Popular Television in Authoritarian Europe 9780719082399, 9781526111739, 152611173X

Citation preview

Popular television in authoritarian Europe Edited by

PETER GODDARD With a foreword by John Corner

Popular television in authoritarian Europe

Goddard.indb 1

5/30/2013 1:41:21 PM

Goddard.indb 2

5/30/2013 1:41:21 PM

Popular television in authoritarian Europe

Edited by Peter Goddard

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan

Goddard.indb 3

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2013 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed in Canada exclusively by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN  978 07190 8239 9  hardback First published 2013 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not ­guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Warnock and Minion by R. J. Footring Ltd, Derby

Goddard.indb 4

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Contents



List of tables



List of contributors

page vii viii

Foreword John Corner

xii

Acknowledgements

xv

1

Introduction: Popular television in authoritarian Europe – a popular conundrum? Peter Goddard

1

Part I: Southern Europe 2

Football and bullfighting on television: Spectacle and Spanish identity during Franco’s dictatorship Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano

3

From puppets to puppeteers: Modernising Spain through entertainment television Mar Binimelis, Josetxo Cerdán and Miguel Fernández Labayen

4

Entertaining the Colonels: Propaganda, social change and entertainment in Greek television fiction, 1967–74 Gregory Paschalidis

53

5

Staying outside ‘the egg’: Surrealist entertainment during the Greek dictatorship Christina Adamou

71

Goddard.indb 5

17

36

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

vi  Contents

Part II: Eastern bloc   6 Between politics and soap: The articulation of ideology and melodrama in Czechoslovak communist television serials, 1975–89 Irena Carpentier Reifová, Petr Bednařík and Šimon Dominik   7 Re-staging the popular: Televising Nicolae Ceauşescu Dana Mustata  8 KVN: Live television and improvised comedy in the Soviet Union, 1957–71 Andrew Janco

91

107

124

Part III: German Democratic Republic   9 Undercover: How the East German political system presented itself in television series Sascha Trültzsch and Reinhold Viehoff

141

10 Agitprop gone wrong: Der Schwarze Kanal 159 Frank Engelmann-del Mestre 11 Popular music on East German television: Constructing the televisual pop community in the GDR Edward Larkey

176



194

Timeline Berber Hagedoorn and Peter Goddard

Index

Goddard.indb 6

207

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Tables

6.1 Numbers of first showings and re-runs of Czechoslovak television serial dramas, 1959–89 page 92 6.2 Episode synopses of Man at City Hall illustrating ­relationships between the ideological and melodramatic narrative lines 101 9.1 Numbers of GDR television drama series and family series broadcast, by decade 144

Goddard.indb 7

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Contributors

Christina Adamou researches and teaches film and television theory at the School of Film, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She is the author of articles and chapters on Greek television history, gender representations, action films and audiovisual translations. She is the editor of the collection Acting on Stage – Acting on Screen (2008). Petr Bednařík works as a researcher in the Department for Jewish Studies, National and Ethnic Minorities at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and as Assistant Professor in the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. His research focuses on Czech and Czechoslovak Jews after 1938 and on the history of Czech media in the twentieth century. Mar Binimelis has a doctorate in communication and teaches at the Universities of Vic and Rovira i Virgili (Catalonia). Her research looks at international film festivals and the Latin American film industry. She has a special interest in issues related to cultural trans­nationalisation and cinema at the periphery. Irena Carpentier Reifová is Assistant Professor and Researcher at the Department of Media Studies, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. Her teaching involves critical media theories, cultural studies and media audiences. Her major research interests are in television popular culture, with a focus on Czechoslovak and Czech serial television fiction. Josetxo Cerdán is Associate Professor at the Communication Department of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Catalonia), where he teaches

Goddard.indb 8

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

List of contributors   ix

film and television studies. He is also artistic director of Punto de Vista Documentary Film Festival and is co-author of Ricardo Urgoiti: Los trabajos y los días (Ricardo Urgoiti: The Works and the Days) (2007) and Del sainete al esperpento (From Sainete to Esperpento) (2011). John Corner is Visiting Professor at the Institute of Communications Studies at the University of Leeds, UK, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Liverpool, UK. His most recent books are Theorising Media (2011) and Political Culture and Media Genre, co-authored with Kay Richardson and Katy Parry (2012). Šimon Dominik graduated in media studies at Charles University and in directing dramatic theatre at the Academy of Performing Arts, both in Prague, Czech Republic. He works as a theatre director in various cities in the Czech Republic, as well as researching the history of Czech television broadcasting. Frank Engelmann-del Mestre studied at Dresden University, Germany, and graduated in English and philosophy. He worked in the UK at the Universiy of Birmingham and at Oxford Brookes University before he became DAAD-Lektor in German studies at Royal H ­ olloway, University of London. He left academia in 2012 and moved to Germany to be a school teacher. Miguel Fernández Labayen teaches and researches media history and theory at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. He is the author of Hannah y sus hermanas (Hannah and Her Sisters) (2005) and is currently finishing a book on Spanish film comedy. Peter Goddard teaches and researches broadcasting history, documen­ tary, news and current affairs at the Department of Com­muni­cation and Media, University of Liverpool, UK. He is co-author of Public Issue Television: World in Action, 1963–98 (2007) and Pockets of ­Resistance: British News Media, War and Theory in the 2003 ­Invasion of Iraq (2010). Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano is Senior Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Málaga, Spain, with research and teaching interests in television studies, television history and memory, and broadcast journal­ism. He is the author of La televisión en el recuerdo: La recep­ción de un mundo en blanco y negro en Andalucía (Television in the M ­ em­ory: The Reception of a Black and White World in Andalusia) (2006).

Goddard.indb 9

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

x  List of contributors

Berber Hagedoorn is Lecturer and Researcher in Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She researches and publishes on multi-platform television, documentary and the re-use of archival footage as cultural memory. With Jérôme Bourdon, she was guest editor for issue 3 of VIEW: Journal of European Television History and Culture (2013). Andrew Janco is Lecturer in the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago, USA. He specialises in Soviet transnational history and migration studies. He is currently turning his dissertation, ‘Soviet Displaced Persons in Europe, 1941–1951’, into a monograph. Edward Larkey teaches German media and cultural history, and inter­ cultural communication at the Department of Modern ­Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication, University of Maryland, USA. His most recent book is Rotes Rockradio: Populäre Musik und die Kommerzialisierung des DDR-Rundfunks  (Red Rock Radio: Popular Music and the Commercialisation of GDR Broadcasting) (2007). Dana Mustata is Assistant Professor in Television and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, having gained her PhD from Utrecht University, the Netherlands, with a dissertation focusing on television and the Romanian revolution. Since 2006, she has been a researcher on European audiovisual archiving projects, including Video Active and EUscreen. Gregory Paschalidis is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, where he teaches and researches media history, documentary, visual culture and cultural policy.  His most recent publications include Τα νοήματα της φωτογραφίας (The Meanings of Photography) (2012) and an edited volume on The Semiotics of Everyday (forthcoming). Sascha Trültzsch worked on a research project about East German television funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and gained his doctorate in 2008 at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He researches and teaches television history, social web usage and popular culture at the University of Salzburg, Austria, and is co-editor of Popular Culture and Fiction in Four Decades of East German Television (SPIEL 25, 2009).

Goddard.indb 10

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

List of contributors   xi

Reinhold Viehoff is Professor and Director of the Department of Media and Communication Studies, Martin-Luther-University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He has written extensively on German television history and is co-author of Deutsches Fernsehen Ost (East German Television) (2008).

