In this essay, I would first of all like to examine what television, and the structures it generates, can contribute to the field of aesthetic reflection—whether it can reconfirm certain stances or, as a phenomenon that does not fit into any of the existing categories, broaden certain theoretical definitions.
Second, I would like to see whether there is any rapport between the communicative structures of television and the «open» structures of contemporary art.
The Aesthetic Structures of Live Television
Television has been the object of numerous discussions that have raised a variety of interesting issues, some of them undoubtedly useful for an eventual artistic development of the medium, but none of them quite sufficient to constitute an exciting contribution to the field of aesthetics. In other words, they have not been able to generate any «novelty» that might challenge existing assumptions and demand a redefinition of principles and precepts.
Some of these discussions have dealt with the «space» of television— determined by the dimensions of the screen and the limited depth of field of TV cameras—and with the very particular «time» of television, so often identifiable with real time (in live broadcasts of events and shows, for instance), and always defined by its relationship with televisual space and the psychological conditions of the average TV audience. A good deal of attention has also been given to the very peculiar form of communication that binds the TV screen to its audience, an audience that is both numerically and qualitatively different from the audiences of other spectacles, in that, although it involves far more people, it still allows each one of them his privacy, a form of isolation that is in total contrast to any idea of collectivity. These are the problems that confront TV scriptwriters, set designers, producers, and directors, and are all worthy subjects for a poetics of television.
On the other hand, philosophically speaking, there is nothing new about the fact that even television, like any other means of communication, has a «space» and a «time» of its own, and a particular relationship with its public. The problems that concern television only confirm the philosophical assumption that intrinsic to every «genre» of art is a dialogue with its matter, and the establishment of a grammar and a lexicon of its own. But, in this case, television wouldn’t offer the philosopher anything new.
This conclusion could be definitive if we were concerned only with the «artistic» (here meant in its most conventional and limited sense) programs offered by television: plays, operas, soap operas, concerts, comedies, films, other traditional shows. But since a broader aesthetic analysis can take into consideration all sorts of communication to measure their artistic and aesthetic value, the aspect of television that would seem most interesting and fruitful to our research is also its most characteristic, unique to the medium: namely, live broadcasts.
Some of the features of live broadcasts that seem most relevant to our inquiry have already been the object of a great deal of attention. First of all, their form, so much like that of a montage— «montage» because, as everyone knows, an event is generally filmed by three or more TV cameras at the same time, though only the best image, or the one supposed to be the best, goes on the air— but a montage that is improvised and occurs simultaneously with the event that’s being filmed. Filming, editing, and broadcasting, three phases that in cinema remain perfectly separate and distinct, are here fused into one—a fact which, as I have already mentioned, certainly warrants the identification of real time with televisual time, since no form of narration can condense the autonomous duration of the represented event.
Even these few preliminary observations are enough to suggest a whole series of artistic, technical, and psychological problems at the level of both production and reception—one of which is the introduction, into the realm of artistic production, of a dynamics of reflexes that until the advent of television was believed to pertain only to some modern experiences of locomotion and to some industrial activities. But something else brings this «immediate» act of communication even closer to an artistic event.
No live broadcast of a particular event is ever the mirror image of that event: in fact, it is always (even though, on occasion, barely so) an interpretation of it. In order to film a particular event, the TV director will decide where to locate the three or more cameras so as to have three or more complementary points of view, whether or not all three cameras are concerned with the same field of vision (such as an opera singer) or with different ones (such as three different points along a racetrack). Obviously, the location of TV cameras is always determined by technical questions, but not so much as to exclude, at least in a preliminary phase, the possibility of a choice.
As soon as the event begins, the director receives the three images filmed by the three cameras on three separate screens. Prior to this, he has presumably instructed the cameramen as to what kind of image they should try to obtain from their respective fields of vision (what angle to take, what lens to use, what depth to choose, and so on). At this point, the director must choose which image to broadcast and when, in order to provide a coherent continuum of images, a real narrative sequence. For his choices inevitably turn into ‘a composition, a narration, a discursive unification of the images that he has analytically selected from a much vaster set of coexisting and intersecting events.
It is true that most live broadcasts today concern events that do not allow much room for interpretation: the focus of a football game must be the ball. But even here, every technical choice inevitably entails a particular bias: a camera that tends to focus on the particular contributions of individual players is telling us something different from the one that prefers to stress teamwork. On the other hand, certain events are particularly apt to be interpreted and turned into narrative. In 1956, for instance, during the broadcast of a discussion between two economists, the screen insisted on showing the weaker interlocutor nervously twisting his handkerchief around his fingers while the voice of the stronger one boomed on over his bowed head. Clearly, the director of the program was more involved with the emotional aspect of the debate than with its economic value.
The famous wedding of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco is an even better example. It could have been approached from a number of possible angles: as a political event, a diplomatic meeting. a Hollywood parade, an operetta, a Regency romance. Predictably, the broadcast chose the last: it stressed the romantic aspect of the affair, clearly favoring flash over depth. During the military parade, at the moment when the purely decorative American contingent was intoning some military anthem, the camera remained focused on Prince Rainier, who, having soiled his pants by leaning against the parapet of the balcony, had bent to dust them off without, for all that, taking his smiling eyes off his betrothed. Maybe any TV director would have done the same (isn’t this the sort of thing that’s best known as a «scoop»?).
Whatever the case, this initial choice certainly colored the rest of the broadcast. If, at the moment in question, instead of focusing on Rainier the camera had focused on the Americans in full uniform, then, two days later, during the religious ceremony, it might have focused on the officiating priest rather than on the face of the princess, as it did. Obviously, to give a certain unity to his story, the director had decided to maintain the same tone frame after frame, chapter after chapter, since the premises he had established two days earlier were still conditioning his narrative. By so doing, he was probably trying to satisfy the presumed taste of his audience, but in fact he was also, though maybe unconsciously, determining it. Despite a number of technical and sociological restrictions, he had found enough room to move autonomously and to tell his own story.
A narrative that evolves according to a rudimentary principle of coherence, and whose realization takes place at the same time as its conception—isn’t this what we would call an impromptu story? Improvisation: here is an aspect of television that could be of interest to aesthetics. The songs of the bards and the representations of the Commedia dell’Arte have already familiarized us with a similar technique; both forms availed themselves of improvisation but with much greater creative autonomy, far fewer external restrictions, and absolutely no referential obligation toward an ongoing reality. Today we find an even more extreme expression of the same phenomenon in those jazz performances known as jam sessions, where the various members of a group choose a theme which they then proceed to develop freely, according to the whims of each, relying on sheer improvisation as well as on a certain congeniality. The result is a «creation» that is at once collective, simultaneous, and extemporaneous, yet (at its best) perfectly organic.
This should in itself be enough to make us reconsider certain aesthetic concepts, or at least to lend them greater flexibility, in particular
