Real Message

If converting the Santa Monica Ferris wheel to solar energy (Oct. 23) is an attempt by Edison and the Department of Energy to educate people on solar energy, perhaps their real message is that it's expensive. A project costing $350,000 having a savings of $7,000 per year takes 50 years to pay itself off. Maybe Edison isn't promoting solar energy after all. HARRY L. CAPORUSCIO JR. Topanga

Commenting on the special election for the congressional seat representing California's Central Coast ("Huffington's Legacy Still Afflicts the GOP," March 12), George Skelton dutifully parrots the liberal Democrat spin that suggests Republican candidate Tom Bordonaro "was just too right wing." Skelton conveniently fails to mention that Bordonaro was outspent by 2 to 1. And in addition to the $1.6 million spent by the Lois Capps campaign itself, outside interest groups contributed another $700,000 in ads attacking Bordonaro.

The stock market here has lost ground in very volatile trading since the recent announcement by the government that it wants to raise taxes in fiscal 1997 to cut the budget deficit. Many veteran observers, including Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, have responded to the decline by commenting that the Japanese are becoming too pessimistic and that the macroeconomic numbers do not suggest such a weak economy.

Re Kenneth Turan's Feb. 26 review "Everyman Can't Keep From 'Falling Down' ": Turan criticized perceived messages that the movie does not purport to make and confused his own expectations for the film with the intent of the writer and director. The principal theme of "Falling Down" is not to applaud vigilantism or address the larger issues of economic hardship and social injustice. The film is essentially a case study of a nervous breakdown that issues a harrowing warning about the peril of living in a society where each day the pressure and the volume is turned up a bit more, courtesy and manners are eroding and the cumulative effect of chaos and petty annoyances can cause severe personalities to snap.

In the past few months, I've watched with irritation as the mainstream media refashioned Malcolm X to be more palatable to the general public. The potency of the totemic Malcolm--brow furrowed, finger pointed, like an Old Testament prophet--has been greatly compromised by the retrofitting. One wonders what he would think of the breathless pronouncements that pour through the television pell-mell.

What is the real message in your editorial? Be date raped by a man who looks and acts like a thug in public and he will be convicted? Why are we just pointing fingers at high-profile and powerful men? What about the man next door who seems OK--the one your daughter or sister would date? "No" still doesn't mean very much in the game of "he said-she said." It seems "he said" still wins if a man appears to be less of a brute. This is hardly a victory; we're still in the first round.

In rebuttal to the negative letters about Edward James Olmos (Sept. 15): When are Latinos going to stop putting their own people down? Olmos is placing Latinos as the main characters in an industry that has portrayed them as anything but who they are. It's true that not all Latinos are involved with gangs, and there should be more positive role models. But there has to be a start; one way or another there have to be more Latinos running the show. Let everyone go and see Olmos' "American Me."

My film "Closet Land," which deals with human rights, freedom of expression, child abuse and other issues, has provoked a predictably polarized response: Some love it, and some hate it. One of the film's harshest critics, The Times' Kevin Thomas, has completely missed the point of the film. "Closet Land" doesn't attempt to literally depict the physical reality of political interrogation. I'm more intrigued by the psychological experience: the disorientation, the absurdity, the terror.

The loss of individuality, a disregard for nature, the corporate affability that lonely people mistake for real intimacy--these are the ingredients in the Mark Taper Forum Improvisational Theatre Project's "The Bear That Wasn't," currently touring Southland public and private elementary schools. A heavy message for young children? Not with the treatment it gets here.