by Rick Moody
Ranjeet has her by the hand. He holds her wrist as if it were spun glass. He leads her to the desk. Helps her up onto the edge of the desk. He says, in his accent, which has the honeyed syllables of a superior subcontinental education, that first of all there were cave paintings. The cave paintings were petroglyphs left behind for men to indicate that other men had once trod on this spot. And here were the things that these men saw. They saw that there were animals, they saw that there were tigers and mammoths and hyenas, and these were the petroglyphs that were left behind preserving the glories of the hunt. History so loves the petroglyph that it never vanishes from human image-making: how to capture a hyena, how to chase down a mammoth, large game slain on the veldt. Then there are the hieroglyphs, these come next, and of the hieroglyphs we know that there are pictures of men fighting against other men, that the northern tribes fought against the southern tribes, and then each of these in turn fought with the eastern and western tribes. We know how these tribes danced and how they loved, we know all these things from these pictures, these hieroglyphs. And now there is the knowledge of the petroglyphs, Ranjeet says, and the knowledge of the hieroglyphs. Every baby that is born is born with the knowledge preserved in these pictures. At the same time, however, there was a mistake which was the mistake of the alphabet—not a picture at all, but rather an emblem for certain kinds of grunts and moans that are made by men. All is made wrong by the historical turn toward the alphabet. All is disturbed by the alphabet. With the calligraphies of the Qur’an and its Arabic tongues, there are letters and sounds of beauty; they are almost like pictures for men to look at. These are of the surpassing beauty that we associate with the pictograms of the Asian tongues. Pictograms were beautiful, and the writers wrote of cranes and bears in the forest and the archers hunting down the bears. The beauty of these pictograms created in the minds of men in China and Japan and Korea ten thousand inventions. They left behind their pictorial account of the noodle, and this learning was transmitted to the men and women who came after and who carried with them the pictures from before, the petroglyphs, the hieroglyphs, the erotic pictures painted on Greek urns, all these were contained in the pictures of the painters, the painters who introduced perspective into the world of flat drawings, the painters of cathedral ceilings, with their lenses and prisms. Then, when the time was right, these painters spawned the photograph; the photograph sprang from the obsessions of cathedral painters, you see, and the photograph was good. These photographs used the very same techniques favored by the painters of petroglyphs. Photographs of untouchables lining the streets of the city, photographs taken by imperialists, these indicate that everything is possible now, and any one man or woman may be an artist of vision, and everyone can remember the history of his city, his culture, his nation, and it is the same with the magic of cinema, where now pictures and music and stories and paintings are all made one, in this special Platonic cave; the greater the audience, the larger the audience, the more memorable the stories, better even than photographs, better even than cathedral paintings. Meanwhile, somewhere else, somewhere far distant but adjacent, there is a different story being told: the tale of written words, words on the page in alphabets. This tale is a sickness. A beautiful sickness, a way of specialized meanings that must be interpreted by monks in little cells with bars on the windows, arguing about this and that, what does this word mean, this word means that you must not eat chickens on Sunday, and this word means that if no one hears, a tree has not fallen. This is a beautiful sickness, a beautiful splitting in half of hairs, and many millions of people in cold northern regions fall ill with it, as with the illness known as plague. This is not the true way because these tales of the alphabet have no light in them. These tales are produced in dank chambers where a large ugly machine goes around and around, smudging grease on pulped boards that are preserved by monks with failing eyesight. No, as you can now see, the true way must be the way of bringing light to all the people, and there is but the one way to do that. There is the one way that cinema becomes the gift to all people of all learning and all teaching, and all beauty, and all truth, the preserved history of all mankind. There is but one way. And, furthermore, that way is the way of the little box that comes into your home or your airport waiting room or your hospital room. That way is the way of television, which is the one light, the light in the house, the light in the darkness, the light of the satellite dish, the light of the dishwallahs of India, the light of the rural places coming out of the darkness, the light of television that brings together all men and women in red bathing suits on a shore, the light of a talking horse, the light of a red-haired woman and her bandleader husband when they argue and she crosses her eyes, the light of an army hospital and its surgeons during the war, the light of a special team of policewomen who are like the three seductive fates, the light of unshaven policemen from a city in Florida, the light of a family of oil barons, the light of four women who sleep with many men and talk about it in cafés, the light of all persons who wish to be millionaires. This is the true story of men and women of today. This is where the myths and stories for the future must be sown. This is where all that needs to be told is told about the heroism of great wrestlers and beautiful women. This is where the stories are told about the houses of rich people and about the plastic surgery transformations of these people into gods. The stories are not told in the consumptive sickness of literature, of words on a page. That is for people who are dying and are sick and nauseated and are vomiting up all their hatred. You can see them dying, inch by inch, because they are homosexuals and are having sex with devices, which is pleasurable, which passes the time, but it is not the way that is delighted in by the gods. This film that you are going to make now, it must be the way of light and the aesthetic vision, it must be television, with its scantily clad sirens, and not in the movie theater that sells cappuccino instead of candies and popcorn. That is what I have been brought here to tell you, Ranjeet intones.
