the middle and upper class accepted Phoebe's plight as an accurate representation.

10. Le Boulevard de Saint Laurent-Another film of the Film Board of Canada. The depressing scenes of the Bowery section of Montreal create a striking visual impact which surmounts the barrier of the difficult French soundtrack.

The film portrays several forms of asocial behavior but in such wise that we see human beings and not merely agents of socially repugnant conduct. The viewer is more inclined to compassion than condemnation. Starting with a nightclub "strip-tease," we are taken on a camera tour of Le Boulevard de Saint Laurent. It is mostly "night people" who fill the screen with only occasional shots of dishevelled women and dirty men sitting on park benches or shuffling along in the daytime.

In showing the film to young college girls from the upper class of Santiago, the author insisted that we were not looking at a certain section of Montreal but that every large city has its equivalent of Le Boulevard de Saint Laurent. The students applauded and expressed their sincere thanks, demonstrating that social evil can be portrayed in a way which serves humanistic, supra-national purposes. The reaction of students from different nations is unvariably one which recalls Terence's dictum: "Nil humanum puto a me alienum."

11. The World of Marshall McLuhan-A film copy of a one-hour television show based on the book which McLuhan published with Quentin Fiore: The Medium is the Message. We earlier made reference to McLuhan's thesis that "the medium is the message" in commenting on Zorba the Greek. McLuhan's latest elaboration of this thesis in the form of a pun states that most people live not in the present but in the previous environment. Apart from the avant-garde artists and astute students of social change and cultural flux, the great majority look through a historical rear-view mirror (recall The Lilies of the Field). To borrow computer terminology, only a few live in "real time," where knowledge can be used to shape the present.

This film documents McLuhan's observations with brilliant sequences of overlapped images, out-of-sight voices, out-of-focus shots, and feverish intercutting of scenes à la Eisenstein. The younger generation find McLuhan refreshing and provocative. The film as a rule, irritates older people. How such films divide audiences is a significant cross-cultural phenomenon. The younger generation, products of the "electronic age," basically sympathize with McLuhan. This has been the author's experience in his teaching experiences in both North and Latin America. The World of Marshall McLuhan, captures viewers in diverse cultures, compelling them to co-create the experience. Disconnected, suggestive, a Joycean "stream-of-consciousness" experience, this film can help bring prepared viewers to understand the bias in media and, consequently, the perceptual prejudices which are unconsciously smuggled into every cul

ture.

12. The Parable-A film made by the Protestant Council of New York for presentation at the 1964 New York World's Fair. It is a remarkable attempt to use the medium of cinema to convey to 20th century mankind the significance of Christ's life and message. In a sense, both can easily become historical relics, recalling the McLuhan insight that we live life backward and not forward. In order to bring freshness to the gospel story, the makers of The Parable resort to a circus background. It is ironic that the spirit of Christ must be clothed in the character of a clown. What he does, however, is ridiculous: exposing himself to the anger of the powerful by helping the underprivileged (the worker, the unemancipated woman, the victim of racial injustice). Finally comes the scene of the clown's voluntary death: an agonizing death scene in the harness of one of the live marionettes, aloft in the high rotunda of the circus tent.

The author led eight film discussions on The Parable in Chile with laity and clergy, atheists and Marxists, youth and adults. The diversity of interpretations clearly indicate that the film is a true parable. That is to say, just as in Christ's parables, so too in this film, there are many levels of meaning, some more overt than others. Three points in particular are interesting:

a. Marxists, atheists, and not a few Christians perceive a subtle criticism of organized religion. Thus the tent top in the parallel-crucifixion scene, some claim, looks like a church cupola; the youthful spectators wear cowl-like hoods; the harness-wires are jerked to the sounds of something close to church chimes. The impression is one of prophetic judgment on all institutions as accomplices in the death of the Christfigure.

b. There is a strong insinuation that the followers of the Christ-figure have not caught His message. They seem to be aloof from the march of history, colorfully portrayed by a succession of decorative floats bearing the names of nations. Just as the picture ends, the man on the donkey seems to veer off onto a side path, no longer part of the parade. Although the evidence is scanty, it is not demonstrably clear that the master of the marionettes undergoes a conversion. Some viewers maintain that he puts on the clown's grease paint to dissimulate the Christ in order to sow discord. These would also hold that the figure on the donkey in the final scene is not the same as at the beginning, but rather the disguised master of the marionettes.

c. It is not certain that there is a resurrection of Christ for we only see a springtime scene of peace and harmony but no physical person resembling the clown. The last scene is reminiscent of the first and cannot be thought to be a clear sign of a physical resurrection.

The intercultural power of this film needs no special argument. The figure of Christ is of transcendental interest and the multiple interpretations carefully folded into the picture, either deliberately or inadvertently, give free play for the imaginations and minds of viewers with divergent backgrounds. The film succeeds in teaching many things ac

cording to the capacity of those learning. As such it is well-named The Parable and revitalizes contemporary mankind's jaded perception of the Christ who taught in parables.

In a world growing smaller and smaller due to satellites, TV, computers, and lasers, it is imperative that attention be given to programming which transcends provincial interests. The author is convinced that underlying the undeniable differences of men and nations, there is a sameness, not a monochromatic sameness, but an inexhaustible wealth of sensibility, spirit, and emotional resonance. We are at an evolutionary juncture where we are seeing civilization in the singular. Our education must recognize that the "image" is the worldwide language which can unite men in the depths of their being across all known barriers of sex, race, class, nation, politics, and religion.

THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING* **

BY FRANCIS S. RONALDS, JR.

International broadcasting is defined as broadcasts prepared in one country but intended for other countries. The discussion of its trends and implications suggests a growing importance.

