You Weren’t There

As TV genres go, the “docudrama” is fishy and often foul. Its dubious nature has been much discussed, but the networks continue producing specimens of it anyway. That means there is a certain demand for them, and anything people want is likely to have some intrinsic merit, so it is unwise to be too censorious. On one level the docudrama may seem to resemble historical novels and chronicle plays (Henry V, say), but there is an essential difference: plays are obviously stylized, and novels are obviously supposititious. Television, on the other hand, purports to re-create literally, down to physical details. Much of its excitement arises from its power of propelling the viewer to “where the action is,” or seeming to do so. That is what gives television its oracular authority. It is the authority of apparently authentic sensation. And it is likely to be abused when it tries to cast backward, taking us into a synthetic past.

The electronic age, with its command of information, offers us a sort of ersatz omniscience, and the attraction of television has as much to do with this as with entertainment. TV has always been rich in documentary (Victory at Sea, The Twentieth Century), and in the Fifties CBS even offered a progenitor of the docudrama, You Are There, whose title makes my point. I remember the episode on Socrates and the hemlock, in which the camera panned around the room, settling on the faces of Crito and Phaedo, as the voice of Walter Cronkite addressed them by turn; they stared lachrymosely at the camera and muttered timeless Hellenic homilies about Unpopular Ideas. (These were what that old Hellenist I. F. Stone called “the Haunted Fifties.”) It was harmless, because the hokey anachronisms were obvious.

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Joseph Sobran

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As TV genres go, the “docudrama” is fishy and often foul. Its dubious nature has been much discussed, but the networks continue producing specimens of it anyway. That means there is a certain demand for them, and anything people want is likely to have some intrinsic merit, so it is unwise to be too censorious. On one level the docudrama may seem to resemble historical novels and chronicle plays (Henry V, say), but there is an essential difference: plays are obviously stylized, and novels are obviously supposititious. Television, on the other hand, purports to re-create literally, down to physical details. Much of its excitement arises from its power of propelling the viewer to “where the action is,” or seeming to do so. That is what gives television its oracular authority. It is the authority of apparently authentic sensation. And it is likely to be abused when it tries to cast backward, taking us into a synthetic past.

The electronic age, with its command of information, offers us a sort of ersatz omniscience, and the attraction of television has as much to do with this as with entertainment. TV has always been rich in documentary (Victory at Sea, The Twentieth Century), and in the Fifties CBS even offered a progenitor of the docudrama, You Are There, whose title makes my point. I remember the episode on Socrates and the hemlock, in which the camera panned around the room, settling on the faces of Crito and Phaedo, as the voice of Walter Cronkite addressed them by turn; they stared lachrymosely at the camera and muttered timeless Hellenic homilies about Unpopular Ideas. (These were what that old Hellenist I. F. Stone called “the Haunted Fifties.”) It was harmless, because the hokey anachronisms were obvious.