Shifting symbolsDirector Bill Condon undercuts the premise...

Shifting symbols

Director Bill Condon undercuts the premise of Louise Roug’s article (“An Intimate Shift on the Big Screen,” Nov. 7) on Hollywood’s current interest in male bisexuality by using Marlon Brando as a past symbol of masculinity. He is perhaps unaware that in the mid-’50s Brando, Montgomery Clift and James Dean came under fire for projecting an underlying feminine sensitivity not seen in traditional he-men like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas or even Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda, who frequently played “sensitive” but otherwise strongly masculine men.

Of course some of the negative reaction to Brando, Clift and Dean was due to jealousy and envy, and the fact that these actors were known to have a gay following and rumors about their sexuality didn’t help the sullying of their images.

Rick Mitchell

Los Angeles

A chewing out

“So it made practical, personal and spiritual sense to change. I started eating meat again,” says Nina Utne (“Utne -- the Magazine That Comes With an Action Plan,” Nov. 7).

What’s practical about eating flesh -- or, rather, what’s impractical about eschewing it? What could make spiritual sense about chewing and swallowing the product of pain and slaughter?

Utne gave up and bowed to the animal killers in order to “make practical sense”: a cowardly way to beg for acceptance. What’s next? A barbecue at the Crawford ranch?

Michele Mooney

Van Nuys

EGREM’s a breeze

Agustin GURZA’S article about EGREM -- Cuba’s Motown-plus -- and their retrospective box set was enticing and informative (“Decades of Sounds Reveal a Musical Treasure Island,” Nov. 7).

It sounds delicious: a breath of fresh, Caribbean air with sparkling melodies and exotic rhythms. I have sampled everything from classical to country, blues to barbershop quartets, jazz to jingles, but nothing has been as flavorful as world music, especially that with a Latin accent.

So much good music out there, so little time. But with Mr. Gurza’s able assistance, I have a chance to find out what has passed me by, collar it and bask in sun-drenched reveries.

William S. Theaker

Santa Clarita

Hall monitors

One of these days Robert Hilburn will be wrong, but I am not holding my breath. Once again he is right on target in “Good Isn’t Good Enough” (Oct. 31) with his “nominations” for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I particularly want to second his nominations of Randy Newman, Gram Parsons and the Sex Pistols. All are so underrated.

I use Randy Newman songs in class to illustrate how songs can reflect different cultures and cultural diversity issues.

I encourage my students from south Georgia to listen to Gram Parsons, who invented country rock and who is from Waycross, Ga..

I was telling my niece that if she really wants to get to the roots of punk rock, she has to listen to the Sex Pistols.

Dave Lake

Savannah, Ga.

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The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has become a tired and ludicrous affair, the antithesis of that which it seeks to dignify with a silly statuette. Would the surviving Sex Pistols even want this award? Is Percy Sledge a rocker? Allow me to nominate a few worthy absentees for next year’s ballot: Donovan; Jan & Dean; Larry Williams; the Fugs; Arthur Lee’s Love; Thee Midniters & Little Willie G.; Canned Heat; Traffic; Johnny Otis; Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns.

And in the “Sidemen” category, let’s not forget the first black rock ‘n’ roll touring band -- Little Richard’s Upsetters!

Robert Leslie Dean

Los Angeles