Cavell - The Fact of Television PDF

The Fact of Television Author(s): Stanley Cavell Source: Daedalus, Vol. 111, No.
4, Print Culture and Video Culture (Fall, 1982), pp. 75-96 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024818 . Accessed: 31/10/2013 13:45
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STANLEY CAVELL
The Fact of Television
Of
there are interesting facts about television, facts about its technolo structure of the about the economic the about gy, history of its programs, networks that produce it.Most of these facts I do not know, but I think I know what it would be like to learn them, and to start to learn what they add up to. Imean to call attention to something else, By speaking of the fact of television, same in I do not, the way, think I know how to learn more about, something is at like the sheer fact that television exists, and that this existence something once among the most obvious and the most mysterious facts of contemporary is that television has conquered, like the electric light, or life. Its obviousness or the Its mystery is twofold: first, how it has the automobile, telephone. we (we, for how and second, example, who write for and read conquered; course in accounting for its remained apparently largely uninterested or to a to I wish it has (What leave, make, conquered, conquering. question, as a form of or mass, it conquered Has part of the mystery. popular, as to what? And what to entertainment? the forms Popular opposed happened over which television triumphed?) comes to a twofold I begin, The twofold mystery assumption, with which that there is something yet to be understood both in interest the concerning is television and the refusal of interest in it. The latter half of the assumption in kind that the absence of critical or intellectual attention to television?both as a not satisfactorily understandable lack of and extent?is straightforward interest, as if the medium were inherently boring. Individual intellectuals will, of course, straightforwardly find no interest there, as they may not in film. But seems to me more or studied, the absence of interest in the medium complete, for by the accidents of taste. That the absence is not than can be accounted is epitomized, I think, in the familiar disapproval accidental or straightforward in certain educated circles. Members evinced toward television of these circles would apparently prefer not to permit a TV set in the house; but if unable to hold to this pure line, they sternly limit the amount of time the children may turn been breached, and the watch, regardless of the content. If this line has in at home or at a choice is between the kids watch letting neighbor's house, they are apt to speak at any rate their and their awkwardly?about guiltily?or of As in its if children's other intellectuals reaction, programs. knowledge brazen out a preference for commercial over public television. have 75
Daedalus)
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Such behavior I have suggests to my mind a fear of television for which Sometimes I heard no credible explanation. suppose, that people say, loosely television is addictive. And of course itwould be a plausible explanation of both television's attraction and its repulsion if it were credible to attribute addictive powers to it, to believe quite literally that the tube is not only in the service of boobs, but that it turns otherwise useful citizens into boobs. (Iwill cite such a view toward the end of these remarks.) But I have no acquaintance with anyone as if it were treats television in all seriousness who the equivalent of, say, a more no of heroin. Even if marijuana level adult fear, analogous presented even on a it available to their children, worried about its effects would make were strictly limited basis, unless perhaps they already dealing with addiction. Nor does the disapproval of television seem to me very close to the disapproval of comic books by an earlier generation of parents, described so well by Robert in "Paul, the Horror and Dr. Wertham."1 Warshow Like any Comics, concerned parent who wants to provide his or her children with the pleasures of how exacting those pleasures are to and who does not underestimate cultivation, was as and dismissed command, Warshow investigated worried?having to that comics incited then claim the fashionable their readers groundless violence?about the sheer time comics seems to steal from better things. But he decided that his son's absorption would pass and that less harm would be done I sense from the it out than by prohibiting it. The difference by waiting was not a that Warshow be himself of television may tempted by disapproval so to in that he had comic firsthand that absorb himself evidence books, craving whereas adults today may would die naturally, have no the absorption own own of from their evidence their television, experience fearing analogous Or is there some surmise about the nature of the pleasure addictiveness. television provides that sets off disapproval of it, perhaps like surmises that once If this were caused the disapproval of novel-reading or, later, of movie-viewing? to vanish when television comes of the case, one might expect the disapproval to match that of the great its programs achieve an artistic maturity age, when Is this a reasonable faith? novels and movies. I have been among those who have felt that television cannot have Certainly come of age, that the medium must have more in it than what has so far been I have felt, at the same time, that so much money and talent have shown. True, it could hardly lavished on it, that if there is anything more in the medium, one of two conclusions may be From this thought, escaped discovery. and that the medium drawn: that there is indeed nothing more to be discovered in a discussion is accordingly one of poverty and boredom (I once found myself no more amedium of art that television is of these matters impatiently observing the telegraph, or the telescope); or, since this is not quite than the telephone, but rather in our that the discoveries, credible, poverty lies not in the medium's been have understanding
medium is for,
of these discoveries,
what constitutes
in our
failure
and its
as yet
treasures.
to grasp what
the
its powers
to on what Since I am inclined to the latter of these conclusions, speculate a better route of understanding what I is conceive task here constitute my might to be (together with some speculation about what kind of issue "the understand a medium" of both that I accept the condition is). This means ing of come that has of these that television conclusions, this, age, programs, namely
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can appear to be their poverty, or less as iswhat there they stand, inwhat we For suppose is to understand. agree that television's first major accomplish can be dated no later than 1953, the time of the coverage of the first ments In that case, it has had thirty years inwhich to show Eisenhower Inauguration. itself. If Griffith's major films around 1915 are taken to date the birth of film as a of of art, then it took only ten more years to reach the masterpieces medium over the next fifteen years, America, to go no further, and and Keaton; Chaplin a momentum in producing definitive movies?movies that are now established art museum of of film of the theaters, programs, among permanent pleasures was essentially slowed (or so studies programs, and of late night television?that the story goes) only with the help of the rising television industry. One of our should be: Did television give back as good as it took away? questions of art further specifies of television as a mature medium The acceptance fact in calling my here the television. A further I mean of what subject or of limitation of this characterization, my subject, is that I am consequence to discuss the progress and results of experimental not undertaking video artists. in what might be called "the This is not meant to imply that I am uninterested medium of video." On the contrary, itwould be a way of describing my motive I here as an interest in what television, as it stands, reveals about this medium. a to assume that this description do not mean of assured captures topic or fruitfulness. I do hope, rather, that it is one way of picking up significance more the supposed general influence the subject of this issue of Daedalus, concerning the influence of print. In of video on our culture at large, on a par with I will I take my bearings from some thoughts developing my contribution, in speculating of film in The World Viewed.2 about the medium worked with That book also addresses what I am calling the nature of the medium, by asking
what the traditional masterpieces, or successes, among movies reveal it to be,
especially book that major revealed. (This Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage3 found that book in part because he cannot believe that and sometimes preposterous, pretentious or even the best of Hollywood films are as self-reflective, intelligent, about their source in the medium in a sense, less explicit?as of film?if, is the work of artists" like Godard and Antonioni. "modernist self-referential is a Hollywood to cause to of whose function is that locale, part imagine people they mythical like America.) know it without having taken its works seriously, An immediate difference presents itself between television and film. To say reveal the medium of film is to say that this that masterpieces among movies revelation is the business of individual works, and that these works have a status to traditional works of art: they last beyond their immediate analogous rewards bear under occasions; their up repeated viewings; they lend themselves to the same pitch of critical scrutiny as do any of the works we care about most is seriously. This seems not to be true of individual works of television. What is not primarily the individual work, but memorable, treasurable, criticizable, the program, the format, not this or that day of "I Love Lucy," but the program as such. I say this "seems" to me to be so, and what I will have to say here on its so. But my experience of television ismuch more limited depends being
not
what
it to be. It is a guiding thesis ofthat experimental films are those in which the medium ismost richly or deeply A reviewer of my recently published remains controversial. work finds
78 than my
STANLEY
CAVELL
