W T I ldlt.d by THOMAS ELSAISSEII JAN SIMONS LUCETTE ••ONK AMSTEPiO"'" UNIVERSITY PRESS WRITING FOR THE MEDIUM Television in Transition FILM CULTURE IN TRANSITION Thomas Efsaesser: General Editor Double Trouble Chiemvan Houweninge on Writing and Filming Thomas Elsaesser, RobertKievitandfan Simons(eds.) (march 1994) Fassbinder's Germany Thomas Elsaesser (summer1994) Film and the First World War KarelDibbetsandBert Hogenkamp (eds.) (fall 1994) WRITING FOR THE MEDIUM Television in Transition Editedby THOMAS ELSAESSER JAN SIMONS LUCETTE BRONK x .I~p X AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS C1P-GEGEVENS KONINKLlJKEBIBLlOTHEEK, DEN HAAG Writing Writing for the medium : television in transition / ed. by Thomas Elsaesser, Lucette Bronk, Jan Simons. -Amsterdam: Amsterdam UniversityPress With ref. ISBN 90-5356-054-8 NUG1925/951 Subjectheadings: screenwriting;television / quality; television. Coverdesign: KokKorpershoek(KO), Amsterdam Typesetting: A-zet, Leiden ©Amsterdam UniversityPress, Amsterdam, 1994 All rights reserved. Withoutlimitingtherights undercopyrightreserved above, nopartofthis publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into aretrieval system, ortransmitt ed, in anyform or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording orother wise), withoutthepriorwritten permission ofboththe copyrightownerandthe auhorofthis book. CONTENTS 7 General Introduction Thomas Elsaesser Part 1-QualityTelevision 15 Introduction Thomas Elsaesser 21 Television in theAgeofConsensus without Sense Lutz Hachmeister 35 'Quality'Television Geoffrey Nowell-Smith 41 Quality Television in TheNetherlands: Some HopefulReflections on Breaking the Taboo Sonja de Leeuw 49 On theQualityofSoap Olga Madsen 54 Zapping One's Wayinto Quality:Arts Programmes on TV Thomas Elsaesser 64 Definitions ofQuality Ion Cookand Thomas Elsaesser 77 Questionable Qualityorthe UndiscoverableQualityofTelevision lan Simons Part 2- Literatureon Television 91 Introduction Thomas Elsaesser 98 TheNovelist andTelevision Drama Malcolm Bradbury 107 OnAchievingGood Television FayWeldon 118 Speaking to Nations Alan Plater 131 Television andLiterature Ion Cook 5 137 LiteratureafterTelevision: Author, Authority, Authenticity Thomas Elsaesser 149 Unwritable Films, Unfilmable Texts? Jan Simons Part 3-Science on Television 159 Introduction Jan Simons 164 Gee-WizardsoftheBox? Thomas Elsaesser 182 Scienceon Television Aart Gisolf 186 On Being GodandDarwin Graham Creelman 191 Citizen ScientistorADinosaurforAllSeasons? Jana Bennett 194 ScienceandTechnologyon TV: FourEuropean Countries Compared JaapWillems 203 Selected Bibliography 207 The Contributors 210 The Editors 211 Film Culture in Transition: on the series 6 GENERAL INTRODUCTION THOMAS ELSAESSER This collection of essays was inspired by a desire to bring together some of the arguments that have, in recentyears and all over Europe, shaped the debate about the future of television. It is undeniable that the commotion came from a certain anxietyand senseofcrisis, although in some quarters (not represented in the pages that follow), the crisis was perceived and seized as an opportunity: to dismantle regulations and state controls, to discredit television's civic accountability, and above all, to make lots of money. Those, however, who felt that public service tele vision - in its old, government-monopoly form and in its advertising-funded, com mercial manifestations- was something worth defending also seized the crisis as an opportunity. It made it possible to reflect on what television had come to mean for audiences and television makers, for oursense ofdemocracy, ofcommunity, and of thecontemporarynation-state: the last in Europe paradoxicallyatoneandthe same time on the verge of disappearing into aFederal Europe, and of reasserting itself in the confused search for nationalism, regional autonomyand ethnic identity. At this juncture, it seemed imperative to limit the topic somewhat and start by studying the fault-lines along a more traditional fissure: the high-culture/ popularculture opposition, forexample, ormore precisely, the dividewhich issup posed to separate writers - men and women of letters- from such astridently popu list, easily demagogic and inherently ephemeral medium such as television. Under the title of 'Writing and Filming', an international weekend conference was organ ized by the Institute of Film and Television Studies atthe University of Amsterdam and held at the Nederlands Filmmuseum on May 15th-17th, 1992. The event was itself something of a follow-up to a seminar organized under the title 'Television: Questions of Quality' by the Centre for Creative and Performing Arts at the Universityof East Anglia in Norwich two years earlier. The presence of speakers who attended both conferences (Cook, Bradbury, Hachmeister, Elsaesser) gave the discussions some continuity, understated by the fact that only the revised version of one paper - Jon Cook and Thomas Elsaesser's closing report from the Norwich meeting- is included here. The Amsterdam meeting wanted to be aforum forwriters and television programme makers and to extend the boundaries by including factual writing, 7 alongsidethe views ofhistoriansand scholarsoftelevision. Anumberoffilmmakers were also invited, well aware that they might open up an intriguing double front: wary of television lest it swallow them, filmmakers sometimes feel they have to keep atarm's length thewriters whose work theyare suspected ofbetraying to the imageand spectacle. Yet