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11/16/05
This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --
A different approach to preventing rape, teaching young men that strength has nothing to do with muscle.
Kyle Pacheco>> "I know people that got raped and not just in the school, but you don't really hear about it as much because like it's so common that it's just kind of overlooked now because people know that it's there."
Val Zavala>> And then, these performers have all the right moves and we'll meet the man who keeps them on a string.
It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.
Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
Val Zavala>> When it comes to rape, the focus has almost always been on female victims. But what about the perpetrators? Is there anything that can be done to keep a young man from becoming a rapist? Some people say yes and they are teaching young men the difference between strength and force. Toni Guinyard went to a Riverside high school to find out how it works.
Toni Guinyard>> It's a Friday afternoon and, as students come and go, wrapping up another week of classes, members of a club unlike any other on this high school campus get together, grab a bite to eat, sit down and talk.
Shawn Johnson>> "Basically what we're going to be talking about is trying to figure out our role in preventing sexual assault, trying to figure out what it means to be a man, what it means to be masculine."
Christopher Gonzalez>> "How many guys will be there?"
Shawn Johnson>> "For this group, I believe we're at fourteen."
Toni Guinyard>> Stopping sexual violence is at the heart of the conversation. The students are members of what is called The Men of Strength, or MOST club. They represent different peer groups on campus and they want to be part of the solution. This pilot program is part of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, statewide My Strength Campaign, the theme, "My Strength Is Not For Hurting".
William Villareal>> When young men begin to talk about this idea that, hey, my strength is not for hurting, that catches other guys. Because if my strength is not for hurting, then what is it for? Because society has taught me as a young man that my strength is for kicking butt and for being a great athlete. But if my strength is not just for those things or is not for violence, then what is my strength for?
Toni Guinyard>> William Villareal is one of three Strength Team members hired to travel throughout the state promoting the campaign candidly talking about sex and violence to anyone willing to listen.
William Villareal>> These issues are taboo only because us as adults have made it so taboo. I mean, I know it's a sensitive issue and should be talked about with respect and with sensitivity and with compassion, but if we do not talk about it, then how do we learn about it? How do we learn to prevent rape and sexual assault if we're not given the opportunity to talk about it, to share our ideas about it?
Shawn Johnson>> "What makes us men? What makes us masculine?"
Toni Guinyard>> What makes this rape prevention campaign different from others is the target audience: men, not women.
Debora Heaps>> For a long time, there hasn't been any programs available for just men to talk about stopping rape from happening. It's often been a woman's issue.
Toni Guinyard>> Debora Heaps is Director of Programs for the Riverside Rape Crisis Center. Most of the victims they counsel are young women fourteen to eighteen years old. The young men recruited for the Men of Strength Club are exactly the same age.
Debora Heaps>> It's about educating young men about their masculinity, about sexual assault and about violence and why it happens and trying to help them to understand that they don't have to be identified as a perpetrator.
Shawn Johnson>> "If all this rape prevention and sexual assault prevention is geared towards them, where does that leave us?"
>> "If I'm doing the right thing, then you should do the right thing too because that's how I'm raised and that's how I want other people to start --"
Christopher Gonzalez>> -- "yeah, seeing things, you know, like because it's not always about, oh, yeah, you shouldn't wear that. I think a girl should be the way she wants to be, the way she feels comfortable, and a guy has to know how to respect that. That's how I feel."
Toni Guinyard>> Men of Strength Clubs have been established at six high schools throughout the state of California, including here at John North High School in Riverside. Now the program has received a lot of attention and some praise, but it's also received some criticism.
Debora Heaps>> The criticism has been that it's a bunch of angry women trying to pick on men and identify them as perpetrators and that's a problem because that is an adversarial approach.
William Villareal>> We're not going in there to accuse or blame or to, you know, get in peoples' faces and make them feel bad about themselves.
Shawn Johnson>> "We know that we're stronger, but how can we use our strength in another way?"
>> "By reaching out in open words, by speaking out."
Toni Guinyard>> This is only the second meeting of North High's MOST Club. Some members did not show up. Of those who did, some sat in silence. Others seemed eager to speak up.
Kyle Pacheco>> "I know people that got raped and not just in the school, but you don't really hear about it at much because like it's so common that it's just kind of overlooked now because people know that it's there and that, you know, it's not like something that's so rare that they talk about it all the time. It's so common."
Christopher Gonzalez>> "Hardly none of us talk about it, you know. We know it's there, but we always keep it down."
Toni Guinyard>> The conversation is a bit awkward. The young men still are a bit unsure about what to say and how to say what's on their minds. It's Shawn Johnson's job to facilitate the conversation. What makes you the perfect person to facilitate this group?
