On this day in 1925, the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture of a face - not a living human face, but that of a ventriloquist's dummy named "Stooky Bill." Bill had been chosen as a performer for his uncomplaining character, even when the powerful lights that Baird's system needed set fire to his hair. Thanks to Bill's sacrifice, more than 3 billion people around the world now spend whole evenings staring into a corner of the room.
I have known sin and I have made television programs; the two have a good deal in common. For one thing, they promise more than they deliver: the lively exterior masks a soul of sawdust. Passively plunked before the little screen, we are neither drawn fully out of ourselves nor still in active possession of our reason; to the degree that we feel or think, these faculties are dulled. The picture hooks us in because, like all primates, we are suckers for certain images: ripe and glossy things, faces from our own species, landscapes and emotions, quick changes of scene. We can no more keep ourselves from watching than we could ignore a crying infant. This is not a good basis for rational thought.
This enforced passivity explains why television is so bad at conveying hard information: the attentive part of our brains has stopped working. Quiz your family about the content of that fascinating political documentary you saw last night and you'll find that an hour of dense exposition leaves but a minute of memory behind. Yet if the interviewees had told you their story face to face, you would know it in detail - because conversation makes us observant, engaged and active. This distinction highlights why, despite the best efforts of State broadcasters and the many millions of Walter Annenberg, "educational television" remains an oxymoron.
Passivity lowers standards: "there's nothing on" is rarely the signal for rising from the couch and going out for a brisk walk - it's the last protest of the drowning mind as the will flickers out and the eyes go rectangular. Broadcasters know and exploit this: as channels proliferate and production budgets plummet we now find ourselves spending long hours watching the private lives of people whom, in real life, we would cross a busy avenue to avoid. Junk entertainment, "prolefeed," has us in thrall.
There are, of course, exceptions: TV sports (with the sound turned off) gives us a better and more informed view than we could ever get from the box seats. The few dramas and comedies that pay for good writing and good acting show it is possible to reward the attentive mind - but in this they are less like television and more like little movies, just as the shows we celebrate as the Golden Age of Television were actually little plays. The essential problem is this: as a medium,TV is cheap; but as art, it remains fearsomely expensive. To be any good, it still requires the talent, experience and dedication of scores of people, from executive producer to make-up assistant, casting director to rewrite man, AD to best boy, gaffer to grip. When they are there, paying attention, you will, too - but the industry has discovered that you don't need to be paying attention to watch. No wonder Baird's son said that, had his father known what use would be made of it, he would have thrown his "Televisor" out the window.
If you enjoy such tales of human fallibility, you will find a new one every day at my sister site, Bozo Sapiens. See you there.
