The Glass Teat - essays of opinion on the subject of television

by Harlan Ellison

  But—aside from the understanding when I took on this column that I’d write what I darned well pleased—there are a number of reasons why I harp more on what’s wrong than what’s good. I’ll get to that in a moment, but first let me list all the subjects on which I’ve said nice cute pretty things:

  A rock group named The New Wave: Laugh-In; The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour; The Ghost and Mrs. Muir; Edward Mulhare in particular; Mission; Impossible; Adam-12 the sign-off sermon; Les Crane; Stan Bohrman; He & She; three different movies-for-TV; a dozen different Saturday morning cartoons; Diana Ross and the Supremes: Ivan Dixon; a Name Of The Game segment and it’s writer/producer/director Leslie Stevens; the ACLU; Ralph Williams; Universal producer George Eckstein; NBC’s First Tuesday series; Doug McClure; Norman Lear & Bud Yorkin; their pilot of Those Were The Days; the ex-sheriff of Fort Worth, Cato Hightower; CBS’s 60 Minutes series; Gov. Charles Percy; the Mod Squad shows produced by Harve Bennett; a buncha old shows like Naked City and The Troubleshooters; Bob Culp; Bill Cosby; some of the writers in the Writers Guild; Cesar Chavez and the UFWOC; and not least, Dustin Hoffman, Black Journal and half a dozen other shows on Channel 28.

  Now, for a cynical, bitter anthracite-hearted, asp-tongued guttersnipe such as myself—who doesn’t like much of anything or anybody to begin with—that seemingly-endless compendium of praiseworthy topics (hardly complete, merely a smattering from 35 weeks of this column) seems to me to indicate a definite bending-over-backward to be nice.

  Not once have I said what a bore Red Skelton is. Never anywhere in these columns have I remarked on Ed Sullivan’s mangling of the English language. Nowhere have I made sly references to how many times Arlene Francis has had her face lifted. I even refrain from bum-rapping Johnny Carson—the world’s oldest Huckleberry Finn—or spending the vitriol necessary to demolishing Joey Bishop, as phony a flag-waver as ever touted motherhood, apple pie and the Amurrican Way!

  So, though I look-with-alarm frequently, kind thoughts and cherry blossoms are not beyond my capabilities. It’s just that they nauseate me.

  And, as for Channel 28 ...

  I refer good old Jack Burgess to my last week’s column, in which I explained why I didn’t spend more time on NET and Channel 28, which should explain that.

  But the reason I dwell more at length on the things wrong is that the good things take care of themselves. Let’s face it, even though there are an enormous number of bummers going down in the country today, this is still the number one place to live. (Which may not be saying much when you consider Brazil, Czechoslovakia, France or India.) For every stupid act committed by someone in authority, there is one that brings a smile to the face. Sure, cops are busting kids left and right for pot, but Leary got turned loose. Sure, we’re still fighting in Viet Nam, but the dissent movement against ROTC has grown big and even partially successful. Sure, we’re polluting the air, but even a clown like Nixon has laid the law down to the automobile manufacturers: find a replacement for the internal combustion engine. Sure, jazz died, but it got replaced by better pop music than we’ve ever known before.

  It’s the sound of the other hand clapping, gang.

  But those good things will take care of themselves. They will happen. The good things we need to happen don’t get enough press. They don’t get talked about enough. That’s what I’m about. You see, it’s like this: doing a column on television, and moving around the country as I do, I get to make some direct linkages between what we are really like, and what TV tells us we’re like. There is an enormous gap. My comments usually tend to fall into the foggy area of that gap. In the area where we need to know.

  For me to spend a column telling you how good a rerun of Kubrick’s Paths of Glory might be, is to waste your time, the Freep’s space, and my brilliant way with words. I would much rather hip you to how they’re using a blonde cupcake named Kam Nelson on The Groovy Show to sell a debased image of American femininity; or try to explain one of the reasons why the TV programming structure is corrupt in its use of “second leads” to hook the younger generations. This, it seems to me, is the kind of job that needs to be done, which I can do, that nobody else appears to be doing.

