theater versus the
imitation
of life
of the cinema. The margin for
spontaneity allowed by an assem–
bly-line script fortified by a bat–
tery of cranes, dollys and cameras
that are television equipment
rather than motion picture equip–
ment is something I leave to the
experts in
Variety
to elucidate.
What can be said, and with
some emphasis, is that up to
this
time the material that seems best
to lend itself to effective and
memorable communication on tel–
evision is actuality. It does not
seem to me entirely accidental
that one of the few television plays
which has come through with re–
spectable dramatic impact was "A
Night to Remember," in which
the story of the SS
Titanic
was
re-presented "live" by a cunning
(and expensive) actuality tech–
nique. The
simulation
of the ac–
tual and the immediate created its
emotional charge. Would the
ef–
fect have been impaired
if
the
play had been filmed? Some of
the performers seem to think so.
The actor who played the lax tele–
grapher told me that the fear of
forgetting one's lines, or making
a single slip in gesture or move–
ment is so powerful that it forces
a kind of do-or-die intensity not
present when a shot can be taken
and re-taken at will. But this is
subjective testimony and as yet
open to considerable disagreement.
Why not more filmed programs
if
the quality is superior to live
315
ones? In the realm of the arts the
advantages seem persuasive, at
least with the present technical
limitations of television.
Meanwhile, what is left of that
enrichment and extension of our
knowledge that the great pioneers
of television like Dr. Vladimir
Zworykin saw as the true func–
tion of this as yet degraded medi–
urn? The tedious insistence in the
trade on the "entertainment"
function of television, as if it were
a primal ordinance from above,
is so infectious that even so-called
"educational" television is smitten
with a sense of guilt
if
it fails to
entertain. Witness some of the
more lugubrious efforts of
Omni–
bus
to make education "entertain–
ing," as in its capsule tranquillizer,
this
autumn, on the state of the
American university as represented
by Harvard.
To answer my own question,
what is left that is positive is a
good deal but not enough. There
By LEWIS MUMFORD
A Study in American
Literature and Culture
"The best book about
America, if not the
best American book,
that I have read."
George Santayana
Paperback $1.45
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