PBS
I wrote to PBS inviting them to take a look at this blog so they could learn a thing or two about how their Masterpiece Classics are being received. I doubt that my message will get beyond the first layer of flak-catchers: polite people who send back calmly-worded acknowledgments that the comments will of course be read in the higher echelons.
I wondered if, perhaps, ‘Masterpiece Classics’ had been designed on the placebo principle: namely that if enough people think it’s actually a true rendition of a serious piece of literature then they will be transported by what they view - - even if the program concerned is a ghastly travesty of what it purports to depict.
The question then becomes: where do these placebo-ed viewers get themselves transported to? It cannot possibly be the same place as the authors were aiming for. Perhaps the American Public has become sufficiently unreflective that just the mentioning of words like ‘Masterpiece’ and ‘classic’ will produce a misty eyed dribbling response, in the same way that words like ‘patriotism’ and cyphers like ‘9 -11′ proved to have such predictable responses. I prefer to think that we are more aware than that, and especially those people at PBS.
It’s part of a bigger concern, isn’t it? Are we a nation of educated people who think critically and question with all the energy our freedom allows? This weekend is the anniversary of the shoot-out at Concord and Lexington in 1776 that was part of establishing that freedom. One could say it’s fitting point at which to reflect as to whether or not we have allowed that freedom to wither and die.
