Ugly truths about screen images

TWO readers took umbrage at comments by Jonathan Rhys Meyers stating that Americans have a tendency to prefer less corpulent images on the small or big screen and that Europe has the market cornered on “titillation” [Letters, April 8].

I must agree with Rhys Meyers, and who but those offended by an ugly truth wouldn’t? It’s unquestionable that there are heroes of great girth “outside” of Hollywood, as enlighteningly told by Greg Jenkins, but, as is evident to even less brighter types, that is not what Rhys Meyers was referring to.

Indeed most of the world’s capitalistic civilization, the purest form of it being the U.S., prefers to look at an idealized image it can, vicariously, identify with.

Additionally, I must rebut Laurie Anne Marie’s allegation: It is rather the U.S. that has the market cornered on titillation with its billion-dollar porn industry beneath a puritan, politically correct facade. Europe, on the other hand, employs more of an open and natural approach to nudity and, thus, exercises less hypocrisy.

Hollywood is placing increasingly less effort in hiding behind a smoke screen of moral depth and human values, only to deliver ever increasingly shocking material to its insatiable target public: the young. And perhaps therein lies the problem.

MICHAEL E. WHITE

Burbank