Amazing tract
TELEVISION STUART HOOD
I must confess that I take up a pamphlet called A Christian Approach to Television (Church Information Service 2s 6d) with considerable suspicion. As the introduction to it rightly says, 'those who purport to speak for the churches on broadcasting have taken an unduly nega- tive view of some aspects of television.' My fears were reinforced by memories of attendance at the meetings of the Central Religious Advisory Council on behalf of both sac and an, and of the mixture of prejudice, odium theologicum and sheer ignorance too often displayed by the priests and prelates assembled in it. It was, therefore, an immense surprise, and a source of considerable pleasure, to find that the Arch- bishops' advisers on radio and television have produced one of the most balanced pieces of writing on the social role and effects of tele- vision that I have read for some time.
What sets the document 'apart from many other Christian statements on the subject is that its compilers understand that the makers of television programmes operate in a real world and not in some sheltered Utopia. It is a world in which very few follow the tenets of the Christian faith to the full; in reflecting their society, therefore, the programme-makers must, if they are to be honest, present ideas, situations, actions that some viewers will find shocking and disturbing. 'No doubt,' says the pamphlet, 'the insensitivities of sinful men in a fallen world -will be often seen on television, but it can hardly be a Christian aim to protect society from seeing "on the box" what surrounds them in everyday life, and in which Christians have unavoidably a share.' This is an approach which stands for freedom but 'does not exclude criti- cism of those programmes in which the service Ignores its own vocation.'. Moral realism of this kind is the keynote of the document as it is of the most serious and creative thinking within the television services.
The pamphlet naturally devotes a good deal
of space to religious broadcasting. One of the difficulties, it points out, is to convey on tele- vision a sense of the numinous which is, by definition, non-visual or only partly visual. They are critical of that fussy style of directing church services which continually switches from details of stained glass windows to crosses and, when all else fails—as in the sec's service from Scotland last Sunday—to children's faces, which are usually sentimentally irrelevant. In the field of theological discussion it recognises the difficulty of finding good broadcasters who are also qualified in the subject under discussion. Radical churchmen--like radical politicians— are better value and tend to use the medium well. In this context there is what I take to be a tactful reference to the Archbishop of Can- terbury: 'sanctity and scholarship, so impres- sive in the flesh, are not always projected con- vincingly through the small screen.' For my part, I have always felt that his appearances on television, particularly when speaking to camera in close-up, were disasters for the Church he represents.
The committee does not touch directly on religious programmes for-children. This is sad, for I should have liked to know their reactions to things like the Tree House Family—Arv's weekly programme—in which Willie Wombat gathers his family of cuddly little wombats to help. Jean Morton tell a Sunday Story. These creatures embody the kind of triviality against which this pamphlet sets its face. Decked out in .Bedouin-type head-dresses, they converse in idiotic, semi-literate, strangulated voices (an effect lovingly produced by the use of distortion techniques) and behave with that mixture of coyness and sentimentality which must, I sup- pose, be traced back to Walt Disney. I have a terrible feeling that they will contrive to make even the crucifixion seem cosy.
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