Listening While I Work (20)

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 246, 10 March 1944, Page 28

Listening While I Work (20)

By

Matertamilias

HERE was a time in the years before the war when we were continually buzzing with funny stories about the Nazi leaders. Charlie Chaplin’s Dictator was symptomatic of this period-though by the time the film came to New Zealand, Hitler had ceased to be a joke. The last four years of war have brought a lull in our jesting. Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels have no longer been even very bad jokes. They have come nearer to being nightmares. But perhaps now at length we are coming back to joking. That, at any rate, is what I felt as I laughed at the story of the Luxemburgers who offended the Nazis across the river by hurling abusive words at them. The Nazis complained and made out a list of expressions that must not be used. Accordingly the town-crier next day went through the town crying out: "These words must not be used: ‘Hitler is a pig’; ‘Hitler is a swine’; ‘Hitler is an etcetera, etcetera’"; each expression being welcomed with loud peals of laughter. This was just one of a series of sketches in the BBC Wednesday night feature from 2YA, Pictures from Europe. I should like to think that this sort of laughter may soon once more be spreading over Europe. * * * UCH a programme goes down better than the more bloodthirsty propaganda. We know that atrocities are committed, but if we have any imagination at all we cannot listen any more to them. So among our propaganda let us have some that we can laugh with. Two other BBC programmes that I heard this week were not so lighthearted. In Which We Serve found and left me astonished. It was announced as "comprising a broadcast synopsis of the well-known film, preceded by a brief survey of Noel Coward’s life and work." I have often been surprised at the extraordinary telescoping that goes over the air, but to find the BBC putting Noel Coward’s life, work, and latest picture (fulllength) into 15 minutes, struck me as a masterpiece of condensation-had it been possible. It wasn’t. The result was as sketchy as a trailer of the film: in fact it sounded so like a film advertisement that I wondered what was becoming of the BBC’s scruples about radio advertising. * * * LATER the same evening I heard the BBC feature Battle Honours: The Brigade of Guards. Three or four years ago it would have sounded phoney to me, but our knowledge of fighting as it is to-day in Italy, as it was in Libya and Greece and Crete, has made stories credible which might otherwise seen unbelievable. The stories were just exploits, but they are nowadays so much a part of our lives that they fit in even on a Sunday evening. They are, after all, a modern version of one of the oldest forms of literature and history, But there has never before been an age when the brave deeds of single individuals have reached so wide a public. ee * * |T may still be necessary to impress us here in New Zealand with the need to ration meat so that the people of (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) other countries, especially Great Britain, do not go hungry. I have myself found such a wide acceptance of this view among ordinary people, housewives mostly, that both the Office of War Publicity programme on a recent Sunday evening and the Home Front talk on the Monday morning seemed superfluous. But we know there are grumblers, and anything that helps to silence them is probably good. Still, the Sunday evening sketch, with its emphasis on the hardships and difficulties in. England, fell sadly flat on my ears at any rate. This was not because I lack sympathy for the English people. It. was just that the theme was thoroughly unoriginal. Propaganda does not lend itself easily to art, nor art to propaganda. I preferred the Monday’s straightout talk to housewives, with practical hints on how to make the meat ration spin out satisfactorily. * * * HE A.C.E., we were told in the in- ‘ augural talk of the session, are planning this year’s talks in courses instead of as single items. This is to my mind a welcome improvement on last year. Two courses are to run concurrently. This month, one is on planting, storing, and drying various fruits and vegetables for the winter; the other is on practical clothing and on problems of making, cutting, renovating, and cleaning. It implies more methodical and purposive listening. * * LISTENERS have once more had the opportunity of hearing Parliament formally opened. But the swearing-in of new members occupied such a long time that we were taken back to the studio for a breather-a record of "The Teddy Bears’ Picnic."