TOWARD TELEVISION CRITICISM
Novak, Michael
I I IIIII tlllllllllll IIII II IIIIIIII TOWARD TELEVISION CRITICISM MICHAEL NOV~tK The Aspen Institute is sponsoring a workshop on television criticism. In two workshops so far, a...
...Probably books are better instruments of subtlety and introspection, and cinema of vicarious intensity...
...its need to have materials for every hour of every day, relentlessly...
...It is legitimate to compare the deliverances of television to those of cinema and of books...
...FATHER AVERY DULLES, S.J...
...Letters [ o/not more than 250 or 300 words ]naturally have a better chance o/ coincide with a rise in status, of the sort that Pauline Kael or Stanley Kauffmann or Edmund Wilson-have attained in other symbolic fields...
...The production of ten first-rate TV shows in a year would not seem to be a sufficient quantity to satisfy our needs...
...4) Thus we need to develop a special aesthetic for television...
...and then their relatively select audience...
...Gregorian University...
...Thus a segment from All in the Family, or Rhoda, or other shows can generate quite intense and fruitful argument about values, perceptions, characterizations, artistic techniques and the rest...
...312-27r IIIIIIII glllll III Illllll I IIlllllllII I Commonweal: 63...
...The dramatic range of television is at present severely constricted...
...Upstate Medical Center, Syracuse OOOOOOOOO Mte/uml Novak (Cont...
...Well, we need to identify "the fact of television," and we need to arrive at a satisfactory vocabulary, (5) The position of the television critic needs to be established...
...3) As a medium, television is not identical to cinema...
...And the symbolic universe within which the images of television are shown--the universe of television itself--seems to be different from the universe of films within the images of film are grasped...
...Some of the things that distinguish television are: .the place in which it is meant to be :sharedmthe private home rather than a public theater...
...He is not only criticizing television for its own sake, although that is an ira(Continued on page 63) II April 1975:40 try are not trying to enforce a brand of politics or a religion on the people in general...
...There is a particular kind of sophistication present in people who watch television a great deal...
...Moreover, such critics write within a well-worked and refined universe of discourse...
...Ten a year might he quite enough to satisfy even the most devoted lover of films...
...Marquette University) Phenomenoiogy of Religion Mariasusai Dhavamony, SJ, Ph.D...
...7) A critic of television must locate himself psychologically, then, in a somewhat different position from the critic of movies or of books...
...For one thing, the critic of televison can take for granted that even more people have watched the productions he is writing about than will read his column...
...Whereas the television critic must match himself or herself against the skills and perceptions of millions...
...The unborn child, no matter where he is in that exciting, creative nine months before he is seen, is a citizen as valuable as any other citizen, and a creature greatly in need of as much justice as society can provide for him...
...One kind of art consists in the creation of beautiful objectsma statue in a park) a painting on a wall, even perhaps a poem for a special occasion, a novel meant to be read as an intellectual occasion, savored slowly, and not merely to pass the time...
...The critic might help them to see what is working, and why...
...Works the tatter comment on may be works experienced by a few, subjected to criticism by even fewer...
...They had to establish the need to discuss film in a quite new vocabulary...
...In two workshops so far, a number of points have emerged rather clear...
...Yet perhaps for a time we should examine prime time television on its own terms, measuring with more accurate appreciation what it in fact does, without rushing on to compare it to what it does not (or cannot) do...
...But those who watch TV need a new show ---and more than one new show-every evening...
...We are probably at the same stage in this respect as film criticism was thirty years ago...
...2) It seems a shame that educational systems and universities limit themselves to training the literary imagination, and neglect the training of the television and cinematic imagination, in which we are all immersed for so many hours...
...then the artists or writers who practice the arts...
...It is possible that Matt Dillon, Archie Bunker and other figures from television function almost like the symbolic heroes of the literary imagination--like Huck Finn and the Deerslayer and Daisy Miller, like Babbitt, "the old man and the sea," and others...
...So perhaps the television critic is in a quite different circumstance from the critic of opera or of dance or of the cinema or of books...
...University of Nijmegen) ot Christ in Contemporary Thought Mary Peter McGinty, CSJ, Ph.D...
...ROBERT PHILLIPS iS currently completing a study of William Goyen's fiction for" Twayne's United States Authors Series...
...A rather priestly role feels quite natural to such critics...
...Television presents, by contrast, something like a Protestant reformation in fields of criticism: everyone his own experience...
...I state some of them as propositions, in a descending order of certainty...
...The good television critic, perhaps, would be able to put into words, and to articulate perceptions, that a great many viewers could be led to share...
...how to compare them with other effects in other shows in other places...