theirthoughts on the topics we proposed- 'the unwritablefilm' and 'the unfilmable text' - were key elements of the conference: the disputes writers havealways had with directorsand which both have had with producers, aswell as the changing status of the director as author, give a much-needed historical dimension to the current controversies over how these roles are distributed in television. Writing and filming have always been perceived as sharing somefunda mentals. Not only do film directors expect their unique stylistic and thematic 'sig nature' to be recognized by an audience, similarto the way writers are recognized by their readers, but films are often called 'texts', a sign, beyond the jargon, that they are beginning to receive the kind of close attention traditionally reserved for works of literature. More generally, filming presupposes writing: a film is usually produced on the basis ofascript, aform ofwriting which has acomplex butabso lutely crucial status in the commercial film industry, while its need to exist at all is often challenged by personal, independent or avant-garde filmmaking. Finally, once afilm hasencountered apublic, it becomesthe subjectofother kinds ofwrit ing: articles byjournalists, criticsand academics. Writing, furthermore, is crucial for television. While one tends to think thatthe unique qualityoftelevision derivesfrom its 'Iiveness', itis in fact amedium dependent on 'writing'. Yet much writing for television - and not always the worst - remains more or less anonymous: for factual programmes, news and political commentary, science programmes, children's television, game shows. Little attention is usually paid to the kinds and qualities of this writing. For all its visual impact, television remains very much a medium of speech and sound, historically derived from radio and currently competing not, in the first instance, with the cinema butwith the press and newspapers. In order to keep this perspective in the foreground, Writing for the Medium has been divided into three sections. The first is devoted to an analysis of what is atissue in the fight overthe future(s) oftelevision, singling outthe slippery term 'quality television' in order to probe what is meant by quality in a popular medium, and howitcan be defined ordefended. The second section focuses on literature and television. With wit and passion, the authors discuss some ofthe ways television and the written text have influenced and changed each other in the past decades. Going beyond the 8 THOMAS ELSAESSER question of literary adaptation, writers with experience in several media and genres, such as Malcolm Bradbury, FayWeldon and Alan Platervoicetheirconcern, but also their continuing engagement for a tradition of quality television writing, which they see under siege in the new world of deregulation and international co-productions. In Great Britain, the writeron television seems, for the time being, to have maintained a certain authority, not least thanks to the independence enjoyed by producers and commissioning editors. The situation is more precarious on the Continent, where authorsfeel that theircraft often goes unrecognized. And yet, the skills required for television writing need to be more widely understood, if television is to retain the loyaltyofnational audiences. The final section examines 'science on television', with series editors from Britain and Germany giving first-hand accounts of the scope for serious science reporting on television, but also considering the entertainment expectations of audiences when watching wildlife programmes or learning about current contro versies in the sciences. Acomparative study points out the different traditions and cultural debateswhich shape programming in this area across Europe. Writing for the Medium will, it is hoped, stimulate the debate about the future of quality television and the place of writing, not least by suggesting that this place need not be confined to drama and fiction. The essays also document the readiness with which writers accept television as an important medium in its own right, instead of expecting it to derive its importance merely from the mess age it may be made to deliver. Given the tendency towards deregulation and the so-called 'market orientation' of broadcasting in Europe, it is important to under stand moreclearly, and acrossthe whole spectrum of programming, which aspects of the public service remit in television - and, by extension, what sort of national film culture - are in need ofsupport orneed to be given anew purpose. As we no tice, information and entertainment- two key elements of public service broadcast ing as well as ofthecinema - becoming increasingly intermingled and 'global', the meaning of a national audiovisual culture for the survival of democracy has to be much morewidely discussed than it isat present. The prospectsofahealthy media culture are important notjustfrom the pointofview ofeconomics. An 'ecological' perspective is necessary to understand film and TV's relation to national literature, to developments in science, to concerns about the environment and to techno logical change. It may even remind us of the basic political arguments for maintaining anationallyspecific, but nevertheless international audiovisual culture, in the face of what some see as the increasing dominance of one or two nations' cultures overeveryotheron the globe. Another outlook one might take away from the following essays is that, 9 GENERAL INTRODUCTION