radio, so my views about the experience of movies and of pretelevision of television's works be unreliable. Still, I think that may treasuring especially who as I have have been the of television people puzzled by phenomenon more to some if been?evidenced of so, it, than by being grateful, grudgingly familiar aesthetic concepts will explain?must have had the commonly thought, or intuition, that its value is a function of its rule of format. My speculations to test how far one would have like experiments here are intended as something to go to follow this intuition, with reasonable intellectual satisfaction, through we know as television. the aesthetic range of the phenomenon I have begun by citing grounds on which to deny that the evanescence of the instance, of the individual work, in itself shows that television has not yet come of age aesthetically. (Even were it to prove true that certain television works yet
to be made become treasured instances, as instances, such as the annual running
serves to prove my case, since this is not an object made by and for television?my topic here remains television as it stands in our lives now.) But movies also, at least some movies, maybe most, used to exist in that resembles this condition of evanescence, in viewable something only as certain places at certain times, discussable occasions for sociable solely of The Wizard of Oz?which
exchange, almost never seen more than once, and then more or less forgotten.
this is still the fate of film. (It is still for most people, perhaps true some that also accordingly people, perhaps still most, would take it as true of movies that individual works do not bear up under repetition and criticism. That this is a possible way to take film, Iwas just asserting, and Iwas implying that it is also partial. I will give a name to this way of taking it presently.) But from the beginning of the art of film, there have been those who have known that there was more to movies, more to think about, to experience, in their instances, than met the habitual eye. In recent years, this thought is ordinary as common, common as I believe, becoming increasingly (though not at all coasts and in certain other enclaves certain people living on the East and West as I have indicated, my few imagine); whereas, impression is that comparatively an aesthetic in maintain the interest of network A television. people products or writer like Leslie Fiedler asserts a brazen interest in network television, a source it is interest. But he insists that the of his interest lies perhaps sterling so to a relief in television's not producing art, in its providing, precisely speak, from art. And then again, it seems to me that he has said the same thing about someone all all American movies. And if did movies, movies, anyway appear to For many, is it he or she is interest, my question would persist: What in? this interest taking A further caution?as it were, a technological caution?also the conditions remarks to follow. If the increasing distribution of vid?ocassettes and disks goes so far as to make the as much a part of the present history of film experience of as arts film is part of their present?hence, in this the history of the other dimension, brings film into the condition of art?it will make less respectable the assumption of the evanescence of the individual movie, its exhaustion under or or rather, itwill make this one casual always viewing, viewings; assumption not inevitable. the product of historical conditions, itself evanescent, evidently of vid?ocassette At the same time, if the distribution recorders and cable to the size of the distribution television increases, as appears to be happening, of take the different
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it, this will make problematic itself, or to a size capable of challenging as amedium of to exist primarily television will continue whether broadcasting. that such developments will actually I am not so much interested in predicting come to establish themselves as I am inmaking conceptual room for understand of such developments. ing the aesthetic possibilities is not the To say that the primary object of aesthetic interest in television is to say that the format is its primary individual piece, but the format, recharacterization is meant to individual of aesthetic interest. This ontological television out that the relation between format and instance should be of essential bring that aesthetic concern. There are two classical concepts in talking about movies of the thing I am calling a format, as it were, an artistic fit the requirements kind: the concepts of the serial and of the genre. The units of a serial are a genre its members. A familiarly called its episodes; I will call the units of some me seems to is for worth works that thesis it reason, television, exploring to a to a serial-episode than rather according principle aesthetically according are these principles? principle. What genre-member I mean by In traditional terms, they would not be apt to invoke what is traditionally called a genre film is a different principles of composition. What movie than the in a group of films is no more problematic membership a serial in one of its episodes. You can, for of example, roughly exemplification or gangster film, or horror film, or or see that a movie is aWestern, prison film, "woman's film," or a screwball comedy. Call this way of thinking about genre, to In contrast, in Pursuits ofHappiness, the way I found Iwanted genre-as-cycle. I in what call of the of genre Hollywood comedy defining remarriage, I speak whose
will
call genre-as-medium. the notion of a Because I feel rather backed into the necessity of considering over in the I reader's of feel need forbearance the next half genre, especially It seems that the notion of a genre has lately been dozen or so paragraphs. receiving renewed attention from literary theorists, but the recent pieces of too I have started to look at on the subject (so far, I realize, writing a sense of dissatisfaction with other on with all begin unsystematically) writing the subject, either with the way the notion has so far been defined, or with the it has been put, or both. I am not interested here in confusion of uses to which an argument but rather in a sketching the paths of two (related) ideas of joining to terms seem me an to to with it what be is interest in certain genre; coming in approaching the notion of a genre. In Pursuits of natural confusions Happiness I was so as I know, of the certain individual discussion far works, which, letting had never been put together as a group, lead me, or push me, into sketching a went no further with it than the concrete motivations in theory of genre, and I me to demand. With to in seemed in individual works the that mind, reading on the contrary, with certain intuitions concern present essay I am beginning, ing what the general aesthetic powers of video turn upon, and I am hoping to these powers from the similar, hence different, get far enough in abstracting a to test these intuitions in concrete cases. (I to in of film, powers get position two of the books I have been most helped by mention that may, however, just are A Natural The Todorov's Frye's Perspective* and Tzvetan Northrop Fantastic.5)
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Before going on to give my understanding of the contrasting notions of a to my First, if genre, I should perhaps anticipate two objections terminology. use of the word there is an established, conventional if and this fits "genre," not use some what I am calling genre-as-cycle, the word and why keep simple other simple word to name the further kind of kind I am thinking of, the kind I am not just call the further kind a set or a group calling genre-as-medium?why or a film is thought of as a medium since itself Second, (for example, of pride? a insist on using the same word to characterize art), why gathering of works within that medium? As to this second objection, this double range of the is deployed familiarly in the visual arts, in which painting concept of a medium is said to be amedium (of art, in contrast, say, to sculpture or to music?hardly, one would think, the same contrast), and in which (of gouache is also amedium or oil or contrast to water in color painting, tempera). I wish to preserve, and make more explicit?or curious?this double range in order to keep open to work and medium the relation between that I call the revelation, investigation or one in the other. In my to of the experience, acknowledgment, keep this open to think of a above the means, all, resisting (by understanding) temptation as a familiar material as if medium (for instance, sound, color, words), simply rather than one of a number of ways of this were an unprejudicial observation a and recognizing instead that only the art can taking the material of medium, can reveal and and define its media, only painting composing movie-making or what what is required, of for (what means, material), possible exploits a amovie. As to the first a something to be painting, piece of music, objection? or my use of "genre" in naming both of what I claim are different principles to true is release something in both of composition?my purpose procedures uses of the word (in both, there is a process of generating in question), and to
leave open to investigation what the relation between these processes may be.
I think, for example, that it is easier The difference may be consequential. or as entertainments understand movies as some familiar kind of commodity
you take them as participating not in a genre-as-medium but in genres-as-cycles,
to if
or if you focus on those movies that do in genres remainder, participate, without as members so conceived. Movies name of of of is the thought genres-as-cycles as evanescent. The the way of taking them that I earlier characterized simplest to be signaled by titles such as The Son examples of such cycles used ofX, The Curse ofX, X Meets Dracula, and so on. Our sophistication today requires that we It is part of call such sequels X II, X III, and so on, like Super Bowls. that certain be better than deviousness their sequels may Hollywood's originals, or Fritz as Lang's The Return of Frank James. perhaps The Bride of Frankenstein is, before going on to consider the thesis Still another word about terminology, a to rather than a genre-member that television works according serial-episode term In picking up the old movie "serial" to mark the contrast in principle. I am assuming that what used to be called serials on film bears some question, internal relation to what are called series on television. But what I am interested in considering here is the idea of serialization generally, wishing again to leave open what the relations are between serials and series (as I wish to leave open, in classical novels, of serialization in photo hence to recall, the occurrence in in in comic One find that the closest music, strips). might paintings, graphs, on television to the movie serial is the since this shares soap opera, equivalent
