An Edge in My Voice

by Harlan Ellison

  And on November 3, vote YES on Prop 15.

  Or cop to being one of the indifferent members of the big conspiracy that killed John Lennon. Goo goo goo joob.

  Or, as John once wrote: Happiness is a warm gun.

  INSTALLMENT 45: 24 SEPTEMBER 82

  The Road to Hell, Part I

  New Horrors! It may be, to my chagrin and your disdain, that I have created and unleashed a Frankincense Monster.

  What this is about (in two parts so relevant correspondence can be run uncut) is midgets, attacking innocent bystanders, being politically correct, knowing the true face of the enemy, and the sorry realization that merely because one subscribes to worthy ideals and noble causes does not necessarily mean that the supporter of these ideals and causes is any less likely to be personally wrongheaded or an asshole.

  Passim this week’s column you will find an advertisement reduced in size from its full-page incarnation in many national magazines (including California), an advertisement for CasaBlanca Fans. Take a moment and read the ad. Let’s all start together.

  Now we come to Ms. Joanne Gutreimen, whose name has appeared in this column several times in the past. Ms. Gutreimen is no ordinary peruser of “An Edge In My Voice.” She is an informed, erudite, intelligent woman fully deserving of our condign approbation for her frequent postcards suggesting topics for discussion. I have, at least twice, flown high on the wings of her suggestions, and thanked her profusely for her good offices. Having slathered that butter, it now falls to me, onerous task, of baring my fangs against this card carrying Saint.

  Along about the 8th of the month I received in the mail from Ms. Gutreimen a copy of the advertisement you’ve just read, and the following letter, reprinted in toto:

  “Dear Harlan:

  “How about a story with not one, but two happy endings? First happy ending: never again will I underestimate the efficacy of writing letters. Contrary to what I’d always thought, large numbers of (protest) letters are not always needed to make a point. You had said that, but I couldn’t quite accept it.

  “Enclosed is an ad that appeared in the June ’82 issue of California magazine. Take a look at it. Notice the blatant sexism in the copy (and not-so-obvious racism in the photo). Envision yours truly, seeing the ad, reading it, and going into conniptions as I scrawl out an enraged letter, pen in fist. I didn’t even take the time to Xerox it. You don’t think of Xerox with hot lava coursing through your veins. Mailed it right off to the vicious no-good offenders, the CasaBlanca Fan Company (address & zip is right in the ad)!

  “After I calmed down, I figured they probably wrote me off as a crackpot and trashed my letter. (It was not a nice letter, Harlan. I called names. I told them they were (1) sexist, (2) racist, and (3) stupid, because why offend women in any ad that was trying to push a product that mostly women buy? That was the gist of it.) But no! About a week or so ago, I received a letter from the CasaBlanca Fan Company on their fancy-Delancey gold-embossed letterhead (doesn’t show in the Xerox I’m sending you). The letter is kind of hilarious but made it clear that (1) the entire Board of Directors read my poison-pen letter (I cringe now), (2) they received about 30 letters similar to mine (at least somebody’s awake), and (3) on the basis of (2), decided to pull the ad.

  “Just 30-odd letters. I would’ve thought more were required. Anyhow, you won’t see this dopey ad anywhere (2nd happy ending).

  “Thank you for the inspiration. Sincerely, Joanne Gutreimen.”

  We pause. Go back and reread the advertisement, in light of Ms.Gutreimen’s reactions.

  Now for the second piece of correspondence. Ain’t it fun reading other people’s mail?

  This second item, dated August 20, 1982 (sans the fancy-Delancey letterhead) comes to us as it came to Ms. Gutreimen on CasaBlanca Fan Company stationery, signed by Edward F. Hart, who is identified as Vice President of Marketing & Sales for CasaBlanca. And here is what Mr. Hart said to our stalwart Joanne:

  “Dear Ms. Gutreimen,

  “This is in response to your June 2, 1982 letter in regards to our advertising program as it appeared in California magazine. I want to assure you that your letter has been read by all the officers of the CasaBlanca Fan Company and its advertising agency. At least 30 other writers complained similarly, and we regret that this ad has offended so many. We extend to you our most sincere apologies.

