llTI'ERS -
Male violence on film
Am I alone or is anyone else concerned about the growing number of films at the cinema depicting women as abused or battered victims?
In watching the trailers before the main film at the Cannon (Sauchiehall Street) on Saturday, I felt sick at the glamourised violence against women in three out of the five trailers.
In the knowledge that violent crime against women has increased significantly in recent years, I feel that films such as this, while thrilling and terrifying, are Iegitimising male violence against women in the name ofentertainment.
They are vicious and sadistic. What effects are they having on our lives? Louise Ewart Shawlands Glasgow
You win this issue’s bottle of Jose Cuervo tequila.
Charming man
Your article on the magnificent Stephen Patrick Morrissey last issue was a complete travesty, and it was apparent that your writer failed to understand the genius ofthe man.
To say ‘Kill Uncle will do little to
pull him out of the rut,’ is ludicrous. It‘s a superb album, top five in the charts, and the concerts sold out within hours of tickets going on sale. If that‘s a rut, it’s one plenty of today’s trendy groups would give their sampling machines to be in.
It sounds to me that your writer has just lazily jumped onto the media bandwagon of saying Morrissey hasn‘t made any decent records since the Smiths split up. That’s rubbish, as a brief listen to Piccadilly Palare, Interesting Drug or Sing Your Life would hastily tell you. May I refer you to the Guardian rave review of his Dublin concerts. At least they seem to know what they are talking about Claire Kiernan Glencroft Avenue Motherwell.
Chernobyl and Scotland
You are right to publicise (The List
; 147) Edinburgh District Council’s
, welcome initiative to supply medical
1 aid to its twin city Kiev, still
struggling to cope with the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. But what is the Council doing to ensure that a similar disaster doesn’t happen
Write to The List, Old Athenaeum Theatre, 179 Buchanan Street, Glasgow G1 2JZ, or 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 lTE. The best letter next issue will win a bottle of Jose Cuervo tequila.
MOIRA NICOI.
closer to home? I The media coverage ofthe fifth l anniversary ofthe worst nuclear I accident so far failed to address the question ofwhich reactor will be 9 next to go wrong. The Soviet government has been rightly ' criticised for failing to inform the , public of what was happening at the 3 time and for failing to evacuate ' people from the area surrounding the reactor but who really believes anything different would happen here. When Torness was being commissioned a few years ago. the Fire Brigade and emergency services were told not to prepare plans for a possible evacuation. neighbouring Dunbar. It was not necessary. we were blithely assured by the then SSEB, the safety procedures. design . and construction of the plant are such that an accident couldn‘t happen. The same assumption applies to the areas surrounding Hunterston, Rosyth, Faslane and the Holy Loch. lfsomething did go seriously wrong, the authorities would be forced to hush it up as they have no alternative plans to fall back on. The suggestion that ‘it could never happen here’ because of the brilliance ofour engineering abilities rings rather hollowin the ears of those (including recently even the Queen) who know how often British : Rail trains break down. Still ifwe try and look on the bright side. now that 1 five years have passed there are only another 9,995 years to go before
Chernobyl will be safe again. Mark Fulton
Gillespie Avenue Edinburgh
Tongue twister
I am writing to take issue with the use made of the word ‘couthie’ in your television listings. ‘Couthie’ is a good
: Scots word meaning ‘kind. affable. affectionate‘. and is used in a context
that suggests your television editor
' thought it meant ‘quaint. provincial‘.
All credit to his attempts to include more ofthe native language in the
, magazine. however,heshould
find out what words mean
prior to using them. I recommend
that he read the Sunday Scot to improve his vocabulary. I read Alasdair Friend’s
‘ experiences on Masterchefwith
interest. Being a vegetarian seems to be an embattled position and it must
make the poor lad very miserable. E He should try a haggis supper
washed down with a bottle of Irn Bru - that should put a smile back on his face.
C. McNair
South Queensterry
Yanked up
There are many reasons for which it would be justifiable to bombard our transatlantic cousins with vitriol. Their Government’s foreign policy, for example, or their grossly uninspired television, or their
adulation of Bruce Springsteen and I Jon Bon Jovi. The ability of their former president to get away with a rather significant international crime by claiming he couldn’t remember what he did that day. Or the fact that they can’t pronounce Van Gogh, spell ‘colour’ or visit Scotland without wearing ridiculous tartan trousers.
But there have been a couple of unwarranted attacks in recent months, and I feel the time has come to take issue with them. A short while ago, in one of those bouts of freestyle opining he has made his speciality, the Great British Novelist Anthony Burgess gave it as his view that the female voice cannot carry sexual messages while it is burdened with an American accent.
I am in a position to assure him unequivocally that this is not the case.
And more recently, Ruby Wax (whose dulcet tones are enough in themselves to refute Burgess’ contention) is quoted in your magazine (The List 147), saying ‘Nobody in America laughs at themself.’ Leaving aside the question ofgrammar, would it not be fair to surmise that few people of any race laugh at themselves to the extent that Ms Wax laughs at them?
Besides, the only Americans I’ve met who lack the capacity to laugh at their own foibles are involved in the Arts (with at least one capital letter), a category in which Ms Wax presumably (and wisely) does not place herself.
E. P. McKechnie Montgomery Street Edinburgh
Self-parody
Re the feature article on Pat Kane (The List 147), it stretches credibility to imagine the Coatbridge chanteur writing a column for the Daily Record (‘Real Morons Read the Record’). Its tabloid punters would probably give up after a couple of convoluted sentences. whereas Scotsman readers have been known to persevere for two paragraphs before cataracts begin to form.
Like Mcllvanney, Kane is terminally articulate, but it is articulate gobbledegook. Having just finished Docherty (a set book!), I almost got to the end thinking the eponymous hero would die heroically in a tragic pit accident. Then on page 301 . Tam dies heroically in a tragic pit accident. ‘They saw a hand projecting from the rubbish. fixed in its final reflex, Tam Docherty‘s hand . . . The Hand was clenched.’
Clenched?! Beats a V-sign to the pit manager I suppose. And at least no miner said to the rubble: ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down, Tam.’ Unlike Kelman, Mcllvanney and Kane have no capacity for self-parody. David M. Bennie Haddington Place Edinburgh
l 95 The List 17—30 May 1991
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