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linked by crises. the feature of more or less endless narration across episodes, a little my in thesis about serialization in going on now to consider recurrences am that the and of intuition I television, repetitions exploring my those of series, in which the relation with soap operas bear a significant narrative comes to a classical ending each time, and indeed that these repetitions and recurrences are modes of a requirement that the medium of television exacts in all its formats. A program such as "Hill Street Blues" seems to be questioning the feature of a series that demands a classical ending for each instance, hence or between the distinction soap opera and series. Similarly, questioning Star Wars of movies and The instanced the sequence by projected oppositely, seems to be questioning the distinction between a serial and a Empire Strikes Back the demand of a serial (a narrative that continues over an cycle by questioning indefinite number of episodes) not to come to a classical ending before the final closer in structure to literary forms episode. This would bring the sequence such as (depending on individual taste) the King Arthur legends, the Shake or Tolkien's a Lord of the in Lamb-like speare Henry retelling), plays (perhaps But Rings trilogy. I am here A genre, as I use the notion in Pursuits ofHappiness, and which to two basic "laws" (or "princi behaves according calling genre-as-medium, a genre is constituted one internal, the other external. Internally, by ples"), can that share it be what which said about members, you might picture as they In practice, this means that, where a given member every feature in common. as it must, for this divergence. from the rest, it must "compensate" diverges, or as new members definition redefinition continuous The genre undergoes a new introduce genre is distinguished Externally, points of compensation. in particular from what I call "adjacent" genres, when one from other genres, a feature shared of feature shared by its members "negates" by the members a a If feature of another. Here, genre will develop new lines of refinement. genres form a system (which is part of the faith that for me keeps alive an seem it would then in principle interest in the concept), possible to be able to move one genre through adjacent genres, until all the genres by negation from of film are derived. Hitchcock's corpus provides convenient examples: his North an shares indefinitely long list of features with remarriage by Northwest to comedies, which my work on the subject, that it is about implies, according In this film, as in other adventures, by Hitchcock the legitimizing of marriage. and by others, legitimacy is conferred by a pair's survival together of a nation as can further be understood the negating saving adventure.6 But that film woman to to which has the feature of the remarriage genre according undergo as in in Hitchcock, this happens like death and revival. When something causes it film immediately preceding North byNorthwest, Vertigo, the Hitchcock man who it is the death revival In Northwest and North by undergoes catastrophe. (and for a reason, I claim, having to do with the structure of the remarriage for the form). A dozen years earlier, in Notorious, Hitchcock compensates feature of the woman's death and revival (hence, maintaining the happiness of a that her death and revival are not the remarriage ending) by emphasizing condition of the man's loving her, but the effect of his failure to acknowledge her (as happens, seminally, according to my discussion of the genre, in The Winter's Tale).
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and negation are meant to specify the idea The operations of compensation to what I take to be the structuralist of a genre inPursuits of Happiness, in contrast idea of a genre as a form characterized by features, as an object is characterized an idea that seems to me to underlay, for by its properties, example, Todorov's work on the fantastic tale.
An alternative idea ... is that the members and such a subjects genre share the inheritance genre of and that goals composition, a of these conditions, represents study and of a of in
certain primary
conditions, procedures art each member of
something I think of as bearing the responsibility of the inheritance. There this picture, nothing one is tempted to call the features of a genre which
have in common (p. 28).
is, on all its
members
and negation are not invoked either in genre Such operations as compensation or in So I am saying that they are made by as-cycle serial-episode procedure. to the in genre-as-medium. But in neither serialization as opposed generation sense of genre are the members of a genre episodes of a continuing story or to get a situation or setting. It is not the same narrative matter for Frankenstein bride as for Rhoda (in a popular television series of a few years ago bearing her name) to get a husband. The former is a drama on its own; the latter serves a a before and after. history, I wish to capture what seems to In speaking of a procedure of serialization, are called narrative "formulas." When me in of what theorists the intuition right are of of of structural or formal matters "formulas" speak composition, they or in I of of which believe, construction, serial-episode genre-as-cycle thinking, of the format, as each solution of an each instance is a perfect exemplification or each step in a mathematical instance of the series, is a perfect equation, formula that "generates" it. The instances do not compete with one another for nor comment upon one another for mutual revelation; depth of participation, an instance "belongs" to the formula is as settled by the formula as and whether untest is the identity of the instance. (Such remarks are really recipes?most a formula would count as for what would look like; hence, ed?for what context. I am taking it that no item of plot need be common "generation" in this to all the episodes of, say, "Rhoda" so that the formula that does the generating the continuing is sufficiently and their characters specified by designating recurrent traits are relations with one another [characters and relations whose is the situation in the situation in definite ways]. This themselves specifiable the formula of of the situation would constitute comedy. A certain description the comedy. Then the substitution of the unknown new element to initiate the can be any event that alters the situation the element of difference, generation, a rash; her sister is being followed by the office comically?Rhoda develops has mother's first her lothario; just showed up; and so on. A boyfriend amount of talent is all it takes to write out the results of the generation mean a much of course does not necessarily salably; competently?which to invent the characters and relations, and cast them, in is order required higher to be funny.) such a way as to allow new generations readily and consistently none of this is so. In what I call the genre of in genre-as-medium Whereas or absence of even the title feature of the genre remarriage comedy, the presence does not insure that an instance does or does not belong to the genre. Belonging minimum
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has to be won, earned, as by an argument of the members with one another; as irrelevant to the existence of something adjacency of genre must be proved, no issue of the definition and refinement a raise further, which, series, multiple
genre undergoes. ("Belonging has to be won, as by an argument. ..." Here is
In their allegory of the relation of the principal pair in such comedies. the pair are forever taking each other by surprise, adventures of conversation, forever interesting each other anew. To dream up these surprises and interests in its degree of demands an exercise of talent that differs not only, or primarily, a series, but in with I connection from the energy energies imagine developing differs in its order of deployment: here, the initiating idea is next to nothing is what one would expect compared with the details of the working out, which where the rule of format is, so to speak, overthrown. Here, what you might call in Pursuits of Happiness I call the myth, is itself under the formula, or what or the instances.) by investigation, generation, What difference does any of this make? I expect no simple or direct answer to the question of the difference between generation and serialization. Perhaps name incompatible ways of looking at human activities generally, or texts. they for example, that a series and its formulas specify the It might be thought,
construction of the popular arts, whereas genre-as-medium and its arguments
an
of the higher arts. John G. Cawelti's Adventure, specify the construction Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture7 perhaps suggests and Romance: Mystery, this. Charles Rosen's The Classical Style8 states a related distinction within high or between the great and the mediocre, the original and the art, between of the classical tale academic. Vladimir Propp's fairy analysis virtually declares that you would not expect a sophisticated work of art to obey formulas in that transfers the question: What is "that way"? way.9 But this merely or automati One wants to answer by saying something like, "Mechanically to this But is maybe cally (or formulaically?)." specific fairy tales, not to all and red-figure vase paintings forms you might call popular. Are black-figure are they less than high art? American less formulaic? And quilts of the are not nineteenth less the of effect certain of them formulaic, yet century surely not unlike the directness of certain nonobjective is breathtaking, paintings. Like think of certain works of those paintings (I Rothko, Louis, Noland, Olitski, Stella), these examples exist essentially as items of a series. It would follow that a serial in a series, of being composed the concept of existence according to not does from distinguish episode principle, popular high arts, only if, for as one such instance, accepts painting high art, something not everyone does. it would follow only if the concept of a series in painting And (or quilts) captures the same thought as the concept of a serial in film and a series in a formulaic is one of establishing television. So far as the thought relation a seems in at between the relation between series instances, paintings certainly as the relation of to one least as strong (as, so to speak, mechanical) episodes seems too strong to another. In fact, the relation between the paintings yield or determined, works of art: here, the instances seem purely generated, by a can format with finite features, each of which be specified and varied to yield new items. (I think here of Stella's Z-forms, or Noland's Chevrons or Ribbons, or Louis's Unfurleds.) The relation between members is exhaustively constitut as if to illustrate a ed, one may say, by their mutual differences, linguist's vision,