  (Of course, it has its bizarre moments. F’rinstance, after my piece of Tom Reddin’s debut, I received word that George Putnam was a big fan of this column. It gave me pause. If Putnam, whom I despise, likes me ... then I’m in deep trouble.)

  And the final reason why I don’t simply report the good things that will be available on your screens in the weeks to come, is that the TV Guide listings handle that more than adequately. I tend to think of my readers as bright enough to know that television (at its best) is as worthwhile an art-form as ballet, the opera, books, movies, and painting. Assuming that, I must then assume that my readers will cast through their weekly TV listings to spot the items that will enrich them, and watch accordingly. If I were to spend time commenting on good shows (usually already aired) that simple intelligence should prompt my readers to catch, I’d be carrying coals to Newcastle.

  Which is not to say if something meritorious comes along that I’ll ignore it. My aim in these columns is to present a fully-rounded picture of what’s happening on the glass teat.

  Does that answer your question, Mr. Burgess?

  And just so you won’t think this entire column is an exercise in “What I shoulda said to him was .. .”, I offer the following observation of the TV-season-to-come.

  This year, on prime-time, there are nine series in which the lead character is a widow or widower, struggling manfully to bring up tots in a world generally no more threatening than an afternoon at Disneyland.

  Next season, the total will jump to thirteen.

  The Brady Bunch is tagged as: the romantic adventures of Robert Reed and Florence Henderson as a newly-married couple who each bring three children to their second marriage.

  The Courtship of Eddie’s Father is Bill Bixby as a widower with a little boy and a Japanese nanny, Miyoshi Umeki.

  The Governor and J J. has Dan Dailey as the widowed governor of a midwestern state (wonder why they didn’t make it a deep south state, hmmm?), his political activity and his relationship to his 24-year-old daughter, Julie Sommars. (Having seen Julie Sommars, were this not Blandsville TV, Inc., we might make some interesting conjectures as to their relationship, but, well...)

  And...

  On the press handout I received from Don Fedderson Productions, listing their two already-established shows, Family Affair and My Three Sons, I found word of a new Fedderson project, a classic of originality, whose bold new directions can best be ascertained by reprinting exactly what is said of all three series:

  FAMILY AFFAIR: CBS, 7:30 p.m., Thursdays; 30-minute episodic comedy (film); Bachelor and his English valet try to raise seven-year-old twins and a teen-age girl.

  MY THREE SONS: CBS, 8:30 p.m., Saturdays; 30-minute episodic comedy (film); Fred MacMurray tries to raise three sons, aided by Bill Demarest without the woman’s touch.

  TO ROME, WITH LOVE: CBS, 7:30 p.m., Sundays; 30-minute episode comedy (film); John Forsythe, a recent widower, takes his three young daughters to live in Rome to get away from the unhappy memories of their loss.

  Now, I ask you, Jack Burgess, with 7½ hours of prime time every week given over to this kind of horse-shit, what would you have me do? Turn my back and talk about NET’s Black Journal and how it’s helping to prove to America that the black man is a vital and important factor in our finally growing up? I should talk about a show that the intellectuals will watch and the scuttlefish won’t (many can’t even get the Channel 28 programs in their area), while prime time tells everyone that the only difference between Hope Lange and Diahann Carroll is a little natural rhythm?

  The network mufti who bought all of this drivel, from The Doris Day Show to Here’s Lucy, in their paralyzing fear of portraying anything even remotely resembling the realities of life in These United States, have opted for crippled families of husbandless wives or wifele
ss husbands, all playing Pygmalion to raise their kids with a vested interest in “acceptable morality” and the beliefs of generations nudging the grave.

  The trappings may be a bit different from show to show—one a governor, another the ruler of the Ponderosa—but the situations that can be devised for these hidebound, limited life-styles are all so drearily familiar that we run the risk of turning-off the very young people who need to turn to television for contact with the outside world.

