CORRESPONDENCE
TV
AND ACTUALITY
SIRS:
Miss Vivienne Koch made several
interesting and valid points in her
"Notes on TV" (PR, Spring 1957 ) .
As a spasmodic "viewer" for the past
two years, I agree with her both about
television's permanence and its fatal
limitations as an "art" form. In many
ways
it
seems like a revival of the art
of the miniature, whether in the small
medieval traveling theaters or in any
other form of shrunken scale. Not only
are attempts at the grandiose such as
Mayerling
sad failures, but the kind
of passable, repertory acting that the
Old Vic offered in
Romeo and Juliet,
good enough in the theater, suffers
acutely from the close scrutiny of the
camera. I was so mesmerized during
that performance by the p eculiar
operations of Claire Bloom's mouth
and jaw that I missed the play. Elo–
cution on TV can pass only
as
elo–
cution or the parody thereof. TV is
merciless with average, large-scale ef–
fects meant for the open theater, for
"projection" into the second balcony.
On the other hand, TV, by ruling
out the kind of elaborate gimmickry
and technical atmospherics that in–
creasingly does duty in the Broadway
theater for good writing and acting,
keeps the human scale. It will probably
always remain a parasite of the the–
ater, as a form of amusement, but it
also puts theater people on their met–
tle. When an artificial style, like that
of the Redgrave production of
She
Stoops to Conquer,
has been perfected
by long practice and is the right style
for the play, TV can faithfully put
it across with considerable effect. And
performers like Noel Coward, Maurice
Chevalier and Victor Borge lose noth–
ing whatever by the diminution and
cold de-glamorizing of TV.
It's possible to blame much of the
vacillation and blunderiig of TV on
the times. As a plaything of big busi-
463
ness, it is certainly one of the major
opiates. Even the firing of such a
dubious genius as Mr. Weaver of
Lucky Strike fame has been something
to regret, resulting in less Goldsmith
and Shaw and more horrible cuteness
of the
Peter Pan
and
Cinderella
var–
iety.
I part company with Miss Koch on
only one point-her definition of ac–
tuality. TV is essentially a retailer of
actuality, like weekly journalism. It is
by nature caustic, reductive, deflation–
ary. You cannot work up the same
enthusiasm for something that comes to
you free that you can for something
that requires money and effort. I
think this applies equally to such great
events as the Hungarian revolt and
the sinking of the
Andrea Doria.
The
finest moment I recall on TV was Mr.
Welch's tearful denunciation of Mc–
Carthy and McCarthy's subsequent
map-lecture on the threat of Commu–
nism in the United States-a piece
of grotesquerie worthy of the greatest
dramatist. This was actual enough,
God wot, but essentially a masterpiece
of deflation, of the reduction of actu–
ality to a human scale. It made a hero
of Mr. Welch and a fool of McCarthy
to a degree that could not have been
imagined beforehand. The fact that
the recent labor hearings have not
been televised shows that the forces
of righteousness are as well aware as
the forces of evil of the hidden dangers
of the medium. What I mean is that
TV cannot be relied on as a faithful
transmitter of actuality in the absolute.
It
is only effective as a kind of re–
duction and dramatic commentary.
Propaganda, technical blandishment
and manipulation of any kind is even
more obvious than usual on television.
This is doubtless the main reason why
TV can have only a very few great
moments, but also why these moments
tend to be unforeseen and accidental.
By the same token, TV can do some–
thing to "redeem" what has often
been called in PR's pages
kitsch
or
Popular Art. I'm sorry that Miss Koch
doesn't seem to take to Jackie Gleason
or TV comedy in general. Gleason now
seems to be played out, but some of