  “Our 1982 brand awareness advertising campaign uses actor Robert Sacchi [star of Andrew Fenady’s film The Man With Bogart’s Face] to recreate three famous scenes from the film Casablanca. The ‘Rick and Sam’ ad was based on a particularly sad, but memorable scene from that film. In recreating this classic scene, we tried to ‘lighten it’ with a blatant exaggeration of Rick’s remorse. We believed that we had positioned the statement so absurdly that no one could take it seriously. We now know that we failed badly in this regard.

  “Our product does have considerable technical merits that make it worthwhile. However, we chose a brand awareness campaign aimed at getting maximum impact. It worked. Unfortunately, if 30 people took the time to write to us, then perhaps thousands protested by simply refusing to buy our product. That’s not the reaction we had in mind at the outset of this campaign.

  “As you might suspect, more than 80% of Casa Blanca’s retail sales involve a purchasing decision made by women. To set out intentionally to offend these buyers is a poor way to run a business, at best. We regard ourselves as a progressive company, and women fill key roles in sales and middle management in the firm. There is no question that we momentarily lost our sensitivities with regards to women’s issues.

  “Thank you for taking the time to write us. I can assure you that the advertisement will never be seen again in future publications.

  “Sincerely, Edward F. Hart.”

  Copies of this letter went to the Chairman of the Board and the President of CasaBlanca, as well as to two of the principals of CasaBlanca’s advertising agency, Davis / Johnson / Mogul & Colombatto, who must have been absolutely vivisepultural with ecstasy at Ms. Gutreimen’s attentions to their handiwork.

  (I hate explaining ‘em, gang, but vivisepulture is the act of burying people alive.)

  Now all of the foregoing Ms. Gutreimen sent to me because, as she said, I inspired her. In much the same way, in my view, that Gilles de Rais inspired Charlie Manson.

  Which brings us to our final piece of correspondence, my letter of September 9th to Ms. Gutreimen which, due to space limitations, we must put on the if-come till next week, after which a few closing remarks about midgets and other stuff.

  Please salt this week’s installment away so we can count on fresh memories and you can refer to it next week without my having to vex the Weekly’s editors with a 2000 word recap in “The Road to Hell,” Part II.

  [Concluded Next Week]

  INSTALLMENT 46: 1 OCTOBER 82

  The Road to Hell, Part II

  Last week in this space you began the adventures of Joanne Gutreimen, a reader of this column who found in an advertisement nationally run by the CasaBlanca Fan Company, parodying the classic film Casablanca, what she took to be flagrant sexism and racism. We ran the ad last week. Ms. Gutreimen’s letter to the company, one of a group protesting the ads, and the company’s response advising they were pulling the ads, were also here last week. We pick up the adventure with my letter to Ms. Gutreimen dated September 9th, in response to her sending me all the foregoing material. Gee, I hope you saved last week’s installment.

  “Dear Joanne:

  “You’re not going to like this.

  “Since you sent me the ad with a copy of their response, and your letter crowing about this grass roots defeat of Utter Evil, with the clear implication that I’ll applaud your action, I’m sure my opposite reaction will startle you. But the simple truth of it is that what you did is no better than what the Moral Majority does. You intimidated without genuine cause, based solely on a tunnel-visioned view of something you chose to misinterpret.

  “Th
e advertisement is in no way racist. It is only the barest, most vaguely sexist, if one lacks any sense of humor whatever, and if one has somehow escaped the mythic grip the film Casablanca holds over several generations of filmgoers, both here and abroad. It isn’t even, as you claim, a stupid ad. It is a clever conceit, elegantly and tastefully put together.

