Compromises
But, inevitably, the Brains Trust seemed sometimes, by its haste, to fall short of the full reply to important questions. Friday Forum had a compromise solution ; the debaters were confined to one set subject, and came to the studio loaded with pros and cons to air their extempore talk. The Critics is yet again a compromise. Each speaker in turn talks on his subject from a set script, and after that discussion continues spontaneously round the table. These hybrids go some way towards ensuring that talk on affairs of moment doesn't degenerate into triviality or inadequacy.
At the other end of the scale from the pure Brains Trust extempore comes the discussion already scripted and set down on paper. I've listened for two weeks to a new round-table pro- gramme, The Rising Generation, which investigates the affairs of the young, their discipline and education and food. Much of the discussion is sound, though I'm bound to say that a high propor- tion of it is platitudinous. But it is the method that interests me here. I find it almost extravagantly unconvincing.
The aim, I take it, is to produce the illusion of homely and sensible people talking spontaneously, under a genial chairman, about the young. They are so busy being homely and sensible, and the chairman so determined on geniality, as to recall the worst excesses of a parish concert. The stuff is so clearly concocted, so obviously recited from typescript, that one can almost see the stage- directions—" Chuckle here" and "Slight sniff and murmur No." The Rising Generation fails, for me, by aiming at a bogus illusion— an illusion which, being bogus, can never be attained. The matter is obscured by the manner. You could argue, on the other hand, that this " scripted-spontaneous" discussion is a convention that has to be accepted, like the convention of opera or the absence of the fourth wall on the stage. Perhaps some do so accept it. I can't.
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