“But those aren’t real.” But is that what you are thinking, asrnyou watch the bloodbaths in The Untouchables? This isn’trnreally happening? That’s why you spend $7.50 to see an attractivernstand-in flash her privates for a less well-endowed “actress,”rnjust to keep in mind that it is only a movie?rnThe last time I heard an intelligent comment on this questionrnwas years ago on the Tonight Show, when Tiny Tim,rnsanctimoniously decrying sex on the screen, told Mr. Carsonrnthat they ought to take sex out of the theaters and put it backrnwhere it belongs—in the home. But that solution would norndoubt disturb the directors of Planned Parenthood.rnThere is nothing wrong with either sex or violence, anyrnmore than wind and water and fire are evil because of the damagernthey sometimes inflict. Eros and Eris, desire and conflict,rnare the magnetic poles of human social life, more essentialrnto us, as human beings, than air, food, and water. But on thisrnside there is no end to strifernWhere violence has taken love to wife—rnA pagan tale of Venus and of MarsrnMatter of fact and heedless as the starsrnOf carnage down in our too human wars.rnThe Romans made love and war their national gods, and Lucretiusrnused Mars and Venus to explain the nature of the universe.rnWe, on the other hand, are content to put them on thernstage and make them fight and fornicate for the spectators’rnnickels. Ours is a peep-show culture. Since we dare not facernlife in the raw, we first drug ourselves then peep through thernelectronic blinds to catch a glimpse of our more interestingrnneighbors—^like Jimmy Stewart, in Rear Window, but at leastrnJimmy Stewart had the excuse of a broken leg.rnIn the film version of Nabokov’s Lohta, Clare Quilty (PeterrnSellers), begging for his life, offers to arrange for HumbertrnHumbert to see executions: “You like to watch?” And when inrnJerzy Kosinski’s Being There the prostitute asks the retardedrnmanservant (Peter Sellers again) what he likes. Sellers’ answer,rn”I like to watch,” is a kind of response, delayed byrndecades, to his own question in Lolita. Of course, he justrnmeans TV, but Sellers’ dimwitted valet—so reminiscent ofrnKosinski’s friend, the equally dull and impotent Andy Warhol,rnwhose greatest kick was to watch his friends making it—isrnthe American Everyman who, by the end of the film, is bothrnPresident and Messiah.rnThe trouble with America is not that there is too much sexrnand violence, but too little, or rather too little of the realrnthings, which also go by the names of love and courage. Therernare all too many middle-class Casanovas who lack the imaginativernconviction required of a faithful husband, or even of arnFrench husband who enjoys his mistress and loves his family;rnand there is an infestation of punks who have the nerve tornshoot defenseless strangers, knowing full well that even if theyrnare caught, they will only be transferred from one welfarernsystem to another. All they lack is the courage to take arnminimum-wage job and defend their building against thernferal dogs that roam the halls.rnIf America were really a sexy-violent society, we would seernmiddle-class men, armed and dangerous, protecting theirrnteenage daughters from the high school basketball players whorntreat them like so much pork, and they would march upon therntelevision station, like a national liberation army, and seize control.rnIn fact, all the whining about sex and violence in our society,rnwhen it is not mere cant repeated by rote, reflects therninstinctive fear that cowards feel when they are confronted byrnreal life, by men who love a woman so passionately that they dornnot become disenchanted when she reaches 35 and whornwould, like an earlier generation of New Hampshiremen,rnprefer to live free or die. <£:>rnLIBERAL ARTSrnP.C. SMOKErn”The New VorA Times has found a new venue for politically correct moralizing,” reported SooH McCouneli in the Neu’ York }KI laitrnMay; the obituaries. “Readers were gratuitously informed that French geneticist jcrrmu’ (.ejcune, dead at 67 because of lung cancer,rnwas ‘a heavy smoker.’ The Times obit page hasn’t yet begun informing us whether various people who have died of AIDS were promiscuousrnhomosexuals, or whether heart attack victims were fat and avoided exereise~:ind, trutli he told, we don’t really expect it to.rnIn PC land, smokers arc the one social group made to feel responsible for the deleterious eou’sequcnccs of their own hcliavior.”rn12/CHRONICLESrnrnrn