Henrietta Hay's Column

Attacks on one of my favorite books and a socially significant movie that I respect highly -- both in a period of a month -- made me mad.

A man in Montrose wants Tony Hillerman's book, A Thief Of Time banned from the Montrose schools. And a Congressman from Oklahoma protested the showing of Schindler's List on television. Both of these complaints cite vulgarity as the reason. I don't think these guys have enough to do.

Granted all parents have the right to control what their children read and see in their homes. And they have an obligation to try to guide their children elsewhere. But they have no right to limit what the rest of us can see and hear and think.

Tony Hillerman is the favorite mystery writer of uncounted people in this part of the country. His novels have brought us knowledge and understanding of the Navajo culture at the same time that they are entertaining us. His books are carefully researched, very well written and his characters are real. Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police are personal friends.

The Montrose parent says that the book is too vulgar for sixth graders. He found 15 vulgar words in the first 60 pages, and was quoted in the Sentinel as saying, "I was offended enough that I didn't feel I needed to read more."

I have never counted the "vulgar" words in any book, so I can't vouch for his accuracy, but probably he was right to quit reading. Hillerman uses profanity very sparingly and never gratuitously.

On page 9 of A Thief Of Time, the anthropologist researching Indian culture approaches a little alcove in an Anasazi ruin and shines her flashlight into it. What she sees is, "Bones. Bones scattered everywhere. 'Oh s---," said Eleanor Friedman-Bernal who almost never used expletives...Someone had been digging. Someone had been looting. A Thief Of Time."

Vulgar? Not by my definition. I do not use profanity, but there are times when an expletive is essential to mental health. Shakespeare knew that some years ago and I discovered it the night I broke my little toe on a chair leg in the dark. "Oh dear," just doesn't cut it.

The same narrow-minded search for "vulgarity" in art turned up in Congress when Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) denounced NBC for "affronting decent minded individuals everywhere" by airing Schindler's List. He went on to say that, "I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program. They were exposed to multiple gunshot wounds, vile language, full frontal nudity and irresponsible sexual behavior."

Where has he been the past fifty years? This is a grim and powerful film about the horrors of the Holocaust. This is not fiction, with lots of voluptuous female bodies and exploding buildings and car chases. This was real. Set in the ghettos of Krakow, Poland, the Plasznow forced labor camp and finally in the concentration camp at Auschwitz during World War II, it tells of one man's successful efforts to save some 1100 Jews from the gas chamber.

It contains everything the Congressman said it does, but his view was skewed 180 degrees. Yes, there was nudity and yes it was obscene. But the obscenity was not in the women's bodies, but in the appalling brutality with which hundreds of them had been stripped of their clothing and driven like cattle into a building where they expected to be gassed to death. Their joy and relief when water came instead of gas gave them a kind of dignity.

This was a very hard movie to watch. It is certainly not for children, but NBC warned watchers in advance, and it carried a TV-M rating. That left the decision up to parents. 65 million of us viewed it. It is far too easy to forget that which we wish had never happened. I think Schindler's List should be required viewing for generations to come.

Tony Hillerman and Oskar Schindler -- the odd couple -- linked because somebody thinks each of them is vulgar. I believe that vulgarity is in the eye of the beholder. In any case I am anxiously awaiting Hillerman's next mystery, and I believe that we must remember the Holocaust so that it can never be repeated.