Beethoven for the Beatniks

Most objections to television are true, but beside the point. Its concerns are trivial; but the principal means of daily communication has always been trivial except in monasteries or dictatorships built on propaganda. Only those who have lived for some time without such a buffer for the brain can know how healthy it is. Pathologically frightened “experts” call the stylized fights on television pathologically violent. But these are the same men who want to abolish Treasure Island, Jack and the Beanstalk, and nuclear tests.

Those who regret the decline of folk wisdom and tradition should listen to the maxims of Ma Perkins and the other kind ladies of the afternoon. The soap opera is one of the few voices of the Western ethical tradition. The cowboy show is another. These stories, though often mawkish, are at least not pretentious; and their very lack of sophistication makes them rely on a basic love for stories which is ignored on the artistic programs and on today’s stage. The heraldry of black mask and white horse, the use of peripeteia and climax, often makes the Lone Ranger’s afternoon adventures more interesting than the still-life study of man on Playhouse 90.

GW

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Garry Wills

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Most objections to television are true, but beside the point. Its concerns are trivial; but the principal means of daily communication has always been trivial except in monasteries or dictatorships built on propaganda. Only those who have lived for some time without such a buffer for the brain can know how healthy it is. Pathologically frightened “experts” call the stylized fights on television pathologically violent. But these are the same men who want to abolish Treasure Island, Jack and the Beanstalk, and nuclear tests.

Those who regret the decline of folk wisdom and tradition should listen to the maxims of Ma Perkins and the other kind ladies of the afternoon. The soap opera is one of the few voices of the Western ethical tradition. The cowboy show is another. These stories, though often mawkish, are at least not pretentious; and their very lack of sophistication makes them rely on a basic love for stories which is ignored on the artistic programs and on today’s stage. The heraldry of black mask and white horse, the use of peripeteia and climax, often makes the Lone Ranger’s afternoon adventures more interesting than the still-life study of man on Playhouse 90.