  “Look, Joanne: I know college women who want Gone With the Wind banned from their university film group because it portrays both blacks and women in ‘subservient roles.’ They are as muddled as you. History cannot be changed. As a portrait of women and blacks during the Civil War it is accurate, and no amount of overcompensatory revisionism will change that. As a portrait of a period, it is correct, and should be seen; as Art it should be seen. The same for Casablanca and the same for the character of Rick, as regards his feeling about women—in this case the one who left him standing in Paris as the Nazis marched in. Doing a parody advertisement of that deeply affecting scene from the film was sensible and innovative on the part of CasaBlanca Fan Company and its ad agency. No harm, no insult, no sexism, no racism, no stupidity.

  “All of those, in great measure, are what you have evinced. And you should not for a moment think you have done a good thing.

  “You have overreacted in a destructive way. You have made the company feel it did something insensitive and incorrect. But in a world where we cannot chuckle at the serioso kneejerking of those dedicated to even the most worthy causes, those who choose to hold on to their wit and their sense of the ludicrous become targets for True Believers.

  “That’s the stock in trade of the Moral Majority, those bluenosed, straitlaced and anal-retentives whose own souls are more than likely cesspools of sexual repression and lasciviousness. They rail against that which they perceive in themselves.

  “You are too bright a woman, and too sensible, to carry on like this. If, in fact, as you say in your letter, you went into conniption fits, with hot lava (which is a redundancy) coursing through your veins…then you’ve got a problem. You know my credentials as regards racism and sexism: I was working with King in the South long before it became fashionable; I’ve just spent six years touring the country lobbying and lecturing for the ERA; my columns frequently take racists and sexists to task. While I may not be as sensitive to sexism as you, a female, may be, I like to think I’m considerably more aware than most folks, male or female. If this advertisement were offensive, I’d have written you congratulating you on mobilizing your anger for a worthy end.

  “But you’re wrong. Dead wrong. And you’ve contributed to the unnecessary shaming of a company that has committed no offense. I don’t give a damn if they received thirty letters or three hundred. It is pure and simple reverse-logic and overreaction.

  “In the past you’ve written to the column, and to me, with solid and sensible comment. I’ve grown to admire you and the social conscience you demonstrate. But this time you’re way off base.

  “I’ll be sending a copy of this letter to CasaBlanca so they can take some small solace. I may do a column on it…it seems to me a subject that needs discussion. I’m sorry it had to be you, one of the stalwarts, who comes in for reprimand. But if I were to ignore your chortle of glee, if I were to permit CasaBlanca to think their ad agency and their own Board of Directors were insensitive assholes, I would not be serving the commonweal.

  “I told you this wouldn’t be to your liking. Sorry about that, Joanne, but we’re definitely on opposite sides in this one.

  “All best otherwise, Harlan Ellison.”

  With Jesse Helms and Orrin Hatch out there, with Phyllis Shitfly still trumpeting her victory over the ERA, with insurance companies lobbying their rates against women, with the feminist-backlash rise in rape, with the endless and constantly mutating anti-feminist virus that infects America, it seems to me incumbent upon all of us who perceive these inequities to know who the enemy is. Please notice Mr. Hart addressed Joanne as Ms. Gutreimen. Also please take under advisement the highly responsible and sensitive tone of Mr. Hart’s letter to Joanne, fancy-Delancey letterhead not withstanding. And know that Hart was not blowing smoke up Ms. Gutreimen’s skirt when he said women hold many and responsible positions in the company, such as the recent appointment of Elaine Pondant as Director of Sales, responsible for all national sales of their fans.

  Also understand that 30 letters (the actual total was 55) is enough to scare the bejeezus out of a company that has to remain responsive to its potential market, but that in conversations with the writers of these letters, Hart discovered that at least half of them had never seen the film. (Several of them went fully into looney tune behavior by saying they never would see the motion picture Casablanca because Bogart was in it!)

  In its way, the ad agency’s use of Bogart and Sam (and in other ads Ingrid Bergman and Sidney Greenstreet lookalikes) was inspired Art. It used mythic stereotypes we know or should know and manipulated them with good humor and a fine satirical sense.

  For Artists of any persuasion these days, the curse of not offending anyone becomes a crippling problem. David Denby, in New York magazine (18 June 79) pointed out, “An artist trying to create a powerful atmosphere can’t be expected to embrace the banal method of tv documentaries, which always illustrate both sides of a situation and leave you nowhere.”

