Can Hollywood Take Over Television?

by GILBERT SELDES

1

IT is not for aesthetic reasons, but for plain profit, that the managers of television should be searching out its prime qualities. They must continue to use it as a transmitter of anything that can be brought before the cameras to entertain people, just as they must continue to show whatever movies are made available; but in the long run a medium of entertainment succeeds by using its particular techniques, by doing what it can do better than any other medium can. The movies proved this when they began to tell their stories not as photographed plays but as something totally new, and radio proved it when it developed its own mixture of vaudeville and personality-shows into the basic comedy pattern, when it struck off into fresh fields and created the daytime serial entirely as radio. The essential nature of television is obscured by the apparently limitless number of things it can do. What is expedient at the moment is useful only because it keeps television forging ahead and gives time for the medium to grow. What is expedient now is, however, fatal if it forces television to grow out of its natural shape.

Radio first imposed its patterns on television, and recently Hollywood has begun to exert its influence. Producers, eager for the accolade of the critics, have already accepted certain cinematic techniques, as, for instance, in the tempo of shifting from one camera to another. The almost undetected rhythm of the movies which appeals to the pulse of the spectator, while the eye and car are held by images and sound, is created by cutting, by the shifts from one angle to another, the insertion of a close-up, the duration of one shot relative to the duration of those that came before and those that follow; and it happens that this ground swell has become standardized in Hollywood so that the rhythm of nearly all pictures—comedy, melodrama, or tragedy—is virtually the same. The public has been conditioned to choppy cutting, and if a shot is held beyond 30 seconds the picture seems odd; foreign pictures, in a different tempo of culting, seem slow-moving. There is no proof that the Hollywood tempo of cutting is right for telling a dramatic story in the medium of television; and the kind of stories Hollywood tolls may not be the kind that television can tell most effectively.

The alert Mr. Goldwyn has discussed in the magazine section of the New York Times the changes the movies must make in themselves if they are to be good television fare. The movies, he said, must go in for a broader style of acting because the subtle and delicate points now brought out on the screen would be lost on the small home receiver. It will not do to inquire what these subtleties are, and it might be noted that a spectator silting within five feet of a 16-inch television screen sees as much as one in the far reaches of a balcony at a big Broadway picture-house. The argument reverses the truth; Mr. Goldwyn is like Mayor La Guardia: when he makes a mistake, it‘s a beaut. The style of acting in television is determined by the conditions of reception; there is simply no place for the florid gesture, the overprojection of emotion, the exaggeration of voice or grimace or movement, inside the average American living room. The television camera is merciless in detecting fraudulent appeals; in a play or a quiz show or a bit of vaudeville, the individual who presses and fakes is instantly shown up. And even an audience fed for years on synthetic and substitute emotions can spot the imposture at close range.

The style of television acting (it could as well be called the level of self-presentation) is determined by a unique capacity of the entire system, from camera through control room to the receiver in the home: the capacity to transmit and deliver a rounded human character more completely than either radio or the movies. This is the source of its special power; this is what. it must exploit to become totally successful. It is not what the movies attempt to do. What the movies do to a novel of character is well known; Mr. Goldwyn suggests that if movies arc to be transmitted into the home, they must pay much more attention to “plot structure.” It is apparently sound advice; it implies that the family group watching television needs to be kept interested. (Mr. Goldwyn’s explanation is also illuminating: at the movies, he says, the patron will sit through a dull part of the feature because it is too much trouble to go out — he waits until the picture becomes interesting again; at home he has only to turn a switch and he escapes boredom. The implication is that the movies hold their audiences in a trap; I cannot accept it.)

In practice, plot development for tho movies is fatally involved with the concept of “the twist.” In the language of the st udios a story is good, but it needs a twist. What‘s wanted is some novelty of plot, some new “angle.” To make The Front Page over with a girl named Hildy Johnson as the reporter instead of a man by I he same name is a tv isl of sorts; to reverse Monsieur Beaucaire and have a barber prelending to be a nobleman is even better. In virtually every case the word is accurate and descriptive because, to accomplish what is desired, either the plot or the character is twisted out of shape; it is not always serious because the material is made and meant to be twisted.

The live pictures which collected the important Academy Awards in 1947 were Gentleman‘s Agreement, A Double Life, The Famer‘s Daughter, Miracle on 34th Street, and The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, not one of which is either important or contemptible: in every one t he twist is palpable. In the course of making even a respectable and faithful adaptation of a novel or play, the Iw ist may appear at intervals: a new character appears or a minor character is changed so that a bit of comedy or an additional charge of excitement is injected; in important deviations from the theme and atmosphere of an original, the twist supplies the motives for violence, for sensation, for the murder and the chase and the jury trial. These elements of thrill, which keep the movie audience reasonably satisfied, must now be multiplied; we must have no quiet moments, because the spectator of television isn’t trapped by people sitting next to him; he can get up and leave—he has only to change to another channel.

That television drama needs careful plotting is true enough; but if we get the twist as standard, if it spreads beyond the mystery drama in which it is natural, television will not only be distorted, it will be stunted. For, going back to its power to convey the fullness and the truth of human beings, it possesses an endless source of material for the drama that rises out of the relation and ihe conflict of character — a source so natural that everyone must respond to it. The plot that develops naturally and logically from character needs no artifice of twisting, because human beings are unpredictable, and it will keep the audience of television contented because “people are interested in people” perhaps even more than in plots.

The character in a movie which is planned for an hour and a half of sensation appears in the trappings of luxury and presents a confused figure, half character and half personality, the product of publicity as much as of the imagination. To project this image, to keep it constantly in motion that attracts the eye, all sorts of twists may be necessary. The drama on television is carried into the home, where the whole fabrication of glamour and personality is out of place because these are public attributes and television is fundamentally private. There is sensation enough, but it is of a different kind; it is that “shock of recognition” that comes to us when we encounter our fellow beings in moments of stress and revelation, when they are being frankly and completely themselves.