  I can see decades of kids just now getting into the streets, who never watch TV, because they’ve been in that elevator again and again and again. And asses like Reagan wonder why there is a marked difference between what his world is supposed to be like, and the world of the kids who marched on People’s Park.

  The answer, Mr. Reagan, is that you were brought up to swallow, whole, the hack ideas of situation comedy writers, but the kids have seen those same dumb-shows so many times they know the climaxes after the opening commercial.

  They, and we, but certainly not you, Mr. Reagan, want a world that is something more than a situation comedy.

  And if you don’t get with that truth, friend, you may live to see the day when the option won’t be picked up on this country. And unlike Death Valley Days, Reagan, when you get a country canceled, you get no reruns, no residuals.

  * * * *

  35: 1 AUGUST 69

  Don’t ask. Just accept my apologies. Almost four solid months of traveling around, lecturing, getting in trouble, trying to beat short story deadlines and the shrieking imprecations of NBC in my ears (they wanted the revised pilot segment treatment of my impending series, Man Without Time). I kept promising Burgess and the Freep Group I’d get a column in to them...but before I could get to the typewriter there I was in Boulder, Colorado or Madeira Beach, Florida or Clarion, Pennsylvania, God, I’m weary.

  But I’m back. For those of you who inquired of the Free Press what had happened to Ellison, and seemed saddened that the column was not forthcoming—bless you. It won’t happen again; I solemnly promise. For those of you who were delighted I’d passed from human ken—eat your hearts out. I’m back.

  And to pleasure those of you who went seven weeks without the cinnamon taste of Truth, here is a triple-length column. It is also triple-length to bug those of you who can’t even stomach a regular-sized portion of these here now goodies. (It’ll be a disjointed column, because it contains the beginnings of three other columns I started during the layoff, but I’ll separate the sections with bullets and if the sterling typesetting department can figure it all out, we shouldn’t run into too much confusion.) So ... onward!

  * * * *

  I’m out on another foray into the Great American Heartland, reporting back in (as Irwin Shaw put it) “where I think I am ... and what this place looks like today.”

  As I write this, I’m 31,000 feet in the air (sans acid), or so Braniff tells me. In the seat in the front and to the left of me, a blonde cupcake with a Shirley Temple postiche is sleeping with her seat tilted back so that I get an unobstructed view down past her black bra, and onto the snowy slopes of her capacious bosom.

  A little while ago this sensual maiden, in an attempt to establish a liaison my shy, retiring nature can only suppose was sexual in nature, asked me if I was with The Beach Boys. (On a flight midway between Tampa and Denver, surrounded by neat little junior executives and Peter Gunn-haircutted NASA space engineers, I reluctantly admit I stand out like a fresh plot-twist on a situation comedy, with my long hair and leather vest, but The Beach Boys!?!)

  I told her no, I wasn’t a rock musician, though I do hum a lot, no, I am a TV WRITER. I could have said I was a television columnist or a science fiction novelist, but those occupations simply don’t have the glamour of being heavy behind showbiz, and while I am not, strictly speaking, a sexual insatiable, a man would be a fool to pass up a chance to keep in practice, and there’s always the chance ... well, the inflight potties on airliners are small, but where there’s a will, there’s always a way....

  “Ah!” this fire-maiden says to me, “you write tee-and-vee! I watch it alia time!”

  My heart leaps in my chest.

  I have here an opportunity unparalleled in the history of this column, right at my fingertips, to plumb the mind of what seems to be a typical young female television viewer. To ascertain, from the grass roots, if you will, what is drawing approbation and denigration via the tastes of the Average American.

  “Tell me, young lady,” I say, with a disarming grin, exposing my dimples, “what do you watch—when you watch?”

  She senses she is on trial, that her words may shape the designs of High-Echelon Programming, and without a pause she replies, “Oh, God, I LOVE Tom Jones!”