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or that of the more advanced of today's textualists, to which according language, or and hence whatever is and meaning, constituted not by art, replaces precedes or containing meaning, but by the weave of the signs (inherently) possessing relation of difference features). among them (say their synthesis of distinctive But at the same time, the idea of the series can be taken to dispute the linguistic or textualist to difference, even since this appeal generally accompanies, appeal a claim that the sensuous are of the themselves properties signs grounds, What in series is rather the absolute ^?arbitrariness argues arbitrary. painting of format, because the artistic discovery is precisely that this synthesis of features generates itself as a proposal of instances, each of which maintains like an empirical discovery beauty. The achievement may be felt as something of the a priori?not unlike a certain aspiration of philosophy. (The implications of the fact of series for modern painting's disputing of received ideas of craft and and its proposal of surprising consequences for thinking style and medium, and photography, is the subject of a pivotal about the relation of painting in The World Viewed.) Painting," chapter, "Excursus: Some Modern over Another home of the idea of the formulaic is jazz, whose improvisations most of its history are explicitly made possible by shared formulas, say of riff in improvisation But the role of the formulaic and progression. is familiar in other regions of music in other arenas of performance?in (say, improvising in other recitations cadenzas), (say, the singing of epics), and in other theater When Commedia dell'Arte). people say they miss television as itwas when (say, what is the sense of the improvisa it was produced live, they may be missing on television is an role of it be that the diminished And may tory. improvisation instance of a familiar process in certain phases of the history of performance, is progressively the scope of improvisation in favor, diminished during which it is no longer open to the for example, let us say, of the literary; in which, or to work out his or her own cadenza, for performer to fill in the continuo part in these are instead written out, fixed. Yet room remains for the improvisatory which I will after about what television's formats, saying something specify those formats are, or are of. I note here that the idea of improvisation has of with the idea In associations serialization. movie and internal, opposite,
serials and in soap operas, the sense of suspense turns on the necessity for
as well as of as plot?humanity expressed by the improvisation, as as to much the and the readiness power and the power improvise, by readiness to endure. The issue is how the hero and heroine can survive this, this can get themselves out. The issue has precipice; how the authors unprecedented It may be this connection of emotional and intellectual. its comic equivalents, that links serialization with the idea or the fact serialization with improvisation in music and in painting are as if serialization of the popular. Contrariwise, as if to prove that necessities to a minimum, can made to reduce improvisation as are as can in their that beautiful be found consequences prove contingencies
to be.
of manner
The point of going get at television's way can see something one an interest invited by
of two modes of composition was to into the distinction of revealing its medium; it represents an effort to get at as the aesthetic interest of television. That there is such it, related to, but different from, an interest in what we
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and that this interest is still its sociology, and its psychology, call its economy, to an insufficiently contributes understood?which developed insufficiently the way I am taking the issue of this television?is critical tradition concerning Imay make to it is issue of Daedalus. It is the point from which any contribution to to If it sensible locate television's interest in a aesthetic proves apt proceed.
serial-episode mode of composition, as contrasted with a genre-member mode,
then an investigation of the fact of television ought to contribute to understand two principles of aesthetic composition. ing why there should be I have said they are principles of is the revelation (I habitually call this What I specify this revelation in The of an artistic medium. the acknowledgment) World Viewed, by way of articulating what I call there "the material basis" of I propose to continue here to be guided by such an idea, I do not film. While mean just to assume that this idea makes good sense. I claim at most merely that what I am saying here makes sense //the procedures of The World Viewed make sense. This is far from certain, but there ismore evidence of their working out there than anything I can provide here. a About halfway summary through The World Viewed, I give provisional, from which there would of the material basis of movies, characterization apart on a delimited two-dimensional be nothing to call amovie, just as without color a a succession to call would be there support nothing painting; I call the basis of automatic world projections.10 To capture my intuition of the comparable material I begin by recurring to the one of television, basis of the (aesthetic) medium remark about television that crops up in The World Viewed. The moment is one at which I am at pains to distinguish in relation to the fact of the fact of movies theater, on the blatant ground that in a theater the actors appear in person and in a film they do not. I quote a response Andr? Bazin gives to this blatant one in which he downplays the difference in question, denying that ground,11 "the screen is incapable of putting us lin the presence of the actor": Bazin wishes to say that it relays the actors presence to us as by mirrors. My response is to note that Bazin's idea here really fits the fact of live television, in which with its what we are presented with is happening simultaneously presentation. This remains reasonably blatant, anyway unsurprising. What surprised me was on to object: "But in live television what is present to us to find myself going is not the world, but an event standing out from the world. while it is happening Its point is not to reveal, but to cover (as with a gun), to keep something on view" (p. 26). Taking this tip, Iwill characterize the material basis of television as a current event reception. This is how I am conceiving of the aesthetic fact of simultaneous of the ideas of a current and of television that I propose to begin portraying. Why in of of fit here the ideas succession and of the automatic, and why simultaneity place that of event than of world, and why reception than projection, are not matters in advance of the investigation of each of these concepts. The mode of decidable that I claim is called upon by film's material basis is what I call perception I wish to think about in connection with The mode of perception viewing. cause for this choice, television's material basis is that of monitoring. The seems to in material be that, television's basis, I have not initially, characterizing as to transmission essential this would I am not included be because it; as essential to the work of television. In that case, the regarding broadcasting
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sets, or visual fields, in our houses, for our private lives, are to be mysterious seen not as receivers, but as monitors. of My claim about the aesthetic medium television can now be put this way: its successful formats are to be understood as revelations of the conditions of and by means (acknowledgments) monitoring, of a serial-episode to of which is say, by means of an procedure composition, aesthetic procedure in which the basis of a medium is acknowledged primarily by the format rather than primarily by its instantiations. What are the formats, or serializations, of television? Imean to be referring to obvious: sitcoms, game shows, grossly things perfectly, sports, cultural coverage
weather
(concerts,
reports,
opera, ballet,
specials,
etc.),
and
talk shows,
so on.
speeches
and lectures, news,
movies,
A notable feature of this list is the amount of talk that runs across the forms. This is an important reason, no doubt, for the frequent description of television as But what does talk this providing "company." signify, how does it in one not or that is that being alone is not alone, anyway, particular signify a of unbearable? is function of this the of the course, Partly, simultaneity medium?or of the fact that at any time it might be live and that there is no sensuous distinction between the live and the repeat, or the replay: the others are there, if not shut in this room, still caught at this time. One is receiving or or like and unlike screening and them, callers; monitoring receiving monitoring, come not to does camera and their their between the presence projection,
presentness to us.
I recognize that even in the present sketch of a way to this approach matters, to the idea of "no sensuous distinction" between the live and the repeat, appeal or the or the and the connection of this distinction with a replay delayed, in of modes difference and presentness, too fast over is going presence
consequential issues. It doesn't even include the fact that television can work in