Goddard.indb 11

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Foreword John Corner

What impact has television had on political culture and the available terms for citizenship, and in what ways have political factors affected its own terms and practices? How enhancing or deleterious to public and to private life have been the various invitations to knowledge and pleasure it has brought into homes across the world? Does television finally work to consolidate or to change the established political and social order? These questions have been asked regularly, often in very different ways, for over fifty years. They have received a range of answers, varying in character from the highly theoretical to the densely empirical and in tone from the cautiously optimistic to the despairing. Since in most countries television is no longer a new medium, these questions have acquired a historical dimension, it being necessary to see television across its different phases of national and international development in order to get close to any kind of meaningful answers. Partly as a result of difficulties in transnational accessibility, including at the level of language as well as of terrestrial broadcast technology, the self-evident usefulness of comparative approaches to pursuing such enquiries has only quite recently been followed through into sustained study that goes beyond matters of documented official policy. The strong tendency has been towards tightly framed research into national settings, stopping firmly at national borders, although comparative work extending to history, scheduling, generic range, textual form and even audiences is now being undertaken more widely. That said, writing from the USA continues to dominate the international field, often working with ideas of ‘television in general’ entirely generated from the American experience. The relative homogeneity of television within these accounts, and the ‘problems’ thought to be raised by it, have often worked to limit full recognition of the

Goddard.indb 12

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Foreword  xiii

variability of the medium across its many different national contexts. This variability is not just a matter of programmes and schedules but also of television’s core political and social character, in what are often sharply distinctive settings of production, circulation and viewing. The chapters in this book are part of an original exercise in extending the range, intellectually and geographically, of comparative enquiry, providing a focus on national television systems previously neglected in mainstream scholarship. The book does well to give emphasis to that most slippery of ­categories, ‘the popular’. Often providing, according to perspective, an easy validation or an easy dismissal of cultural products, the term is placed awkwardly across one of the central fault-lines in modernity – that between, on the one hand, the dynamics of market production and consumption, and, on the other, the values and practices of democ­ racy. How can one be against the ‘popular’ without being against ‘the people’? But who defines ‘the popular’? Within what contexts of econ­omic and cultural inequality and systems of cultural provision is it measured and placed against its ‘other’ (the ‘unpopular’? the ‘elite’? the ‘high’? the ‘serious’?). Media and cultural research has had a tendency to be more than a little ambivalent on these questions, rightly wanting to distance itself from the resoundingly negative verdicts offered by earlier ‘mass society’ critics of the ‘culture industry’, at the same time as being reluctant to endorse without heavy qualification the benefits of ‘consumption’, ‘choice’ and a postmodern relativism around matters of value. Another key term identified by the editor in his Introduction is ‘control’, the often explicit character of which in totalitarian ­societies makes for an illuminating contrast with its stealthier and more covert forms in many systems which are formally democracies. As many chapters document, television can be assumed to be exerting a controlling influence on political and social perceptions when in fact the evidence suggests a far less efficient process, one subject to audience scepticism, comic subversion and contestation. At the same time, television can be regarded as a champion of liberty when it is, in fact, quietly working to set limits and discourage questioning. More so than the media which preceded it, television has always had an element of the suspect, if not the sinister, at work in its public image, an element which in part follows from its implantation within the home (when compared with cinema), its offer to show the world rather than ­describe it (compared with radio) and its use of time (time which, it is judged, might otherwise be spent more ‘profitably’). Its dual character as both a major medium of public information and a principal agency of popular entertainment has contributed to aesthetic and generic

Goddard.indb 13

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

xiv  Foreword

diversity, with the functions of knowledge and diversion sometimes carried out within the same format, whether explicitly or otherwise. Successful inter-generic hybrids are often the focus of evaluative dispute (‘reality television’ is the obvious example across the last two decades). There is another duality at work too. Television is a major agency of collective feeling, of membership, as many of the chapters here variously show, but it has also been in many countries a route for the development of stronger currents of individualism. The interplay between the two, within different kinds of format and mode of address, continues to be significant. This innovative collection promises to extend our understanding of national television systems previously neglected by English language research. By the diversity of the comparative points of reference it offers, it will also provoke further questions regarding those systems which we think we know about.

Goddard.indb 14

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Acknowledgements

This collection has been longer in its gestation than expected, and my profound thanks are due to all of the authors concerned – for offering such illuminating chapters, for contributing such interesting ideas and debating points in email discussions, and for their patience and goodwill at moments of delay. I am also grateful to Matthew Frost and staff at Manchester University Press for their continuing support for this book. And warm appreciation is due to my colleagues at the University of Liverpool, especially to Karen Ross and Yannis ­Tzioumakis, who have commented very helpfully on sections of the text. Above all, however, I must acknowledge the role of Rob Turnock in the conception and development of this volume. His was the initial idea, and he played a substantial role in planning and organising the work in its early stages, in which he proved to be a wise and agreeable collaborator. Peter Goddard Liverpool, September 2012

Goddard.indb 15

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Goddard.indb 16

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

1

Introduction: Popular television in authoritarian Europe – a popular conundrum? Peter Goddard

In the second half of the twentieth century, television emerged as the dominant cultural form in much of the world. By the 1980s, the academic study of television was beginning to emerge as a dedi­ cated area of scholarship, dominated – as was television production in large parts of the globe – by the USA and Britain. Perhaps as a result, the television cultures and programmes that developed under the authoritarian regimes of Southern and Eastern Europe have been largely absent from histories of the medium. This absence does not just constitute a gap in the historical accounts of television in those countries, such as Franco’s Spain or Ceaușescu’s Romania: it marks a profound disengagement with the various forms of television culture that have emerged in contexts beyond liberal Western democracies. Writing from a British perspective, it is easy to find reasons for this absence. Analogue television has traditionally been organised on a national or sub-national basis and this has particularly been the case in Britain and the USA, where geography has largely prevented the reception of television from abroad. As a result, television studies – and particularly the study of television history – was principally a national and parochial affair until relatively recently (Bignell and Fickers, 2008b: 11–12). Language barriers and variable archival access probably exacerbated this, making research into television cultures elsewhere in Europe a difficult and unrewarding pursuit for English-speaking researchers, who tended to be at the forefront of television scholarship. In the authoritarian states of Europe, of course, it was virtually impossible for anybody to conduct research into tele­vision at the time, and even now television archives remain incomplete or difficult to locate. On top of this may be a general antipathy or prejudice regarding things foreign. As John Ellis observes in his book TV FAQ (2007: 133), a commonly held view asks ‘Why is foreign TV such rubbish?’

Goddard.indb 1

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

2  Peter Goddard

Ellis argues that foreign television programmes are necessarily viewed out of context because the uninitiated viewer is beyond the reach of the rhetoric, cultural references and patterns of everyday life to which television is so intimately connected. Two recent developments have begun to chip away at these suppositions and prejudices. One is a growing, if geographically uneven, body of work on national television histories that is emerging within Europe. The chapters in this book, and some of the sources that their authors draw upon, testify to this trend (although, of necessity, they also turn at times to British and American scholarship to situate or explain local programme forms). The other development is partly a consequence of this emerging body of work. As material about other countries’ histories is made available to scholars, opportunities emerge for the consideration of television history from different European perspectives and for pan-national comparisons. As a result, international conferences have been arranged, and scholars from various countries have begun to collaborate on publications that are concerned with television history as a European, rather than a national, interest. Important recent examples include A European Television History, edited by Jonathan Bignell and Andreas Fickers (2008a), and Transnational Television History: A Comparative Approach (2012), edited by Fickers and Catherine Johnson. Nevertheless, even when this new ‘transnational turn’ in television history scholarship is considered alongside British, American and other nationally focused studies of the medium, the great majority of work has considered television and television history within Western liberal democracies – a point acknowledged by Bignell and Fickers (2008b: 49). But as television was being introduced across Europe, large parts of the continent were under the control of non-democratic, authoritarian regimes practising various versions of state communism or fascism, and it is the forms of television that developed there that this book sets out to reveal. These television forms are interesting for their own sake, of course, and even more interesting when we can examine them for their aesthetic qualities or for the specialist ways in which they connected with their audiences and with national culture, as many contributors here are able to show. But in exposing them to international scrutiny, as this book seeks to do, it is also possible to see them as posing thought-provoking challenges to some of the normative Western-based assumptions about television as a cultural phenomenon. As this volume’s title suggests, we are concerned here with popular television, but the concept of ‘the popular’ has its basis in liberal notions of taste choices and the democratic availability of cultural forms. In the chapters that follow, ‘popular’ is necessarily a