  She repeats it. Love. Tom Jones. Her Graf Zeppelin breasts heave at mention of the magic name, causing to be born in me a moment’s panic at fear of the already sorely-tried black bra rending with a fearful shriek, sending those cannonball convexities hurtling into my face. Fortunately, she’s turned-around in the forward seat, and the trajectory would just miss my right ear.

  “What is it about Mr. Jones that so delights you?” I inquire, shifting slightly further out of the line-of-fire.

  “Why, the way he sings, prithee, good sirrah,” she responds. “He sings like’a angel.”

  “Of course, of course,” I stammer. She is looking at me in a manner I take to approximate that given to Cary Grant in Gunga Din when the thugee killers of Kali find him defiling their temple. “To be sure, the way he sings. An angel, of course. Nay, an archangel! But what else?”

  She subsides, willing to give me another chance. Then, palpitating handsomely, she rises once more. “He’s very good-looking.”

  (So is a side of prime rib, I think. To myself.)

  “And he dances so nice.” (Nicely, I think. To myself.) (Have you ever stopped to consider the extent of the shit up with which a man will put when there is a possibility of getting laid? Lawd, what shabby creatures we are!)

  “And when he teases the girls in the bleachers, I could just...” She doesn’t complete the sentence, but suddenly, 31,000 feet in the air, there is the moist scent of female musk.

  I crimson, blanch, and cough to cover my embarrassment. “Are you, perhaps, inveigled by the production values of the show?” I ask.

  “The what?”

  “The pro—” Then I stop. I suddenly recall a special moment when I went on a road tour with The Rolling Stones, several years ago. We were in Sacramento, I believe (after three days of gigs-and-planes I couldn’t tell San Jose from San Diego, except San Jose is where we had to go in and out of the stadium in an armored car because the crowds were so big and ruthless). It was a twitchy crowd that had filled the auditorium. Rows of cops up and down the aisles. The groupies and teeny-boppers were pitched at the fracture point. They’d run out of jellybeans to throw on the stage and had started tossing underpants, bras, kotex, jewelry, anything that wasn’t hammered down. The preliminary acts had come and gone, and now the Stones were on. You couldn’t even hear them. The crowd noise;—from where I stood in the wings—was like the sound of waves washing up on a beach. Or maybe like that of a wounded animal. A riot broke out in back. Cops put it down. The manager was getting uptight. His auditorium was hung with tapestries and expensive drapes. He went from uptight to outright terrified when three young birds boiled out of the audience and tried to climb over the wheelchair cases in the front in an attempt to leap the orchestra pit and get on stage.

  He came over to me, and whispered, “Are you with them?” I nodded that I was. “Look, tell this one nearest you”—he meant Bill Wyman, who was closest to the stage-right wing—”tell him I’m going to lower the fire curtain...and they should step back three paces so it doesn’t hit them.” I said okay, and when Bill caught my signal and moved close enough for me to howl the instructions over the music and the crowd noise, I gave the word. He nodded, and passed it down the line to Brian Jones, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. C
harlie Watts, the drummer, was already well back of the drop-point. Three paces back is what the manager wanted.

  Mick and Brian Jones took three steps forward. It was now virtually impossible to seal off the stage ... and the crowd was getting crazier. Then Mick started to tease the girls. He moved sinuously, getting them even more turned-on, if that was possible. Then he slowly stripped off his jacket, wriggling out of it while holding the hand-mike. As they shrieked and moaned to be thrown the incredible souvenir of their love-idol, Mick folded the jacket into a little square, and held it out over the footlights. The girls tore their hair and cried and beat the arms of their seats. The sound climbed till you could hear nothing but the blood pounding in your temples. And just when the animal horde thought they were going to get the jacket, he spun neatly and dropped it onstage behind him.

  Then they broke and ran. Hundreds of them. They came right through the cops, slamming them into the walls. They went over the seats, and hit that row of cripples in their wheelchairs like a Kansas twister. The first onslaught of young girls fell into the orchestra pit and the others went right over their backs like troops crossing barbed wire on the backs of their buddies. (I heard a report there were fifteen broken backs in that batch.)