  If you doubt the truth of that observation, consider the tv docudrama about Kent State.

  For an Artist working in these days of heightened consciousness—and we’re talking about a very small demographic slice with that sense of epiphany—writing with power and impact becomes difficult to the point of impossible. (I had one guy, who said he was from Malta, rail against the general equating of his homeland with the Maltese Falcon.)

  It gets to a point of unnatural hypersensitivity where an Artist can write about no one for fear of offending; and then we wind up with television.

  Let me put it this way: a year or so ago, I received a letter after the publication of one of my books, from a man who said, “You are always using midgets in your stories as heavies. They are always evil and terrible people. Well, I am three feet tall, and I want you to know we don’t like being called midgets! We want to be called little people!”

  That letter unmanned me. I was taken aback and gave it long and serious consideration. Finally, I wrote him a response, as follows:

  “Dear Sir: I am five foot five. I am a little person. You, sir, are a midget.”

  An outstanding event is scheduled this Saturday, October 16th, at Bovard Auditorium of USC. It is called THE DAY OF THE IMPRISONED WRITER, it is dedicated to freedom to write, freedom to read, and is sponsored by the P.E.N. LA Center. An afternoon (3:00 to 5:00 approximately) of drama, readings, poetry and music keynoting the hundreds of writers condemned to darkness around the world. Among the passionate artists who will be in attendance are journalist A.J. Langguth, whose book on terrorism in South America may be familiar to you; members of the Latino Writers Group presenting work of the famous Cuban poet Angel Cuadra who, through P.E.N.’s efforts, has been freed from prison; the “jazz priest” Malcolm Boyd, one the remarkable men of our time; Lester Cole, one of the blacklisted “Hollywood Ten”; and your humble columnist, who has written and will read a special essay on writers in chains. All under the direction of Jan Dorin, the Bulgarian director and filmmaker who was in prison and escaped to this country. The donation is $8.00 (students: $2.00), all monies to be used by the P.E.N. Freedom to Write Fund to aid imprisoned writers around the world. I urge you to come and say hello.

  INSTALLMENT 47: 18 OCTOBER 82

  Letters reprinted with permission from the L.A. Weekly

  He has nothing to do with this, except for something he wrote. His name is Eric Hoffer, an ex-stevedore turned philosopher, and he set down these words: “What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people’s faces as unfinished as their minds.”

  The quote drifted across my mind as I started this week’s advisement in terror. I thought about that ooze-dripping Thin
g from Carpenter’s recent film, and the sleek scorpion-tailed Alien, and all the other supernatural and extraterrestrial horrors we see on the big screen. And I smiled with something like a death rictus when I realized that they would seem street correct with the rest of the strolling pedestrians in Winifred, Montana.

  Because in Winifred, Montana the monsters wear Levis and farmer straws, and their minds are more alien than the most bizarre tentacled visitor from some far galaxy. Don’t take my word for it: ask Kathy Merrick.

  You’d like Kathy Merrick. She’s shy, and polite, and intelligent. She and her husband, Happy Jack Feder (that’s his name), are the sort of quiet country young folks you’d instantly call decent.

  And she walked the streets of Winifred in 1976, never realizing she was surrounded by monstrosities. When the knowledge came, it shattered her life.

  She was single then, and teaching junior and senior high school English. Fairly fresh from receiving her degree, in her first job, and blissful about opening intellectual doors for the children of that rural community. Innocent. Untenured and vulnerable.

  I might never have heard of Kathy, and you would not be reading these words today, had she not been turned onto a fantasy I wrote titled “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” discovered by her younger brother in one of my books in 1970. Kathy read it, thought it would be exciting for her students, and proceeded to teach it in a sophomore English class.

  When they refused to renew her contract, they told her it was because she was teaching godless pornography, and they cited my story as the chief example.

  You won’t find a word of self-defense for that story in this column. It’s one of the ten most reprinted stories in the English language, and if you have never read “godless pornography” it’ll be easy enough for you to locate. Judge for yourself.