Interviewing and incredulity

Press, 11 July 1979, Page 17

Interviewing and incredulity

Television and Radio

POINTS OF VIEWING

By

KEN FRASER

Marty Feldman, that erstwhile comedian, has a near-double on the New Zealand screen. Feldman’s bulging eyes “popped out,” I seem to recall, from a medical condition, but Jim Hopkins could be that way from his sense of wide incredulity. ' Hopkins seemed to be having trouble reconciling the views of an Anglican priest on Television One’s “Dateline Monday” this week with what some might_ consider should be Christian answers for blacks living under apartheid. Suggesting that the use of arms was the only recourse left to blacks in southern Africa was Father Michael Lapslev, a

work colleague of Canon John Osmers (in Lesotho), who last week had his hand blown off by a letter bomb. The bomb, in Father Lapsley’s opinion, was almost certainly sent by the South African Government. South African consular staff were said to have declined to appear on Monday night’s programme. With his prominent eves ever-widening behind spectacles with lenses like lemonade-bottle bottoms, Hopkins seemed over-anx-ious in ensuring that Father Lapsley did not go unchallenged in any of his remarks. The result was a stunting of the flow of an interview with material infrequently on screen — not a member of a rugby supporters’ tour group in South Africa which has been shown what the establishment wants it to see. but a clergyman with work experience among the blocks,

Had more time been allotted the developing of what could have been a memorable screen session, and had Dairne Shanahan been the interviewer, it may have turned out differently for she has the knack of allowing her subject the scope to talk. She demonstrated that ability in her easy handling of the secondaryschool teacher exodus subject earlier in the programme. There seems to be an increasing number of tur-

bulent priests in a world which, to a large degree, thinks that politics and religion have no inter-rela-tion, and so the temerity of a clergyman who speaks about political situations is enough in itself to raise hackles. Hopkins’s worries about “theological compatibility” could be the type Of discomfort felt by a viewing audience of many nominal Christians whose religion amounts to perhaps an hour once a week — on Sundays. Scarcely less startling than the utterances of Father Lapsley were revelations by New Zealand secondary school teachers about the crisis in their profession though the presentation would have been better served without the blackboard distractions of the comic, Norman Gunston. The programme certainly should have had New Zealanders sitting bolt upright in anguish over the future of education in this country.