Goddard.indb 2

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Introduction: Popular television in authoritarian Europe   3

loosely defined concept. Where data exist, it may be possible to use ratings to determine the take-up of the programming discussed in this book. But ‘popular’ surely involves a further sense of connection with audiences, involving an appeal to widely shared tastes or cultural needs. So the remainder of this chapter seeks to interrogate notions of ‘the popular’ in this context, examining normative (Western) definitions of popular television before considering some of the problems that arise in attempting to transplant these ideas to television forms devised and produced in an authoritarian context. Television and ‘the popular’ What was considered ‘popular’ about popular television can be articu­ lated with deceptive simplicity, at least in relation to its development in the USA and Britain of the 1950s and afterwards. For example, John Corner notes that ITV’s schedules offered ‘a ready appeal to a large audience’ (1991: 15) in the years following its launch in 1955 as a British competitor to the BBC, while Stuart Hall explains that cultural forms such as television can be thought of as popular ‘because masses of people … consume them, and seem to enjoy them to the full’ (1981: 231). For television companies themselves, the medium’s popular appeal seemed even more straightforward: ‘After the tensions and anxieties of everyday life, people welcome the opportunity to sit down, relax and be made to smile and laugh’, explained the ITV Handbook of 1978 (quoted in O’Shaughnessy, 1990: 88). On the face of it, then, this commonplace Western version of popular television offered itself as a leisure activity involving entertainment and pleasure that appealed to a wide spectrum of viewers. The idea of ‘the popular’, however, has deeper resonances. Popular culture has variously been thought of as embracing the culture ‘of the people’ or describing a version of culture intended ‘for the people’, with these formulations often seen as contradictory but sometimes as complementary (see O’Shaughnessy, 1990: 88–9, for example). But unlike older cultural forms, it is hard to think of popular television as ‘of the people’ in the sense of it having somehow grown organically from popular expression or pastime. Instead, it was always a manufactured product – a form of industrially produced culture. In other words, regardless of its undoubted popularity with audiences, Western popular television was essentially a ‘top-down’ version of cultural production. Necessarily, it contained much that audiences could identify with or recognise from their own lives, but it was never­ theless produced by socially dominant groups, often with an explicit intention to appeal to popular taste. Such an intention is most explicit,

Goddard.indb 3

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

4  Peter Goddard

of course, in American television, which has always been organised on commercial lines, dependent upon mass audiences to generate revenue from advertising. In Britain and other Western market democracies, where public service broadcasting had a stronger role, this notion of explicit popular (or populist) appeal has historically been more indirect in television than in most other cultural forms. Even in Britain, where ITV was introduced as an advertising-funded competitor to the BBC as early as 1955, strict regulation ensured that it maintained a public service role alongside a commercial imperative to maximise audiences. Nevertheless, television in liberal democracies – like other ‘manufactured’ cultural forms – has essentially been founded on notions of choice, including an appeal to popular tastes alongside more ‘serious’ fare. This mobilisation of popular taste, sometimes commercially moti­ vated, could also be considered to be democratising, since it freed television production from an attachment to the sensibilities of political and cultural elites (those of its producers and executives, perhaps) and directed it to giving ordinary people what they wanted.1 In this formulation, popular television has sometimes come to be defined in opposition to ‘worthwhile’, socially valuable, ‘quality’ television, however simplistic such a division might be. Holmes (2008: 31) points out that even though audiences do not necessarily consider ‘popular’ to be inferior, their perceptions can nonetheless be influenced by the judgements of critics, among whom the notion of popular as inferior might be more prevalent. Despite this, European public service broadcasters sometimes saw no contradiction in aiming to produce ‘quality popular’ programming (see Corner, 1991: 7–8; Gripsrud, 2000: 291). Three further issues follow on from this Western-based notion of popular television as a manufactured and at times commercially moti­ vated source of pleasure which ordinary people (generally) valued as viewers while having little say in its production. One concerns the timeliness of its emergence in the decade following World War II alongside rapid social and economic changes. In Britain and the USA, the 1950s were a time when affluence replaced austerity, social mobility grew and leisure time increased. A wide range of aspirational consumer goods (including the television set itself ) emerged, echoing and inspiring new consumption patterns and new markets. The 1950s, then, were a time when ‘the contours, dynamics and forms of the “popular” as a category of consumption’ were ‘massively re­organis[ed]’ (Corner, 1991: 2). A key element was the rise of the individual consumer, expressing personal identity by exercising taste choices. Popular television reflected the material circumstances of this new consumer society, helping to structure its leisure time,

Goddard.indb 4

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Introduction: Popular television in authoritarian Europe   5

c­ ommunicating changing social norms and, in Britain and the USA, serving as a lucrative platform for the advertising which helped further stimulate consumption.2 So if popular television aimed to satisfy a demand to ‘give ordinary people what they wanted’, this demand was partly a symptom of the wider social changes taking place in Western democracies at the time. The second issue involves control. If popular television is to be considered a form of ‘top-down’ popular culture, then it evidently embodies a set of power relations. For Stuart Hall, this means that it, in common with other cultural industries, has the power, ‘by repetition and selection, to impose and implant such definitions of ourselves as fit more easily the descriptions of the dominant or preferred culture’ (1981: 232–3). The implication of this is that there is an important difference between the audience appeal of popular television – not just in offering pleasure, but in representing characters, situations and social mores in a recognisable fashion – and its ideological underpinnings: popular television is unlikely to pose a significant challenge to the structures of power in society. While it may appear to be democratis­ ing, at least in comparison with some earlier cultural forms, it is certainly not emancipatory. Instead, Michael O’Shaughnessy describes popular television as ‘masking, displacing and naturalising social problems and contradictions’ (1990: 96–7). Nevertheless, the totality of this effect must ultimately depend upon what audiences do with it. When Hall (1981: 233) refers to ‘a dialectic of cultural struggle’, he notes that popular forms also contain ‘points of resistance’ and warns against considering audiences ‘cultural dopes’. So, while popular television may embody a world view that serves the interests of ­socially dominant groups, audiences can also bring their own – at times subversive – understanding to bear in some circumstances. Developing another aspect of popular television’s power relations, the final issue concerns nationhood. One significant benefit of tele­ vision is its ability to reach all citizens at once. So, like radio before it, television became a crucial site for the construction of national identity and national consciousness, and mass appeal popular programming such as drama and comedy played a substantial role in this. The organisation of television on national lines played an important part too. For some in Europe, including the opponents of ITV in Britain, the idea of popular programming raised the spectre of cultural imperialism and ‘Americanisation’ (see Strinati, 1992; Bondebjerg et al., 2008). Some popular television was bought ready-made by European broadcasters, generally from the USA, embodying social and cultural values and aspirational consumption patterns whose appropriateness in a different national context was open to question.

Goddard.indb 5

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

6  Peter Goddard

But locally ­originated popular programming often had quite a different effect. With a scarcity of channels and large popular audiences, it could engender a sense of common national experience – a view of the nation, its national characteristics and its common reference points shared easily and pleasurably by a majority of its citizens.3 In this sense, popular television was able to serve as a kind of ‘social cement’, helping to bind together the nation and break down barriers of class, education and social mobility. Popular television in authoritarian Europe What the countries covered in this book – Spain, Greece, Czecho­ slovakia, Romania, the Soviet Union and East Germany (GDR) – have in common is that they were subject to authoritarian rule in the era in which television was introduced, so we cannot expect the various assumptions that scholars might normally make about the role of television, and particularly the concept of popular television, to apply as they would in a Western liberal context. These countries do not have much else in common, however. They are geographically, politic­ ally and historically diverse, involving Southern and Eastern Europe, right-wing and state socialist regimes, and the chapters here suggest that television was used by the regime and consumed by viewers in widely differing ways. Nevertheless, it is worth examining how their experiences challenge our normative assumptions about what constitutes popular television. The first challenge must be to the notion of popular television appealing to and entertaining mass audiences. This concept, apparently so simple in the USA and Britain, is much more difficult for researchers to confirm in some of the countries covered here. In Spain, Franco’s government undertook detailed audience surveys and sought to produce mass entertainment, even though this took rather narrow forms and had ideological rather than democratic motives (Chapters 2 and 3 discuss examples of this). But communist countries such as the Soviet Union carried out little useful audience measurement because they were more interested in whether programmes contained the right ‘messages’ than in how viewers responded. The fact that historical records (including documentary and video archives), if ever extant, are often incomplete or unavailable to researchers creates a further obstacle to enquiries about the popular appeal of television. How can mass audience appeal be measured in countries where ratings and audience reactions were not routinely gathered or published? And even if ratings are available, where only one or two heavily state-censored channels were available, can we say that