The world may become a global village some day, and home receivers may be picking up audio and video signals via satellite from all over the world. But that "some day" will not be soon, certainly not in this decade and probably not in the next.

On the other hand, if we judge by the investments going into transmitters for use in external propaganda efforts via short- and medium-wave radio, and if we accept estimates that the number of short-wave radios will nearly double during the seventies, then there is no doubt that international broadcasting is alive and well, enjoying healthy middle age. DEFINITIONS

Before examining the above claims, let us define terms. Just what is international broadcasting?

.. I exclude domestic broadcasting in foreign countries and speak solely of broadcasts prepared in one country but intended for other countries. Such "external" broadcasts may be mounted by governments, either officially as external services or unofficially as clandestine stations, by "public/private corporations," by religious groups, and by commercial

*Special thanks for help in preparing this paper go to Mrs. Barbara Schiele, VOA's inexhaustible fount of facts and figures on the subject.

**Excerpts from "The Future of International Broadcasting," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 398 (November 1971), pp. 71-80. Reprinted with the permission of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and the courtesy of the author.

operations. Most of the major international broadcasters, including Moscow, Radio Peking, Radio Cairo, the Voice of America (VOA), and the Deutsche Welle (the external radio of the West German government) belong to the first category. At the moment of writing, there are seventeen Communist and fourteen non-Communist clandestine radio stations. The British Broadcasting Corporation and certain Commonwealth stations patterned after it, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, are granted appropriations by Parliament but are not directly controlled by the government currently in power. Radio Free Euope and Radio Liberty ... [may] be converted into similar "public/private" corporations. . . . Radio Peace and Progress, although housed in the same building as Radio Moscow, purports to be supported by Soviet public organizations.

Major religious broadcasters...may carry news but... concentrate on bringing the word of God to people who might otherwise be deprived of it.

One service of Radio Cairo beams out recitations from the Koran for 98 hours a week. Of the commercial broadcasters carrying international services, the largest are Radio Luxembourg and Europe Number One-the latter located in the Saar. Their audiences are estimated in the tens of millions. The Commercial Service of the Ceylonese Broadcasting Corporation, although not described as an external service, would not be so lucrative if it were not for its millions of listeners in India.

I am aware of only one television station with an "external" service: Tallin TV is beamed across the Baltic in Swedish and Finnish. There are, however, important "spillover" audiences for a few TV and many national radio stations. Of political significance is the considerable if unmeasurable viewership for Austrian TV across the borders in Hungary and Czechoslovakia; there is a lot of cross-watching between East and West Germany, particularly in the Berlin area; and Estonians can pick up and understand Finnish TV programs.

Listening to a foreign country's domestic radio broadcasts is traditional in Europe, where some powerful medium- and long-wave signals virtually blanket the continent. Accra is heard throughout Anglophone West Africa, Radio Conakry in the French-speaking countries, and Nairobi is popular throughout East Africa. Refugees from China report listening to Cantonese programs from Hong Kong. The U.S. Armed Forces RadioTelevision System, broadcasting only in English for troops stationed abroad, is believed to have a very large audience, particularly in Germany, Japan, and Southeast Aisa. However, even though spillover listening to such programs may have international political consequences, they cannot rightly be labeled "international broadcasts." With the United Arab Republic, on the other hand, it is difficult to distinguish domestic from external broadcasts. Radio Cairo's three 500-kilowatt medium-wave transmitters can be heard though-out the Near East and North Africa, as

well as in the UAR itself. Its Arabic programing is generally aimed at Arabs everywhere.

In the case of certain international broadcasters, direct listening is supplemented by relays and by "placement." A great many Commonwealth nations continue to relay BBC newscasts and other programs on domestic facilities. Hundreds of stations south of the Rio Grande regularly relay portions of VOA programs in Spanish and Portuguese; twothirds of Latin America's 3,600 medium-wave stations carried VOA coverage of the flight of Apollo 11. Communist stations do not fare so well. Somewhat to the surprise of experts, Havana so far has not seen fit to relay Radio Moscow, which receives such brotherly support only from Ulan Bator. Little Albania, one of the largest international broadcasters, has only recently begun to relay selected programs of Radio Peking. Largely as a by-product of direct broadcasts, BBC and VOA also ship out vast quantities of taped programs for replay by government and commercial stations all over the world. The Office de Co-operation Radiophonique (OCORA), now absorbed into the foreign service of the French Radio, supplies much of the programing carried over many French-speaking nations in Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. Relay and placement is also common within the East European Communist bloc.

Since this whole range of activity is too broad for coverage in one short article, I will discuss only the politically significant broadcasts of official government and "public/private" stations.

SATELLITES

What about the future? Will satellites make it possible for Moscow, the Voice of America, and other broadcasters to dispense with short-wave and to beam TV as well as radio programs directly into the homes of people practically everywhere?

The United Nations Working Group on Direct Broadcast Satellites says no-not for a long time to come. In a report of February 26, 1969, it concluded:

While it is considered that satellite technology has reached the stage at which it is possible to contemplate the future development of satellites capable of direct broadcasting to the public at large, direct broadcasting of television signals into existing, unaugmented home receivers on an operational basis is not foreseen for the period 1970-1985.

In a July, 1970, report to the White House, a panel of U.S. government experts under the chairmanship of W. E. Plummer of the Office of Telecommunications Management came to the conclusion that direct radio broadcasts by satellite, while technologically feasible, are economically out of sight:

Such a satellite could provide a single voice channel to an area the size of Brazil, for up to twenty-four hours a day, with poor to good quality reception by typical FM receivers employing simple outdooor antennas. However, the estimated annual cost would be between $40 and $50 million. By comparison, the VOA is presently