The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Monday, the prime minister of Lithuania said compromise was possible to avoid a Soviet economic blockade and at least 80 people died in a train fire in India. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: After the News Summary we look at the obscenity charge leveled against the Mapplethorpe exhibit in Cincinnati [FOCUS - WHAT'S OBSCENE?]. Lawyer Floyd Abrams and publisher Samuel Lipman debate the right of communities to set obscenity standards. As earth week begins in the U.S., we have a report on a major Soviet environmental disaster, the drying up of the Aral Sea, [FOCUS - SEA OF TROUBLES] then we remember Greta Garbo with a film excerpt [FOCUS - SCREEN SIREN] and critic Richard Schickel. We close with a Roger Rosenblatt essay on freedom and art [ESSAY - FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION].NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Lithuania spoke of compromise with Moscow today as Mikhail Gorbachev's deadline for the Baltic republic passed without punishment. Gorbachev had threatened to begin withholding some vital supplies to Lithuania today unless it rescinded some of its independence laws. The republic's leaders met this afternoon and wrote Gorbachev, asking him for a meeting to clarify his threat. Lithuania's prime minister, Kasimira Punsfia, said her republic is prepared to move towards a compromise on some of the pro- independence laws it passed since last month. She called Gorbachev's latest threat a softening of his position because he did not demand the outright renunciation of Lithuania's declaration of independence. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: The pro-democracy movement in the Asian nation of Nepal won another victory today. King Barenda announced the resignation of the current prime minister and he asked an opposition leader to fill that slot. Last week the king ended a ban on political parties that had been in effect for 29 years. That move came after troops fired pro-democracy demonstrators, killing more than 100. At least 80 people died today in a train fire in neighboring India. The fire began when a leaking gas cylinder exploded. The train was jammed with people going to the market. Dozens of people were riding on the roof. Many of them were seriously hurt when they jumped off the moving train to escape the flames.

MR. MacNeil: Earth Week began today with a call on Pres. Bush to spell out his environmental agenda in a speech to the nation. Gaylord Nelson, a former Senator from Wisconsin who helped found the original Earth Day 20 years ago said only the President had the prestige to make conservation a national priority. He spoke to the National Press Club in Washington.

GAYLORD NELSON, Earth Day Organizer: The President has a golden opportunity to grasp this issue and steer the country on a path that will preserve the integrity of our sustaining eco system and the stability of our economic system. Tough, frequently unpopular political decisions and recommendations will have to be made. The President is the only one who can provide this kind of critical and bold leadership. That's what Presidents are for.

MR. MacNeil: A White House conference on global warming opens tomorrow in Washington. Representatives from 17 nations will participate in the two day meeting. Bush administration officials plan to propose increased international research on the science of global warming and its economic implications. The Sierra Club attacked the conference today. They called it a smoke screen for the administration's inaction on the issue.

MR. LEHRER: Daniel Ortega said today he might postpone the hand over of power to Violeta Chamorro. The Nicaraguan president said that was an option that the Contra rebels do not disarm by Inauguration Day, April 25th. Speaking at a news conference, he accused the Contras of trying to stall cease-fire talks. Nelson Mandela went to a rock concert in London today. It was held in his honor at Nimbley Stadium. About 70,000 people turned out. Mandela called on the crowd to continue the fight against apartheid in South Africa. The African National leader has not yet accepted an invitation to meet with Prime Minister Thatcher, but he said he hopes to do so in May.

MR. MacNeil: Back in this country, the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center and its director pleaded "not guilty" today to misdemeanor obscenity charges. The charges stem from a show of photographs by the late photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe. The exhibit of 175 photos includes five depicting homosexual acts and two showing nude children. We will have more on this story right after the News Summary. Also today striking teachers in Oklahoma shut down nearly a quarter of the state's school districts. Members of the Oklahoma Education Association demonstrated outside the state capital to protest the legislature's failure to pass a bill containing pay raises.

MR. LEHRER: More than 9300 people competed in the Boston Marathon today. Italy's Helendo Bordine won the 26 mile race with a time of two hours, eight minutes and nineteen seconds. Rosa Multa of Portugal was the first woman to cross the finish line. It's the third time in four years she's won the women's race. Both Multa and Bordine were gold medalists in the 1988 Olympics. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Cincinnati art debate, a Soviet environmental report, Greta Garbo and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - WHAT'S OBSCENE?

MR. MacNeil: First tonight we discuss art and obscenity. As we reported today, the director of the Cincinnati Arts Center pleaded not guilty to obscenity charges brought against by prosecutors for the city. The charges concern a show of photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe which opened last weekend in Cincinnati. We start with this backgrounder from Arts Correspondent Joanna Simon.

MS. SIMON: This show has generated controversy since last summer when the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., cancelled its own plans to exhibit Mapplethorpe's work. Mapplethorpe, seen here in a self-portrait, was a homosexual photographer whose work included lush photos of flowers, nudes of men, women and children, and pictures of male homosexual and sadomasochistic acts. The exhibition became a focal point of a national debate over federal funding of the arts.

SEN. HELMS: I don't even acknowledge that it's art.

