ARTS & AMUSEMENTS
Auntie's Uncle
By STUART HOOD
Do you have an UNCLE credential card? Are you a member of THRUSH? Can you identify Napoleon Solo? Illya Kuryakin? Mr. Waverly? If you have never heard of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement you won't have a clue. You are not of the cult. So you probably don't care either what these people have done to The Avengers. But a lot of people do--particularly if they have been. buying advertising time on commercial television around about 8 to 8.45 p.m. on Thursday evenings. For The Man from UNCLE has hit the ratings hard. The cost of the spots has been rising above that magic figure of fifteen shillings per thousand. So the rumour. is that The Avengers is going to be moved' and re- placed by that standby of des- perate programme planners---an old feature film. There is nothing like a long bit of celluloid to beat a shorter bit of cel- luloid.
Some day, I hope, somebody is going to do a piece of research on programmes like The Man from U NCLE--- these fairy-tales of our time--in a serious effort to discover what it is in them that holds children from play and old men from the lounge bar. As we follow the desperate attempts of THRUSH to marshal the hordes of darkness and dominate the world, are we harmlessly indulging our paranoiac fantasies? Watching the egregiously silly plottings of the villains, do we indulge that Jungian side of our personalities, that goes in and out with us, haunting our dreams and imaginings? What do men get out of it? Women? Children? Some such specific 'research might be a' sight More useful than pained screams about television and crime, the break-up of the family circle (you will remember how, before the advent of the telly, it used to chat happily round the fire, play wind instruments and read improving books). or television neck.
As far as men are concerned, I suppose there is the satisfaction of these sudden bursts of fire from the burp guns: orgasmic, bloodless, the ideal solution were it available- - for that situation in the office, at work, in the shop, at home even. The women, no doubt, find it de- lightfully safe. There is Napoleon Solo, intrepid, resourceful, doomed to that wry celibacy which is the fate of all heroes in telefilms, needing mothering a little, attractive, never able to get into bed with anyone because the American networks wouldn't like it, and never able to get legally wed because that would mean the end of the series.'So he is reduced to dallying with allutneuses like Angelique, the THRUSH agent in last week's episode –an interesting blonde
with a slightly twisted face (as if she had had a mild thrombosis at some time), who, to judge by the way she slumps back in the seat of her sports cur, clearly indulges in the kind of oscu- lation Mrs. Mary Whitehouse so disapproves of. (This. incidentally, is one of the few things Mrs. Whitehouse and I have in common. There was a shot in a BBC-2 play a couple of weeks ago of Jack Hedley pursuing his passion half- way down a lady's throat, which I found un- appetising, unaesthetic and unnecessary. I am beginning to think there is something to be said for the good old movie conventions---rocket bursts, wild horses, waves breaking, . blossoms opening. Taetlet Veneris seraper peraetae.) Then there is Illya with his blonde appeal, like a fashionable ballet dancer, the kind of man that makes ladies of family and good breeding behave like Beatle fans at the Garden. Sexu- ally it is all curiously ambiva- lent. Doubtless this goes over the heads of the chil- dren, viewing in their masses, who are---in any case probably in- ured to it all, having graduated from 'Stingray and Thunderbirds.
Not that there isn't a good wholesome side to it all. Take last week's episode. A clean-looking pair of college kids, poor and in love, are in- volved in the efforts of Professor Amadeus- in reality a former SS doctor--to acquire a blood bank so that he may revive the body of some high-ranking Nazi (the Filhrer himself?), which he has stashed away in a state of sus- pended animation underneath his garage in some Long Island suburb. It is an indication of his baseness that, to raise the wind for his project, the Professor has not hesitated to split a pair of rare Schleswig-Holstein stamps, which he persuades the college boy to auction for him. Gee, honey, we'll be able to get married. But they haven't reckoned with Angelique and the Professor, who • severally and together—waylay, beat up and maltreat the kid and his girl friend. Indeed, the boy is saved from deptteellage at the hands of Angelique only by the arrival in the nick of time of Napoleon Solo. The villain and his mummy perish in a kind of Gotterdfim- merung. The college kids are given a trip round the World at UNCLE's expense and offered the dead professor's priceless stamp collection, so that they can buy a lovely home. But they want to do things the hard way—to demonstrate the frontier virtues which have made America what it is---so they hand the album back to be used to set up a research fund. Next vacation, no doubt, they will be working in a drugstore or service station to make enough for that modest
trontinued on page 584 Continued from page 58Ij home they know they deserve. They are real, puritanical—maybe it's with them we are sup- posed to identify after all, and not with Napoleon Solo, who strolls off under the end- titles for a spot of heavy petting in Angelique's car.
Not everyone, I read in Radio Times, has got the point about the programme. Children, says Robert (Napoleon Solo) Vaughn, believe every- thing. Some adults accept the whole situation as nearly truthful. Then there is 'an "in" crowd of characters, who see the show as a gigantic joke.' These seem fairly frightening statements to me. Who, I wonder, is conning whom? What do these things do to us, to children, to the believers? Do they in some crude way purge us? Are they merely the modern equivalent of Grimm? Might it have been unnecessary for the Germans to realise the desperate fantasies of their leaders if they had been able to sit in front of the television screen, all-powerful, quick on the draw, reaching for their beers with karate-hardened hands, identifying with Napoleon Solo? I don't know. I don't think the people who make the programmes know. Nor do the people who at various times, as I have done myself, put them on. I think it is time they did. Meantime if you want to see a send-up of the send-up, take a look at Get Smart, in which the hero is a coward. It is at least meant to be funny.
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