Shawn Johnson>> Because I believe, at one point in time, I am one of those kids. I went to this school. I know the diversity in the school and I feel like I can relate to a lot of the things that they say, a lot of things that they believe. "Are we going to be perceived from girls and from your peers as being soft? And are you guys okay with that?"
>> "I'm happy if I'm doing the right thing, so if they think I'm soft just because I'm sticking up for this girl, then I'm soft. But I'm doing the right thing and I don't care what people think because I know I'm doing the right thing."
Shawn Johnson>> "You agree with that?"
>> "Yeah."
Shawn Johnson>> "That was nice, that was nice (laughter)."
David Breunig>> "What are you doing to keep yourself eligible in the classroom? That's the important part."
>> "Doing my work. Keeping focused."
Toni Guinyard>> David Breunig is a teacher, football and basketball coach at North High. He is also an advocate of the MOST Club.
David Breunig>> My expectation for these young men is to learn the lesson, learn what they can do to become powerful male role models and then spread the word to not only their peers, but to their children as they grow up.
Toni Guinyard>> Breunig says he hasn't received any criticism about the program, but admits it has limits.
David Breunig>> Are you going to reach everybody? No. There's no way. But for every kid I can take under my wing and try to change his outlook on life, tell him he can be a successful person and be a strong person and not have to do these negative type things, then it's a win for me.
Toni Guinyard>> So they pin their hopes on this group of young men chosen from more than one hundred students who signed up. They provide us a peek inside their world of challenges and pressures as they face the topics of sex, relationships, respect and role models.
Christopher Gonzalez>> "My dad treats my mom like a princess, like a queen, you know. That's the way it should be. It's wonderful because they're always happy, always going out, always having fun and I want that for my wife, to treat her the same way."
David Breunig>> Most of the kids on campus, I think most kids in general, want to do the right thing, but some of them need to be led in the right direction.
Toni Guinyard>> Is it going to take a lot of work to get young men to think that --
>> -- "A lot, a lot of work."
Toni Guinyard>> Why do you say that?
>> "Because they're so into like the same style they are in like looking at girls differently, looking at them as just somebody to like be with, you know, not as someone to respect."
William Villareal>> You cannot ignore the problem. It is a fact. Rape and sexual assault happens.
Toni Guinyard>> It happens, but the young men in the MOST Club are willing to confront the issue head-on and do their part by living up to the motto "My Strength Is Not For Hurting".
Shawn Johnson>> "Appreciate you guys coming out and I hope to see you next week or the week after, so thanks, guys."
Toni Guinyard>> I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.
Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".
Val Zavala>> No one epitomizes public affairs on PBS better than Bill Moyers. Well, Moyers is now retired, but he's still speaking out and he appeared recently at UC Irvine. That gave our Orange County reporter, Roger Cooper, a chance to sit down with Moyers to ask him where he thinks our country is headed.
Roger Cooper>> Time passes. It was December 2004 that Bill Moyers signed off from NOW and retired from PBS and television journalism at age seventy.
Bill Moyers>> "So this is it for me, but fortunately, not for NOW. David returns in three weeks. I'm Bill Moyers. Thank you and farewell."
Roger Cooper>> We wanted to know what he's been up to and caught up with him as he prepared to speak at UC Irvine. Interestingly enough, not his first trip to UCI. Forty years ago, as Press Secretary to Lyndon Johnson, Bill Moyers was along on the presidential trip to Orange County when LBJ dedicated the UCI campus. Bill Moyers, it's almost been a year since we saw you on public television. Is there life after public television?
Bill Moyers>> There is, sometimes a frenetic life. I've been out speaking. I've been taking on this battle over the future of public broadcasting and speaking against the efforts by the radical right wing to control it, influence it, intimidate it and neuter it, and that's been both challenging and, I must say, enjoyable. You know, there was an Irishman who comes across a brawl in the street and he says, "Is this a private fight or can anybody get in it?" Well, this fight to save public broadcasting is a public fight and I'm glad to be in it and we need to get a lot of other people to get into it too.
I've also been doing some research into the book I want to do about the Kennedy-Johnson years when I was a very young man in Washington. That was a kind of hinge of history. I've taken several trips with my wife overseas that we've postponed for the four years I was doing a weekly broadcast. I've gotten to know my two new young grandchildren. And I've been giving a lot of thought to, you know, what do I do with Act Three of my life? So it's been a good year. I have missed the broadcast. I've missed the audience. I've missed --
Roger Cooper>> -- I was going to say, so much since you left NOW has come to a head or come unraveled. Do you ever want to go tap David Brancaccio on the shoulder and say, "David, I've just got to get back for one more broadcast?"