MS. SIMON: Sen. Jesse Helms and other conservative members of Congress attacked the exhibition as vulgar and obscene. Subsequently, Congress passed a law that forbids funding certain kinds of art and requires grant recipients to sign a pledge saying they will not produce this art. For many in the artistic community, the oath and funding restrictions amount to censorship. The Cincinnati Mapplethorpe show was scheduled long before the controversy erupted in Washington, but the Cincinnati Arts Center did not use any federal funds for its exhibition. So the issue here is not federal spending, but obscenity and community standards. Cincinnati strictly enforces state laws against pornography and obscenity. There are no x-rated movie theaters, no adult bookstores, and residents cannot rent adult videos or buy certain magazines in the city. Cincinnati is also home to the National Coalition Against Pornography, which has pressured the arts center to cancel the Mapplethorpe show. The show opened last Saturday to a record number of visitors. But along with the rest of the crowd were nine members of a grand jury. They viewed the show of 175 photographs and returned an indictment against the arts center and its director, Dennis Barrie.

ARTHUR NEY, County Prosecutor: This morning at 10 o'clock this particular art show opened for the first time publicly and for the first time publicly we as public officials can and we did act.

MS. SIMON: Shortly thereafter the police closed the show temporarily while they videotaped seven photographs for evidence in the upcoming trial. The forced evacuation drew an angry response from the crowd.

FEMALE CITIZEN IN CROWD: I think it's horrible. I think that it's an infringement on our first amendment, and it's very upsetting.

FEMALE CROWD MEMBER: I think it's silly.

MS. SIMON: Museum Director Barrie defended the show.

DENNIS BARRIE, Director, Arts Center: There's simply nothing wrong with this exhibition and we will maintain our stand on the first amendment, we'll maintain our stand that we will present this exhibition. It's an important exhibition. It's important for this city.

MS. SIMON: If convicted of these misdemeanor charges, Barrie faces a maximum penalty of six months in prison and a $1,000 fine on each count. The museum faces a $5,000 fine. While some wanted to close the show, a federal district judge enjoined the local authorities from doing so until the case goes to trial.

LAWRENCE WHALEN, Police Chief: I've said from the beginning that my personal opinions have no place in this whole matter, that the law is the determinant factor. The judge has interpreted the law today and the Cincinnati police division will follow in direct step and accord with the judge's orders.

MR. MacNeil: So who should decide what is obscene? That's what we debate now with Floyd Abrams, an attorney who specializes in first amendment cases, and Samuel Lipman, publisher of "The New Criterion", a conservative cultural magazine. Mr. Abrams, what do you consider the important issue in the Cincinnati case?

FLOYD ABRAMS, Lawyer: Well, I think you've stated it. I think it's who decides. I'd expand that a bit, who decides what to see, who decides what's art. I would have thought that we had long since ruled for ourselves in this country that it's up to all of us to decide what art we want to see, what museums we want to go to, what art should be in museums or the like. And the idea of policemen walking around in museums, grand juries prowling about in museums, indictments, criminal charges, seems to me anathema to American history and to the first amendment.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Lipman, what do you see as the issue here?

SAMUEL LIPMAN, Publisher, The New Criterion: I think the problem, in other words, the issue, is what control do people have over the kind of lives they want to live. The problem is that people have to have the ability through the democratic process to create conditions of minimum decency under which they, their families, and especially their children can live. That's what's called civilization. Without that, without these simple possibilities, we can't even have art, let alone free speech.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Abrams, it's true that the Supreme Court in an important decision gave communities the right to decide their standards, their contemporary standards. It didn't give them the right, but it upheld the notion that there should be contemporary community standards when it comes to obscenity.

MR. ABRAMS: That's true. What the Supreme Court also said though was that even though a community may want to ban art or a book or whatever, even if a community thinks something is obscene, they can't do it, unless the work taken as a whole has no serious artistic value at all. That is a central precept, a first amendment law, and an obscenity law because of the first amendment, and the notion that this museum in Cincinnati is showing artistic works which have no artistic value at all, no serious value at all, seems to me really absurd.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Lipman, do you quarrel with that, that while a community can set its standard in what is obscene and Cincinnati has done it in other matters than this show, that it also has to meet the test that Mr. Abrams has just put that in taken as a whole, that an exhibition or a work has no artistic value?

MR. LIPMAN: Well, I'm very surprised that a lawyer of Mr. Abrams' stature treats the Supreme Court and the body of law that we have in the United States as a given. The fact is that from the beginning of the republic, everything in the United States that is part of the body of law is subject to political decisions, sometimes by majority decisions, sometimes by 2/3 vote, but the fact is that even the Constitution, even the Supreme Court is subject to change. Courts change. At the end of the 19th century in Plessey versus Ferguson, it was decided that segregation was legal. In the 1950s, because Dwight Eisenhower chose Earl Warren as a Supreme Court justice it was decided, properly in my opinion, that segregation was illegal. What we are looking at is a political process. We are not looking here at an artistic process because I don't think that Cincinnati is about art. We are looking at the entire political process by which even the citizens of Cincinnati with whatever artistic tastes they have, they're probably not mine, but whatever artistic tastes they have, their rights as citizens of the United States to participate in the political process are the same as mine one for one.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Abrams.

