Word: scum
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...SCUM...
Somehow one does not think that civilized old England has a prison system seriously in need of the services of Brubaker, the reform-minded prison warden recently portrayed by Robert Redford. But aside from the fact that the Borstal, a juvenile facility, in Scum is neat and clean, unlike the pigsty prison farm in Brubaker, the two institutions are identical...
...needs prevails in both places. Day-to-day management is vested in an informal conspiracy between wardens and toughs who have risen to the top of prison society solely on the basis of physical prowess. Discipline is maintained through beatings, buggery and other less colorful forms of brutality. In Scum, alas, no redeemer appears to offer even brief hope of change. The only appealing character is an individualist named Archer (Mick Ford), whose rebelliousness is of a highly personal sort. He is a vegetarian and an atheist whose insistence on special treatment throws sand into the system...
...them--maybe he realized that his life could well have been spent behind a Seven & Seven, not a typewriter. But the paunchy columnist who wrote sad humor like no one else ever will could not bring himself to admit that even New York had its share of unredeemable scum, that bum was a nice word for derelict, that plenty of criminals were vicious, not loveable. And, in his whole menagerie, there was one character he never drew--the young punk who laughed at things that weren't funny, the punk who was tough because he liked it that way, needed...
...from them. Americans, so idealistically generous and expansive in their official mythology, have generally greeted foreigners with fear and loathing. A New York newspaper editorial in the late 19th century commented on the Italian influx: "The bars are down. The dam is washed away. The sewer is choked. The scum of immigration is viscerating upon our shores." Franklin Roosevelt held rigidly to his immigrant quotas all through the '30s, when Europe's Jews were desperately seeking refuge from Hitler. The American failure to welcome Europe's Jews may have encouraged Hitler...