Goddard.indb 6

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Introduction: Popular television in authoritarian Europe   7

television was genuinely popular even if large numbers watched? The authors of several chapters here (see Chapters 5 and 8, for example) have been forced to rely largely on secondary evidence to gauge audience responses – correspondence (where available), memoirs, interviews with programme-makers (who may themselves attest to the responses they received) and even the existence of more recent remakes of programmes initially produced when television was under strict authoritarian control. If contemporaneous judgements about popular appeal can be hard to confirm, another approach is to take a retrospective view, examining programmes from the pre-democracy era which remain in popular memory now. This approach explains the inclusion here of work on Der Schwarze Kanal (The Black Channel) (Chapter 10), a news propaganda programme which was universally known in the GDR and has come to be regarded as an iconic programme of the period, even though it had few regular viewers at the time. Nevertheless, research into the memories of those who watched represents a surprisingly underdeveloped field in most of the countries covered here. This is unfortunate. In states where viewers were offered little meaningful choice over the programmes they could watch, such research might even be claimed to offer more reliable indications of popularity than written records. Work of this sort is beginning to emerge in some of the countries covered here – see for example Gutiérrez Lozano (2006) and Reifová (2009) – but this remains an important area for further research. A more extreme approach still is to question the identity of the populus itself, as Dana Mustata does in her work on Romania. Here, television was personally monitored and controlled by the Ceaușescus according to their own tastes (see Chapter 7, and also Turnock et al., 2008: 197). So, she reasons, it was with them alone that Romanian television sought to be popular. Tellingly, however, she also shows how Romanian television unwittingly assumed a genuinely popular role when a failure of control led a broadcast rally to become the trigger for the public uprising that brought about the downfall of the Ceaușescu regime. Despite these problems of definition, it is clear that popular tele­ vision under these regimes was as much a ‘top-down’ product as in the West. But one important difference is that it did not have the same motivation to make explicit appeals to widespread popular taste. Where television was under the monopoly control of an authoritarian state, it saw no need to attract mass audiences in order to satisfy public demand or to derive revenue from advertising. Only in the populism of Spanish television can we see genuine attempts to gratify popular

Goddard.indb 7

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

8  Peter Goddard

tastes. Elsewhere, the forms of television discussed in this book demonstrate that what viewers might want was a troublesome notion when it conflicted with what the regime thought they should have. In this respect, the oft-assumed binary of ‘popular’ versus ‘quality’, flimsy though it is in Western television, seems to collapse altogether in totalitarian countries. However, there are interesting comparisons to be made between the accounts offered here of the evolution of family drama serials in Czechoslovakia (Chapter 6) and the GDR (Chapter 9). In both countries, narratives based on explicit ideological intent were gradually supplanted by softer, more character-oriented forms of drama which could provide stronger audience appeal, and this process reflects a revealing rebalancing of the needs of the regime and of the audience, suggesting that some limited pressures to attend to what viewers wanted did exist even in a totalitarian context. In Western nations, the popular take-up of television coincided with and became implicated in the post-war consumer boom and a growing public sense of affluence. These economic conditions were not replicated in most of the authoritarian states covered in this book, so the idea of the television set as an aspirational consumer item had little power in territories with little sense of consumerism. The only limited exceptions to this are in Spain and the GDR – both more ­outward-looking than the other countries covered here. Spain’s economic and political isolation diminished during the 1950s, so the expansion of television coincided with improving economic conditions; most GDR viewers could receive West German television, so the regime could only condemn Western consumerism (as ‘the devil’ – see Chapter 9), rather than conceal its rise from the public. Nevertheless, we can say that forms of television programming in many authoritarian countries did reflect material circumstances in a variety of ways. Often established in the early years of the regime, television could serve as a symbol of modernisation and renewal under a new system and as a bulletin board for its ideals and practices. Conversely, in Greece (see Chapters 4 and 5), which had no regular television service until 1968, the absence of television was seen as more symptomatic of previous political failure, and its eventual establishment a sign of the army’s ability to get things done. In Romania, where it was instituted as an organ of the regime and a potent propaganda tool, the television service had by the mid-1980s become a very visible victim of the country’s economic failure, with broadcasting hours greatly restricted (see Chapter 7). As in Western Europe, popular television embodied a set of power relations for the regimes covered in this book. But whereas this was largely a hidden issue in the pluralist West, where there was at least

Goddard.indb 8

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Introduction: Popular television in authoritarian Europe   9

the illusion of choice, it is often a directly observable issue in these accounts of television in authoritarian countries. Here, control was not exercised subtly but with punitive consequences, and various methods of direct state censorship were employed. Plainly, the intentions behind this fit Stuart Hall’s previously quoted explanation: ‘to impose and implant such definitions of ourselves as fit more easily the descriptions of the dominant or preferred culture’ (1981: 232–3). And authoritarian states often sought robustly to exclude alterna­ tive ‘definitions of ourselves’ too. Chapter 11, for example, recounts the manner in which the GDR sought to manage and neutralise the supposed threat of popular music and its associated youth culture. Chapter 2 provides a different sort of example, explaining how the Spanish government calculatedly used televised sport as a form of ‘low-cost manipulation’, with intentionally soporific effects. However, other accounts here offer interesting evidence of audience resistance to these forms of control. In Chapter 5, Christina Adamou suggests that the surprising popularity of the Beckettian Εκείνος και … Εκείνος (This One and That One) in Greece may have arisen in part from its subversive potential. Its surreal aesthetics and minimalist dialogue enabled it to evade censorship while allowing audiences to read it as a critical and liberating text. Similarly, Andrew Janco (in Chapter 8) attributes the popularity of KVN in the Soviet Union largely to its improvised and spontaneous qualities, which undermined the policies of pre-vetting and censorship that applied to most other programmes. Elsewhere, several authors suggest that audiences were able to enjoy the melodramatic and character- or suspense-driven elements of drama serials regardless of the strong ideological messages that they sought to convey. This is a difficult point to validate, and it is likely – as Hall proposes – that prolonged exposure to such ideological messages must have had some effect. Nevertheless, Hall also identifies popular forms even in the West as containing ‘points of resistance’ (1981: 233), so we may argue that the subversive possibilities available to audiences in authoritarian states could have had a rather stronger pull. There does seem to be some evidence that the availability of dissident, anti-state (or at least not pro-state) readings could help to make a text ‘popular’ in such heavily state-controlled circumstances. Finally, it is easy to see how popular television could be employed to build an enhanced sense of nationhood in countries under authoritarian rule. Bignell and Fickers (2008b: 21) assert that the Soviet-influenced countries of Eastern Europe used television to ‘publicise the decisions made by the ruling party, educate the population, and estab­lish a channel of communication between the party and the people’, and this book contains numerous clear examples of