MR. ABRAMS: I think there are two problems with that. First, I've correctly stated what the law is. I'm glad to talk to you about the law ought to be. In terms of what it ought to be, I would think that the minimum protection for books, for works of art, for the like, ought to involve some assessment of whether this is sort of sleaze for sleaze's sake or make some attempt at being serious art or a serious book. You cannot seriously maintain that the citizens of Cincinnati or New York or anywhere else could just forage through libraries, taking out books because they think they don't like them or because they think they're offensive to them. Any one of us has the right to keep all the rest of us from engaging in censorship. And what I've heard you advocate so far is nothing less than censorship as a matter of routine.

MR. LIPMAN: Well, I think to be accurate, what I have advocated is a trust in the democratic process, and what is so extraordinary to me about this discussion over Mapplethorpe, and related matters, Cerano, Art Hispace, Annie Sprinkle, what is so remarkable, it seems to me, is a combination of factors. One is that we're dealing in material that cannot be described. No newspaper has to my knowledge yet printed illustrations of the Mapplethorpe photos in question. To my knowledge, it has been very rarely --

MR. MacNeil: I know of at least one campus newspaper which has - -

MR. LIPMAN: Well, wouldn't you say that's the exception that proves the rule?

MR. MacNeil: Perhaps it is.

MR. LIPMAN: The fact is that it's even been rare for it to be described that two of the most difficult photographs in the exhibition are representations of one man urinating in another man's mouth and a man with a finger up his penis. Now I don't like to be talking about that on television but that's what we're talking about. Now the second thing is --

MR. MacNeil: And your argument would be that the fact that those things are depicted photographically means it can't be art?

MR. LIPMAN: No. My argument is that if we are to have fair discussion with the American people as part of the political process, we ought to be able to talk about what the material is and so far the most extraordinary gentility has ruled all of the media, but on the other hand, the position that the media has taken is that everything is permitted. And the other point I wanted to make is that I'm not saying that artists don't have a right to their opinions about what is art or even that art lovers don't have a right to an opinion about that. What I'm saying is that the citizens of the United States have a right to be part of the process, not only by which art is judged, but by which they make their own lives. People have the right to know that they can send their child to the corner store for a loaf of bread and that the child will come back without damage to his body, his mind or his soul. That is what the decision is about and they have to make that decision, not me.

MR. ABRAMS: But the decision that they have to make is where to send their child. The decision that they cannot make is whether I can view a work of art. The decision they cannot make is whether a library ought to contain a book or not. And what you're advocating is a sort of a continuing plebiscite by which the public decides whether or not I or you or any of us can see work which may be, we may be in a minority in liking. Why would you say that?

MR. LIPMAN: But my dear Mr. Abrams, democracy is the continuing plebiscite. The people of these states decided that they didn't wish to be governed by an English king. That's a very large thing. The people bear this right and I, whether I would bear it, would decide it in the same way as they would is not really important except insofar as I would campaign as vigorously as I could for what I wanted.

MR. ABRAMS: That's why we have the Bill of Rights, that is to protect us against the majority telling us what we can see and what we can think and what we can watch and what we can feel. That is not a majority vote.

MR. LIPMAN: But that is also why we have local government in Cincinnati that is elected and decides how to enforce the laws. What I am saying --

MR. MacNeil: What --

MR. LIPMAN: Yes, go ahead.

MR. MacNeil: I get that point. What happens if the court in Cincinnati, what happens in your view if the court in Cincinnati decides that the prosecution doesn't meet the three tests that the Supreme Court says that it should meet, that it is sexually explicit, offensive sexually explicit material, that it is not, does not have value as art, and that it doesn't meet the local community standards? Suppose the court says it doesn't meet all those tests and throws out the prosecution?

MR. LIPMAN: Well, what happens, I assume --

MR. MacNeil: What would you like to have happen?

MR. LIPMAN: Well, what happens, I assume, is that the prosecution would have to decide whether it was to appeal and if the prosecution appealed, I would hope that the case would continue in a normal fashion to the Supreme Court. At the Supreme Court, I would hope that the Justices responsible would perhaps take into account Justice Jackson's decision in the Terminiello case, that the Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact, that there are some things which governments must do to survive and societies must do to protect themselves. I'm not clear as to the point at which this line should be drawn. I would feel that the line between what you have chosen to call censorship and perfect freedom of expression, the line is shifting all the time. We work this line out as culture changes, as society changes.

MR. MacNeil: And you're saying it's time the Supreme Court redefined it, is that --

MR. LIPMAN: I personally think that the Supreme Court definition is so weak and so attempting to cover everything that it has no force. That is simply my opinion. I believe, just as the proponents of civil rights in race matters have always felt, that this is a matter of continuing discussion and I think it would have been ridiculous in the 1940s to have told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People I'm only telling you what's the law.

MR. ABRAMS: You are quite right in saying that the law changes and interpretations of the law change. Where you're wrong is where you want the law to go and it seems to me that where you want the law to go is to give every community the sort of local option to define what is proper for their citizens to read and watch and look at and believe in. And that is nothing but a prescription for an official party line as determined democratically. If Cincinnati wants people not to watch this painting, they can determine it. I don't think so.