as well as in tape. William to me that since Rothman has suggested television can equally adopt amovie mode or a video mode, we might recognize one dimension of television's in the understanding of the act of "company" one to as from mode another the that is switching thing always live, that is, effected simultaneously with our watching. This points to the feature of the current (suggesting as well as the contemporary in indicating the continuous) articulation of this aesthetic medium's to It basis. is internal my physical so as to formats to be made television in this continuity, which participate means that are to admit formed discontinuities both within themselves and they between one and another, and between these and commercials, station breaks, film
news breaks, emergency signal tests, color charts, program announcements,
and so on, which means formed to allow these breaks, hence these recurrences, mean here not to be legible. So that switching (and I primarily switching within a narrative but a narrative to one or another breaks, for a switching from, say, station or for a sponsor, and back again) is as indicative of life as?in ways to be is. specified?monitoring aesthetic of (I think in this context of the as yet undefined position to commercial commercials. television often find them merely Foreigners or [or of course, in addition, marks of a corrupt amusing annoying interruptions civilization]; native explainers will sometimes affect to find them more interest ing than the so-called programs they interrupt. Surely, ordinary people,
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either of these axes to grind, can feel either way on anyway people without occasion. Nor do I doubt, in all soberness, that some commercials just are more or some to What the favor than commercials effort, claim, programs. interesting over programs suggests to me is that the aesthetic position of commercials, what makes them aesthetically possible rather you might call their possibility?what not their inherent aesthetic interest [one would not than merely intolerable?is transmissions sit still, with mild interest, for periodic minute-length of, say, a or a of routine: these of the Garbo's face masterful of passage Chaplin glimpses but would be pointless], but the fact that they are readable, not as interruptions, as interludes. Of course they can be handled all but intolerably, like late-night used car ads, or offers of recordings "not sold in any store." But even in these of live switching?life, is the requirement cases, the point of tolerability at these is invitation that the habitual moreover, by acknowledged peculiar late hours to "come on down" or to order by writing or by "calling now." Where life, there's hope.) is expressed not simply by the amount of fact of television's company massive of its formats for talk. Here I am thinking but the talk, repetitiveness by not merely of the shows explicitly of talk, with their repetitious sets and hosts in talk (as sports events and guests. Broadcasts of sports events are embedded even as can see or covers of and I the shows are), game point providing occasions for talk. Of course these shows are reasonably exciting, visually and aurally, some of them, with their obligatory jumping and screaming; and even, mildly is excitement this and education sufficient to account for the educational. But to tune them in endlessly, for the pleasure taken in them? willingness endlessly am to or fantasies, of I satisfied Nor cite the reputed attractions, striking it The thirties than, in thinking about the attractions of Hollywood rich?anymore idea comedies, was I satisfied to account for their popularity by the widespread I am struck by the plain fact that on that they were fairy tales for the depression. new sets of contestants are introduced each of the game shows I have watched, me we are not to us. What that is interested in identifying with these strikes we are introduced to them. The hardest part of ordinary people, but simply that or the scariest part, that of improvising the conventional conversation, phrases someone and to talk, is all there is time for on these formats; of meeting starting and it is repeated endlessly, and without the scary anticipation of consequences in presenting the self that meetings in reality exact. The one who can get us perennially acquainted, who faces the initiation time and again, who has the to create the familiar out of strangeness?the host of the show?is power heavily rewarded for his abilities; not, indeed, by becoming a star, but by becoming a even a celebrity, famous for personality, nothing but being visible and surviving
new encounters.
there's
of the idea of improvisation The appearance just now, or reappearance, indicates the principal room I said was left for the improvisatory in television's not its dimension of talk. I would wish formats, persistent exactly to say that is since the dimension of localized is itself all but talk there, improvisation own or for talk will but each format its have present; universally requirements most for The of elaborate these are, opportunities improvisation. naturally, their monologues, and hence the presented by talk shows themselves, with invite, and with their more interruptions and accidents that expert monologues
88 or less extended little interviews.
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the fact that nothing of consequence is said Here, that with the fact is that the something compared spoken, are seen to have to find famous and the successful permanently momentarily words for their lives, even as you and I. The gift of the host is to know how, and at ease and on the spot, and to make how far, to put the guests recurrently the one with the other, and both with his or her capacity dramas of overcoming at any time to top what has been said. This is not the same as turning every event into a comic routine, as Jonathan Winters and Robin Williams have the matters talent and imagination to do. They are too anarchic to entertain guests, or too absorbed by their inventions, as if inhabited by them, to invite and relentlessly so at for conversation. prepare Johnny Carson is taking conversation near, good he has made so good an alliance, not but not over, the abyss of embarrassment, to say conspiracy, with the camera, that he can instruct his audiences' responses with a glance in our direction (i.e., in the direction of the camera)?a power the it is rather beside the point that the comedian shares with the lion tamer. Again, for sports events are not particularly so-called color commentaries colorful, of response itself. So since the point of the role is rather the unpreparedness are we for the unrehearsed, the unscripted, that the persons at news hungry us to feel desks by exchanging please pleasantries with each other obliged one as to of them pleasantly (sometimes abbreviated speaking the other's name) stories. This provides a primitive version of the complex transitions between emotion in having an actor step outside his or her character as part of her or his for example, in Bergman's The Story ofAnna, or Godard's Two performance?as, or Three Things I Know About Her. Since the practice of exchanging pleasantries reveals that the delivery
meant to conceal the
of news
is a form of acting
that for all
(itmay,
can
I suppose,
bring out,
have been
the news
fact)?hence,
television
must if only because theatricalized?there itself is as likely as not to be fictional, us as the as to out that is else television be something important brings between fact and fiction, some matter of life and death. This would distinction fact or fiction, our news is still something be its demonstration that, whether to by the human that can humanly be responded to, in particular, responded so we will accept news what be terrible that But of may power improvisation. evidence of this power as reassuring? I will at the end give an such mediocre
answer to this question.
to is this: If I am right in taking improvisation A more immediate question be as apt a sign of human life as we have to go on, and a sign that survives the on to taped change from live production, why is it that people who miss the live It may be television do not recognize where the quality of the live is preserved? But it that they miss the life primarily of television's old dramatic productions. to with its the of audience live is not television's obligation experience provide to bring us worthwhile out into actual the world going theater?beyond it can still be is the live not seen where (live or on tape). Why performances of of in all the of and first talk, found, exchange? Is this region improvisations too tawdry for those who have pictures of something higher? I do not deny a is reputedly the dullest, deadest in finding life in what certain paradoxicality Then the question the head." of feature television, namely "talking omnipresent did this feature get its deadly reputation? for us should be: Where
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current and remaining category of the material basis of television, after to is of the point the the and event, category equally simultaneity reception, to at to out will it first the formats that look its but here, bring significance, help The
are not made primarily for talk?for example, sports and cultural coverage.
These
of my of the television fare ingested by many up for The of feature characteristic movies, (and, except by me). acquaintances these programs is that they are presented as events, that is to say, as something out of the ordinary. as occasions, But if the event is something unique, screen likes to monitor, it television the so, appears, is the opposite, something the utterly familiar. The familiar the uneventful, the repeated, the repetitive, including here situation comedies? repetitions of the shows of talk?centrally are of of the uneventful, their embodiment because the company accordingly make the bulk
ordinary.
or company in the endlessly uneventful has its purest use in the literal of television sets as monitors realization, and emblem, against at for example, against unwanted the suspicious, entry. The bank of monitors on to a time?one each of the door guard glances from time which fixed, say, empty corridors leading from the otherwise unattended points of entry to the I am taking as the aesthetic the mode of perception building?emblematizes To find comfort
access to television.
multiplicity encodes the denial