Goddard.indb 9

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

10  Peter Goddard

this approach – from Greece and Spain as well as Eastern Europe. However, the idea of ‘the popular’ opens up interesting questions about whether this television-based ‘communication between the party and the people’ could run in both directions. Under authori­ tarian conditions, it would be easy to assume that viewers simply got what was considered good for them by the regime but, while this was largely true, several of the accounts in this book suggest the existence of a residual feedback loop. In Romania (see Chapter 7), while there was political interest in what ordinary viewers made of television, there is no indication that programme forms changed as a result. But in Czechoslovakia (see Chapter 6) and the GDR (Chapter 9), popular television drama not only developed distinctive national characteristics but, as we have noted, these seem intentionally to have been modified to provide greater audience appeal. A similar process can be seen in Edward Larkey’s account of the development of the pop music programme in the GDR (Chapter 11). Here, though, another dynamic also seems to be at work: the GDR explicitly sought to reject overt Western pop influences, at least to begin with, and to construct something distinctively national in its place. In Spain, too, national forms of song (copla) and of sport (bullfighting) were held up by television as patriotic and a significant element in national identity (see Chapter 2). For most of the countries covered in this book, the projection of ideas about nationhood and national identity was merely internal, but in Spain television was also used to project an image of the nation externally. Chapter 3 tells of attempts made by Franco’s regime to use entertainment programming to demonstrate to the rest of Europe that it was progressive and modernising. Ironic­ ally, as its authors show, many of these programmes were produced by non-Spaniards and their content did not always integrate easily with the image of the nation that television sought to convey to the Spanish people. Conclusion So it is clear that the concept of popular television represented something rather different in an authoritarian context from the normative Western assumptions that have come to define it. Popular television could not be so readily identified or labelled within the programming that was produced under authoritarian control. Here, apparently straightforward notions concerning mass appeal inevitably found themselves in conflict with the political purposes of ruling regimes which considered television less a source of pleasure than a tool for inculcating national ideological norms. More often than not, this

Goddard.indb 10

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Introduction: Popular television in authoritarian Europe   11

seems to have resulted in television which would probably be neither popular nor credible with Western audiences. In the absence of thorough records, we are frequently forced to speculate about what the intended domestic audiences – whose perspectives on television forms and programmes are likely to have been quite different from those of their counterparts in the West – would have made of it. But it seems clear that they were often conscious of its ideological intent and, at times, took refuge in opportunities to subvert it or laugh at it. However, while ‘points of resistance’ to the dominant culture were available through television and were sometimes taken up in both Western and totalitarian contexts, the ultimate resistance – watching a competitor’s programming – was rarely widely available to the audiences for authoritarian television. As a result, viewers were denied the opportunity to exercise the kinds of taste choices that underpin the notion of popular television in liberal democracies. The GDR, where West German programmes could also be viewed, provides an interest­ing exception to this. In the absence of the incentives to appeal to a mass audience that were common in Western nations – competition, advertising revenue, pressure to give audiences the programming they wanted – the oft-assumed relationship between popular and quality television becomes further problematised. Nevertheless, popular television can be considered a ‘top-down’ form of culture in the West as well as in authoritarian Europe, although this is manifested in different ways and perhaps more starkly in nations which are intolerant of ideological pluralism. All the same, the persistence of some programmes in audience memories long after the fall of the regimes that produced them does suggest that popular television in authoritarian Europe was able to function as a form of shared cultural experience which contributed to a sense of community or nationhood. In this sense at least, viewers in the region have much in common with those in longer-established liberal democracies who, nowadays, routinely look back on, recycle and celebrate television programming as a symbol of past experience and enjoyment. Organisation of the book In a volume such as this, there is a very real danger of generalisation from one nation to another, so it is important again to emphasise that the chapters that follow concern six distinct and widely differing national cases. For convenience, however, it seems useful to organise the book into three parts, reflecting a limited sense that the conditions discussed in some chapters share several common factors:

Goddard.indb 11

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

12  Peter Goddard

1. Part I contains Spain and Greece as right-wing, nationalistic regimes in Southern Europe. Here there were deliberate efforts to use cultural forms (including television) to emphasise particular national characteristics and values which supported the government-­ favoured ideology. While there was no wholesale disengagement from Western liberal culture, including the cultures of European and American television, national production was intended to play a significant role in bolstering national pride, cohesion and respect for the ideals of the regime. Each country is represented by two chapters. 2. Part II is drawn from ‘Eastern bloc’ countries which practised state socialism under varying degrees of domination by the Soviet Union. Here, state control took more overt forms than in Spain and Greece and, as far as possible, these states were isolated – culturally as well as geographically – from Western values. As a result, television could develop in a distinctive fashion to reflect the ideology and culture promoted by the state in isolation from the direct influence of Western television. The three chapters here cover cases from Czechoslovakia, Romania and the Soviet Union itself. 3. Finally, we include three chapters about the GDR, reflecting its anoma­lous position as a Soviet-dominated country that could not be physically isolated from Western European cultural and commercial influences. West German television could be received readily in most of the GDR, so its own television service attempted to project the ideology and values of state communism and to build a sense of the GDR as having a distinctive national identity, despite competing with Western programming for viewers. So the GDR provides a case study of television in a nation governed by state communism whose programming, of necessity, was also informed by direct experience of and exposure to Western television and culture. There is also another kind of generalisation that readers of books such as this should avoid. Especially with a collection of studies about television in countries which feature comparatively rarely in accounts of television history, it would be easy to assume that the programmes covered here are in some way representative of national programming. But, as in Western nations, television programmes embraced a wide range of forms and types of content, so the cases that follow are no more than a snapshot – indicative at times of a wider picture, but able to show little of that broader picture in themselves. This book is not a history of television, nor even of popular programming, in the authoritarian states of Europe. Even so, it aims to contribute to the writing of that history and perhaps to hasten its arrival.

Goddard.indb 12

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Introduction: Popular television in authoritarian Europe   13

Notes 1 See Curran (2009: 11–12) for more on this ‘populist’ analysis. 2 Turnock (2007) offers an illuminating discussion of the relationship between social and economic change, consumerism, advertising and television in 1950s Britain. 3 See, for example, the examination by de Leeuw et al. (2008: 134–45) of drama as a site for the construction of national identity in European nations; and Corner’s (1991: 7–9) discussion of the audience address of the BBC’s Tonight.

References J. Bignell and A. Fickers (eds) (2008a), A European Television History. Oxford: Blackwell. J. Bignell and A. Fickers (2008b), ‘Introduction: Comparative European perspectives on television history’, in J. Bignell and A. Fickers (eds), A European Television History. Oxford: Blackwell. I. Bondebjerg, with T. Goban-Klas, M. Hilmes, D. Mustata, H. Strandgard-Jensen, I. Veyrat-Masson and S. Vollberg (2008), ‘American television: Point of reference or European nightmare?’, in J. Bignell and A. Fickers (eds), A European Television History. Oxford: Blackwell. J. Corner (1991), ‘General introduction: Television and British society in the 1950s’, in J. Corner (ed.), Popular Television in Britain: Studies in Cultural History. London: British Film Institute. J. Curran (2009), ‘Narratives of media history revisited’, in M. Bailey (ed.), Narrating Media History. Abingdon: Routledge. S. de Leeuw, with A. Dhoest, J. F. Gutiérrez Lozano, F. Heinderyckx, A. Koivenen and J. Medhurst (2008), ‘TV nations or global medium? European television between national institution and window on the world’, in J. Bignell and A. Fickers (eds), A European Television History. Oxford: Blackwell. J. Ellis (2007), TV FAQ: Uncommon Answers to Common Questions About TV. London: I. B. Tauris. A. Fickers and C. Johnson (eds) (2012), Transnational Television History: A Comparative Approach. Abingdon: Routledge. J. Gripsrud (2000), ‘Tabloidization, popular journalism, and democracy’, in C. Sparks and J. Tulloch (eds), Tabloid Tales: Global Debates Over Media Standards. Lanham, MA, and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. J. F. Gutiérrez Lozano (2006) La televisión en el recuerdo: La recepción de un mundo en blanco y negro en Andalucía (Television in the Memory: The Reception of a Black and White World in Andalusia). Málaga: Radiotelevisión de Andalucía (RTVA) and Universidad de Málaga. S. Hall (1981), ‘Notes on deconstructing “the popular”’, in R. Samuel (ed.), People’s History and Socialist Theory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. S. Holmes (2008), Entertaining Television: The BBC and Popular Television Culture in the 1950s. Manchester: Manchester University Press. M. O’Shaughnessy (1990), ‘Box pop: Popular television and hegemony’, in A. Goodwin and G. Whannel (eds), Understanding Television. London: Routledge. I. Reifová (2009), ‘Rerunning and “re-watching” socialist TV drama serials: Post-socialist Czech television audiences between commodification and reclaiming the past’, Critical Studies in Television, 4(2): 53–71. D. Strinati (1992), ‘“The taste of America”: Americanisation and popular culture in

Goddard.indb 13

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

14  Peter Goddard Britain’, in Dominic Strinati and Stephen Wagg (eds), Come on Down: Popular Culture in Post-War Britain. London: Routledge. R. Turnock (2007), Television and Consumer Culture: Britain and the Transformation of Modernity. London: I. B. Tauris. R. Turnock, with A. Hecht, D. Mustata, M. Pajala and A. Preston (2008), ‘European television events and Euro-visions: Tensions between the extraordinary and the ordinary’, in J. Bignell and A. Fickers (eds), A European Television History. Oxford: Blackwell.