MR. MacNeil: In other words, you're saying that even if a large majority of the citizens in Cincinnati don't like that exhibition, they should not be able to prevent citizens, perhaps the small number of citizens who do want to go and see it.

MR. ABRAMS: Even if there were only one citizen who wanted to go to that museum, I think he has an absolute right to do so.

MR. LIPMAN: Well, I think that when talks about one citizen, one is clearly making a kind of reduction in the situation. The problem is that we have to decide whether we will allow the same normal formation of policy to take place in the area of art and its relation to the public as we allow in every other area of American life. Let us talk about it. Let us fight it out in the polling places.

MR. ABRAMS: And vote?

MR. LIPMAN: And vote.

MR. ABRAMS: Vote on books?

MR. LIPMAN: Well, I guess I can't imagine anything that's forbidden to the American people to vote on.

MR. ABRAMS: I can. Anything that violates the Bill of Rights.

MR. LIPMAN: But you see we are in a process, continuing process of redefinition, so we continue to redecide that. You know as well as I do that Justices are actually named to the Supreme Court even by liberal presidents for political reasons.

MR. ABRAMS: Sure, but that doesn't mean there's no such thing as law or no such thing as core values in the Bill of Rights. Surely, if the first amendment means anything --

MR. MacNeil: I have to wind it up now, gentlemen. Can you finish your sentence?

MR. ABRAMS: Sure. If it means anything, it means that it's for each of us to decide for ourselves what we want to see.

MR. MacNeil: And do you have another sentence?

MR. LIPMAN: It means that it is for each of us to decide for ourselves and then to attempt to build the kind of democratic society that we wish to live.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. Mr. Lipman, Mr. Abrams, thank you both.

MR. ABRAMS: Thank you.

MR. LIPMAN: Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Jim.America

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the Newshour tonight, an environmental story from the Soviet Union, the legacyof Greta Garbo, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - SEA OF TROUBLES

MR. LEHRER: Next, environmental problems Soviet style. Until glasnost, being concerned about fouling or polluting the environment was mostly a Western thing to do. Now that has changed as we see in this report from the Aral Sea in Soviet Central Asia. Jane Corban of the BBC Program "Panorama" is the reporter.

JANE CORBAN: The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth largest in Land's Lake, a sea the size of Ireland, now it's threatened with extinction thanks to man's interference. This graveyard of ships stranded on the sea bed is witness to the triumph of central planning for the local interests. For 20 years as the water disappeared, an official silence prevailed in Moscow. Not until last year was the plight of the Aral fully revealed when the first expedition of Soviet scientists and writers visited the region. The deputy editor of "Novy Mir", the nation's leading literary magazine, led the expedition.

GRIGORY REZNICHENKO, Deputy Editor, "Novy Mir" Magazine: [Speaking through Interpreter] The sea is simply dead. There's practically no life, no fish. Even sea gulls or migratory birds don't stop there anymore. The sea is dead. I'd compare it to the Chernobyl catastrophe. That took place in a minute. The Aral Sea disaster has taken several years. It's a creeping Chernobyl.

MS. CORBAN: The Aral Sea in Soviet Central Asia is bounded by the republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and the Kara-Kalpak. An inland salt sea, it is fed by the Syr Dar'ya and the Amu Dar'ya Rivers. For the past 20 years, these rivers have been partially diverted to irrigate rice and cotton. As a result, the Aral has been robbed of water. Its volume has shrunk by 2/3. If the rate of water loss continues, the sea will all but disappear by the year 2000. Uzbekistan is a thousand miles from Moscow. Its people are closer culturally to China than to Russia. Their ancestors came from as far away as Mongolia and Turkey. Their way of life is now threatened by decisions made in Moscow 30 years ago, decisions which have had a profound and damaging effect on their environment. The whole climate of Central Asia is becoming hotter and more arid as the Aral Sea shrinks. Once the lake was an oasis in the desert. A vital source of water, the Aral's vast surface also tempered weather conditions and made life in the Harsh Asian Steppes bearable. Now the delta of the once might Syr Dar'ya River, one of the sources of water, has dwindled to a trickle. It barely reaches the Aral. The Amu Dar'ya to the South is in a similar plight. As a result, the concentration of salt in what little water is left has risen dramatically. As the lake recedes, layers of dry salt are left on the sand to be whipped into the atmosphere by the wind. For miles upon miles, the sea bed stretches, broken only by abandoned fishing villages. The men have been forced to leave and look for fish hundreds of miles away. Today only a few children and women are left.

PROF. AMANGILDI SKAKOV, Kazakhstan Academy of Sciences: [Speaking through Interpreter] The whole reorientation of agriculture resulted in the shrinking of the lake and consequences that weren't foreseen. Now we have to improve people's lives. It must be treated as an ecological disaster. As the ecology of the region has been disrupted, so has the balance of nature, and it's a real catastrophe.