covering a sports
The
of monitors, of succession
event, a network's
each linked to a more or less fixed camera, as In integral to the basis of the medium.
cameras are, similarly, placed ahead of
their views are transmitted to us one at a time for home consumption in principle, we could all watch a replica of ismerely an accident of economy; sees. In that case, we the producer the bank of monitors might speak of into the plural. When there is television's material basis by putting simultaneity a switch of the camera whose our we into is fed sole receiver, image might think time. That
of or this angle, not as a switch but as a of switch comment of from one from camera one or monitor angle to to another another camera monitor. attention
from one Succession is replaced by switching, which means that the move as on film, to is motivated another of but not, by requirements meaning, image of and if the is dictated opportunity by requirements anticipation?as meaning the heart, or the rapid eye movements by the event itself. As in monitoring of what during periods of dreaming?say, monitoring signs of life?most of some reference or base appears is a graph of the normal, or the establishment from which events stand out with line, a line, so to speak, of the uneventful, If narrative can be pictured as the classical significance. perfectly anticipatable an event of of one stable situation, progress from the establishing through to the reestablishing of a stable situation related to the original one, difference, can be as the serial procedure of a stable condition thought of establishing or events that are not crises of the by repeated punctuated developments a or but situation intrusions resolution, single requiring emergencies?of
humor, or adventure, or talent, or misery?each of which runs a natural course
and thereupon is perhaps to say, rejoins the realm of the uneventful; which serial procedure is undialectical. As I do not wish to claim that generation and serialization exhaust the field of narration, so I do not wish to claim that they are exclusive. So in saying that
90 television
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its formats in ways that explore the experience and the organizes the of and hence the and the event, concept concept of the experience I am not saying that film lacks an analogous exploration, uneventful, only that each medium will work out its stabilities in its own way. The ways will be as of close as monitoring the sort of task my is to viewing, and to define such a closeness, and distance, is remarks here are meant to interest us in doing. For example,
film and video may occupy themselves with nature, but if the distinction I have to between a our and is then valid one, monitoring viewing pointed experience of nature, its role in this stretch of our lives, should split itself over the different In The World Viewed I suggest a sense in which presentations.
. . . has the of the frame in opposite significance generally painting. as much as Bazin's that the screen works what it excludes Following suggestion by to it includes, that it functions less to frame than to mask led me (which by what as of a as a whole), of I the world of a photograph the segment speak interpreted not the way or outlines its content of a film as forming borders frame but form, form looms and molds rather the way 200). (p. the film frame
In such a light, Iwas led to say, "we are told that people seeing the first moving were amazed to see the motion, as if by the novelty. But what movies pictures for that thing now, in did at first they can do at last: spare our attention wholly ... It is not in the branch. the frame of nature, the world moving novelty that our has worn off, but our interest in our experience" (ibid.). Now, sparing of monitoring, itwholly is not a characterization which attention and expending is rather preparing our attention to be called upon by certain eventualities. The is now either an event world is not in the monitored branch, whose movement a or a are of mark of for the uneventful wind) (a sign (if, say, you sign watching that the change has not yet come). The intimacy of such a difference prompts me to Imean to be calling attention and viewing, emphasize that by monitoring so that film and video will not be to aspects of human perception generally, one of these aspects to the exclusion of the other, but rather expected to capture to stress one at the expense of the other?as each may be stressing different to film of its relation to relation of video of its art; communication, aspects
seduction.
use of the concept of the uneventful is produced by my understanding of My interest in getting beyond the events and the dramas of the Annales historians' or anyway to the common life.12 longer spans, of history to the permanencies, as a way of emphasizing that the in is worth making This concepts explicit are as of television and movies I have been speaking of the phenomena which as are the in need of investigation themselves. much phenomena Everything seems to me so doubtful, or intangible, in this area. Iwould like to have useful to consider why in which the opera and the ballet I have seen on words to me so good, whereas films I recall of recent in have seemed television years me can respect the to seemed and of ballet have opera boring. Is it that television as or the of those media without trying, theatricality foreign conventionality as to reinterpret them? And is this well of film greedily would, thought of the theatrical event? I did like television's ability to respect the independence a television Bergman's Magic Flute, but I also felt that the piece looked like to And does is this the idea The of respecting the easy beg. question production.
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event go into the reason puppets and are at home on television in a muppets way are not in movies? they Here an answer suggests itself to a question my assumption of the primacy of format might at any time raise: Isn't the television "special" an exception to the rule of this primacy, a since, by definition, special occurs uniquely? The answer is not merely that uniqueness a television format (like proposes farewells, awards, roasts) that any number of stars and celebrities can occupy, and occupy again and again, so as not that is, serially. The long regularly, answer has also to what can the occur format is that outside a series. specify Take the fact that the entertainment to a star or showcase special, designed a takes form the of show. The of the celebrity, familiarly variety fittingness can now show format I for to television a attribute the fact that variety variety show just is a sequence acts of events, where events are interpreted as autonomous or routines constituted are incidents of excitement that as understandable by in show another in and town. another The of essentially repeatable, concept event here captures the sense of the is, the variety and the discreteness?that as the of such items it does in items the of track shows, integrity?of naming and field meets, and of bouts on a fight card. The broadcasts of cultural events may also seem another set of to exceptions the rule of format, other instances of occurrences. But what is unique unique is above all memorable, is the performance here, and what itself, say of Balanchine's ballet on Stravinsky's Agon, the performance at which the pair of dancers of the difficult canon passage got off to a false start and had to begin the performance, the television presentation itself may be of again. Beyond interest, perhaps because of its novel camera installations, which make for a or because it was the first to greater fidelity to the details of the performance, use subtitles in a But these features of the presentation form an particular way. essentially repeatable format, usable and refinable in future broadcasts of ballet the television presentation so becomes If, however, performances. integral to the performance, the performance itself having been designed to incorporate the of presentation into its own integrity, that the ideas of possibilities "repeating" the format or of refining such things as camera "installations" no longer make clear sense, then the television format would have been led to the condition of I have seen too little in the way of such works to have genre-as-medium. any useful response to them. They must in any case be part of the realm of as said, I am here video art, which, experimental leaving out of account. I note that the variety format also fit the requirements of radio in its network said that in its television "took over" days. It is, I think, commonly beginning, from radio. or no many programs, or ideas for programs, Empirically legally, one could so to but or it should be deny this, ontologically, speak, aesthetically, wondered why radio was so ready a source for television. The better thought may be that television took its formats from many of the same places radio had taken them, for example, from vaudeville, and that the reason they could share these sources is that both are forms of and that is, broadcasting monitoring, currents of simultaneous event reception. Since one of these currents is made for the ear and the other also for the eye, itmay be wondered what ratio of these senses is called upon for example, is the weather by various events. Why, given its own little dramatic slot on news programs, whereas the performance of the
