RADICALIZE THE CAUCUS

This article has been provoked by a request from David Levy that I write a short piece about what I've been doing.

I've been thinking.

So it won't be a short piece.

I've been thinking about words, how there are so many more of them now and how they mean less. Ted Turner makes a speech about the evils of five giant corporations coming together to rule the world and, at the same time, he sells Turner to Time-Warner.

Words. There are so many of them--in this magazine, in symposia, in conferences . . . by us . . . by all of us . . . about how to fix television, how to make it better, how to create a better environment in which we--as producers, writers and directors--can make better programs and earn better livings at the same time (or more appropriately, live better lives, which need not necessarily entail making more money).

But as it is with Ted Turner, our words loop around us so that they lose all meaning. We appear very much like the Red Queen, running (our mouths off, at least) and remaining forever in the same place.

We, again like Ted Turner, obviously like the way we sound and since we are an articulate group, our cacophony isn't too unpleasant.

In the past, words have been known to have had a profound effect on events, words like "The truth shall set you free," or "Give me liberty or give me death," or "The truth is on the march and nothing can stop it now." But words like "I will not be crucified on a V-chip," or "People are violent, not television," or "More profits, not just more markets," or "Creative control," or . . . ?" do not provoke a visceral response in the listener or reader.

Why they don't, I think, is obvious. They remain "just words" and they are fundamentally self-serving; they speak to the collective well-being of the persons (or groups) uttering them. No sacrifice is involved; no risk is being taken.

Words are our tools for making a living. We observe and we analyze, then we transmit our thoughts, using words. We do drama and comedy with words. This desire to observe and explain and entertain with words is what sets us apart, yet when we talk about "saving television" we are not set apart. We are one with the Ted Turners who say one thing and do another. Thus, we are reduced to "just words."

This Caucus should not be about "just words."

Words are good; "just words," bad.

Words dance . . . and to make them move, the poet Robert Graves said, you need lightning. Words ignited by lightning demand action. And there needn't be too many of them, either. Less jaw work, my junior high school teacher said, means more paw work. And it's lightning and paw work we need now. Not "just words."

I think this Quarterly, which I briefly edited in 1993, is a good place to start. Let there be lightning. And let there be action after the words. Let there be outrage, because as Henry Gates recently wrote, "if there is an excess of outrage it is because there is an excess of hope."

The box that we fill with light and shadows is history's most important communication device; we shirk our responsibility by engaging in false debates, by adding to the millions of words about who's responsible for the violence in America, who's the caretaker of a child's education, who should monitor who's watching what, who's getting the biggest share of what, who should or should not be getting screen credits, squeezed, mashed or full-frame or who's transmitting by satellite, by phone-lines, or by cable?

We are, in my opinion, spending too much collective time--in these pages and in symposia and conferences--speaking in a voice that is muted by a nostalgic and self-pitying and accusing-of-others whine. As an elite group, we're better than that. We say we are. But "just words" are not enough.

We need to find another collective voice.

Let us find that voice and then let's have the courage to shake things up by what we do . . . with our work. Let's not just demand quality, let's provide it. Let's stop playing "their" game. Don't give "them" what they want--and if that means giving "them" nothing so be it.

Re-read Lysistrata. Withhold that which we have that "they" treasure, that "they" need. How long can we apologize for the low state of the art, when we are the artists?

Use this Quarterly to take that case to the public, to the Congress, to the White House. Use words that will dictate the debate, not follow it. Provoke. Think not of personal success nor personal aggrandizement. Think of the "fire" that was once in our bellies and adhere to those things that are paramount to our doing our best work. Refuse to concede controls or dare to let the contract go. If every member of this Caucus would do this . . . back up their words with this kind of action, wouldn't things change? Wouldn't others join us?

They won't now because they believe we are all like Ted Turner, using words to veil our deceptions.

We could start changing what other non-Caucus producers believe by declaring ourselves as 100 percent behind the Caucus's own credo about Aims & Objectives and by living by those words. We could continue by making the pages of this Quarterly dance with words driven by the lightning of our convictions.

Words . . . I've used a lot of them to state the obvious, more than I thought I would. I've used words to ask you to join me in walking away from "bad" deals, deals that corrupt our creative and soulful selves, to resist being a part of debates that obfuscate (c'mon, television doesn't cause violence--poverty and racism and sexism and social isolation and greed cause violence) and let us change how we talk to each other and to the readers of this publication. Let us swing our collective arms and clear the sideboards of the debris of self-approval and let's take ourselves apart. Let's be critical of what we do. Let's stop "making do" and "settling for less." Let us look in the mirror and acknowledge who we have been and who we really are. Then let's try to be who we really are. Radically transform ourselves back into the men and women we really are. Someone recently wrote that in youth, we are; in age, we seem. We are, aren't we?

And as a group, we can prove that we "are" by making real words out of "just words" and by making those words mean something.

I think we'd feel better.

(Robert Guenette, an Emmy award-winning writer, producer and director of documentaries, series and television movies, has been re-evaluating his place in the television industry since his wife's death two years ago.)