MS. CORBAN: The catastrophe has come about because hundreds of miles upstream from the Aral, the river's been diverted to irrigate vast tracts of land for agriculture alien to the desert, rice and cotton. These are thirsty crops demanding millions of gallons of water. Canals were built and the desert's been turned into a paddy field. This precious water is lost in the sand. It was part of Brezhnev's grandiose scheme to force man's will on nature, a state plan imposed by Moscow. The nation needed rice and cotton and this region was forced to grow them. Thirty times the normal quantities of fertilizers and pesticides are needed to stimulate productivity in unsuitable terrain. A poisonous chemical cocktail seeps from the paddies into the diminished river and on to the Aral to add to the salt already there.

GRIGORY REZNICHENKO, Deputy Editor, "Novy Mir" Magazine: [Speaking through Interpreter] Our expedition asked who's to blame for the destruction of the Aral Sea and we concluded that our system is at fault. But there were people within the system and the official body responsible was the Ministry of Water Resources. The destruction of the Aral is a symbol of mismanagement, a memorial to the years of stagnation.

MS. CORBAN: The central planning of the Breznhev years destroyed the traditional economy in the town of Aralsk. The only clue to its prosperous past are the rusting docks now stranded 30 miles from the water's edge. As late as 1963, Aralsk was a thriving port, the center of an extensive sea trading network. Fishing was the main industry. In 1921, when Volgagrad was threatened with starvation, Aralsk responded to Lenin's appeal and sent 400 wagonloads of fish in a single day. The shores of the lake abounded with wildlife and migratory birds gathered here in huge flocks. The rare wild horse, the Kulano, lived on islands in the sea. Today a lone Kulano gallops across the dry sea bed. The breed is almost extinct. Only a few swans are left of the extensive bird life. Beneath the waters only four out of thirty-eight species of fish are left and the fishermen are reduced to casting their nets in the shallow waters of the river delta, the only place fish can live. Once, the haul almost broke the nets. Now a whole day's fishing yields a pathetic catch.

FISHERMAN: [Speaking through Interpreter] In a month's time we'll have to move to a place called Zesan, 900 kilometers away, because there aren't any fish left here. It's difficult to go so far but at least there are fish there, and so we'll have to go.

MS. CORBAN: Aralsk is suffering a severe water shortage. The whole water table has been affected by the shrinking sea and increasing salinity. Wells have dried up or been contaminated by salt and chemicals. What little water is left is stagnant, a breeding ground for typhoid. Cases have increased here by 29 times. Every drop of drinking water must be piped from a hundred miles away and laboriously collected from public pumps. Fifteen thousand people have left the area as living conditions worsen. Aralsk now has open sewers and children play on a refuse dump in the center of town. A Communist Party newspaper has revealed that 83 percent of the Aral's children have some kind of illness. The market shelves are almost empty. Abundant produce once grew here, but the fields are too dry now. The lack of water has impoverished the region and brought disease. This region has the highest infant mortality rates in the Soviet Union, four times the national average. For years, the authorities concealed the figures, but now official statistics have revealed that fifty-nine in a thousand newborn babies Die. This rate's comparable to the poorest third world nations. An inadequate diet means that nearly half the pregnant women are anemic. Even their breast milk's contaminated by chemicals in the food and water.

DR. ASTITUL ABSCIUKIROVNA, Aralsk Obstetrician: [Speaking through Interpreter] The high figures are connected with environmental changes and social conditions. Recently, more babies are being born prematurely and there are more and more miscarriages, many caused by fetal abnormalities. We frequently see congenital defects, especially in babies born to women who've had late miscarriages. There's a lack of vitamins and green vegetables. Fresh fruit isn't grown here.

MS. CORBAN: Salt and chemical deposits left by the shrinking sea have caused a dramatic increase in cancer of the throat. TB rates have doubled. The very air is poisoned by 65 million tons of salt, pesticides and dust whipped by the winds every year from the dry sea bed. The old local leaders who implemented Brezhnev's plan admit the consequences were never considered, and the whole nation, they say, is to blame.

AITALBAI KUMAROV, Former Chairman, Aralsk Economic Council: [Speaking through Interpreter] Everywhere the priority was to increase productivity, the amount of rice and so on. No one thought about ecology. This disaster concerns not just our region, but the entire nation. In a way, we, the older generation, have some responsibility. We weren't far sighted enough to see the dangers. We all tried to fulfill the plan but it ended up such a disaster.

MS. CORBAN: A single weather station records increasing temperatures and falling humidity levels, but despite a government decree, nothing has yet been done to increase the rivers' flow. The ministry responsible for saving the Aral is the same one that presided over its destruction. As for the ruined local economy, one fish farm has been set up that can't produce enough fish for even a single village. The level of the sea is still falling. The people of the Aral cannot save their sea alone. At a recent local congress, speakers appealed for urgent help from the outside world. They warned that otherwise the disappearance of the Aral could provoke far reaching climatic changes.

PIERPAT SHERMUKAMEDOV, Save the Aral Committee: [Speaking through Interpreter] Twenty years from now it will snow in July in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan if the Aral dies. The whole balance of nature has been disrupted. The Aral is dying. It is not too late yet to save it but in five or six years it will be. We can still rescue the Aral and ourselves. If we don't save it, we can't save Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, or even perestroika.

