TV Reviews : Multiculturalism Sparks ‘Words in Your Face’

No one will ever accuse PBS’ performing arts series “Alive From Off Center” of not being politically and multiculturally correct. At least not after tonight’s highly inclusive, non-white-male-dominated season premiere (at 11 on KCET Channel 28), a fast-moving, half-hour anthology of young poets and spoken-word artists that includes black rappers (male and female), Latinos, gays and even a young man whose odd, brief piece seems only slightly less avant-garde if you learn that he’s hearing-impaired.

Called “Words in Your Face,” the episode--which places its 20 performers in a variety of colors, styles and settings--has been filmed so smartly and paced so briskly by director Mark Pellington that you may not stop to notice that hardly anyone is on camera long enough to make the impression some hint at being capable of. It’s a tease of a show, which is at least something.

On one hand, the woman who reads the poem that includes the immortal lines, “Jean-Paul Sartre / Fill me with awe-tre / Or spit in my face / And call me a tart-tre” probably gets her point well enough across in her designated half-minute, as does the Southerner who chainsaws a Lewis Grizzard book while reciting angry anti-columnist verse.

Of the more politically, racially and sexually provocative acts, some are pretentious enough you’re glad the busy editor does the equivalent of yanking them off with a cane, but the better cant-ers slip by too fleetingly. Most are apparently New Yorkers, though erstwhile L.A. punk maven Henry Rollins (the closest thing to a host) interrupts periodically to encourage viewers to rage at unseen bogymen--the only one of which specifically called out by name is, of course, censorship.