Being as behind the times as I am, I finally made it to see Robert James Waller’s The Bridges of Madison County. As Francesca’s ashes floated in through the air to mingle with those of the man she had joyfully done “the-old-in-out-in-out” with, I thought that I heard someone in the audience crying.

I found myself thinking of a Bill Moyers interview with film producer David Putnam that I had seen on “World of Ideas” several years before. The film producer had voiced some reflections on his film Midnight Express which seemed to me relevant in light of Bridges.

Putnam told of how he had once went to watch his own Midnight Express in a theater to see how the audience reacted to it. The film contains a scene in which the main character, in a rage of insane anger, literally bites off the tongue of another character. The intention of the scene, according to Putnam, was to communicate to the audience how dehumanized the main character had become by being subjected to the subhuman environment of a Turkish prison.

However, to his shock, the audience cheered when the scene played. Putnam told Moyers something to the extent that he was horrified by that fact that a scene in a film he had helped to create had inspired an audience to cheer at the sight of watching one human brutalize another in such a manner. He also said that since that time he had paid special attention to not using scenes in his films which might affect the audience in that kind of way.

The mistake that Putnam made was in completely misconstruing how American audiences would be likely to react to such a scene. There were noble intentions behind the scene, but the audience interpreted the violence portrayed simply as a “justifiable” act of revenge analogous to what is commonly found in Stallone or Schwarzenegger films.

Clint Eastwood, who was so unenlightened as to direct the movie Bridges, could learn quite a bit from a filmmaker like Putnam.

The lesson which Eastwood could learn from Putnam’s reflections is that artists have responsibilities to the audience for which they seek to make movies. When a person acts in any situation, they should ask themselves what the consequences of that act will be for other persons, as well as for society in general. There is no reason to regard artists as somehow immune from such moral considerations. Artistic acts of creation are just like more mundane acts of everyday life: they affect others in a way that is either morally acceptable or morally unacceptable. Although artists may legitimately claim the right to be free from censorship, they have no right to claim immunity from moral condemnation.

There is a crisis in America right now. High divorce and infidelity rates show that, by and large, the average American regards others

as commodities to be used for

their own selfish attainment of happiness, and then disposed of when the relationship has become inconvenient.

Given that the movie Bridges was released into this kind context, could it possibly not influence American society for the worse? In fact, this is probably the key to the success of Bridges. The movie provides a cheap rationalization to individuals who regard others, even their “significant other,” more as objects than as people.

Tyler Roach is a senior in English, philosophy and religious studies from Des Moines.