Goddard.indb 14

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Part I Southern Europe

Goddard.indb 15

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

Goddard.indb 16

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

2

Football and bullfighting on television: Spectacle and Spanish identity during Franco’s dictatorship Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano

The aim of this chapter is to analyse how television in Spain during the 1960s, controlled by the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, used popu­ lar entertainments such as football and bullfighting to gain popular acceptance and to feed the patriotic sentiment encouraged by Francoist propaganda. After addressing the characteristics of the Televisión Española (TVE) model as a state-controlled channel, these pages will explain how technological innovation in television developed alongside the experience of economic progress in Spain during that decade. Television entertainment targeted at an audience composed primarily of the urban middle classes and the rural working classes privileged traditional subjects such as football and bullfights. A ‘star system’ relating to such television shows was used by the Francoist dictatorship to improve its public image, thanks to the great popularity of this new medium, even though Spanish state television was marked by the censorship of information and the restriction of freedom of expression.1 The Spanish television model during Franco’s regime Spain’s state-controlled public television company, TVE, began broadcasting in 1956, when Spain was under the dictatorship of General Franco, who came to full national power after the Civil War ended in 1939. The origins and early development of television in Spain owe much to the political context in which TVE was born. By the time the country’s first regular television service went on air, the military regime had already been in power for seventeen years, consolidating its authoritarian, monolithic, centralist state through the prohibition of political liberties and freedom of expression. Franco’s government implemented its policy of prior censorship and propaganda across a

Goddard.indb 17

5/30/2013 1:41:22 PM

18  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano

number of different media (the press, radio and cinema newsreels), as well as using education – with the full blessing of the Roman Catholic Church – to impose upon the populace a patriotic, anti-communist, ultra-Catholic code of morals known as National Catholicism, under a motto that proclaimed Spain as ‘one great, free nation’. Moral and social adhesion to this patriotic ideology was entirely compulsory (Febo and Juliá, 2005; Sevillano, 1998). In the early years of the dictator­ship, this triumphant official image, brimming with the rhetoric of pride in its own identity, was in stark contrast to the economic hardships generated by the autarkic system itself. Autocratic rule meant commercial isolation for Spain and extreme poverty for a population suffering the harsh consequences of the post-war period in a climate of fear and repression cultivated by the police and the military alike at the regime’s behest. These were also the days of what might be termed the ‘prehistory’ of Spanish television (1948–56), a time during which the dictatorship showed scant interest in the medium’s future potential as a propaganda tool. Television broadcasts in Spain were no more than a project under development, in which technology companies such as Philips and RCA had begun to show interest. Television made its first public appearance in Spain in 1948, with Philips providing a demonstration at the International Trade Fair in Barcelona and RCA attempting, although ultimately failing, to broadcast a bullfight to an audience in a Madrid arts centre (Baget Herms, 1993: 17). During the early 1950s, a time of experimentation for the medium in Spain, the companies authorised by the regime to import television sets, which included Marconi and Sylvania, advertised their contributions to the forthcoming television era in the press (Ibáñez, 2001: 51–3). Between 1949 and 1956, the General Directorate of Radio Broadcasting charged a team of ‘pioneers’, armed with scant resources, most of whom worked for Spain’s Radio Nacional, with the task of carrying out preliminary tests in preparation for the launch of TVE (Rodríguez and Martínez, 1992). On 28 October 1956, a date which marked the anniversary of the Falange (a political movement promoted by Franco’s regime to provide ideological support for the dictatorship), scheduled television broadcasts finally began. The establishment of TVE as a monopolistic public service funded primarily by advertising revenue was in complete contrast to the models adopted in Europe’s democratic nations, where a tax was levied on set ownership and commercials were either limited or forbidden entirely. As Baget Herms (2001) points out, once the initial trial period had been successfully negotiated, the first age of Spanish television ran from its official inauguration in 1956 until 1962. Borrowing from

Goddard.indb 18

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

Spectacle and Spanish identity during Franco’s dictatorship   19

terminology coined by John Ellis, Palacio (2006) defines this as an era of ‘scarcity’ as far as television was concerned. At the beginning of television broadcasting, the country was marked by an agrarian economy, a high level of illiteracy, and social and labour inequalities. The economic slump that coincided with the early years of TVE made a truly spectacular debut impossible – the 30 per cent rise in the cost of living between 1956 and 1958, together with an alarming fall in salaries over the same period, meant that few Spaniards could afford a television set (Ibáñez, 2001: 50). In response to the grave economic problems faced by the country, there were calls from certain quarters of the elite ‘families’ or lobbies that supported Franco’s government for measures to liberalise the Spanish economy. The year 1959 proved to be a turning point in the history of the dictatorship. The progressive opening up of diplomatic relations with the rest of the world (Spain had joined the United Nations in 1955 and US President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited the country in 1959) was now bolstered by the approval of the Plan de Estabilización (Stabilisation Plan), which ushered in a series of liberalis­ing economic reforms. These in turn soon brought significant sociological changes in their wake, most notably the creation and extension of a burgeoning middle class, which was destined to become TVE’s first mass audience. By now, the heavy sense of national identity created by the insular, protectionist system that had gone before had gradually been eroded. The regime had come to view television as the ideal tool with which to indoctrinate the nation anew, this time with the promise of modernis­ation (Ibáñez, 2001: 62). It was against this backdrop that the Madrid-based TVE started to expand to other parts of Spain. Broadcasts in Zaragoza began in 1958 with a live mass, a football match and a bullfight. The next step came in 1959, when the TVE signal reached Barcelona and a production centre was opened in the Catalan capital. The minor economic recovery experienced from 1959 onwards and the opening of Spain’s borders to foreign commerce aided television in its quest to establish itself. This new economic freedom was accompanied by a similar transformation in state policy on science and technology, which also significantly benefited the medium, increasing state and private investment in the technology of production and transmission. In the years that followed, the dictatorship would use television to propagate a new model of Spanish society. This represented a compromise between the preservation of the traditional values that saw Spain as the ‘last spiritual bastion of the Western world’ and the securing of the benefits of a consumer society in what was proclaimed by the regime itself to be Spain’s ‘economic miracle’.

Goddard.indb 19

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

20  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano

TVE as a symbol of modernisation and of the dictatorship’s ‘economic miracle’ The early 1960s saw the TVE signal gradually spread, if later than originally anticipated, to all corners of Spain, and it was against this backdrop that early Spanish viewers experienced their first encounter with television. In regions such as Andalusia, the severe economic and social backwardness of the 1950s and the irregular transformations brought about by the so-called economic development of the 1960s had a significant effect upon leisure habits and on the way in which television was viewed. The first ten years of television in Spain saw a blend between rural traditions and the modernity ushered in by the new medium itself, especially in urban contexts. A rural exodus (to other European countries and to Spain’s larger cities) was the most significant population phenomenon of this period. Television evolved in parallel with national economic growth, which was driven by industrial development and the expansion of the tourism industry during the 1960s. Under Franco’s governments, the different regions of Spain underwent varying levels of industrial and economic expansion, regulated by a series of Development Plans, the third and last of which was completed in 1975. These Plans included funding for public media. The initial Development Plan, which came into force in 1963/64, saw heavy investment in infrastructure and the metallurgical industry, as well as export subsidies (Martínez and Laguna, 2002). Along with the foreign investment made possible by the liberalisation of the economy and the revenue generated by tourism, the demand for Spanish labour abroad, which brought large quantities of foreign currency into Spain during the 1960s, was a key factor in the country’s economic development. Emigration also served to defuse domestic conflict and tension. On 17 June 1956, the year in which TVE began broadcasting, the National Emigration Institute was founded. This organisation oversaw the signing of agreements with the governments of countries such as West Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium that enabled Spanish workers to seek employment abroad.2 Andalusia was one of the main sources of such labour. In the 1950s and 1960s, a period which saw the rebuilding of Europe as well as the boom in the Spanish economy, well over one million Andalusians emigrated to foreign climes. Although TVE did not begin broadcasting in Andalusia until 1961, many ­Andalusians had by then already experienced the medium at first hand in the European countries to which they had gone to work. Television now entered the second phase of its development. The appointment of Manuel Fraga Iribarne as Minister for Information and