Bill Moyers>> (Laughter) I think all of us who have been journalists during our lives know that the story goes on after us, and it's a big temptation every time there's a new development in that story, the story of the world, the story of the human race. We want to say, oh, I've got to get back and tell my part of it. Yeah, sure. I don't want to go tap David. He's doing a great job. But there are times when I'd like to get the fire hose and run toward the building.
Roger Cooper>> You brought it up. Of the politicalization of public broadcasting, what are your concerns as we talk about that?
Bill Moyers>> Well, public broadcasting, since it gets some of its funding from the Congress, fifteen percent of our total budget, has always been a ripe target for people who would prefer that we not have a public system. They prefer everything to be privatized. They prefer commercial television to public television. But this is the most serious, sustained and sinister effort to intimidate public broadcasting in my lifetime. Remember, Roger, I was present at the creation. I was there for public broadcasting after 1967 and I've been in this system for almost forty years now. This is the most serious and sustained effort to politicize public broadcasting, intimidate its journalists and terrify its programmers.
Roger Cooper>> What did you think when you learned your broadcast was being singled out for monitoring by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?
Bill Moyers>> (Laughter) I laughed because here's the Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a right wing Republican, who's spending taxpayer money to find out what's on my broadcast. All he had to do was watch it on Friday night or call me and I'd send him the lineup or buy a TV Guide for $2.50. I mean, to think that this guy would actually spend money to hire a still unidentified, unknown monitor or some other right wing journalist to watch what was on the air and then to try to measure it for "political bias"? Ridiculous.
Roger Cooper>> A lot of your theme of recent years in your books and your speeches has been that you're worried about freedom continuing and democracy continuing in America, your most recent book of "Bill Moyers on America". You're afraid that economic interests may buy our democracy, if not already bought it.
Bill Moyer>> Well, that's the oldest story in America. The founders created a system which really respected property more than individual rights and the history of our country is a see-saw between the power of organized money and the power of organized people. Each have prevailed at different times. But we've never had so much money coursing through American politics as we have today.
Theodore Roosevelt warned against the powers of organized economic interests. His cousin, Franklin Roosevelt, said in effect, "A government by organized money is as much to be feared as a government by the organized mob." So I really do think that the most fundamental change in politics in my lifetime has been how money has virtually bought the government out from under us. But I am troubled today for several reasons.
One, organized big government is in league with big business and big media is now part of big government and that affects the quality of what people read, see and hear. Secondly, I'm concerned that this is the most secretive administration in my lifetime. I'm a fanatic today about journalism and people knowing what's going on because of what happened in the south and what happened in Vietnam. To see this administration totally control the flow of information out of the White House and the government --
Roger Cooper>> -- you've been away a year. You've watched the developments. Are you now pessimistic or optimistic? Where are you?
Bill Moyers>> I take a long view of history. I just came back from a trip to Greece for my wife's seventieth birthday. I sat up on a hill overlooking the scene of a volcano two thousand years before the life of Christ, two thousand B.C., looked at the civilization they've excavated there, civilization after civilization, disaster after disaster, war, more war, rumors of war, real wars. I thought this country is two hundred fifty or three hundred years old. What a blink of the eye it is. What a blink of the eye we are.
I'm seventy years old, maybe got another five, ten, fifteen years, gone. Those people are gone. After that, I take a long view of history. You know, there's a will to survive on the part of the human race that is very powerful. You know that people can turn things around. The great thing about an open society, of democracy, is that we can climb up on the bridge of the ship, grab the captain by the elbow and say, "That's an iceberg out there. Better turn around."
So we have turned our course just in the nick of time several times. It took a long time. I mean, two hundred fifty years in slavery, two hundred years to win women the right to vote. But over time, I take an optimistic viewpoint. I said to a friend of mine on Wall Street, "How do you feel about the market?" He said, "I'm optimistic." And I said, "Why do you look so worried?" He said, "Because I'm not sure my optimism is justified." I'm not either.
Roger Cooper>> It's great to have you back with us at KCET.
Bill Moyers>> My pleasure, Roger. Thank you for having me.
Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:
Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
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You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.
Val Zavala>> They say it's never too late to have a happy childhood and here is your chance. We take you to the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles near a freeway off-ramp in a plain cinder block building. But as Vicki Curry found out, once you go inside, you've entered another world, the world of Bob Baker's Marionettes.
[Film Clip]
Vicki Curry>> No one understands a child's fascination with puppets like Bob Baker. His shows have delighted children for forty-five years, making the Bob Baker Marionette Theater the oldest continuously running theater of its kind.