“And now,” he says, “I must tell you about Roots.”
“Wait,” Jeanine says, seeing at last a chance to get a word in somehow and hoping, thereby, to get out of the office. “Just how do you know all this?”
“I thought it up while I was driving for the car service.”
“Your —”
“My car is outside. Parked in an illegal spot.”
“What you’re saying is very powerful. But actually I —”
She can hear some commotion outside now and she uses it as an opportunity to open the door. In the hall, Vanessa is standing over Annabel’s desk ridiculing her, while the others, as usual, pretend to be knee-deep in work. “And the treatment lands, by accident, somehow by accident, on the desk of Vic Freese. And he calls me, telling me he has some treatment, says it’s called The Diviners, and what a tremendous piece of work it is, this treatment, have I seen this treatment? And everyone is talking about this treatment. And I don’t even have this particular piece of paper. Which has now been promised to me for what, three days? What do I pay you for? To sit here and talk on the phone with your friends about how horribly you are treated at the office, where your boss actually wants you to get the material before somebody else, some agent, because that’s how you make the deal? You make the deal before the other companies, not after them. If you make the deal after the other companies, you don’t make any money or there is no deal at all. Yeah, you are treated so badly, because you have to sit around and talk to the eleven managers and agents of some actor who wants you to come out with him to some bar tonight where supermodels are going. Horrible. Your boss actually wants you to do your job, how astonishing, because that’s the only way your boss can meet the payroll so that you can actually pay your rent and pay your taxes and I can continue to run a business —”
It wouldn’t be a day at Means of Production if one of the women there was not weeping. And Vanessa, waving a stale doughnut, looks over at Jeanine, who darkens the doorway of the empty office that is now the office of the theory and
practice of television at Means of Production, and she evidently sees the half-light and the disheveled participants in the discussion of the theory and practice of television, the history of the medium, and she does a double take. But now Ranjeet simply reaches around Jeanine and closes the door. There is the sound of a siren going down Fifth Avenue. A convoy of rush hour buses.
“Think about the birth of the man called Kunta Kinte, in the program entitled Roots. When before in this medium which is called television has the birth of a black man such as this been as reverently treated as it is in the program entitled Roots? The father holds an infant up to the stars, and it is like the exaggerated dance sequences of Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire. It is the falsehood that tells a truth about the history of your nation which has never been told, which is the truth about a child born in Africa, not even born in this country, a child who didn’t even choose to come to this country but who came here forcibly. It could be the most important birth in the history of the country, the birth of little Kunta Kinte, even though he is a fictionalized personage! Certainly the most important birth on television! The woman crying out in pain, pushing, pushing, and then the little child being held up by the father, Kunta Kinte being held up to the stars. And then there is the youth of Kunta Kinte, and into this is cut very falsified footage of wild animals, a cheetah running in a field which is clearly not the field in which Kunta Kinte is later seen running. Or there is a monkey standing on a tree limb at the moment that the young Kunta Kinte is about to be captured by a slave trader. All these many lapses, these mistakes in the editing of the material, and the misplaced comic moments of the program called Roots. However, above all this is the slave trade, above all this is the instant of the sale into slavery of Kunta Kinte, because no matter the aesthetics of the moment, all American stories aspire to this condition, which is the condition of the saga. All stories aspire in this direction, and all corporations aspire toward the sale and reproduction of this saga. Nothing could be more American than this, and nothing could be more international than what is American, nothing could be more human; there are no nationalities, there are only ethnicities and corporations, there is only the military and its collateral damage, and the land of profitability and cowboys and slave trading.”
Ranjeet is so excited by the details as he spins them out that he paces the room, stepping on the coverage on the floor in his shiny sneakers, which are knockoffs from a large retailer. It’s hard to tell under the beard how old he is. Jeanine thinks thirty-four, but he carries himself like he’s thirty years older. There is something sexy about him. Again, he takes her wrist as he speaks of LeVar Burton. LeVar Burton, who plays Kunta Kinte. And when he does, he can feel her disfigurement. She knows that he knows. She has her sleeves pulled down, of course. As she always does. Even in the summer.
Vanessa comes in. She had to eventually. Vanessa bustles in and suddenly the lights are on, and Ranjeet is picking up the coverage from everywhere on the floor.
“Give me the update, you guys.”
Circles under her eyes. It’s one of those days when you have to feel pity for her, which is the compassion on which the abuser depends. Circles under her eyes, disarranged hair, a shirt that’s badly tucked in, a missing earring.
“He’s giving me a lecture on the miniseries,” Jeanine says.
“Hey, wait a second. I want everyone to hear this.”
Everyone winces at the advent of team strategy meetings. They overcome Vanessa with a migrainous instantaneity. Though it can be said that Vanessa’s attention deficit problems do prevent lengthy attempts at these or any other corporate time wasters. She leads Ranjeet, babbling, out into the hall and into the conference room with the arty glass table that Jeanine herself ordered from a catalogue. The others gather in the hall.