Goddard.indb 20

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

Spectacle and Spanish identity during Franco’s dictatorship   21

Tourism in 1962 accelerated its technological and social expansion, signalling the onset of a period in which the medium would cease to be seen as a luxury reserved exclusively for a privileged minority. Television was soon more widely available than it had ever been before. As they opened the gateway to economic liberalism, the governmental powers-that-be now saw television as a useful propaganda tool with which to reinforce popular support for General Franco – presented as the guarantor of domestic peace at the start of the dictatorship and now heralded as a champion of development and modernisation. As Rueda Laffond (2008) has explained, Franco’s minions were not slow to recognise the triple potential of the new medium, namely as a source of funds in the shape of advertising revenue, a socio-cultural influence that would serve to create a new middle class, and an ideological weapon with which to win public approval and ensure support of the regime. From 1962 onwards, TVE broadcast Francisco Franco’s Christmas message to the nation. In 1964, as part of the celebrations marking the first twenty-five years of the dictatorship (referred to by the regime for propaganda purposes as ‘twenty-five years of peace’), Franco also opened the company’s new facilities at Prado del Rey, Madrid. This was the first and last time in the dictator’s life that he set foot in TVE’s studios (Palacio, 2006). The introduction in 1966 of a new press bill abolishing the censor­ ship of newspapers and magazines was a ‘liberalist’ milestone in the dictatorship’s adaptation to the changing times (García Galindo et al., 2002). Although timid criticism of the regime began to appear in the press as workers, students and neighbourhood movements alike became more active, television had by now established itself as Spain’s most popular medium. While the aforementioned liberalisation was not reflected in any shape or form at TVE, Spanish programmes now began to enjoy a higher profile at international television festivals and in foreign markets.3 The policy adhered to by the Ministry for Information and Tourism, upon which TVE’s directors were totally dependent, was openly to use television to cultivate popular support for Franco and elicit social approval of those values deemed bene­ ficial to the regime. In addition to the misinformation that inevitably accompanied monopoly control of information and propaganda, this policy also involved the sustained broadcast of entertainment forms that highlighted a series of symbolic referents which the dictatorship sought to identify as both ‘Spanish’ and ‘patriotic’ (including football, bullfighting and the type of traditional Spanish song known as the copla). The rest of the schedule consisted of popular series im­ported from the USA and coverage of major national and international sports events.

Goddard.indb 21

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

22  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano

Combining tradition and modern technology as spectacle: Football and bullfighting on Spanish television Sports broadcasting was included when television was first exhibited experimentally in Madrid and Barcelona in 1948, and also formed part of the early non-regular broadcasting which began in 1951 (Bonaut, 2008). Football featured in TVE’s programming schedules from its inception in 1956. The first live football broadcast was in April 1958, when a Spanish League match between Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid was shown. The involvement of Spanish teams (especially Real Madrid) in European competitions gradually underlined the need for technological improvements. In 1957, TVE recorded and then broadcast the European Cup final between Real Madrid and Fiorentina. TVE linked up with the Eurovision network for the first time in 1959 to show another of Real’s European encounters (Baget Herms, 1993). FC Barcelona’s TVE debut also came in 1959, in one of Spanish football’s classic encounters – Real Madrid versus Barcelona. This broadcast led to a huge rise in sales of television sets in Catalonia’s biggest city. Even in 1958, before the TVE signal from Madrid had reached the region, many football supporters in Barcelona had bought sets in order to watch football action shown by the Italian channel RAI (Baget Herms, 1994). At the start of the 1960s, advertising for television sets in the Spanish press used football as a selling point. As well as Real Madrid’s partici­ pation in the European Cup, the World Cup, in which the Spanish national team habitually took part, also featured heavily in such adver­ tise­ments, as did the Spanish League, which embraced clubs from all over the country (González Aja, 2002: 199). The undeniable attraction of the marriage between football and television forced TVE to strive to show more matches. An agreement between TVE and the Football Federation increased the number of League matches broadcast to thirteen in the 1963/64 season. As this arrangement did not involve a televised match every Sunday, however, radio continued to offer the most direct means of keeping abreast of sporting developments. So, despite the novelty of television, live football essentially remained ‘the almost exclusive domain of radio until just after the 1966 World Cup in England, the last to be followed mainly via radio’ (Balsebre, 2002: 379).4 The Mexico World Cup in 1970 was the first to guarantee live coverage of international matches, thanks to satellite technology. By then, however, television had been a popular medium among football fans, who were accustomed to watch highlights or recorded matches, since the early 1960s. Television’s popularity was boosted further still by improved technology, which enabled the number of football

Goddard.indb 22

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

Spectacle and Spanish identity during Franco’s dictatorship   23

broadcasts in the TVE schedule to grow progressively: in 1965, TVE showed a Spanish League match approximately every two weeks; by 1970, this had risen to one every Sunday; and in 1975, the last year of the dictatorship, there was one month (April) in which a total of seven domestic and international matches were broadcast. Besides football, in the first half of the twentieth century, watching bullfighting was one of Spain’s most popular leisure activities, which explains why the country’s earliest television schedules featured programmes devoted to this traditional pastime. On 8 August 1948, RCA decided to promote its television technology by showing a bullfight, which the organisers felt to be ‘the most Spanish of spectacles’. Problems with the electricity supply turned this broadcast, to be screened before an audience at the Fine Arts Centre in Madrid, into a complete fiasco. But the event was repeated with success the following year, when it coincided with the saint’s day of Franco’s wife. So it was, in 1949, that the Francos became the first Spanish family to enjoy the luxury of watching a bullfight in their own home, a television set having been installed expressly for the purpose at their Madrid resi­ dence (Ibáñez, 2001: 61; Palacio, 2001: 29). When regular TVE broadcasts began in 1956, the personal endeavour of Gabriel Arias Salgado, minister in charge of TVE, led to frequent live broadcasts of sporting events and bullfighting. Bullfights in Spain are usually staged between March and October. Bullfighting had occupied pride of place among the leisure habits of many Spaniards since the beginning of the eighteenth century, so its presence in early Spanish television broadcasts came as no surprise. In regions like Andalusia, the interest aroused by these programmes was sustained by a deep-seated bullfighting culture. TVE, like ­national television channels in other countries, used a popular tradition to attract viewers (Briggs and Burke, 2002). Moreover, the tradition in question served to strengthen the sense of national identity that the dictatorship sought to promote, an identity that relied heavily on stereo­types borrowed from Andalusian folklore. The initial refusal of certain bullfighting impresarios to allow TVE’s cameras inside the bullring was reversed through a financial settlement. In any case, as the impresarios soon discovered, so few households boasted television sets in these early days that the broadcasts did not harm attendances, serving instead to promote the virtues of Spain’s national fiesta. The reticence of many impresarios was due largely to the fact that television gave bullfighting aficionados a better, more comfortable view of the action than they enjoyed in the bullring itself. Furthermore, as the press pointed out, it enabled them to elude one of the perennial perils of attending a bullfight, namely the ‘collective