That is the atmosphere in which television lives; within its incomparable mechanical illusion, it is incomparably the conveyer of truth. No high degree of sophistication is needed to spot and discard what is false, but perhaps some innocence of the spirit is needed; perhaps the audience for whom television is being prepared has been so steeped in the corruptions of movie-fiction that it will, for some time to come, accept base metal for genuine. But if the creators of television in the East do not fall under the movie spell, if they keep flowing across the little screen something that is natural and true, the audience will at least have a standard of comparison. And — more pressing at this moment — the radio managers who now have their investment jeopardized will be creating a kind of television that will fend off the incursions of Hollywood, a television they can afford to produce over many years, until the movies reluctantly learn that their twisted plots and trills for adolescents will not capture the great audience at home any more than they captured and held the adult audiences in the movie theaters.

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NINE TENTHS of what one set’s in television today is aimed at the drifting movie audience. But even within that limitation, the extraordinary power of the medium asserts itself. The programs that have impressed people (outside of sports and special events and Hopalong Cassidy) have again and again been triumphs of character. I have noted that all the serials based on the radio formula of artificial characters in unbelievable adventures have failed while pure character-comedy has succeeded with The Goldbergs, Mama, and their imitators. W ith no admiration for ihe techniques of Milton Berio, 1 perceive his attraction, because in his way he presents the unvarnished, the aggressively brash trulh about one human being, himself, subordinating to it the other elements of entertainment his vaudeville should supply. It took longer for a milder and more intricate personality to arrive, but Dave Ciarroway illustrates the same golden rule: that what a person is counts inordinately. The puppets in Kukla, Fran and Ollie are characters, and all the ingenuity of rival groups cannot shake the special hold on the audience of these character-puppets.

Even the extravagances of the personality program, the exploitation of handsome women with a lot of friends who “drop in,” testify to the essential soundness of building programs around w hat people are, more than around what they do.

The dramatic series, particularly on CBS and NBC, vary from good television to feeble imitations of the movies, but the best individual programs, those approaching closest to what television can accomplish, have been consistently well received; and, at the other extreme, those commercial announcements which have tried manfully to catch the accent of true character have also been successful. It is too early to make assumptions about popular taste, but the significant minimum of hope remains — good television has not been driven out by bad.

I repeat that this is important to the managers of the business because their situation is serious. They have already lowered the standards of radio broadcasting perceptibly, and the temptation to do anything that makes money in television is understandable. It is gratifying that those programs which rise above the expected level have held their own, because a persistent loyal adherence to sound principles now will give television a chance to develop normally, not merely as a supplanter of radio but as a going concern, a genuinely popular entertainment.

The public interest is greater still. Television can drain off all that is popular in both radio and the movies, the trivial and the important all at the same time. If it becomes the medium for mass entertainment only, as that is now conceived, radio and the movies may survive as substantial elements, radio living on its daytime and other special services, the movies attracting the vast audience that mass television will not permanently hold.

The danger is that neither of the older entertainments will survive a long period of reorientation, that radio will become insignificant and the movies will become feeders for television. If this happens before television itself discovers the range and diversity of an art that is both popular and democratic, the effect will be disastrous. All the pressure is in that direction, and the good omen I have emphasized — that interesting and experimental work in television has captured both sponsors and public approval — is in itself not enough. Some form of public counterpressure is needed. It is justifiable because of the dual nature of television, its function as a means of communication and its function as a medium of entertainment. In radio, entertainment has invaded communications. The early Winchell combined both functions — his “feuds” with Ben Bernic and his gossip were important elements in his popularity; the Hollywood gossips with their guests still straddle both fields; (he egregious John B. Kennedy, who makes cheap join’s about world affairs, is the worst of the metropolitan instances.

That television news and analysis may drop even lower in the scale has been foreseen. In a sober memorandum Edward R. Murrow has looked into the possibility that a man with a face and voice and personality peculiarly suited to the medium of television may become a national sensation without competence to assay the news and with no sense of responsibility to the audience. The abuse of confidence by bearing false witness will be all the more serious if the channels of information become limited, as they will if radio dies out and television remains expensive. The pull toward the truth will, however, be powerful, for the nature of television itself favors a certain honesty.

The sense of existing in the present which distinguishes radio from the movies is even more strongly felt in television. This, we feel, is happening now, it is the real thing, it is the truth. On that quick, instinctive response from the audience, a good director in television will base his entire style, the rhythm of movement, the frequency of close-up shots, the intensity of facial expression, the level of the projection for the voice; on it the sponsor will build his advertising, the balancing of adjectives and proof, the incidence of slogans, the substitution of the handshake for the hammer blow of radio. Nothing essential is foreign to this concept of television; so long as we feel that we are in the presence of something truly created, we shall accept fantasy as soon as we accept fact; we shall understand Macbeth and Private Lives and Alice in Wonderland. We need these characters presented boldly, with emphasis, without counterfeit emotions.

The golden opportunity of television is in the hands of the people as much as it is in the hands of the producers of programs. For every hour the individual citizen gives to television, the producers owe him diversion, entertainment, enlightenment. Only the individual can decide whether he is being sufficiently repaid for the time he gives.

In television the arts of entertainment and communication both reach their highest point; for all practical purposes, presentation is complete: we have sight and sound and immediacy; color is coming, and three-dimensional presence is not impossible. In a staggered and illogical way, we have approached a sort of Platonic ideal of communication. And the probability that this undreamed-of technically perfectible instrument should be put to the service of base and mean purposes is enough to make us question everything we have done in the past to make the popular arts serve the people.