hypertrophic. "The mind fights to retain
a certain level of order and emotional
reward. Human beings require simple rules
that solve complex problems. If the
cerebral cortex is rigidly trained in the
techniques of critical analysis and packed
with tested information, it will reorder all
that into some form of morality, religion,
and mythology."
Edward O. Wilson's On Human Nature
is only a preliminary survey of basic broad
elements of man's inherited personality; it
is mostly just to suggest that natural
science can be applied to transcendental
questions like why are we like this and
what do we do now?
Although the substance is heavy the
book is readably light. Despite all its
modern science the book does not bog
down and is not boggling. It is written for
laymen because it is aimed at laymen as a
plea for empirical enlightment. Yet even
this strong intention Wilson states
cautiously, now that he has been condi
tioned to fear over-reaction and being
blanketly dismissed.
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