Some Give an NC-17 Rating to OCPAC Series

Should the Orange County Performing Arts Center assign film industry-type ratings to programs there?

You’d think its Young Person’s Chamber Music Concerts would warrant G ratings, yet more than one family reportedly exited just such a program by Morton Subotnick recently, and one “stunned” parent felt compelled to write a letter complaining about the graphic images to which her child had been subjected.

While performing his composition “All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis,” Subotnick “displayed on a large screen--murdered people in a pool of blood, a wolf tearing open a man’s throat on a gallows,” Kathy Smith of Newport Beach wrote to the center. “I was stunned at the inappropriate images. Many uncomfortable parents had to make creative exits with their young children. One boy said in a loud voice, ‘I don’t want to be here.’ ”

Smith’s letter also alleged that a center employee had brushed off her concerns, saying, “ ‘Children see those images every night on the news. You can’t shelter your children.’

“Perhaps her children are exposed by her to graphic violence on television,” Smith continued, “but ours are not. There is a Smokey Robinson song, ‘Be Kind to a Child’s Mind.’ [I hope that] future ‘children’s shows’ will be ‘kind to their minds’ and thoughtful of parents trying to raise them in spite of an often perverse entertainment industry.”

*

Series coordinator Aaron Egigian says he believes Smith’s was a minority reaction. He said many families gathered around Subotnick to hear more after the concert ended and further asserted that Subotnick had “allowed the children in the audience to select the section of the work to be displayed [on the screen], and they called out for the ‘Wolf’ section.”

In a written response to Smith, however, Egigian said he and the composer--himself a parent--”agree that this part of the program was better suited to more developed minds.”