It is a bright, crisp Midwestern day in 1997, and the small-town parade could be something out of Ronald Reagan's childhood scrapbook. Main Street is lined with townspeople applauding as the baton twirlers, marching bands, basketball squads and quilting clubs make their way past. But the clapping abruptly stops as some bright red banners come into view. Adorning them are the faces of two heroes from history: Abraham Lincoln and Lenin.
This jarring mix of Norman Rockwell and Red Nightmare is one of the more alarming scenes in ABC's upcoming mini-series Amerika. Three years and nearly $40 million in the making, the 14 1/4-hr. epic, which will run for seven installments starting Sunday, Feb. 15, imagines what the U.S. might be like under the domination of the Soviet Union. The fictional takeover has been bloodless (just how it took place is purposely kept hazy), but the consequences are drastic. A puppet President sits in the White House while Soviet officials pull the strings and plot to dismantle the Republic. The economy is such a shambles that people in the once thriving heartland now have to line up for tomatoes. American Gulags have been set up for political opponents, and the countryside is littered with camps of rootless dissidents known as "exiles."
Still two weeks away from its telecast, Amerika has incited what may be the biggest avalanche of protest against any program in TV history. Moscow has denounced it as dangerous propaganda, liberal groups have complained that it will fuel anti-Soviet sentiment, and the United Nations is upset that the movie portrays its troops as ruthless marauders. Critics have raced into print with condemnations of the still unfinished movie, many of them based only on bootleg scripts or a 90-minute presentation tape. Last week the protesters scored a major victory: Chrysler Corp., the show's largest advertiser, announced that it was withdrawing all its commercial spots from the program.
ABC has responded to the furor by agreeing to run a disclaimer at the beginning of each night's program reiterating that the drama is fiction. ABC News is considering airing a special segment of its Viewpoint series to provide a forum for both critics and defenders of the show. But the network has vowed not to cave in to pressure to tone down the controversial movie or cancel it. ABC President John Sias told the New York Times last week, "We're going to run that program come rain, blood or horse manure." Or deadlines: the sprawling project, for which more than 1 million feet of film were shot, is still not done, and 33 editors are working furiously to finish it in time.
The storm over Amerika has all but demolished any chance that the mini- series, when it finally reaches the screen, will be judged on its own merits. Which is too bad, because the segments that have been completed (six hours so far) reveal a far more subtle, challenging and skillfully woven drama than the advance brouhaha would suggest. Its political implications aside, Amerika is the sort of project that network TV seldom tries and even more seldom achieves: a thought-provoking epic.