CATO THE CENSOR

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Much as I enjoy the role of Guardian of Undergraduate Morality for which the CRIMSON article on the cancellation of the Humanities 4 Genet film has cast me, I should like to point out a few distortions in that article.

The description of my standing at the entrance to Boylston Auditorium turning away the Hum 4 students who tried to get in, my frail form alone interposed between the student and his damnation, pleases my sense of the dramatic, though it hardly satisfies the claims of truth. The film showing was open only to members of French 183; no guests were admitted--as simple as that.

Chant D'Amour was not shown to the students of 4 because the staff deemed it irrelevant to the course. Its "blatant sexual imagery" (sic) was an additional complicating factor, though for the complaining student who visited the CRIMSON office in high dudgeon, this factor seems to have overridden any concern for the film's artistic merit or academic relevance. Would complaints have been forthcoming. I wonder, if showings of Cocteau's Orpheus or Kurosawa's Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail had been cancelled? The question of censorship, raised by the CRIMSON article, is not pertinent; it was simply decided not to show the film to Hum 4.

Having had the mantle of Cato the Censor draped upon my reluctant shoulders by the CRIMSON, hence-forth I will bend every effort to save Harvard's undergraduates from their sinful selves. CRIMSON WRITERS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS, BEWARE! MY WATCHFUL EYES ARE UPON YOU. Arthur Friedman   Teaching Fellow in Humanities