OFF THE CHAIN.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 421, 18 July 1947, Page 5

OFF THE CHAIN.

* Sir,-My attention has been called to an afticle in your issue of June 20 by Dorian Saker. In that article, by a

somewhat dexterous confusion of isSUCt, and under the cloak of a classical dis# course on Saturnalia, your contributor makes a defence of certain student activities "once a year." Mr. Saker knows perfectly well that there is only one material,objection taken to "Cappicade" and its attendant performances — and that criticism begins and ends in what he so aptly calls "bawdiness" and "pornovranhy," that bawdiness and. pornography, flagrant and unashamed in which the men and women of Victoria University College are said to join in yearly "Saturnalia." The issue is perfectly clear. The 1947 *Cappicade" lived so well up to Mr. Saker’s views of what is fit and Proper and aynropriate "once @ year". that, in my opinion, it came under the-ban of the Indecent Publications Act, There was a time, some years ago, when Bacchanalians themselves, without scruples as to their manners and habits, yet thought , twice ‘about making a song in their praise. Your contributor appears to .applaud that song. He goes back 2,000 years of civilisation and he claims no progress in morals and manners. This frankness and these manners’ seem to disclose a very "modern" lack of moral and artistic sense. Conduct which is tragedy when applied to the

lives of our.awn friends and relatives d is artistically sorry, stuff for comedy when anvlied tg the lives of other people. If Mr. Saker’s studies in Saturnalia had been related to studies in morals and the application of- princinle to human "behaviour" he would at least have recognised the fact that he was toying with a difficult and, even, a dangerous subject. I think your contributor should ‘be made aware that any sincere attempt to understand drainage-mind-edness past or present, may have merit, but an attempt to persuade us that it smells sweet is an offence, Had* Mr. Saker’s researches ‘been directed to the history of Capping Carnivals even at V.U.C. he might have found humour and high spirits, without "bawdiness." He would certainly have found something more artistic and "less boring and repetitive and feeble than "Cappicade" of 1947.

F. A.

DE LA MARE

(Hamilton)