THE MENTAL EFFECTS OF TELEVISION

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 28, 3 February 1937, Page 16 (Supplement)

THE MENTAL EFFECTS OF TELEVISION

Will the 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 point; easier perhaps to settle than its predecessor, how loud one’s radio set ought to play! They will show more contrast in light and shade; they will offer as scenes and objects far from the transmitting station. There may be halls specially fitted for television; and a vast collection of ‘properties’, pictures, diagrams, apparatus and films. Some films will be specially designed for television. What difference will television make to our habits and mental attitudes?

media to which, twenty years ago, terms like ‘form’ and ‘figure’ could have been applied only by a few trained hearers. Today the sound-world is criss-crossed with innumerable subjective patterns, which, to thousands of listeners, are complex new experiences. This gain is not the only one; radio has taught listeners not only to perceive, but to think and to feel. Do we agree with Arnheim, who, from the aesthetic point of view, looks forward to television without enthusiasm, fearing that it will reduce broadcasting to a mere means of dissemination, since ‘ television will always prefer facts to ideas, and the individual to the general’? Is this not in the hands of the controllers of programmes? Look at the cinema for a moment. I remember a film whose producers, by manipulating mourn Jul milk-cans in rainy mean streets, suggested—unsuccessfully, I thought—the superiority of a certain firm; the film was nearly all facts; with few ideas. But with excitement I remember the northward rush of “Night Mail,” spilling ideas, like a paper-chaser, all the way. Ilotha and Grierson, in making documentary film, show that the decree of divorce between i’eas and pictures lias not yet been made absolute. But at the desk and in the studio, the artistic presentation of an idea can be built up deliberately, even fastidiously: television

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 A 1 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. Why?’ 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 off. Though there is nothing to bo said 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 concert, see some hearers helping the conductor, some following the score, while the majority sit still, a few with closed eyes. Will the screen always be tugging at our sleeve and saying ‘Come and look’? 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-produced. 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 duo to Rudolf 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 much more than this. Beforo it came, many thousands of people had heard few modes of speech other than those of their neighbours and flocial equals. 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 sound-pictures but supply them with a rich eobtext of meaning. Radio has created a whole new realm of mental life. It has been built upon the appreciation, as well as the understanding of words and music.

must land its idea all wriggling and slippery, and serve it up alive. The television commentator w r bo wiil compare this show may feel towards even imaginative film-pro-ducers as a student of animal behaviour occasionally does towards sedate and sedentary. zoologists who choose to study life in its dead forms.

Television will prefer the individual to the general? This is true, but here television fills the obvious gap in sightless broadcastings. Last mourn, the Archbishop of York said to Mr Howard Marshall: “You cannot take the congregation to a distressed area. You can only tell then about it.” Before long, television may take the distressed area to the congregation. The same remark, of course, applies to pleasanter subjects. If television orings to the fore those rare people with tongues, as well as ideas, in. their heads, it will found an entirely new profession. In one’s armchair it wiil be found possible to move around Oxford or Cambridge, Norwich or Chester in company with one who not only knows but loves his town, who not only loves it but can impart that love to listeners outside his own social circle. Few dons realise how contumelious that note of detachment in their speech may sound to listeners whose lives are untouched by any academic mould. Description and commentary are desirable for another reason. Culture is less easily perceived by the eye to-day than a century ago. This is obvious of a new culture, like that of America, but does London, nowadays, 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 office of a good - one. No longer do clothes, except in subtle ways (which can be copied) proclaim the culture of thoir wearer. The starkest functional building I ever saw was, they assured me, an excellent new concert hall, while petrol-filling stations have been wistfully disguised us Greek temples.

One 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 were, moreover, distinguished philosophers, and a don whose tongue, rumour says, has launched a thousand slips. A tefiiftting subject to televisel

What will happen to humour, when television comes I Eyebrows; probably. But the 8.8.U.’s sever3it test and their g:oitest triumph, if it succeeded, would be to televise an American lady whose impersonations are known only through rumour to thousands who have not the good luck to live in London.