TWO REACTIONS TO ‘IMAGINING A FUTURE’ AT TAPER : Well-Meaning Event Loses Its Way in a Gush of Superficiality

The commemorative program of anti-nuclear sentiment presented Monday at the Mark Taper Forum made me angry and unhappy. Can you imagine a more disturbing reaction to such a well-meaning event?

The point was to underscore the obvious: That nuclear devastation is “pornographic.” They didn’t miss it. They subverted it. Unintentionally--which made it worse.

Imagine, for a moment, not the future, but a lineup of generous artists and a band of guileless children (the most betrayed in all this) ready to reiterate for us the evils of nuclear destruction.

What could go wrong? More than one thought possible. The program gushed, it was superficial, self-flagellating, historically misleading and politically misguided.

If these are serious charges, let’s be clear. They stem from my own deep conviction that nuclear devastation is something we don’t trivialize, as “Imagining the Future” seemed intent on doing.

Self-extinction in a mushroom cloud is the terminal obscenity. It is the most urgent issue of our time. Paying it lip service--with tired jokes about the impotence of the Atomic Energy Commission, a misplaced silly song by Sheldon Harnick about the pretty mushroom cloud (where are you when we need you, Randy Newman?) and pronouncements about how the Administration neglects the homeless, aged and poor--doesn’t cut it.

Most troubling, though, was the use of the children, the very ones we claim to want that future for. The children on stage Monday read letters from the St. Louis Grammar School third-grade class to Japan’s Emperor Hirohito. The letters apologized for the wrong thing: not that we dropped the bomb, but for “the stupidity of our government” in allowing it. You’d think it was dropped on a whim.

Did no one give that third-grade class historical facts? Facts don’t excuse the bombing, but they do explain it. Why not respect the children and trust them with the bracing truth that abject apologies are worthless, that we must shoulder responsibility for mankind’s most tragic mistake and acknowledge, “We did it; we thought at the time it was the thing to do and now we must make absolutely sure that it never happens again.”

There were two redeeming features: the measuring of our stockpiled firepower, megaton after megaton, by the chilling drop of beans in a metal pan--and the deeply haunting music of composer Kazu Matsui played by him on the shakuhachi (Japanese flute) and by Jane Kuramoto on the koto. Those stunning sounds and an hour of silence would have been eloquence enough to send us into the night reflective and resolved.