essaysbysean.blogspot.com
By the time I was leaving elementary school several changes (I forget) had been made to the TV world. Each change had resulted in a journalist writing in the newspaper entertainment section that a new level of quality broadcasting was imminent. I recall cynically telling my teacher for grades six and seven, Mr. Macintyre, that the latest claim would be as false as the others had been. He once told us, sheepishly, that studies showed that people who watched shows of high quality did not buy as many of the products advertised on commercials. This was before PBS.
It was years earlier, during the days of black and white television, that Rod Serling had addressed the quality issue. In our day Serling is best known for creating The Twilight Zone. Earlier, Serling was known for his award-winning teleplays, such as Requiem for a Heavyweight. Back then, for a brief spell, it was possible to give prominence to a screenwriter’s name, as we do today for playwrights. Serling said that teleplays could not approach the quality of stage plays as long as the shows depended on sponsors because the sponsors would never risk controversy.
It’s been years since I heard, “Lassie is brought to you by Campbell’s Soup.” I suppose the sponsor obstacle has since fallen, as have other obstacles, until one might think today that only the “ratings” obstacle remains. One would be wrong. As Shakespeare would say, “The fault is not with our stars but within ourselves.”
Vulnerable
When we undertake to go out to the cinema we undertake to be vulnerable to “the agony and the ecstasy.” But at home we play it safe. There, as the cathode tube glows, we may stir the soup on the stove, pet the dog, and glance at the newspaper headlines… all the while determined not be vulnerable. Instead of pretending we ourselves are in the danger zone, we pretend the action is safely in our living room, like how news from Vietnam was in our living room. If, perchance, a Shakespeare-style show played we would maintain our safety by having a relief valve of commercial breaks and by never having any hushed thoughtful intermission between acts.
Nor is news vulnerable. My dear dad would sit properly in his easy chair with both eyes on Walter Cronkite. Now a news anchor might say, “If you can’t see it…” and describe the scene to viewers who don’t have a grownup attention span.
There was a brief time when society allowed television to be creative, a time when society felt permission for change: the 1960’s. When the A&E channel was first advertising, “TV too good for TV” many of the A&E shows, such as The Avengers, were from that time. A friend tells me the channel has since dropped all their A programming to stick with only the E.
Post 9/11
A show that faces 9/11 with both eyes is Battlestar Galactica. It’s so different… I am reminded of one time years ago, watching a TV docudrama about Albert Speer, when I read aloud a full screen of text, reading it to the young kitchen worker on the couch next to me. I had guessed the text would swiftly vanish. It did. She said, “Thank you, Sean.” The incident has stayed with me not just because she had no ego problems with being read to (unlike the young males I knew then) but because I have never since seen a TV show that so overestimated the reading speed of the average American. Not until now.
The first thing I noticed about Battlestar Galactica was that the orienting text on the screen, such as “City of Caprica” was small and did not linger. The next thing I noticed was that acronyms, such as “an FTL ship,” were used in dialogue without being “spelled out” in full or explained. Would a senior citizen I knew, who happily watched Star Trek, “get” such acronyms? For folks like her, remember, the “teleportation chamber” was simplified into a “transporter room.” Obviously the producer of Galactica, Ronald Moore, has not marketed to the lowest common denominator. Moore has risked letting the audience stretch intellectually …and emotionally.
The average viewer, while stirring his soup, probably couldn’t bear a show where an Israeli prime minister, for the sake of peace, allows a child he has met to die by an imminent Hezbollah rocket attack. Yet on Galactica the Madam President, a schoolteacher, must consider doing such a thing. It’s awfully tense… but great drama. Then the battlestar commander, Adama, must consider whether to blast a radio damaged, quote possibly hijacked unquote, passenger liner heading for headquarters. And Adama’s sensitive son, Lee, is the pilot with his finger on the trigger.
I don’t see a European-style “lack of innocence” in Battlestar Galactica. No, I see an ennobling determination to face reality. I don’t think the rest of bogus TV land will ever aspire to such dramatic quality.
… …
.. …
Sean Crawford
Calgary
Post 9/11
still hearing a lady pilot’s outraged, despairing cry,
“We are at war!”
2006, 2026 Calgary
Footnote: How did a school teacher became president? Easy: Because, like during in our Cold War, a written “line of succession” was established to maintain governmental continuity in the event of a massive attack, resulting in the Minister of Education being next in line.
