Cliff fl. Hicks
V-chip not
considered
censorship
Tele(vision) + electronic/parental
guidance = V-chip.
Yes, I, who am diametrically op
posed to censorship in all forms, be
lieve the V-chip is a good idea because
it’s not censorship.
Here’s your boarding pass, your
luggage is loaded on board; follow my
train of thought on this one.
What the V-chip does, as I under
stand it, is this. It allows parents to
program their television to not allow
their children to see specific television
programs.
Each show will be rated (though it’s
still pretty fuzzy as to who will do
that), and parents can choose a spe
cific rating for their children to be able
to see and then override it themselves.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
A parent does have the right to ob
ject to what a child watches, listens to
or does. That’s because they’re adults,
and until the child is 18, the child isn’t.
One fear I have, however, is that
parents won’t use this V-chip. Similar
locks are available for programs that
allow you to gain access to the Internet
and look at the Telecommunications
Bill that Congress tried pushing
through earlier this year (Congress
passed it, but the courts have tempo
rarily overturned it).
Despite how simple and easy
everyone’s making this sound, the
parents still have to use it, and that may
be beyond the attention spans of the
parents at whom this type of measure
is aimed.
Second, will everyone who has had
to help their parents program a VCR
please raise their hands? Yeah, I
thought so. My parents, dear folks that
they are, ask me for computer help all
the time.
iecnnoiogy gets more and more
complex the faster and faster it
progresses. By the time the next gen
eration is my age, I may have troubles
following it all too.
So, the government honestly ex
pects parents to program their TV to
tell children what they can and can’t
watch. More than half of these people
think the Information Superhighway
is the Interstate up to M.I.T.
If, however, parents CAN get the
chip to work, they’ll make television
a lot more interesting. It could be the
end of overdubbed movies! After all,
children can’t watch it if their parents
don’t want them to.
Also, shows can get more aggres
sive and realistic (or unrealistic as the
case may be). No more cut-away shots
in soap operas, no more reworked
angles in crime shows. All of these
things don’t HAVE to stay any more.
They aren’t going to be dropped
out immediately, of course. This prob
ably will be a slow and cautious or
deal, but it all comes down to the fact
that the TV now has a lock on it, just
as the old liquor cabinets used to.
Don’t call the V-chip censorship
because quite simply it isn’t. Not any
more than a parent throwing away a
child’s 2 Live Crew compact disc or
Playboy magazine is.
It’s simply another form of paren
tal guidance, and quite frankly, the
world can use a little more of that.
Hicks is a freshman news-editorial and
English major and a Daily Nebraskan staff
reporter.
I Band member off to Seattle after concert
By Patrick Hambrecht
Senior Reporter
When Garth Johnson’s band
Plastik Trumpet finishes playing at
the Saturday Silk Cafe benefit con
-cert for Bosnian
Concert rape victims,
PrPviPUU don’t expect him
rlCVIdrV to hane around
for long. He’s
leaving on April
12 to attend Sup
Pop Records’ An
niversary Party in
Seattle.
Johnson won
the trip to grunge
rock headquarters by winning Sub
Pop’s store display contest for a new
Film plays
on viewers’
primal fear
By Cliff Hicks :
Film Critic
If you don’t like the courtroom
drama style of “A Few Good Men”
or the psychological play in “Silence
[Movie
Review
rOt The Lambs,
skip “Primal
Fear.”
If you want to
see a perfor
mance that will
haunt you for a
good long while,
go see this film.
“Primal Fear”
is the story of a
young man
named Aaron Stampler (Edward
Norton), who stands accused of
murdering one of Chicago’s well
respected dignitaries.
Hotshot defense attorney Martin
Vail (Richard Gere) takes his case
pro bono, mainly to get more pub
licity.
Vail honestly doesn’t care if
Stampler did it or not. He only takes
the job to make Stampler appear in
nocent.
Prosecutor Janet Venable (Laura
Linney) had, as she calls it, “a one
night stand” with Vail and is driven
to win this case.
To Venable, it seems like an open
and shut case. Vail has to prove her
wrong. Then things start turning up,
including the political connections
of the deceased and a mysterious
tape.
Based on the novel by William
Diehl, “Primal Fear” is a story that
is designed to make you squirm in
your seat, unable to take your eyes
off the screen.
The performances, however,
make the film. N
Linney scores about average as
the prosecutor driven by the office
and the fact that she’s working
against her ex-lover. Overall, how
See PRIMAL on 10
album by Eric Matthews, a solo
trumpeter from the band Cardinal.
“He’s an excellent trumpeter,”
Johnson said of Matthews. “His al
bum is kind of a ’60s-flavored, or
chestral pop sound.”
To compete, Johnson filled Zero
Street Records, 1411 O Street, with
Matthews-related paraphernalia, in
cluding an old pulp novel called
“The Cardinal,” a smoking jacket
and hip-swinging Elvis clocks with
pictures of Matthews’ head glued
on.
