Wednesday, February 18, 1987
Daily Nebraskan
Page 5
i . ii
1 HdllL
Amerika' descends into predictability
By Charles Lieurance
Senior Reporter
The news on the street is that con
servatives and liberals alike are staying
away from the ABC miniseries "Amer
ika." Liberals are boycotting the show
because of the red paranoia it repres
ents. Conservatives are of two minds.
First, even the thought of a Soviet
occupation of this fair land is enough
to ruin any conservative's evening.
Second, conservatives don't go for this
sci-fi stuff. Give a conservative a good
episode of "MacGyver" any day of the
week.
There ain't many Republicans at a
Trekkie convention.
And, of course, in many ways "Amer
ika" is science fiction of the cultural
variety. It takes place 10 years from
now and plays off all kinds of science
fiction paradigms. Number one is that
the world of "Amerika" is a familiar
one littered with homespun American
iconography wheat fields blowing,
small town parades, Sunday family
dinners, Sunday family arguments. This
Edmunds
remakes
rock history
By Stew Magnuson
Senior Reporter
The Dave Edmunds Band
Live, "I Hear You Rockin' "
(Columbia Records)
Whenever a producer for a rock-a-billy
or rock 'n' roll band is needed
in England, they say, "Get Dave
Edmunds." Lately Edmunds has
been getting more attention behind
Record Review
the board for such bands as the
Stray Cats and Pole Cats and such
obscure, but excellent groups as
King Kurt than he has for his own
music.
Edmunds is a rock 'n' roller.
Always has been. Years before the
new American roots movement came
along, he was recording new, lively
rock 'n' roll. "I Hear You Rockin' " is
a live collection of classic new and
old rock. Yes, rock 'n' roll is still
alive and all the classics weren't
recorded 30 years ago. Some classics
are even in my memory.
Mixed in with Dion's "The Wan
derer," "I Hear You Knocking" and
Elvis Presley's "Paralyzed" is Elvis
Costello's "Girls Talk" and Nick
Lowes' "I Knew the Bride When She
Used to Rock 'n' Roll."
This is a great party album, full of
fun, bouncy rock numbers and a
beautiful homage to straight-ahead,
unadulterated rock music. No syn
thesizers or fancy tricks. A little
boogie-woogie piano, some saxa
phones and a good time. Even
Edmunds' boring MTV hit "Slipping
Away," written by ELO's Jeff Lynn,
takes on new life played live.
In 1 970, Edmunds hit "I Hear You
Knockin' " is still a great sing-along
tune, and his cover of Juice Newton's
"Queen of Hearts" is a pleasant
surprise.
The only song that doesn't cut it
is "The Wranderer." Even Edmunds
playing live can't match the energy
of Dion's original in the studio.
Thanks toyou...
it works...
forALLOFUS
makes those moments in "Amerika"
that contradict the iconography all the
more startling. It's an oft-used device
in numerous science-fiction novels and
stories. The audience is at home but
home's not what it used to be.
The paradigm that kicked in during
Monday night's episode is the most dis
turbing and the one that will most
likely be the undoing of "Amerika."
This is the Nazi paradigm. The ques
tions surrounding Nazism and Adolph
Hitler's rise to power are an obsession
of the 20th century, a constantly imple
mented metaphor for the rise of dub
ious charismatic leaders, for tyrannies
large and petty, for the denial of human
rights, for that place where we might
be headed somewhere between "Mein
Kampf ' and the book of Revelation.
Nazism has been the subject of "Star
Trek" episodes, TV miniseries, movies
of the week, all-star motion pictures
and endless novels about the triumph
of the indomitable human spir'L or the
destruction of the will, and has been
hidden sometimes neatly and some
times not so neatly in the subtexts of a
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million more novels, plays, films, car
toons, etc.
What made the first night of "Amer
ika" seem unique in the history of TV
plot writing was its avoidance of the
Nazi paradigm. The black-leather vil
lain in jackboots was nowhere to be
seen. There was no talk of genocide. No
vaguely swastika-like symbols floating
around everywhere.
'Amerika9 update
That all started to change Monday
night. The audience was introduced to
an Aryan sadist in leather with a taste
for American women. There was even
talk of a "final solution to the Ameri
can question." Hmmm, where have we
heard that phrase before?
I suppose it was too much to hope
that "Amerika" would stay as three
dimensional and as well-written as its
first night, but I still hoped they
wouldn't start slippig into a world of
easy villains and easy heroes.
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And leave
Now there are no more gray areas.
Kris Kristofferson and his family of
landowners with ideas about the dis
tribution of land, money and food that
would make a Marxist spontaneously
combust, are the good guys. The Rus
sians as now represented on the Mil
ford, Neb., level by the leather storm
trooper are the evil Huns bent on des
troying everything the American peo
ple hold near and dear.
The script writing has already fallen
to a pretty hideous level. One of the
first lines spoken Monday night was,
"You don't really know how to love a
man," said with an accent somewhere
between Ricardo Montalban and Mar
cello Mastroianni. And the episode
ended with a hyper-cathartic scene in
which a bedraggled troup of VFW cur
mudgeons bring up the rear of a Milford
parade. A crowd gathers, recalling the
good old days when nobody had to
answer to no stinking Russkies. Kris
tofferson, as the famous Devin Milford
fresh out of a gulag in Texas, gives the
crowd the cue to start singing "The
Star Spangled Banner." It starts slow,
rV
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For just $89 round trip, you and your friends
will have a great time wherever you go.
the driving to us!
but eventually the whole town is sing
ing, The sadistic Russian officer starts
to give the signal to stop this nonsense
and is stopped by American figurehead
Peter Bradford (Robert L'rich), who
tells him: "I think you'll find it's best to
let this go." By then, of course, the
sounds of "The Star Spangled Banner,"
only half-remembered by some, are
wafting out across the fields of waving
wheat.
There's an all too similar scene in
the movie "Casablanca," in which a
bedraggled bunch of Frenchmen strike
up "La Marseilles" in front of a bunch
of leather-clad SS officers. That scene
had cinematic good taste. The scene in
"Amerika" was tremendously infantile,
a display of cinematic bravado best left
,to those who make those wonderful
montages that appear on your TV screen
just before the network signs off to the
accompaniment of the national anthem.
Still, there's enough going on in
"Amerika" to keep a viewer hooked.
It's just that what was actually mean
ingful film fare for the small screen is
now mostly cheap thrills.
f oyi