92
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stock market is simply announced? Does this have to do with the weather's more visual interest than the market, or with its natural involvement providing in drama, or with its perennial role as a topic of conversation between strangers, or with its an being allegory of our gathering frame of mind, or simply with the it (as if retaining some control over the future)? If fact of interest in predicting the interest in predicting itwere exhausted by its practical bearing on our plans serve as well as for the days ahead, announcing it would it or dramatizing a little lecture about it. Prediction to of is with interest the stock respect making to those who have a market only, on the whole, specialized connection with it, those, for example, who play it, for whom not just a day's outcome, but a day's or events of fluctuation stability, matter. Of more fateful interest concerning the format of news is its invitation of the television item I have perhaps most notably omitted inmy more or less informal of formats, namely, that of the event shaped expressly for the itemizing came of television that itself, something coverage upon most possibilities most memorably with viewers' consciousnesses the civil rights and antiwar demonstrations of the sixties, and subsequently with the staging of terrorist actions. In citing the theatricality of scripted news recitation, and in emphasiz am ing television's tropism toward the event, I indicating what the possibilities are that events seek to attract; but the fact of television no of the medium shaped more the occurrence of such events than it explains the effects of explains our on as my For what would have to be explained, consciousness. weather to to our the Annales historians is intended reference is register, exactly our lives, or to take continued attraction by events, our will to understand interest in them, from their dramas rather than from their stabilities, from the incident and the accident rather than from the resident, from their themes
rather than from their structures?to theatricalize ourselves. But this is
that Thoreau, for one, held against the interest in reading news something a a half papers ago, an interest he described as amounting virtually century and
to an addiction.
idea of the long time span oddly applies to the spans of narrative time commanded altogether extraordinary by serialization. The ultimate span is that commanded the by successful soap operas, in which can go on off and on for years. I said a while ago that serial following of its yarns I might add that the span of soap operas can is undialectical. Here procedure or to allow them rather to require modification of the concept of escape history, as drama, history as related to the yarns of traditional novels. history, of history a soap world can be The shorter (or lapse of fictional time in immeasurably slower) than that of the span of time over which one may watch them. (Forty or so years ago my mother tuned the radio to a fifteen-minute serial frequently as she and Iwere to to called "Helen Trent," off, go getting ready respectively, work and to school. The idea of the serial was announced each morning by a woman can find romance after or it was asking whether thirty-five, maybe can forty. I imagine that this serial still persists. But if so, Helen Trent must still be something like thirty-five or forty years old.) However dire their events, are of the interminable and passages they everyday, abysses of the routine, which may help explain the ease with which members of their audience take to account for the their characters (so it seems) as "real." Without attempting The Annales historians'
THE
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specialized features of the stories and audiences that make soap operas possible, I call attention to the fact that the most even sensational efforts prestigious, on television recent in been have serials?either the snobby years originating sort the BBC has "The patented ("Upstairs/Downstairs," Forsythe Saga," or the "Tinker Tailor," "Brideshead Revisited"), sort antisnobby American ("Roots," "Dallas"). Here I am merely assuming, without argument, that eleven weekly hour-length episodes of, say, "Brideshead Revisited" command an order of time incommensurate with film time. It is equivalent in its effect neither to on film that would nor to last eleven that would hours, something something last eleven weeks (whatever such to would I eleven films nor, be), think, things of an hour each. Not only does an hour in television time that signify something has no bearing on film time, but it is internal to the establishment of its formats that television obeys the rhythm, perhaps even celebrates the articulations, the of the order of the week, as does Genesis. The way in which recurrences, it celebrates this, by further dividing and the in terms of minutes repeating day and seconds, would be a function of television's establishment in industrialized of time. societies, with their regimentation It may be thought that one of the formats I listed earlier itself proves that one should make much less of the differences between film and video than I am inclined to make, or rather proves the Imean the emptiness of the differences: common on format of movies television. Of course, no one perfectly running would claim that the experience of a movie is just the same run on television as projected on a screen, and everyone will have some informal theory or other about what the difference consists in?that the television image is smaller, that the room is not otherwise dark, that there is no proper audience, hence that the image is inherently less gripping, and so on. But how much difference do such differences make? It seems to me that subtleties here can be or bypassed because a difference, sufficient to give us to think, between the postponed, medium of film and that of video is that, in a film on television, the running television set is (interpretable as) amoviola; amonitor though unlike a moviola, it. A way to may be thought of as a device for checking a film without projecting the difference, is that the experience of a film begin characterizing accordingly, on television is as of something over whose running you have in principle a are not subjected to it, as you are control; you by film itself or television itself. But to go further with this line of difference would require a theory of the or mean a I of the relation between moviola, the editing viewer; theory experience of this way of screening a film and that of its full or public screening. The moviola may be thought of as a providing reproduction of the original, or as a reduction of it. In the latter case, we need to think, for example, that a piano score is not reduction of a symphonic a reduction of scale; merely physical perhaps it should be thought of as an extreme case of reorchestration. Equally, a piece for piano can be transcribed for orchestra, and so on. Are there analogous intermediate and reciprocal operations or lending comprehensibility, perspicu to the relation between small and large screens? ousness, it may (Naturally, seem that the relation between small and mechani screens, large being merely and their cal, should be clearer than the relation between transcriptions this is not originals. My point is that as amatter of fact, of the fact of experience, we need a so.) In the former case, that of reproduction, theory of the
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can cover which from a black-and-white reproduction, everything half-page an art book of a fresco a hundred times its size, to a in photograph duplicate cast
of a statue.
It is a contrary
whose events are,
of the long time

