____AyRTS Monday, November 16, 1987 Page The Michigan Doily Piercy speaks on feminism, ' ., 4 By Avra Kouffman "This is the sort of scene you al- ways fantasize about when you're taking your first writing class," said Marge Piercy, surveying the packed- to-capacity crowd in Rackham Ampitheatre last Thursday. The feminist poet and University alumna received a standing ovation after reading from her poetry. She spoke to the Daily at the ensuing reception in her honor. Daily:' What projects are you currently working on? Piercy: I have a book of poetry - contemporary American women's poetry that I edited, which has about 60 poets in it, many of them quite young. The ideas came from a British publisher so it's coming out first in England. It's going to come out here very soon, it's out in Eng- land already. It should be published here... probably... within, a month. It's called Early Ripening. Then I have a book of poetry coming out from Knopf in February called AvailableLight. D: Who are some of your fa- vorite poets? P: I love to read Adrienne Rich and Audre Lord, Joy Harjoe, Linda Hogan, Phil Levine - they're all poets I really like an enormous amount. D: Is any of your work autobio- graphical? P: A lot of my poetry -90% of it is. D: Are most of your characters based on real people? P: No, I write character-centered fiction; if you want people to be very real in fiction they can'tjbe based mostly on one person, it just doesn't work much that way. D: What did you like most and least about the University when you were here? P: What I liked most about it was probably going to college at all. I loved Ann Arbor and I made a lot of friends here, and it was intellectu- ally very stimulating - a lot was going on in the arts - so'that I felt like I was coming to life in a whole lot of ways that hadn't (previously) been available to me. Things I didn't like were being made to feel that I was the wrong sex or somehow the wrong volume level; those were things I didn't like. Also, I had fac- ulty and a dean say to me - I was working my way through college - switchboard, I worked for the tele- phone company, I worked in the dorms. . D: You're married. Some femi- nists feel that marriage is a sexist institution, because lesbians and gays aren't allowed to marry their same sex partners and because laws are geared so that when a marriage ends in divorce, the woman usually 'I loved Ann Arbor and I,.made a lot of friends here, and it was intellectually very stimulating... Things I didn't like were being made to feel that I was the wrong sex somehow or the wrong volume level.' -Author Marge Piercy because other people can't, I think that one should change the laws so they can; it's like saying you won't eat because other people are starving. Well, people should not be starving, but you do -them no good by not eating. D: Dance the Eagle to Sleep contained a paragraph which dis- cussed how some girls felt that sleeping with a rock star would ,change their lives. Do you think that this attitude has changed in the last few years, and do you think that fe- male rock stars like Madonna, Tina Turner, and Cyndi Lauper present negatives or positive images to young women? P: I'm always glad when women are successful in fields that are pri- marily male dominated. I think Madonna's a real shrewd operator. As for her image, itdepends on what people do with it. It depends on whether somebody looks at her and says 'here's a woman who manages her image, who hasn't self destruc- ted.' Then they get something posi-, tive out of it. If people look at 'I-ar a material girl... ' and think that they should wiggle around in the same way, then they get into trou- ble. D: The term "post-feminist" has been bantered about a lot lately. Do you think that we're in a post-femi-- nist period now? P: Are we in a post-peace period; a post-equality period? If we'reii post-equality, we're in post-feminist. To be feminist is to care about women - if you care about women, you're a feminist! If you believethat women have a right to safety, plenty, peace, and- fulfillment in various aspects of their lives then- you can't be past-feminist, because: the millennia (period of great happi- ness, peace, prosperity) hasn't 'ar- rived as I've noticed. D: In closing, what advice would; you give aspiring authors at the University? P: Read and write, read and write, read and write, read and write, and read and write! 'well, if you can't afford to be here, you shouldn't be here.' In sp te'of the fact that I was getting all A's a lot of the time. D: Where did you work? " P: I worked... Oh I don't remember all the jobs I had! I worked secretarial jobs, I worked the suffers financially, while the man gains. Could you comment on this? P: Well, I think it's absolutely true. But that has nothing to do with whether a particular person marries, unless you're a purist. In other words, I'm not going to not marry ,, 'Carrier' Good intentions plagued by poor execution By Marc Carrel Most people would refer to The Carrier, the new independent film only showing in Ann Arbor, as a horror film. It is not a slasher flick, but it does show some people melting and the like. Pro- ducer/director/writer Nathan White (an alumus of the University) said he would prefer his movie to be called "a supernatural thriller." What it is most likely to be called is "a disappointment." White wrote the film (which was shot in Manchester, Michigan) two years ago. The project was a large undertaking, as the production crew had to trasnsform the town to look like a small town in the 1950s. The plot concerns Jake Spear (played by University student Gregory Fortescue),'who is attacked early on in the movie by a large shadowy creature (which the characters in the film call the "black thing"). Its existence is never explained, nor is its demise; it sim-, ply