COUNTERPUNCH LETTERS : Inspecting Two Defenses

It never fails to amaze me how righteously self-serving moviemakers and TV producers can get when they are criticized for making films that either pander to our basest morality or that perpetuate cultural stereotypes. Irvin Kershner and Henry G. Saperstein in the July 16 Counterpunch are the two latest examples.

I’m glad to know that Kershner had only the noblest intentions in mind when he signed to direct “RoboCop 2.” In fact, I greatly enjoyed his social analysis of his own movie. However, that is not the picture he made and that isn’t why he made it. He seems to be ashamed to admit that he needed the job and now seeks to defend what he did by coating it with an after-the-fact veneer of thematic idealism. All I saw in “RoboCop 2” was an atrocious disregard for the value of human life.

Saperstein’s rationale for KCAL continuing to show those awful “Dick Tracy” cartoons from nearly 30 years ago has, in part, to do with their age. They are “only old cartoons,” he says. Using that reasoning, let’s bring on the Stepin Fetchit, Mantan Moreland and Richard Loo movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s; let’s dust off the Bosco cartoon, and, hey, let’s put “Birth of a Nation” on the Disney Channel. Yeah, they all featured ugly stereotypes, but they’re only old movies, so “sit back and enjoy.”

JIM BOYD

Los Angeles