“It all took up about a quarter of
my store,” Johnson said. “So great
is my devotion to Sub Pop Records.”
Though Johnson admits his
Matthews display was motivated en
tirely by his desire to travel, he says
his store is always crammed with
colorful kitschy objects anyway,
many of them not for sale.
Elvis shampoo bottles, a “Joanie
Loves Chachi” paperback adapta
tion of the television show, a mod
orange broken television set, a Devo
poster and scores of other trashy
cultural artifacts fill his small store.
“I’m just an object magnet,”
Johnson said. “I’m not a collector. I
enjoy the humor of outdated objects
for psychic cultural reasons. Things
that perhaps have some sort of cul
tural relevance.”
Instant kitsch has become
Johnson’s favorite, he said.
“These days, I’m really into
Urkel, ‘Saved By the Bell,’ ‘90210,’
‘Melrose,’” he said. “I have a great
‘Saved By the Bell’ backpack I
picked up in Rochester, New York.
“The thing about ’90s kitsch is,
people don’t see it as kitsch yet.”
Johnson’s relative loneliness in
his pursuit of ’90s trash sometimes
irks him.
“I find it somewhat annoying
how our generation has embraced a
cutesy ’70s kitsch nostalgia, but
don’t see how kitschy things in the
’90s are.
The Silk Cafe show, 227 N. Ninth
St., also will feature Pavlov’s Tri
angles, Pitchfork, Broken Spindles,
Think and Project Mercury. Admis
sion is $2, and the show begins at 6
p.m.
Photo courtesy of United Artists Pictures Inc.
James Earl Jones (left) and Robert Duvall play brothers who meet for the first time in the Richard
Pearce film, “A Family Thing.”
By Cnerie Krueger
Film Critic
Imagine this.
You have lived your entire life as
a Southern white man with typical
Movie
Review
Southern family
values. Then one
day you receive a
letter that
changes every
thing you have
known all your
life.
You find out
you are black.
This is what
hannens to F.arl
Pilcher Jr. (Robert Duvall) in Rich
ard Pearce’s new film “A Family
Thing.” Before his mother died she
wrote a letter explaining a secret she
could not take with her to the grave.
A few days after she passed away,
Earl received the letter and found out
that she was not his real mother.
Earl’s father had raped a black
woman, and he was the result of that
rape.
The woman, who died while giv
ing birth to him, had been close
friends with his mother. His mother
agreed to raise the baby because he
looked white.
The letter also told of a half
brother living in Chicago. His
mother’s dying wish was for Earl to
meet him and to know him as a
brother.
Earl leaves the safety of the South
to find a policeman named Ray
Murdock (James Earl Jones). Earl
finds out that he is getting himself
into quite an adventure.
Ray has known about Earl all of
his life and has held a deep resent
ment for the entire family, so he is
not overly open to the idea of build
ing a relationship with him. But
Ray’s blind aunt, Aunt T., teaches the
men that the bond of family is too
Film: “A Family Thing”
Stars: Robert Duvall, James
Earl Jones
Director: Richard Pearce
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Grade: A
Five Words: Sniff... bring
plenty of Kleenex
strong to ignore.
The performances in this film are
incredible. Robert Duvall was the
perfect man to fill the roll of Earl.
He looks and sounds like the stereo
typical redneck who has never left
the confines of the South, but he
does a great job of playing the fish
out of water when he finds himself
See FAMILY on 10
House members push for educational TV
From the Associated Press
NEW YORK — More than 100
House members signed a letter to
federal regulators saying broadcast
ers should be required to offer at
least three hours of programming
each week addressing the educa
tional needs of children, The New
York Times reported Tuesday.
The Federal Communications
Commission has been under pres
sure to conclude a yearlong debate
about whether to put in place new
rules requiring more educational
programs for children.
The next round of license renew
als for broadcasters is set to begin
in June.
A letter initiated by Rep. Edward
J. Markey, D-Mass., and signed by
103 other members represents per
haps the largest number of House
members to express an opinion on
the subject since the Children’s Tele
vision Act was passed in 1990, the
Times reported.
Under the law, license renewals
depend on whether broadcasters
comply with certain criteria, such as
the requirement for educational and
informational programming for chil
dren. The question of how compli
ance should be measured has been
a problem.
Few commercial stations now
approach three hours of educational
programming a week.
The letter appeared aimed prima
rily at Rachelle B. Chong, who is
considered a swing vote on the ques
tion of a specific minimum. In a re
cent speech, however, she has de
dared herself opposed to such a
standard.
FCC Chairman Reed F. Hundt
has been lobbying for the three-hour
minimum standard. The commercial
broadcasting industry opposes that,
arguing that if Congress wanted a
specific amount, it would have
passed legislation.
There could be an impasse on the
issue that would allow license re
newals to go forward without any
specific guidelines for the amount
of children’s programming required
for renewal.