gets shot and melts to nothing. But from then on Jake is "The Carrier" and he transmits the disease to anything he touches. Once, someone touches something infected by him, they melt on contact. This disease outrages the religious town of Sleepy Rock in which Jake lives. People grow suspicious and eventually violent as the town breaks into two factions which Jake pits against each other. The film "shows the lack of communication in our society and is about unbridled fear and hate," said White at its premiere last week. "It shows how these neuroses can make us the carriers of insanity." This does not mean much but is eloquently put; which is more than can be said for most of the dialogue in the film. Take, for example, Raising Hell Daily Photo by SCOTT LTUCHY' DMC (left), Jam Master Jay (middle), and Run (right) of Run DMC rocked the Hill Thursday night. Jake's mixed metaphor when he is depressed, "Life isn't worth the paper it's printed on." But White says his film is full of social satire and humor. This may be true, but it is on a pretty low level.: When Jake touches any object it Js; infected. We can later tell where Jake has been, when a .man in an outhouse is screaming for his wife as he melts into the toilet seat; or when a woman being raped by her See MICHIGAN Page 8 .Now in its third year, the Peer Information Counseling Program (PIC) has continued to grow. PIC is a minority student support program based within the library, Staffed by undergraduate students, it provides research assistance by appointment and on-demand when staff is available. PIC staff cand processing by appointment. But - wait! There's more! You can also arrange for a PIC staff mem- ber to come to your dorm for a library talk or word processing instruction! Don't get lost in the library! Look for PLC staff at the Ref- erence Desk and in the Academic. Resource Center or call Darlene Nichols, PIC Coordinator, at 764-4479, for more information., 'Death By Scott Lew So these big-wig Hollywood producers are sitting around this table wondering what to do next, and one guy says, "Hey, why don't we make a movie abodt a real tough old guy who runs around and shoots a lot of people. Except- get this fellas- instead of making him the bad we make him the good guy. *We could get Wayne. Or Bronson." "Well, it'll 'sell ticliets," one of them will say; "but Wayne's dead." "Oh, that's okay. We'll get Bronson." The only problem left was to find a reason for Bronson to kill all these people. "He could be fighting crime," one of the producers said. "No, silly. He did that in Death Wish 1, 2 and 3, " replied another. "How 'bout saving the whales." "Don't be stupid!" "Fighting for a peaceful world?" "Nobody cares." ' "L've got it," cried one voice in the corner. "He'll be saving the kids!" And they called the movie Death Wish 4: The Crackdown. In the first ten minutes the theme is established: Paul Kersey (Bronson),,.architect and ex-gilante from the previous movies, has been dating a beautiful reporter for the past two years. She has a teen-age daughter who dies of a cocaine overdose. Bronson really gets P.O'ed and with the help of a mysterious Mr. Nathan White (John P. Ryan), finds the names of some drug dealing 'mafioso. Bronson goes and kills them. Then, we find out that Mr. White is also a cocaine dealer and he has set Bronson up and kidnapped his girl friend. No problem. Bronson can kill them too. That's the plot. Sounds a bit simple? Hey, what plot? Forget it! The movie really doesn't have a plot, it has a situation. Situation for Bronson to kill this guy, then another. I stopped counting after 30. Who needs plot with all this great killing? i s More bothersome than lack of plot is Bronson's acting, which really isn't acting at all. He says lines and pulls triggers and that's about it. The second problem is a poorly written script by Gail Morgan Hickman (The Enforcer ). Kersey's excuse to kill all these people is that he's saving the kids from drugs. In fact, he says the line "saving the kids" almost as many times as he shoots people. Then why in the world would Hickman have Bronson running around a teen-ager packed roller rink with M-16 in hands, shooting the bad guys (who also have pretty big guns)? Doesn't Bronson worry about shooting one -of the kids he's trying to save? Hickman, besides making Kersey look dorky and one-dimensional, also makes the character look hypocritical. He valiantly declares, "Anybody connected with drugs deserves to die!" In the next scene, he is drinking whisky with Mr. White. Where's the continuity? Death Wish 4. It's stale, it's inconsistent, it's hypocritical, it's not a good movie. If you re a real Bronson fan, save a couple of bucks and wait for the video. But if I were you, I'd just forget it. dead awful -0 SOCIAL'WORK DAY Tuesday, Nov. 17,1987 6-9 PM Amphitheatre, 4th Floor, Rackham Bldg. Alumni, professors, and administrators will speak on career opportunities in social work and University of Michigan programs * Masters in Social Work " Ph.D. in Social Work and Social Science FOR MORE INFORMATION: 764-5330 5 n I £155 £"RUMRE ___________ IMu EU'aP 11 ATTENTION BSN CLASS OF 1988. The Air Force has a special pro- gram for 1988 BSNs. If selected, you can enter active duty soon after graduation-without waiting for the results of your State Boards. To qualify, you must have an overall "B" average. After commis- I The English Composition Board's ACADEMIC WRITING T .V VTT T'P QPTP Q All apartments come with running water. Ours come with 600,000 gallons of it. At Village Green of Ann Arbor, the fieldstone walls, rolling landscape: flowing streams ind waterfalls are just a pleasant introduction to a whole new style of luxury living.. *7 acres of natural ponds and streams. . 6,000 square toot, 24-hour Clubhouse with glass-enclosed whirlpool, III I ,I