White Men Can’t Win

Regarding the controversy over the film “Basic Instinct� (review, March 20; Film Clips, March 29):

Unlike most of those picketing “Basic Instinct,� I’ve actually seen the film. The suspected killer’s bisexuality is never made to appear to be a motivation for acts of murder. No one (with any common sense) who sees the film could take away from it the message that it’s bad to be a lesbian or that lesbians are murderous by nature. Should we also believe that all cops are violent, oversexed alcoholics who occasionally shoot innocent bystanders, as does the character Michael Douglas portrays in the film?

It seems today that we can’t have a villain who is anything other than a white, heterosexual male (WHM, or WHMP if he’s also Protestant) without offending some very loud (and occasionally dangerous) minority. Heaven forbid that we WHMs start getting “sensitive� about being stereotyped in movies, TV and literature.

If we lobbied and boycotted the thousands of portrayals of WHMs as evil, violent, sexist, capitalist horndogs, there just wouldn’t be any villains left on the map. And that would be the end of entertainment as we know it, because you can’t have art without conflict.

A politically correct world filled with multi-gender heroes of all colors still won’t sell tickets without a good old-fashioned bad guy to kick around in the last reel. Of course the WHM revolution will never happen. Us straight white guys are too damn “stoopid.� (And we can’t jump, either, but that’s another letter.)

LEE LANKFORD

Woodland Hills