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JUNE 2005

Executive Director of the Lincoln Center Institute Shares Insights

By Scott Noppe-Brandon

For this column, I thought I’d stray a litle bit from my usual concerns, namely the state of arts in education. Just a little bit, mind you: I want to talk about a favorite television program and, after all, being aware of the impact a powerful medium can have is part of my work. Besides, my concern today is certainly as universal as anything I might deal with in my professional life: it is the concern of a parent.

I enjoy good television. I do not believe that absolutely nothing besides Masterpiece Theatre or Live from Lincoln Center is worth watching. I also don’t choose my TV fare solely for its high-brow merits, any more than we at Lincoln Center Institute choose our artistic repertory because it qualifies as “high art.” We choose it because it is, without exception, of high aesthetic quality. Television, too, has produced many works of great quality: they can be—dare I say it—art, and watching them can be an aesthetic experience. By “aesthetic experience” I mean, for example, an episode of ER that moves me because the script is strong, and the characters are convincing and appealing. In their joys and tragedies I can find reflections of the larger human condition, moments drawn from almost frighteningly recognizable episodes of our own lives, and from the joys and tragedies that touch us daily on the evening news.

More’s the pity to have witnessed what I can only qualify as a gratuitous pull at the heartstrings. Dr. Carter left ER last week after 11 years on the show. He gave a moving speech to his fellow emergency room doctors and nurses and then he was gone. Forever. I hoped to be able to bask in the afterglow of the season’s finale, with that happy-sad feeling one reserves for departing old friends and good TV cliffhangers. However, the show did not end with Dr. Carter’s leaving: it ended with a ten-year old boy named Alex, son of a nurse, running away from home, hitching down the highway, on his quest to find his father. He is picked up by a man in a truck. Gone. End of show. The scene was haunting, chilling, surreal. And I hated it.

I fear this as much as any parent. Kids are abducted all year long, from home, from school, from stores, from churches and temples. All of us dread the phone call, the empty space in the playground. We don’t need the fear assault from the frames of our favorite TV shows. But it is not only on our behalf that I resented that ending. Television should not exacerbate this—all too realistic—fear. There is a distinction between a parental warning, cautiously thought out, and an emotional manipulation, accompanied by strategic shots and subliminal music (or uneasy silence) depicting children being picked up by strangers.

The fact that we do not know—won’t know for months—how the story resolves itself, makes it worse. It departs from reality in favor of blatant pandering to the morbid thrill. Maybe the truck driver will turn out to be a good Samaritan and will immediately call the boy’s mother from his cell phone. Maybe the worst will happen. Not knowing may be good strategy to keep the show’s fans in thrall, but is that strategy worth crossing the moral line into territory where our worst fears are trivialized in the name of ratings?

I do not bristle when I see the grittiness of life shown on TV, and I do not wish to debate whether TV depicts too much violence and sex. Simply, I wish to present a plea to the decisionmakers in the world of television, and, indeed, all media: when your product has the rare and delightful opportunity to be both entertainment and art, please keep the art in entertainment.#

Scott Noppe-Brandon is the Executive Director of the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education. www.lcinstitute.org

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