When Ferris Bueller Meets the Elephant Man

Generally, when people bemoan the lack of morality in the movies, they are either gnashing their teeth over the gratuitous violence in “Rambo” or the blatant sex in the back row.

With the release of “Colors,” we have yet another category--a movie condemned for glamorizing gangs and inciting riots. Having seen it, I’m betting the only folks it will incite are patrons storming the box office, demanding their money back.

The problem I’m addressing is the power that some movies possess to cloud men’s minds--movies that are judged not by their content but by their pretensions.

A saint is defined by his good deeds and a philosopher by his good words, but in some of the movies, we’re supposed to believe that a character is noble simply because he’s got a nose the size of the Chrysler Building. It is a type of thinking that has come to be the standard by which we judge people in real life. It is my contention, though, that a bad person trapped in a bad situation doesn’t necessarily turn into a good person. We have been brainwashed into believing that every hostage is a hero, and so we confuse inconvenience with courage. A victim of tyranny may, himself, be a tyrant to his own family.

Most people came out of “The Elephant Man” feeling as if they’d just spent two hours with Mother Teresa. The fact of the matter is that, as depicted, John Merrick was nothing but an ugly yuppie--wholly self-centered and, ironically, totally caught up with appearances.

At the beginning of the movie, Merrick is being exhibited by an evil sadist. A boy who is a ward or son of the blackguard seeks out a doctor to tend to the Elephant Man’s injuries. The boy does this at obvious risk to himself. Later in the movie, when Merrick is abducted by the same brute and taken to the Continent for exhibition, the boy helps him effect his escape. So, twice this boy endangers his own life for the man, but Merrick never makes the slightest effort to rescue the lad, although along the way he has made rich and powerful allies.

Proof of Merrick’s goodness is that, at one point, he mumbles the Lord’s Prayer, and, at another, he pours tea for the queen’s cousin without spilling a drop. I’m not certain what the standards are these days for sainthood, but I think they must be a bit more stringent than what any 4-year-old can pull off without breaking a sweat.

At the time that “Tootsie” appeared, I was struck by the enormous gulf between what the character of Michael Dorsey was really like and what the ads and reviews insisted he was. And not since the Emperor modeled his spring wardrobe had there been such a divergence between hype and reality. The hype insisted that this was a movie that raised the consciousness of America. It was supposed to show how sensitive to women’s concerns Dorsey became as a result of walking a mile in high heels. The truth, however, is that Mr. Sensitive did nothing in the entire movie that wasn’t motivated by his desire to get an acting job or have sex with Jessica Lange. While perfectly reasonable goals, they do seem to have less in common with your run-of-the-mill saint than with, say, Warren Beatty.

At one point in the movie, Dorsey goes to bed with Teri Garr, but it’s only out of panic and because he doesn’t want to have to explain his female finery. On another occasion, he stands up Garr and the birthday dinner she’s prepared because Mr. Raised Consciousness is tied up hustling Lange. To top things off, Dorsey even uses secrets Lange has unwittingly divulged to his Dorothy Michaels persona as seduction ploys.

If his is a raised consciousness, what’s a lowered one? But, then, I never quite understood how it was that Alan Alda, major-domo of “MASH,” rarely allowed a woman to write or direct any of the 250 episodes in the 11 years the show was on the air but received a standing ovation every time he appeared on a NOW podium.

My problem with the moral message of “Mask” is two-fold. Once again, in Rocky Dennis, we are presented with a grotesque protagonist. Once again, we are told to look behind the facade. What makes this mascot of a motorcycle gang so gosh-darn wonderful, though? Although we, the audience, are expected to see the beautiful person within, when he falls in love with a blind girl, she isn’t one of those adolescents beset with acne, blubber or even braces, for God’s sake--she’s a gorgeous, blue-eyed blonde. None of that looking behind the facade for old Rocky!

