Thursday, June 14, 2001
There are bad books and really bad books, but this doesn’t mean that reading books is a waste of time; and so it is with television: just because you’re watching ‘Family Fortunes’ doesn’t mean that others should be denied the pleasure and reward of watching ‘Channel 4 News’.
This might seem an obvious point, but when it comes to discussing the merits of this medium reasoned debate can sometimes go out the window. TV brings us art and community, and should be valued for it.
First the art. The one-hour TV drama format is a genuinely important platform for creativity. Things like plays work better on a stage, things like movies need a big screen and demise of the novel seems to have been exaggerated, but none of them could have brought us ‘The Sopranos’ or ‘The Singing Detective’.
These shows only make sense in the TV format. There’s a rhythm and intimacy that television allows that nothing else can match.
Gore Vidal, who wrote scripts for live TV drama recently remarked that he did film work just for money (including writing the script for ‘Ben Hur’), but he would have done television for nothing, because he enjoyed the challenge, and really enjoyed the huge audience he reached.
Which brings us to the second great strength of TV – it creates and reinforces communities. When you’re watching ‘Big Brother’, you are part of a community of millions that is engaging in a shared experience. You might be on your own on the sofa, but as soon as you get to work the next morning, you’ll be knee deep in ‘Did you see your man Brian last night?’.
Membership of this community shapes who we are a little, and gives us something to belong to. The first big televisual event in the UK was the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1952 – people wanted to be there to see it, even if they couldn’t be.
Until I was out of range of BBC television for three years I never appreciated the extent to which the base level of my childhood experience had been informed by watching television. I’d meet people who had no idea about ‘The Wombles’ and ‘Blue Peter’ and ‘Cheggers Plays Pop’ (the lucky sods), and while of course it didn’t really matter, actually it did.
The community building side of television is seen at its clearest with sport. Some sporting events, like Grand Prix and The Tour de France hardly work as spectator sports without television. Unless you’re Martin Brundle, you’re not going to be watching every Grand Prix around the world from beside the finish line, but from the comfort of your living room (or that of a friend’s), you can share in the event. And when David O’Leary scored that penalty, how many of us would have seen it were it not for TV?
Telelvision is a good servant but a poor master. It can encourage passivity and a separation from your own life, or it can expand your horizons, inform, entertain and include. So I’m not giving up, but I could, if I wanted to. No problem. It’s not like I’m addicted or anything. Seriously.