“Madison. Jeanine. Over here.”
“Like we don’t have more important things to do.”
“Shut up, Madison.”
Annabel, wiping away leftover tears, bringing up the rear. Thaddeus Griffin waves from his phone, points at the mouthpiece. Vanessa beckons him in, but it’s nothing doing. Thaddeus won’t appear in groups of women, Jeanine thinks. Too much potential for cross-referencing. When the women and the guy in the turban are all assembled in the conference room, looking at a glass bowl with individually wrapped Tootsie Rolls in it, Vanessa starts in.
“We’ve been educated in the American academy. We’re the best and brightest. But that stops now. As of this moment, we’re going to be the stealth intelligence unit, learning about this medium that we don’t know anything about. Nod if you understand. We’re going to learn about the medium of shamelessness. That’s what Ranjeet is here to help us do. We’re going to infiltrate. We’re going to bite the hand that feeds us. I want to know who programs Entertainment Tonight and I want to know who the reporters are for Inside Edition. I want to know the ratings results for every appearance of Elizabeth Taylor in the past five years. The Gilligan’s Island reunion special. Or anything having to do with Michael Jackson. The ratings for all his appearances. The Larry Hagman character. Who thought that up? Shooting him? If there’s the opportunity to show women with enhanced boobs in swimsuits, let’s do it. If there’s the opportunity to show married women climbing into the beds of men just for money, perfect. Take lots of notes on whatever Ranjeet says. As long as he says it. Think about syndication. Just this morning I’ve been discussing syndication and its revenue streams with my lawyers. What I mean is, it’s time to take the company to the next level. The level where the money is. I’ve put in all this work and you guys have put in all this work, we’ve plotted and dreamed, and what do we have to show for it? We’ve got the undivided attention of the kids with blue hair, that’s our audience, dabblers, kids who use lunch boxes for their purses. We’ve got the bald poets with their art historian wives and PBS tote bags; we’ve got the film school students. And that’s nice. I never thought we could even get this far, but the company needs to grow, needs to rocket toward the light . . .”
Jeanine can feel her abdomen beginning to twitch as if inside there’s one of those monster larvae about to bust out of her entrails and rocket toward the light. Looking around the table at Madison, who’s gazing critically at her fingernails, at Annabel, staring vacantly out a window, Jeanine can tell that Vanessa has finally driven the locomotive off the rails.
“I have to go to the hospital in Brooklyn right now. I mean, you guys know that my mother is back in the hospital, right? I’m trying to keep the company going without any interns. Can anyone explain to me why we keep losing the interns? And why are we in this totally awful office space? Why can’t we get an office downtown? Anyway, I’m trying to keep the company going and now I have this, this situation with my mother. So that’s what I have to show for all the hard work. I have to look to the future; I have to look to the possibility of a more dependable revenue model. Which is why I have gone to great lengths to hire Ranjeet, who comes highly recommended from the University of Delhi. He’s an important international thinker on the cinema and television from one of the largest, most successful film markets on the globe. He’s personally acquainted with Umberto Eco and Edward Said. So here he is, Ranjeet Singh, in case you haven’t met him yet, to help plot our revolution in the medium of television.”
Even though everyone is desperate to get back to their desk, desperate to pretend that Vanessa is not putting a third piece of bubble gum in her mouth, Jeanine has to ask a question. She even knows it’s awful, but she asks anyway.
“What about reality television? Reality programming? Like that show about . . . the one where everyone’s going to an island, and they just, they get rid of people? Because people, they just can’t make it on the island, like —”
“Ranjeet?”
All eyes turn to the expert.
“Reality programming,” Ranjeet starts, hands in prayer position, “is a type of programming which comes from Europe. It is the revenge of Europeans on the American dramatic series. People perform
crazy actions. They might perhaps eat a rat. Persons collaborate on the eating of rats, preparations for rats, which herbs to use. You might have a program about persons doing these things. You might perhaps find persons in a house together with a lot of money, and you could see who tries to find the money first, and the house has many rats in it. Or you could put people in a house together, and one of these persons is having sexual relations with another. What these programs lack is a mythology. You simply have people and money and sexual relations, and you have no mythology. Consider in the program called Roots the moment when the captain of the slave ship, who is incidentally played by Mary Tyler Moore’s boss, and this captain of the slave ship is not comfortable with the duties of the slave ship. He finds that he cannot believe in the mission of the slave ship, but nonetheless he is contracted to bring the ship into port. The evil first mate brings first a wench, which is his word for the young African woman with exposed breasts, and he says, ‘Captain, perhaps you’ll be wanting a belly warmer,’ or something to this effect, and the captain must decide whether he is equipped to have this unclothed African woman overnight in his cabin. So the captain is morally conflicted by the endeavor of slavery, and yet when there is the beautiful woman with the exposed breasts in his cabin, when he is lord of the high seas, he cannot refuse. This is mythology. This is the story that is equal to a hundred other stories. The myth of national origins is rich in a way that the reality television camera cannot be.”