...Another kind is found in the arts of everyday living: not only the arts of cooking, but also the arts of designing furniture," deco[ating the home, conversation, sizing up the characters of others, administration, leading a discussion, and many others...
...There are probably a good many other differences as well...
...6) Often a television show exceeds the bounds of mere entertainment...
...D. Phil (Oxford University) Courses may be taken in an M,A...
...the proportional size and intimacy of its images...
...lillllllll I II Virtually all a critic's moves could be followed by a very large audience, so that they could learn to see in a more perfect way...
...That is to say, "television facts" sometimes become cultural facts...
...program or in an unclassified status...
...but his or her return must always be to a medium shared by all...
...They too, after all, have gone through the experience of the works in question, and have their memories as viewers to hold as a check against what the critic is saying...
...TUOMAS E. CRONIN is the author of the forthcoming The State o/ the Presidency (Little-Brown...
...Listen to college students reminisce about the television figures of their childhood...
...and the shows bear the scrutiny...
...Even the collegeeducated watch 35-42 hours a week, on the average...
...OOOOOOOOO REVIEWERS .e JOHN GARVEY IS an editor at Templegate Publishing in Springfield, II1...
...it generates imaginative symbols which feed the entire culture...
...What it does is powerful enough...
...The critic may be "ahead" of his or her audience, and have skills that most do not...
...One may make fun of the relatively small audience that watches Channel 13 in New York, but even on a single evening that audience probably exceeds the number of readers of the best selling books...
...Additional courses are available through the Institute of Pastoral Studies...
...Perhaps television is more like the common arts than like the fine arts...
...how certain effects were attained...
...how the symbolic materials of the show are shoddy, or genuine, or complex, or stereotyped...
...i Illllllllllllll I Chicago For application or information, contact S. Mary Peter McGinty, CSJ U Graduate Theology Program Loyola University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois 60626 1975 Summer Session: June 16 -July 25 Pentateuch in Modern Criticism study Thomas Ranck, Ph.D...
...Quite the opposite...
...Many governments have attempted this tactic, and we don't need to get into that, although recent European history is a gruesome teacher...
...The point of television criticism may not be to find in shows materials that no one else in the world could see except the privileged critic and a few of his peers...
...I I IIIII tlllllllllll IIII II IIIIIIII TOWARD TELEVISION CRITICISM MICHAEL NOV~tK The Aspen Institute is sponsoring a workshop on television criticism...
...weal...
...Because the state deems him unworthy doesn't mean that the issue is closed...
...This is the first of a regular column on books on religion that he will write for Common...
...The point is that television is sui generis...
...The kind of signal used by television presents a quite different physiological experience from that provided by film...
...And the conventions of television seem to be somewhat different from those of film...
...I beLng published...
...There are many different kinds of art...
...Here the television critic may play a special role in society...
...Critics had to establish that there was such a thing as "the fact of film...
...Besides, many of the viewers of television, who may be more engaged in television than he is, may also have a larger experience of television than he has...
...Expertise in watching tekvision~in the simple act of watching with appreciation and enjoyment--has its own breadth and depth...
...the limited and highly structured time frames in which it is obliged to work...
...They may enjoy its comments on itself and its self-referential moments (which are many) with greater insight...
...University of Ottawa) at LoyolaWestern andEasternMysticism G. Justin O'Brien, Ph.D...
...Such images help us to understand the world around us...
...the commerce of its images with domestic reality and with the reality of the "news...
...There might be ten first-rate movies made in a vintage year...
...recently published Models oj the Church (Doubleday...
...They are merely trying to save the lives of fellow citizens, their neighbors if you will...
...Drew University) TIfEOLOIgV TheFourth Gospel Brendan McGrath, OSB, S.T.D...
...The television camera is a very rich instrument of creativity, and the power of its impressions, even when the subject matter is prosaic, is quite remarkable...
...This universe includes, for example, all similar critics who have written in the area...
...ROGER D. MOORE, M,D...
...The skills required of a serious critic of drchie Bunker, Kung Fu, or the Smothers Brothers do not at present - i Hl l Commonweal welcomes letters on [ subjects treated in its pages...
...The critic of serious books and serious movies can assume that he or she is enga~ng in an activity that will appeal to a "discriminatiing" audience...
...1) Prime-time television is worthy of a serious critical effort...
...and at which precise moments a show fulfills its ideal possibilities, and when and why it fails...
...If one watches a show, and tries ~o criticize it afterward, the effort bears fruit...
...portant task, but he is also in some ways a guardian of the symbolic materials that enter into the nation's psyche every day...
...They create the symbolic theater that shapes our ~syches...
...At that time, too, not very many persons took the movies seriously...
Vol. 102 • April 1975 • No. 2