however dramatic,
span that applies

transient. So
to individual
the aesthetics
episodes,
of serial
comes to a is an episode suggestion that what is under construction as as and time time between transience. Without consider argument repetition a the thinking of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, ing that this is way of characterizing of What and following Is Called Thinking? I surmise that that, Heidegger's seem about what these speculations something had better be said, in conclusion, to add up to. construction or or repulsion anxiety that I have found television to educated circles, and I ask whether the considerations a realistic level of for this fact of provide explanation a book the depth of the level required, I mention several sources as Iwas casting about for touchstones in notes for my present remarks, Four the Elimination starting Arguments for of to convince Television by Jerry Mander.13 The book wishes its readers that like "tobacco, saccharin, some food dyes, certain uses of polychlori television, and X rays to name a few" may cause nated biphenyls, aerosols, fluoroscopes cancer and for that reason alone to be banned. And there are ought plenty of other reasons: it is addictive, and "qualifies more as an instrument of brain than anything induction and/or hypnosis that stimulates washing, sleep a form of sense it is conscious deprivation, learning processes"; causing I go back to the fear inspire in what I called we have been assembling indicate television. To to me by recommended it suppresses and replaces creative human imag and confusion; disorientation ery; it is an instrument of transmutation, turning people into their TV images; it our alienation to "it accelerates from nature and contributes hyperactivity; of nature." Is this a disturbance merely of therefore accelerates the destruction stretch of what I have been able to read of style? Perhaps the most astonishing this book Machine." is its section in praise of Victor Tausk's description of the "Influencing that television is the realization of the ultimate Mander is convinced machine. But the paper is that to influencing point of Tausk's extraordinary think there are in reality such machines of schizophrenia.14 is symptomatic I cannot tell whether Mander knows this, and whether, if he does, he is declaring that he is schizophrenic, and if he is, whether he is claiming that television has so even as him it is driven so, driving the rest of us, and perhaps claiming that it a state is in which the truth of our condition has become particularly lucid to am to still prepared him. Without telling these things, I regard this book, the as take it seriously, very fact that numbers of reasonable people apparently can of the depth of anxiety television inspire. symptomatic The depth of it seems to me also expressed in the various more or less casual one hears about, for example, the role of television in determining hypotheses to the Vietnam War. Some reactions end this war, others say it helped that it made the war seem unreal. One of the most haunting (understandably)
from television is the footage of the Vietnamese images I know priest war. in himself protest immolating against the Bergman considers this image in at once the refuge there is in madness and its silence, Persona, as if considering
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OF TELEVISION
95
and the refuge there is in television. The maddened, speechless heroine stares at the burning priest both as if she has been given an image of her pain, even a kind of explanation of it, and as if she is the cause of such pain in the world, as of its by her. the role of television in explanations of catastrophe was in preparation war of television began in Vietnam. Consider that the conquering before the for War the Iwish which the of World after means, II, purposes just hypothesis to offer here, after the discovery of concentration and atomic of the camps that human life will bomb; of, I take it, the discovery of the literal possibility to to it that is that itself. is (This, too, had say, willing destroy destroy itself; itwas realistically described by Nietzsche. In my been in sufficient preparation; infection But as a lesson of the Second World War, the lesson there seems no way taking this I detect the lingering effect, for all its excess, of a for us to learn realistically, once well-known "The White Negro.") And the essay of Norman Mailer's, our cities and the with the of decline continued increasing fear of conquering at out Not to postpone the shut-ins. world of present night, producing walking the it that fear television?the of fear large is my any longer, hypothesis saying or to of account the what it fear that for the fear television?is pervasive enough of the world, the irreversible pollution is the growing uninhabitability monitors of the earth, a fear displaced from the world onto its monitor (as we convert the fear of what we see, and wish to see, into a fear of being seen). The loss of this on view, the loss of our humanity, Heidegger's inhabitability would mean, whether or not we remain alive. Of course children may not have contracted the fear; and the child in us is capable of repressing the fear, ambivalently. My to respond to the mind's demand of itself to take up the is meant hypothesis slack of mismatch between the fact of television and the fact of our indifference were itself an to its significance?as though this slack expression of the fact that a an a is that has and yet that what it monitor, commodity conquered, appliance events from existence its own whose monitors, (cultural apart preceded
coverage, sports, movies), are so often settings of the shut-in, a reference line of
or banality so insistent as to suggest that what is shut out, that normality at all costs whose be as entry we would guard against, must suspicion monstrous as, let me say, the death of the normal, of the familiar as such. I am not unaware that the charge of psychosis may well now be shifted in If so, it should have been leveled at me at least a decade ago, when direction. my The World Viewed appeared, since the concluding of that book paragraph a such prepares hypothesis: A world
immortality. business. world, there That mean So
complete without
This there is an
me which
is present
a
to me
danger. to
is the world
It takes my
of my
haunting of the world,

its coherence as
either because I left it unloved or because I left unfinished

for me to to want that the camera the world that past: to want deny it affirmed of the coherence of the deny me. But without complete me. the world is coherent without is nature's yet the survival last. of me. It will
importance
of film?and
life as my
is reason
reason is equal to what is essential that the present
I want judgment
immortality: me is not upon
The development television makes
I have intuitive
introduced
here lies in the thought that the medium the failure of nature's survival of me.
of
96
STANLEY
CAVELL
I suppose it is a tall order for the repetitions and transiences of television, the company of its talk and its events, to overcome the anxiety of the intuition the embodies. But if I am right, this is the order it more or less already medium for good and ill, in human fulfills, proving again the power of familiarity, our who knows but that if the monitor picked it And call affairs; adaptability. on of the better talk monitored talk, up habitually people who actually had to say, and if it probed for intelligible connections and for beauty something our our it knows but that its events?who would alleviate among paralysis, our addiction to a solemn destiny, us to in sufficiently adaptation, pride help cause. to its about allow ourselves do something intelligent
on the basis of a A set of comments William Rothman of acknowledgment. prepared on every other page as I a the first version of these remarks caused changes prepared then read by Norton and Arnold version. This was Batkin, Gus Blaisdell, Jay Cantor, comments to I used as I prepared the present version. I am, as before, grateful whose Davidson, these friends. 'In The Immediate Experience (New York: Anchor 1964). Paperback, 1979. Harvard Press, University 2Enlarged edition, Cambridge, 1981. Harvard Press, University 3Cambridge, 1965. 4New York, Columbia Press, University 5Translated 1975). (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, by Richard Howard 1981. 6I spell this out in "North by Northwest," Critical Inquiry, Summer 1976. of Chicago Press, 7Chicago, University 1971. ?New York, Viking, Derrida du Seuil, (Paris: Editions 1970). ^Morphologie du conte, translated by Marguerite to characterize cartoons in "More of The World ,0P. 72; this is taken further and modified reading second of Viewed," pp. 167fF. of California uWhat Is Cinema? translated by Hugh Gray 1967), p. Press, (Berkeley: University 97. in Fernand On History, translated the essays collected Braudel, 12See, for example, by Sarah of Chicago Matthews Press, 1980). (Chicago: University ?*New York, Morrow 1978, pp. 348, 394. Quill Paperbacks, of the influencing in of Tausk's "On the Origin Machine' 14An English translation paper, in The Psychoanalytic in 1919, is included Reader, edited by originally published Schizophrenia," Universities International Robert Fliess Press, 1948), pp. 31-64. (New York:
References A note

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The Fact of Television Author(s): Stanley Cavell Source: Daedalus, Vol. 111, No.

The Fact of Television

conditions, procedures art each member of

is, on all its

and lectures, news,

88 or less extended little interviews.

multiplicity encodes the denial

of the long time

span that applies

haunting of the world,

either because I left it unloved or because I left unfinished

reason is equal to what is essential that the present

immortality: me is not upon

The development television makes

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