61 CHRONICLESn”The Cannes festival, the largest andnmost prestigious film showcase, hasngenerally favored less commercial,nmore artistic films often with a leftistnpolitical message—the choice of filmmakersnrather than moviegoers.” Thisnis the voice of the New York Times,nfriends and readers, not that oiChronicles.nAnd the New York Times—like ilnDuce—ha sempre ragione. She is alwaysnright. This year, however, wasndifferent. The festival was more commercialnthan ever. Almost 14,500 participantsnsaw more than 600 movies.nThe city was overrun with Americannbusinessmen vying with top dollar fornhot films. The advertising was sensational.nYou couldn’t walk into thenCarlton Hotel without being overwhelmednby an enormous James Bondnad encircling the entrance.nNot that all the old traditions werengone. West Germany’s Barbara Sukowangot the Best Actress award fornplaying Rosa Luxemburg, the Marxistnheroine killed in the Sparticist Revoltnof 1919, while Michel Blanc was declarednBest Actor for playing a homosexualnin a French sex farce. But evennthey had to share their awards withnother performers.nWhile Rosa Luxemburg had tonshare her award, movies that concentratednon themes of a spiritual, evennof a religious nature, did not. Fewnfilms garner more than one award atnCannes, but this year two films wentndouble dipping. The top prize, thenGolden Palm, along with the prize fornBest Technical Direction, went to RolandnJoffe’s The Mission, starring RobertnDe Niro and Jeremy Irons. With anprice tag of $26 million, it cost bignbucks by Cannes standards. Morenstrikingly, it concerned two priests whonare ordered to abandon their missionnamong the Indians of South Americanand refuse to do so. It is clearly aimednat commercial success, and it takesnreligion seriously.nSecond place, the Special JurynGrand Prize, went to Andrei Tarkovsky’snThe Sacrifice, a slow-pacednCULTURAL REVOLUTIONSnSwedish film, made by a dying Russianndirector, about the search fornspiritual meaning in a crazy world.nThe award for Best Artistic Contributionnalso went to Tarkovsky, Thirdnplace, the Jury Prize, went to AlainnCavalier’s Therese, about St. Theresa.nThis year’s Cannes film festival wasnboth more crassly commercial andnmore explicitiy religious than in thenpast. One of the great fears of thenBourgeois Age was the destruction ofnstandards by the inrush of the GreatnVulgar. Suppose now the high tide ofndemocratization were to mean, for artnat any rate, the uniting of standards,nmoney, and religion, res olim dissociahiles,nto use Tacitus’ words. Thenmoney a few clever Englishmen madenoff of Chariots of Fire does not seem tonhave attracted the attention of ourngreedy Hollywood moguls. Maybe thisnyear’s fortnight at Cannes will do thentrick. (ECK)nDemocracy stiffes the arts—the sagancontinues. According to the Chroniclenof Higher Education, state legislatorsnacross the country are diverting taxnmonies away from the arts, humanities,nand social sciences and into then”hard” sciences and engineering andnbusiness programs. “There’s no doubtnabout it,” says Larry L. Leslie, directornof the University of Arizona’s Centernfor the Study of Higher Education. “Ifnit doesn’t have to do with engineeringnor the sciences, it’s going to be ditficultnfor people to get new state funds.”nNevada has just enacted a new fundingnformula that takes money away fromnEnglish, history, and art departmentsnand gives it to science and engineeringnfaculty. The Texas Faculty Associationnhas lodged an official complaint aboutnall the recruitment money flowing intonscience and engineering faculties andnaway from the liberal arts. Observersnin Maryland and Massachusetts reportnsimilar trends in their states.nBefore adding to all the professorialnhandwringing over statehouse philis-nnntines, we might ask: Just what benefitndo average taxpayers currently receivenfrom college programs in the arts,nhumanities, and social sciences?nAnyone who has leafed through anynpublications of the Modern LanguagenAssociation knows what the liberal inn”liberal arts” has come to mean.nCarolyn Heilbrun devoted her 1984nMLA Presidential Address to a not-socovertnaffirmation of literary lesbianism.nThings are no better in the dramaticnand visual arts, where academicnpainters and sculptors teach captivenstudents to exhibit their hatred fornAmerica in paint and marble. JacquesnBarzun argued recentiy in Harper’snthat America spends way too muchnmoney subsidizing artists who lacknboth talent and message. Some of thenworst of our artists-as-public-functionariesnnow staff the universities.nLike their literary and artistic colleagues,nmost social scientists nurse annideological gripe against the societynthat pays them. Pollster Everett Laddnof the Roper Center recently reportednthat a survey of social science professorsnfinds them well to the left of mostnAmericans, and well to the left of theirncolleagues teaching engineering ornbusiness. Similarly, at a conferencensponsored last year by The RockfordnInstitute’s Center on Religion & Society,nUniversity of California sociologistnJay Mechling observed that mostnundergraduates with a professed commitmentnto Christianity are “not peoplengoing into history or English; theynare people who are going to becomenengineers.”nDoes this mean that the Americannprofessoriat in the arts, humanities,nand social sciences has been turnedninto alienated leftists by doing honestnscholarship? Hardly. Many of this century’snbrightest minds in the literarynand creative arts—T.S. Eliot, WyndhamnLewis, Allen Tate, Eugene lonesco,nEzra Pound, and Jorge Luis Borges,nto name but a few—have beennpolitical conservatives, even reactionaries.nEven among sociologists, then