The Ubiquitous Screen

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 755, 8 January 1954, Page 9

The Ubiquitous Screen

HREE weeks ago J. C. Reid, Senior Lecturer in English at Auckland University College, wrote in these columns of a year’s listening to American radio. A close look at television has now been taken by another academic observer, PROFESSOR IAN. A. GORDON, head of the Department of English, Victoria University College, who is at present in New York. His impressions are printed below.

ELEVISION will come one day to New Zealand. It is still some years off. It could come, I suppose, to Auckland tomorrow, where there is the population and the terrain to make it possible, But a country that insists on radio stations in Gisborne and Timaru and New Plymouth is unlikely to accept television until (like the telephone) it is available for all. So it will be a few years yet. Perhaps it is just as well. There are technical and cultural problems to be ironed out before this powerful massmedium is let loose among the long white clouds. I have spent now some six weeks in the States, and have never once missed an opportunity of seeing television at work., This was not what I came for. But when one finds television in the hotel bedroom, television in one’s friends’ houses, television in bars and lounges, one would have to be blind and deaf to avoid it. The characteristic H-shaped aerial sprouts from the roof of both the pent-house on Park Avenue and the grim apartment blocks of Brooklyn and Jersey City. Television, like electric light and running water, is here to stay. It is largely, like all American radio, commercially sponsored. In New Zealand we do not-as most people do in England-hold up our hands in_ holy horror at the idea of advertising over the air. Few Americans could understand what all the fuss was about when the English papers protested at commercials being inserted in the American telecast of the Coronation. The average American accepts the commercials as he accepts the advertisements in the New York Times, which they (and, I hope, we) consider a fine paper. The more thoughtful American just switches his mind off while the smarty salesman or the gorgeous blonde goes into the routine of plugging the brand of cigarette or washing machine or processed cheese. Somebody must pay for it all. In America it seems obvious and ele-

mentary that it will be paid for by somebody who has something to sell. Every so often, then, the quiz-master and the dancer and the news-commenta-tor and the play in full career are wiped from the screen to be replaced by immaculate males and females who somehow manage to combine an enthusiastic flow of patter with a fixed smile, holding aloft in the meantime the favoured product if it is portable, drinking it with audible relish (Man, What a drink!) if it is drinkable, puffing it in wreathing clouds towards the camera if it is smokeable, and if all these fail, walking’ round it and patting it lovingly if it is something large, non-smokeable, not potable, and non-portable, like a stationwaggon or a bank. It is all rather fun, and as the defenders say, you can always ignore it. a "nae

They may be right. What of the programmes themselves? They vary in quality, of course, but they seem to have settled down into a few fixed general patterns. The favourite pattern is undoubtedly the panel. Three or four people whose names are News discuss or guess or quiz. Half a dozen carefully chosen members of the general public enter in sequence, and the panel tries to guess their name or their occupation or generally what is biting them. The member of the G.P. invariably wins. However searching the panel may be, the common man emerges from the studio with sixty-four dollars, either because he has beaten the experts or because they have beaten.

him, or because while he is leaving the studio in despair the sponsor (who has been watching the programme on television, believe it or not) rings up and offers him a cash prize for the brave show he has just put up. Spirited bonhomie and hand-out dollars reduce the viewer-listener to a state of what is probably enthusiastic acquiescence. Then wipe! And before the mood has evaporated, up pops the gorgeous blonde with lovely ‘hands that never peeled a spud. But I do her an injustice. She is peeling a spud, and her tapering fingers hold aloft for inspection the new MurphyDecorticator, only one dollar ninetyeight available everywhere in the better stores. The second major pattern is the show dominated by one figure. Bob Hope clowns around with the aid of his stooges. Loretta Young reads (her lovely eyes holding you spellbound) a pathetic letter from some young man or woman

with a Problem, and the scene fades into a dramatisation of the Problem and its Solution. Miss Young plays the young woman, if the correspondent be a young woman. If not, she plays the young wife of the corresponding young man. Either way she wins. Or Groucho Marx rips off his incredible wit for half an hourand half an hour of Groucho is almost worth coming to America for, even after all these years. The third major pattern is, of course, sport, and the keynote is good visual reporting. So far mere entertainment. On different levels, but unashamedly entertainment. Is this all that television has to offer the captive American, in his armchair and slightly darkened room? If he knows where to look, there is much else. Some people in America are thinking seriously both about and in this new medium. In a country where the word Investigation is both a joke and a menace, I have heard a magnificently fearless political commentary by. a crusty Professor of Political Science,

sitting in his armchair at his University and letting the Administration have it with both barrels. I have seen a first rate American ballet in a weekly programme sponsored by the F ord Foundation, which is meeting the challenge of benign mediocrity by offering only the best. Perhaps most surprising of all, I have seen a University course" on ShakeSpeare, sponsored by the University of Southern California. Television students could not merely look. They could pay their fees, enrol, and take the degree examination, and if they passed count the course towards their B.A. Funny? In _ theory, perhaps. In fact, the professor was a Shakespearian scholar of distinc-

tion and a first-rate teacher. As he moved his figures about a scale model cf an Elizabethan theatre I began to revise a few of my own views. I could not help thinking of our extra-mural student at Te Horo (I refuse to place him in Waikikamukau) who pays his fees, enrols, takes the degree examination, and then only too often fails, because he has never seen his professor, either in real life or on television. If a community continues to agree that students need not attend the university from which they will graduate, television might weil be the answer. Television has certainly altered some of the patterns of American life. Children who used to play around the street gather now round the viewing-screen. Parents who hold out are compelled to install a set. Otherwise they never know where their children are. They are certainly not at home. One recently ar-

rived New Zealand couple found that their youngster had the situation under contro] within a week. He chose as playmates only those whose parents possessed television! -The movie industry is feeling the blow and as I write has taken the unprecedented step of running a full page advertisement in the New York Times imploring you to take your wife to a movie . .. any movie. Perhaps the most noticeable change is in the saloon. Time was when you could sit over a beer in. the midst of babel, while the accents of Brooklyn and the Mid-West argued the state of the Union. Today, though it be sunlight without, within is a cathedral darkness. A long row of silent males, their heads reverently inclined towards the screen at the far end of the bar, follow baseball or boxing in rapt. adoration. They speak never a word, and their only gesture is to signal for another drink. Apart from the research libraries, the saloons are now the most peaceful spots in urban America.