Bob Baker>> We try to entertain the children. When they're sitting on the floor, they're looking almost into the puppets' eyes, so they become very real. I have people come here today who tell me that they came here when they were small kids when they had their birthday parties twenty-five years ago or they're bringing their child to see a theater here that they saw when they were kids.
Vicki Curry>> Baker is a native of Los Angeles. His father took him to a puppet show when he was five and he was hooked. By age eight, he was staging his own shows.
Bob Baker>> I had an hour lesson every day but Sunday and I had to practice mostly two hours a day. I was really learning the skill of not only working the puppets, but making the puppets.
Vicki Curry>> Baker's talent soon brought offers from Hollywood. He's worked on hundreds of television shows and movies, including "A Star is Born", "Bedknobs & Broomsticks" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". It was his onscreen experiences that led him to create the theater.
Bob Baker>> We kept saying we want to do puppets on film. About that time, we put this theater together so we could show people production numbers and things that could be done.
[Film Clip]
Vicki Curry>> Countless people have witnessed what Baker's puppets can do not just in Los Angeles, but around the world. He has two traveling companies and they've performed at thousands of county fairs and private parties.
Bob Baker>> You know, there's very few places I haven't performed somewhere along the line. "Have puppets, will travel", I guess, is the slogan.
Vicki Curry>> He can take the show on the road because of a technique he pioneered decades ago when he had to put on a show with no stage.
Bob Baker>> Well, I did it out front this way and they liked it. I thought, well, why bother with the stage? I'll bring more puppets and do a longer show and not have to carry in that great big old bulky stage. We do nothing to really camouflage the puppets here. We come out as ourselves. The puppet is down below us and the children are on the floor. Also, it gives us the freedom of, if we want to do a skating number or a dance number, we can actually do it. This is more fun. We've broken the barrier.
[Film Clip]
Vicki Curry>> Even without a stage, the shows are elaborate productions. How many puppets do you usually have per show?
Bob Baker>> A hundred to a hundred twenty-five.
Vicki Curry>> For each one-hour show?
Bob Baker>> For one hour.
Vicki Curry>> Wow. And how many puppeteers?
Bob Baker>> Five to six. And back in here, we have a light board. It's an antique board.
Vicki Curry>> Now the people who work here really learn the fundamentals and they can in the theater.
Bob Baker>> They have to learn how to be a lighting designer and figure out what lights to use and dimmers when they come in and out. Also, what colored lights are best. We have painted ceilings that come down here besides having drapes. Each show has its own set.
Vicki Curry>> And so everything that you have in a show is created and built here?
Bob Baker>> Built right here.
Vicki Curry>> In this theater?
Bob Baker>> Um-hum.
Vicki Curry>> Every bit of it?
Bob Baker>> Every bit of it.
Vicki Curry>> That includes, of course, the marionettes themselves. Besides building puppets for their shows, Bob Baker and his team hand-craft puppets for sale. He's overseen the Disney character collection for fifty years. When you make the puppets that you sell as collectibles, you hand-make each individual puppet?
Bob Baker>> Every puppet is handmade. It's hand-crafted, handmade. It's strictly one of a kind.
Vicki Curry>> Baker's team is made up of a few long-time colleagues plus a group of young people from the neighborhood.
Bob Baker>> A lot of people come here -- they don't come here to be a puppeteer. They come here to work and do something and, before long, they're working a puppet. I'd rather teach a puppeteer how to work a puppet than to have one that has had bad training because it's very hard to break the habits that they have with moving the puppets, especially the way we work.
[Film Clip]
Bob Baker>> While we're working the puppet, I'd be moving around like this with the puppet.
Vicki Curry>> The puppet in some ways mirrors what you're doing.
Bob Baker>> Yeah, I move my body with the puppet. Anyway, it helps get the action because they're able to swing out and do various things. It involves acting, body movement, a little bit of drama, a little bit of just personality, also kind of wanting to show off.
[Film Clip]
Vicki Curry>> Bob Baker says he's proud to be teaching something to both the young people he trains and those in his audiences.
Bob Baker>> Most children today are not exposed to a lot of music. They're not exposed to a lot of theater and they bring them in from the schools. They get to see a theater, kind of a miniature theater, in operation with the lights, with the scenery going up and down into the gallery. The puppets, you can feel that something alive is coming through.
[Film Clip]
Bob Baker>> Every time I try to do something else, something brings me back to puppetry. I've never really quit a hundred percent. I won't be sitting in a rocking chair and I won't retire because I don't have a hobby (laughter). I'm hoping that there will be legacy that I can leave, that all the puppets and the theater will be carried on. I have determination that it's going to stay here a long, long time.
[Film Clip]
Val Zavala>> For more information on the puppet theater, you can go to bobbakermarionettes.com. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.
Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.
Sponsored in part by:
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