From: messaround@messaround.com   
      
   Email to Hitch Minor:   
      
   'As usual I was amused by your column this week - especially the stuff on   
   the badger: very Orwelline - but was concerned about your comments about the   
   name of Gibson's dog in The Dambusters. It seems to me that you're taking a   
   priggish line on this by suggesting that anyone who opposes the censoring of   
   it from the film would get pleasure and glee out of hearing it. You seem to   
   be missing the point that censoring it is censoring social history and   
   controlling how the past is perceived. It sets a precedent - if that now,   
   what later? It seems to me that in spite of your conversion to hardcore   
   toryism the ex-Marxist has not lost his fondness for the airbrush.... I   
   would prefer the film to be shown with a small prefatory warning, as we   
   get - or used to get - for swear words and violence. The other thing is of   
   course that some people laugh at it simply because it has quite rightly   
   become an unacceptable word and when something becomes unacceptable it   
   creates tension and tension often creates humour. It becomes naughty and   
   therefore subversive. If you fail to understand this you ultimately fail to   
   understand one of major reasons the cultural revolution occurred and   
   furthermore how some of its worst consequences (and not all its consequences   
   are bad) might be overturned.   
   I don't like the Dambusters as a film (and I agree with you about 'Dunkirk')   
   but I think you're being a bit harsh on it. The film is not really supposed   
   to be a forensic illustrated slide lecture on the non-effectiveness and   
   unintended slaughter of the raid (I think that asking audiences, as you   
   suggest, to accept that and the mass slaughter at Dresden etc so close to   
   the war is a bit rich and rather dour Trotskyite dreaming) but more a   
   tribute to bravery and ingenuity in tough times.'   
      
      
   - the dog in the film is called 'Nigger'.   
      
   ROBBIE   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)