THE MENTAL EFFECTS OF TELEVISION

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 13, 30 January 1937, Page 11

THE MENTAL EFFECTS OF TELEVISION

Will tKe Screen Always be Tugging at Our Sleeve, and if it is in the- Room Shall We be Able to Resist It?

T ET US LOOK AHEAD a few years, said . Professor T. H. Pear in a broadcast address. Television screens will be larger. How large they 'ought' to be is a nice poiut; easier perhaps to settle than its predeeessor, how loud one's radio set ought to playl . They will show more contrast in light and shade; they will offer as scenes and objects far from the transmitting station. Ther©' may be halls specially fitted for television; and a vast colleetion of 'properties', pictures, diagrams, apparatus and.iilms. Some films will be specially designed for television. What difference will television make to our habits and mental attitudes? First, a question, the answer to which is important but not easy to give. It may be assumed that sightless broadcasting will eventually cease, just as the silent films were doomed from the day that A1 Jolson's sobs blasted their way into our hearts. The television suppliers cannot ignore that very natural feeling of the subscriber: 'Here's a perfectly good screen and nothing on it. Whyl' But when viewing and listening always go together, will one be able to relax, to rest,- to ignore the screen, to shut one's eyes, to sew, to move about, doing odd jobs? It is tempting to answer, as the producer might do, that radio performarces ought either to be given full attention or switched oi?. Though there is nothing to be sSid for the irritating habit of allowing the radio to dribble a background for talk or bridge, it should not be forgotten that there are degrees of attentive clearness, and different ways of attending, as all will agree who, at a coneert, seo some hearers helping the conductor, some following the score, while l the majority sit still, a few with closed eyes. Will the screen always be tugging at our sleeve and saying 'Come and look'f And if it is in the room shall we be able to resist it? Will viewers, at first, make their own television sets, and rejoice in it, as they did in the early days of radio? For five years or so, this might solve the leisure problems of many people. It is surely possible that we may have an interval of happy amateur building before all the sets in use are mass-produeed. Arising out of this are some interesting problems for the economist, relating to the price of sets. Considerable credit for looking into the • future of television 's mental effects is due to Budolf Arnheim. I propose to borrow several penetrating comments from his "Radio" and to remark upon them. The ordinary telephone is merely a means (artistically, a leaky means) of transmission, but.. sightless broadcasting has always been mnch more than this, Before it came, many thousands of people had heard few modes of speech other . than those of their neighbours and soeial eqnals. They were seldom or never stimulated to imagine personalities behind voices. To-day many epicures of hearing discuss expertly the qualities of fifty or more voices and, in a radio-play, not only distinguish a number of sonnd-pictures but supply them with a rich context of meaning. Radio has created a whole new realni of mental life. It has been built upon the appreciation, as well as the understanding of words and music.

media to . which, twenty years ago, terms' ' like 'form' and 'figure' could have beenapplied only. by a few trained hearers. ■ To- '• • day the sound-world is criss-crossed with innumerable subjective pattexns, which, 'to-'- : thousands of listeners, are complex new ex- ' '• periences. This gain is not the only one;' • radio has taught listeners not only to per-'. . . ceive, but to think and to feel. > t . - Do we agree with Arnheim, who, from s the aesthetic point of view, looks forward, •. , , to television without enthusiasm, f earing , that it will reduce broadcasting to a mere, t means of dissemination, since 'television, will always prefer facts to ideas, and the •. fl individual to the general'? Is this not in: * ( the hands of the controllers of programmes?' . ' i Look at the cinema for a moment. I remem-,' ' ber a film whose-producers, by manipulating ' • mournful milk-cans in rainy mean' streets, suggested — unsuccessfully, I thought — the su- ' " ' periority of a certain firm, the film was '' nearly all facts; with few ideas. But with excitement'l reniember the northward • 4 1 • xuSh of "Night Mail," spiHing ideas, like a paper-chaser, all the way. Rotha and Grierson, in making .documentary film, show' " that the decree of divorce between ideas and. pictures has not yet been made absolute. ' ' 1 But at the desk and in the studio, the artistic presentation of an idea can be built up • deliberately, even fastidiously: television L •

rhust 'land its, idea all fWriggling. and, slip-; ' -^pery,* and serve it-.up. aliye. The television^ coinmeutator who mil '.com^ara • this show- *' - rnfiy- feel towards even iinaginative film-pro- . ducers«as a:student of animal behaviour oc- . . , casionally does towards sedate and seden- ; . ta,Ty zoologists who choose to study.life in- - .. -. its ^deadjforms. i Television wUltjprefer* the individual toi i. ; the general? This is -true,,. but %ere';televi*' •• «ion";fiUs the obvious'g'^p' in'.! sightless ' broad-' , . castings. , Last !moiith,-4the Arehbishop of ' York.said to Mr Howard Marshall: " You ' , paiinot take the congregation to' a distressed area. " You can ohly^tdll:" them" aboiut " it " Before". long, television may take the disties'se'd area" to the- congregation.;. The Samo '• • remark, of course, applies to pleasanter sub- • ' je'Ots/' If television brings^to the fore" those" "* i -rare'' people / with ■ tongues, as well as ideas, V .* In-their heads, it will found an;entif ely new . profession. * In one's armchair it . wUl'1 be"- . i found possible to, move atoun'd' Oxford, or. , Cambridge, Norwich. or 'Chester in company with , one who not only knows, but loves, his Jown, who not only loves it but can impart r ' , k that lovO to listeners dutside his own socialcircle. Few dons realise.howfcohtuaaelious. • that^not'e of detachment in -their. Sjpeecbmay - • ■ sdund - toi' listeners -whose lives .are .ii'ntouched • by.any academic : mould, , ' - - » ' Description and cpmmentary are desir- .. • 'able -for janotheri.reason. - Culture is -less eas-' : - ily : perceived by: the 'eye- to-day than "a cen- ; tury- ago.. . This is obvious of a, new, culture,, ...like that of -America,.bdt..d'oes London/now-- • • adays, wear its ' elegance on its sleeve? Televise-the presses, the linotype-machines, the delivery vans of a modern newspaper office; without description you could never make the viewer realise how the leading articles get written, how and why the news which appears is chosen. Moreover, the office of a bad newspaper is apt to -look like the oflice of a good one. No longer - do • clothes, except . in subtle ways . (which jan be copied) proclaim the culture of their wearer. The starkest functional building I ever saw was, they assured me, an.excellent new concert hall, while petrol-filling stationa have been wistfully disguised as Greek temples. Oue may speculate concerning the future of talks. Monologues, however interesting, are not the highest form of talk which we can expect. A mark of any civilisation's progress is the interest taken .in conversation, and by conversation is not meant essays read in serial order, certainly not debates, and not necessarily even discussions. Once at a dinner in a college hall an admiring guest called our attention to four faces, whose owners were conversing vivaciously. They were M. Henri Bergson, two members of the House of Lords who wero, moreover, distinguished philosophers, aud a don whose tongue, xumour says, has launched a thousand slips. A tempting subject .to televisel ' "What will happen to humour, when television comes? Eyebrowa, probably^. Btit the B.B.C.'s sevcr35t test and their great- , est triumph, if it succeede'd, would be to • televiso an American lady whose impersonations are known only through xumour to thousands who have not the good luck to live in London. »-