MS. CORBAN: The Aral, like Chernobyl, is a manmade disaster of such massive proportions that it may even now be beyond help. But these global catastrophes are mirrored across the Soviet Union, in hundreds of smaller scales with equally damaging decisions imposed here in Moscow by the all powerful planning ministries. Just as the success of perestroika, economic revival, will depend on the attitude of the bureaucracy, so environmental reform hinges on central government departments. They will have to reconsider policies which have blighted nature and poisoned cities. FOCUS - SCREEN SIREN

MR. LEHRER: Now Greta Garbo. She died yesterday in New York City at the age of 84 and she died a mystery. She was an actress who made 27 movies, became a star, and then quit when she was only 36 years old. That happened in 1941, and what has happened ever since has been a cult of fascination with Greta Garbo, while her movies have become classics, none more so than the 1939 satire "Ninotchka". Here's an excerpt from that movie where actor Melvin Douglas tries to woo Garbo, who plays a Soviet envoy.

MR. DOUGLAS: [In Movie] If there's anything you'd like to study, please go ahead. I have nothing to conceal. This is my desk, these are my books, and here am I. Where shall we begin?

MS. GARBO: [In Movie] I will start with you.

MR. DOUGLAS: [In Movie] Excellent. Now let's see. I'm 35 years old, just over six feet tall, and weigh 182 pounds stripped.

MS. GARBO: [In Movie] What is your profession?

MR. DOUGLAS: [In Movie] My profession. Keeping my body fit, keeping my mind alert and keeping the landlord appeased. That's a full-time job.

MS. GARBO: And what do you do for mankind?

MR. DOUGLAS: For mankind? Yes, not so much for mankind, but for womankind, my record is not so bleak.

MS. GARBO: [In Movie] You are something we do not have in Russia.

MR. DOUGLAS: Thank you.

MS. GARBO: That's why I believe in the future of my country.

MR. DOUGLAS: I'm beginning to believe in it myself since I met you. I still don't quite know what it's all about. It confuses me, frightens me. It fascinates me. Ninotchka, do you like me just a little bit?

MS. GARBO: [In Movie] Your general appearance is not distasteful.

MR. DOUGLAS: Thank you.

MS. GARBO: The whites of your eyes are clear. Your cornea is excellent.

MR. DOUGLAS: Your cornea is terrific. Ninotchka, tell me, you're so expert on things, can it be that I'm falling in love with you?

MS. GARBO: Why must you bring in wrong values? Love is a romantic designation for a most ordinary biological or shall we say chemical process. A lot of nonsense is talked and written about it.

MR. DOUGLAS: Oh, I see. What do you use instead?

MS. GARBO: I acknowledge the existence of a natural impulse common to all.

MR. DOUGLAS: What can I possibly do to encourage such an impulse in you?

MS. GARBO: You don't have to do a thing. Chemically, we're already quite sympathetic.

MR. DOUGLAS: You're the most incredible creature I've ever met, Ninotchka, Ninotchka.

MS. GARBO: You repeat yourself.

MR. DOUGLAS: Yes. I'd like to say it a thousand times. You must forgive me if I seem a little old fashioned. After all, I'm just a poor bourgeois.

MS. GARBO: It's never too late to change. I used to belong to the petty bourgeoisie, myself.

MR. DOUGLAS: No.

MS. GARBO: My father and mother wanted me to stay and work on the farm, but I preferred the bayonet.

MR. DOUGLAS: The bayonet? Did you really?

MS. GARBO: I was wounded before Warsaw.

MR. DOUGLAS: Wounded, how?

MS. GARBO: I was a sergeant in the third calvary brigade. Would you like to see my wound?

MR. DOUGLAS: I'd love to. [

MS. GARBO POINTING PUT HER HEAD DOWN AND SHOWING DOUGLAS THE BACK OF HER HEAD]

MS. GARBO: A Polish lancer, I was 16.

MR. DOUGLAS: Poor Ninotchka, poor, poor Ninotchka.

MS. GARBO: Don't pity me. Pity the Polish lancer. After all, I'm still alive.

MR. DOUGLAS: What kind of a girl are you, anyway?

MS. GARBO: Just what you see. A tiny cog in a great wheel of evolution.

MR. DOUGLAS: You're the most adorable cog I've ever seen. Ninotchka, let me confess something. Never did I dream I could feel like this toward a sergeant. [Clock Chimes] Do you hear that?

MS. GARBO: It's 12 o'clock.

MR. DOUGLAS: It's midnight. Look at the clock. One hand has met the other hand. They kiss. Isn't that wonderful?

MS. GARBO: That's the way a clock works. What's wonderful about it?

MR. DOUGLAS: Well, Ninotchka, it's midnight. One half of Paris is making love to the other half.

MS. GARBO: You merely feel you must put yourself in a romantic mood to add to your exhilaration.

MR. DOUGLAS: I can't possibly think of any better reason.

MS. GARBO: That's false sentimentality.

