FILM CHRONICLE
III
like Intelligence Officer Peck, knows how to take care of rats, and
his lack of scruples becomes a political asset. Further knowledge is
irrelevant ; the hero does not need to look too closely into the heart of
evil.
Knowledge may even be dangerous. The hero should know that
Communists are rats without needing to examine the nature of Com–
munism. Is our thinking so primitive that we fear that a close look will
not only expose us to destruction but will turn us into rats, that Com–
munism is contagious? Is that why there is so much fear that people
may read Communist literature, and why those who have had no con–
tact with Communism are deemed the only safe anti-Communists? The
man of conscience who examines the enemy sees human beings-the
primitive explanation is that he got too close and was infected.
If
you
know enough to hate Communists, you know enough; if you know
more, perhaps you can no longer hate. The ritualistic nature of this
popular anti-Communism was made apparent in the public reaction to
Acheson's remark that he wouldn't turn his back on Alger Hiss. Acheson
spoke as one human being talking about another ; he was a ttacked for
his failure to recognize that Soviet agents are not supposed to be re–
garded as human beings.
The morality play had meaning as an instructive dramatization, an
externalization of the conflict within man. Our popula r culture and
popular politics and even our popular religion take this conflict and
project it onto the outside world. The resulting simplification has im–
mediate advantages : we are exonerated, they are guilty. In contrast with
drama which sensitizes man to human complexity, melodrama desensi–
tizes men. No wonder the public has no patience with real political
issues, nor with the moral complexities of Shakespeare or Greek tragedy.
The movies know how to do it better: in a film, Stevens or McCarthy
would prove his case ; in a film, Oppenheimer would be innocent or
guilty. A reporter who made a telephone survey asking "Are you listen–
ing to the Army-McCarthy hearings?" got the housewife's response:
"No, that's not my idea of entertainment." It is the stereotyped heroes
and villains of h er brand of entertainment who react upon our public
figures-so that if Stevens admitted that he had functioned in the real
world of conciliation and compromise, he would be publicly dishonored
(yet he cannot prove his basic honesty without making that admission).
Senator McCarthy has not the look of a man in the grip of a fixed
idea ; rather he has the look of a man who has the fixed idea well in
hand. When national issues can be discussed in terms of "ferreting out
rats" (and even McCarthy's political opponents accept the term) the
man with the fixed idea is the man who appears to stand for something.