The second problem I had with the boy was his relationship with his only friend. This, remember, is the same friend who takes up trading baseball cards so that he and Rocky will have a hobby in common. But when the kid begs out of a motorcycle trip they’d planned, so he can spend the summer with his estranged father, how does Rocky react to the news? Is he happy for his buddy? Is he at the very least stoic about his own disappointment? No. Like all the other spoiled brats these movies pass off as sterling characters, he lashes out at his friend. He even taunts him by telling him what a dope he was to trade away his valuable Tony Lazzeri baseball card for peanuts. And to whom had he traded it? Rocky, of course.

Friends like this almost make Ferris Bueller look good. Almost, but not quite. Ferris, in case you’ve forgotten, was the cynical little wise guy who thought he was superior to everybody else in the universe. Once again, it is a character with no character who serves as moral arbiter.

It is Ferris who encourages his pal to stand up to his father. We never meet the father. What we get to know about him is that he is wealthy and spoils his kid only slightly less than he spoils himself. It is never suggested that the man is evil or has ever abused his son. However, when the boy inadvertently destroys the man’s car and garage, Ferris lets us know that it’s as much as the guy deserves.

What naturally goes unquestioned is Ferris’ moral superiority. Who is this role model, this savior in sneakers? He’s the very same lout who bullied his friend out of a sick bed and into his dad’s expensive sports car because he, Ferris, felt like getting out of the suburbs and into Chicago for the day.

Finally we come to “Broadcast News.” Although, to my mind, a better movie than the others, it, too, lacks a moral center. The Holly Hunter character is as shallow as Ferris Bueller--and, like him, is permitted to make the ultimate value judgment.

Keep in mind that she’s the one who sends her romantic rival off to Alaska, while William Hurt tries to help his own rival learn to be a successful anchorman. Keep in mind that Hunter thinks she is every bit as smart and sensitive as everyone keeps insisting she is, although it’s Albert Brooks who gets to say all the smart, sensitive lines in the movie. Keep in mind that it’s Hurt who keeps berating himself, telling everybody he’s ignorant, inept and overpaid. But, in the end, it’s Hunter who gets to spurn Hurt on ethical grounds. (Why not dump him because he wasn’t good-looking enough? It would have made just about as much sense.) She has found him to be morally reprehensible because the tear he shed on camera wasn’t spontaneous.

Now, about that tear. . . . If Hurt had been depicted as a back-stabbing hypocrite who cared about nothing but his own career, her stand might have had some validity. But Hurt is obviously a decent human being, whose idea it was in the first place to do a story on date rape. He is clearly moved and upset by the victim’s story. What is so awful about the tear being the director’s afterthought? Are TV newsmen not supposed to have afterthoughts? Journalists and screenwriters have them all the time, or at least should have; the process is called rewriting.

Finally we get to the great moral dilemma of “Broadcast News.” It’s a question that’s been kicked around ever since the first anchorman popped into view. The question: Does it make a whit of difference whether an anchorman is well-versed on the news or if he or she is merely an attractive talking head? Frankly, my dear, I don’t think it matters in the slightest if Dan Rather can spell Afghanistan or Tom Brokaw would recognize Kurt Waldheim if he tripped over him.

Is it immoral that anchormen are paid far more than the folks who supply them with their material? It’s no more or less moral than the fact that newspeople in TV, by and large, earn more money than people doing similar work for magazines and newspapers.

Frankly, I see no point in complaining that the stars who draw the viewers to broadcast news are overpaid. If not for the money, why on Earth would any grown-up want to sit there night after night reading the news to people who are sitting home watching the news?

Besides, I don’t hear anyone bellyaching that the stars of “Broadcast News” are making bloody fortunes, and nobody seems too concerned with whether they understand the lines they’re reading.

The fact of the matter is that the stars of movies and TV shows are invariably paid far more than the folks who write their lines and create their characters. So, if you want to talk about immoral pay scales. . . .