evanevanevan

I just discovered a song on my hard drive seemingly written just for me and my superb sartorial statements.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Majorettes - White Levis [mp3]

And yes, I do find lampshades to be the best dance partners.

"All in all, Chicago has the ingenuity, the daring and the taste that will save television from the terrible fate that's been Hollywood's. If the day ever comes when television establishes a true 'academy', a place where the young and hopeful may go to learn the art of television programming, Chicago is the only conceivable place for such an institution."

- Theatre Arts magazine, July 1951

Once upon a time, when television was still a nascent medium, Chicago was the center of some of the most innovative and experimental programming in broadcast history. While the New York studios were cranking out variety shows and Hollywood was making the sitcoms and dramas whose forms are virtually unchanged today, Chicago was producing an amazing body of work without big stars or big budgets. (Rich Samuels's site is the most comprehensive source of information about the period). I want to say that the Chicago School helped pave the way for the television of today, but frankly, are there really any shows that display this willingness to challenge traditional forms? We're talking about shows like:

• Studs' Place - an improvised sitcom starring Studs Terkel. No studio audience, no laugh track, no script - just an story outline given to the performers.
• Garroway at Large - a talk/musical variety show with no audience where the host, Dave Garroway, would wander around a large stage at will, followed by a single moving camera, speaking directly to the viewer.
• Kukla, Fran, and Ollie - an ad-libbed puppet show ostensibly for children, but sophisticated and watched by adults.

Of course there is good television produced today, but little deviates from the standard narrative structures. The Wire may be amazing and baroque in its scale, but it's still an hour long drama. Is there really any venue for true experimentation in television? The standard answer is "the Internet duh" but is anyone really generating anything legitimately good or groundbreaking? Re-workings of The Office set-up but transplanted into different workplace settings don't really count. Television began with a burst of experimentation before quickly settling into uniformity for the next fifty years. Where are the truly successful examples of innovative web broadcasts? And I mean successful. I think too often we hear of new Internet-based media projects and say, "oh that's so neat how they're taking advantage of the digital age!" without ever looking critically at whether the results are any good.

Here's the larger question:

Is holding out hope for the Internet to be the great egalitarian cultural savior for the 21st century a tragically 20th century sentiment?