MR. DOUGLAS: Oh, you analyze everything out of existence. You'd analyze me out of existence, but I won't let you. Love isn't so simple, Ninotchka. Ninotchka, why do doves bill and coo, why do snails, the coldest of all creatures, circle interminably about each other, why do moths fly hundreds of miles to find their mates, why do flowers slowly open their petals? Oh, Ninotchka, Ninotchka, surely you'll feel some slight symptom of the divine passion, a general warmth in the palms of your hands, a strange heaviness in your limbs, a burning of the lips that isn't thirst, but something a thousand times more tantalizing, more exalting than thirst.

MS. GARBO: You're very talkative. [DOUGLAS KISSING GARBO IN SCENE FROM MOVIE]

MR. DOUGLAS: Was that talkative?

MS. GARBO: No, that was restful. Again. [DOUGLAS KISSING GARBO AGAIN IN "NINOTCHKA"]

MR. LEHRER: Greta Garbo earned an Academy Award nomination for that performance. Some thoughts now on her performances both on the screen and off from longtime movie critic Richard Schickel, who now reviews for Time Magazine. He joins us tonight from Los Angeles. What was there about Greta Garbo that kept so many people so fascinated for so long, Mr. Schickel?

RICHARD SCHICKEL, Film Critic: Well in the end, it was her absence more than her presence, obviously. You know, she is not truly a living screen presence to the last several generations of movie goers. It's one of the most curious careers in all the history of film and I would guess that she really belongs more to the annals of celebrity than finally she does to the annals of moviedom.

MR. LEHRER: Alistair Cook said one time that she was every man's fantasy mistress. And I saw Kenneth Tynan, one of your fellow critics now deceased, said, "What when drunk one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober."

MR. SCHICKEL: I think you have to have been there at the time. I mean, in all honesty, her reputation to my generation and to subsequent generations was, you know, one of those mysteries of grown up life which we hoped to attained when we reached a certain age. It was sort of like understanding the cocktail hour and those other mysterious adult rituals. If you were of a later generation or are of a later generation, it seems to me that of all her films, the one you played a charming excerpt from, "Ninotchka", is the one on which truly her reputation will rest. A lot of the other films are a peculiarly exotic romantic sort that seems I think to most people who were not there at the time, you know, kind of curiosities, rather than something that you can get yourself very worked up about. "Ninotchka", on the other hand, is a film, it seems to me, of almost immortal charm.

MR. LEHRER: Well, how did she stack up as an actress? How do you and others who stack up people, where would you put her?

MR. SCHICKEL: We try not to stack people up.

MR. LEHRER: I know it, a bad analogy and I stayed with it too long, sorry.

MR. SCHICKEL: I don't think we'll ever know really how good of an actress she was. As I suggest, the screen character that her initial popularity was based on was really a silent picture type. It was a variation on the vamp, the exotic woman who lures innocent males into disastrous relationships. The variation she played on it was that she was usually ultimately the victim of this relationship. She had a wonderful kind of knowing, ironic quality with which she confronted males,and that was her singular most characteristic on the screen, but the genre, which became her genre almost exclusively, was one that was fading even by the late 1930s. I mean, people were much more interested in comedies like "Ninotchka" or a different kind of female suffering, the kind let's say that Betty Davis was competing with her at that time. So, you know, I think she limited herself and I think her studio limited her. I think there were territories she did not explore, whether through indifference, laziness, shyness or whatever, so that we will not know quite ever what she might have done at a different studio with different higher aspirations in her own mind. She talked a great deal about wanting to do art, but, you know, she really did not press very hard on that. I think she was a terribly self-absorbed woman and obviously a capricious one, and one who really was rather difficult to press outside of her known boundaries which included the known boundaries of that lot in Culver City and the people that she worked with there.

MR. LEHRER: So what we saw in this clip from "Ninotchka" right now is what you pretty much saw in all 27 of her movies?

MR. SCHICKEL: No, no, not really. What they did here was make great -- she was a very sober actress in many respects, and they made great sport of that sobriety in this film. It's kind of the genius of the film which was written by Charlie Brackett and Billy Wilder and directed by Ernest Luvich. What we saw more often in her films were kind of dooming romances, "Camille", "Queen Christina", twice as "Anna Kariniana", all of which I think are the next tier of her work. I mean, these are the other films that I think may have some appeal. The rest of the movies are really, I'm sad to say, I haven't seen absolutely all of them, but what I have seen of them are lugubrious, indeed, and really very difficult I think to get behind.

MR. LEHRER: What is known about why she gave it up at the age of 36? What do you believe about that?

MR. SCHICKEL: Well, I think there were practical considerations there. For one thing, her basic market was a foreign market, not a domestic market. As World War II came on, those markets were lost to American studios as a result of the war and so a lot of her grosses were not going to be what they had been worldwide. The salary asked her to take some kind of a salary cut. She refused. She left. I don't believe she ever intended to leave forever. I don't think that happened. I think she discovered that it was rather pleasurable to leave. She avoided the worst trap of the aging star, which is to age in public and to see the goddess, you know, with cracks sort of beginning to appear in the facade.

MR. LEHRER: But didn't she carry that to an extreme, Dick?

MR. SCHICKEL: Well, I think she came to like that role. I think she was shrewd enough in her way to say to herself, say this is a pretty good gig, I have plenty of money, I am a legend beyond legends at this point, and the less I appear in some ways, the more famous I become. I think, you know, as you know, there were attempts and really quite serious attempts to bring her back to the screen and she was tempted by them in the '30s and '40s, but they kind of in the end came to naught because I think she was beginning to relish this peculiar celebrity of hers.

MR. LEHRER: But didn't she, does that add up? I mean, to relish her celebrityness, she relished it in private, did she not? She must have sat around and looked at the stories about herself.

MR. SCHICKEL: What better way to relish your celebrity really in a way. I encountered her at one point in her life. She was in her early 70s then. She was a cheerful woman, living not a reclusive life. She had a fairly wide circle of acquaintances. She was out and about quite a bit actually. She simply did not enjoy, obviously, the more public aspects of celebrity, but I think she took a great deal of sort of secret pleasure in the kind of fame that accrued around her.

MR. LEHRER: Did she --

MR. SCHICKEL: She didn't strike me as an unhappy lady.

MR. LEHRER: That was my next question. She didn't strike you as an -- because her image was of this unhappy woman walking around in her sunglasses and her hat, and probably very very sad.

MR. SCHICKEL: She had a number of wealthy friends. She traveled from here to there visiting them. She was an exacting house guest. And I think if there was a sadness in those late years, it was that this was a circle of no very great intellectual or artistic attainment or of much involvement with the world. I sensed, I mean, this is the most subjective of responses, I sensed in her some slight hunger for more stimulus than she was getting. I will also say that she gave me the loveliest wink I've ever had in my life.

MR. LEHRER: And that makes you, that makes you a rare person, as you realize.

MR. SCHICKEL: Indeed.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. Richard Schickel, thank you very much for being with us.

MR. SCHICKEL: Thank you. ESSAY - FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight the Tuesday essay. Roger Rosenblatt talks about freedom and art.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Why should art be free? These days, the question is raised in an antagonistic context by those seeking to limit or defend the power of the National Endowment for the Arts. But entirely on its own, the question is a fair one. Why should art be free? Nothing else in society is free. Architects, who might well consider themselves artists, are not free. Building codes and other practical constrictions contain their art. Doctors are not free to do what they choose with their patients. Lawyers certainly aren't free. Laws and the judicial system keep lawyers under wraps. Athletes aren't free, every game has its rules. Why should art be exempt from regulations that apply to everything else in our lives? The reason has nothing to do with government intervention or the Bill of Rights, issues that inevitably crop up when art and politics collide. The reason that art should be free is that art would not be art if it weren't. The entire process of art is a display of freedom, with all the exhilarations and perils that freedom carries with it. Artists, ["The Mystery of Picasso", Vestron Video, Shown on Screen] when they begin a piece of work, usually have only the sketchiest idea of where they are going or how they'll get there. A poem begins with an image, a painting with a color or a shape, a symphony with a few spare notes [Segment from Symphony]. From that point forward, the imagination breaks ahead like a runaway horse, and it is all that the artist's own talent can do to keep from being dragged in the dust. In short, freedom is not an accessory that propels art or that accompanies art. It is the essence of art. Even in the most familiar and well established plot, there is a mysterious wildness to the process. The playwright Marlo's Faust is nothing like the Faust of the composer Belios, is nothing like the Faust of the novelist Goethe. Homer's Odisus is not Tennyson, is most definitely not James Joyce's Ulysses. [Scene from Movie With Artist Drawing on Wall] In that wonderful story and movie, "The Horse's Mouth", the painter, Gully Gypson knew only that he wanted to make a painting of human feet, hundreds of remarkable traipsing, dragging, marching, standing, toiling feet. That was his vision, but he had no idea where those feet would take him. The mysteries of art are mysteries to the artists, themselves. [Scene from Movie] In the secret cave dwellings of their mind live ideas, objects and characters unseen in this world, unheard of, ready to spring to imaginative life at the opening of a landscape or of a chapter or of a song. Did Shakespeare know that his Hamlet was waiting in the wings when he began to write the play? I doubt it. Freely the boy stepped forth into the action. Freely he moved about the scenes. Freely he talked, until there emerged out of all that freedom a remarkably orderly figure who could pose such problems as "To be or not to be". What a surprise it must have been to Shakespeare to hear his young created hot head say something as grown up as all that. The necessary freedom that art requires is commanded by the process. Art cannot help but be free if it is to be itself. Sculptors say that the function of their art is to free the form already buried in the form. It's a nice way to look at art, as a sort of liberating act, a release of some magnificent heroic prisoner, who, like the Beast, waited for Beauty to acknowledge its worth. One may not like what one sees in a work of art. One may not want to buy it, or sponsor it, or wish to see one's government back it up with public funds. But the issue of definition ought not to be confused. Everything free is not necessarily art, but if the thing is art, the thing is free. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday, the prime minister of Lithuania said her government was willing to compromise with the Soviets in order to head off a threatened economic blockade, and some 80 people died when a moving passenger train caught fire in India. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the news tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.