Goddard.indb 23

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

24  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano

emotional psychosis that can so easily develop in the crowded tiers’.5 The commercial difficulties were soon resolved. By the mid-1960s, interest in bullfighting had multiplied thanks to its growing television audience. In 1966, growing demand from viewers, who felt that too few bullfights were being shown, forced TVE to strike a deal with the bullfighting impresarios that allowed it to broadcast one bullfight live per week during the months of April, May, June and July (Diario Sur, 31 March 1966: 5). The success of these television broadcasts was replicated in several Latin American countries, which in addition to screening matches involving Spanish football teams also showed recordings of bullfights from Spain. Furthermore, just as with football, sellers of television sets, aware of bullfighting’s large public following, crammed their advertising campaigns with references to the art. The press also began to devote more space to bullfighting in their sports pages, where it shared star billing with football. The popularity of football and bullfighting among early Spanish viewers By the mid-1960s, television was firmly established in practically the whole of Spain and TVE was able to reach millions of homes, notably in those areas of greatest demographic importance (which had been the first to receive the channel’s signal) and highest economic develop­ment (whose inhabitants, moreover, could afford to purchase television sets). Eager to escape the unpleasant realities of the postwar years, Spaniards wasted no time in availing themselves of the opportunities for amusement and information alike that television now provided. Surveys carried out by the Institute of Public Opinion confirmed TVE’s huge popularity as a source of entertainment. Accord­ing to these studies, which were published by the dictatorship itself, the programmes favoured by early audiences were films, music shows, the news, bullfighting and sports broadcasts (Del Campo, 1967: 45–59). In the 1960s, watching television was an activity often undertaken in the company of others – relatives, neighbours, even complete strangers. Shop windows, the houses of neighbours or relatives, bars and country estates were the locations in which bullfighting and football were most commonly viewed by those who did not have their own television set. Throughout Spain, dropping in on the neighbours in order to watch television became a popular form of socialising and, of all the events covered by the medium, football was among the most frequent reasons behind such visits. On Sundays, when League

Goddard.indb 24

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

Spectacle and Spanish identity during Franco’s dictatorship   25

matches were televised, those families lucky enough to own a set habitually played host to relatives and acquaintances eager to see the action. Where recollections of the early days of television are concerned, bullfighting also occupies an important place in the minds of Spain’s first generation of viewers, many of whom identify the image of a bull as the first thing that they recall seeing on a television screen.6 Since its very beginnings, Spaniards of every social class had been attracted by the art of bullfighting. In the nineteenth century, the early bullfighters of largely noble origin gave way to professional matadors, drawn from all strata of society. From this point onwards, bullfighting became a pursuit for the masses (Shubert, 2001). Despite its largely male following in the arena, televised bullfighting appealed to viewers of both sexes and all ages. Women employed in factories, on the land or as servants tell of how they would leave work early and congregate at the doors of bars – the interior was a primarily male domain – to see their favourite bullfighters on the screen. Bars were undoubtedly the venue of choice for the majority of those eager to watch the bullfights broadcast by TVE. Bloody though the spectacle was, many parents took their children with them to the bars, where the dual attraction of watching both television and bullfighting awaited. In rural areas, the days on which bullfights were shown caused quite a stir. Typical Andalusian farm estates or cortijos were another location favoured by those who enjoyed watching televised bullfighting in the company of others. Labourers would rise or finish work earlier than usual when there was bullfighting on TVE, gathering together in a room or shed to watch the action on a set loaned to them by the foreman or owner of the estate. Workers were even prepared to forfeit part of their daily wage rather than miss the bullfight. The desire of Franco’s government to extend the supposed ‘culturally’ beneficial effects of television and its programmes led to the creation of a system of collective viewing in what were known as ‘TV clubs’. Based on a model originally developed in France, these were set up primarily with the more economically backward rural areas in mind. The first TV club was opened in 1964, in Mantilla La Seca (in Zamora). In August 1969, official sources announced that Spain’s ‘extended family of TV clubs’, backed by the Ministry of Tourism and Information, now numbered an impressive 3,500 branches (Sol de España, 22 August 1969: 3). The wish to take advantage of or exert political control over collective gatherings around a television set led to an explicit definition of the functions of these premises, which were officially regulated by the Second Development Plan (1968–71). Spanish films in the mid-1960s portrayed television viewers as an audience overwhelmingly enamoured with the entertainment

Goddard.indb 25

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

26  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano

provided by TVE. Characterised by their frivolity on the surface and rigidity beneath (Camporesi, 1999), the channel’s schedules combined censored news programmes with a variety of different spectacles that occupied a significant amount of airtime. Meanwhile, countless articles about famous presenters, actors, singers, bullfighters and celebrities of every conceivable ilk, all of whom owed their fame to television, now appeared in the press. The figures created by this ‘TV star system’ were exploited by the dictatorship as public exponents of the balance between the traditional values that underpinned its political doctrine and the economic development that television in all its modernity so magnificently epitomised. Along with musical performances and a few successful game shows, two traditional spectacles played a decisive role in creating these ‘TV legends’ with patriotic undertones: football and bullfighting. The ‘Spanish identity’ as depicted by TVE’s traditional spectacles and stars From the very beginning, Franco’s regime had resolved to create a common cultural panorama that would reinforce the idea of Spain as a united nation in the wake of the disintegration brought about by the Civil War between 1936 and 1939. The creation of a plethora of commonly recognised ‘national’ figures from the artistic world also made a key contribution to the task of rebuilding the nation. In the 1940s, before television arrived, football had become the most significant manifestation of the escapist culture promoted by the dictatorship. The sport’s only serious rival in this regard was arguably radio, although the relationship between the two was complementary rather than competitive. Apart from football and radio, other sources of distraction for the Spanish populace included bullfighting, cinema films based on traditional stereotypes, musical comedies or reviews, non-political theatre and cheap literature (typically stories of the Wild West and serialised tales that completely ignored the harsh realities of contemporary life) (Gómez Mompart, 2002). The role played by these communications and leisure media, and the subculture created by their usage for political ends, proved both incisive and decisive in the development of an assumed Spanish consciousness that some authors have called a ‘false national ideology’ (Gómez Mompart, 2002: 599). The main reason for this accusation is the fact that the concept of Spain which the dictatorship sought to promote in no way acknowledged the nation’s plurality or the cultural traditions of its many regions. Instead, it rehashed certain superficial elements of some of these traditions (notably those of Andalusia) to

Goddard.indb 26

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

Spectacle and Spanish identity during Franco’s dictatorship   27

create a popular leisure culture that was seen as encapsulating the ‘true Spanish identity’. The Francoist dictatorship used a distinctive ‘Spanish star system’ (copla singers – women wearing flamenco dresses – football players, bullfighters) politically. The typical show-business elements that the dictatorship liked to exploit on the international stage worked in a similar way. Parts of this popular tradition featured in Spain’s tele­ vision output from the very beginning and are therefore firmly lodged in the memories of present-day viewers of the medium. Flamenco and copla programmes, sports, bullfighting and broadcasts of religi­ ous celebrations were used on TVE in order to praise the so-called ‘typical Spanish’ character. These visual archetypes were also used in the advertisements for television sets appearing in the press in the 1960s and 1970s. The copla enjoyed its golden age during the terrible times of the post-war period and was exploited by media such as radio, cinema and, later, television. Musical popular culture under Franco’s dic­tator­ ship was based on the commercial exploitation both of the coplas themselves and of the female stars who sang them. Though seemingly unconnected with politics, folk music genres nevertheless bring a certain political influence to bear. As a result, the nationalism promoted by Franco’s government became associated with ‘Spanish song’ and the honourable, courageous, passionate women who performed it, such as Lola Flores, Juanita Reina and Concha Piquer (Ruiz Muñoz and Sánchez Alarcón, 2008). The clichés exploited by TVE in various musical programmes were also exported to foreign television. Some Spanish artists, like Carmen Sevilla, appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, the famous American variety programme. During the 1960s and 1970s, Spanish film musicals and television programmes created several variations on this female stereotype. Even Massiel, the singer who won the Eurovision Song Contest for Spain in 1968, could be regarded as an updated version of a copla singer, adapted to pop music. She became one of the most famous stars in Spain due to her victory, which was portrayed as embodying the spirit of Spanish patriotism.7 Although they shared billing with the country’s folk-­ culture heroines, the leading male figures in the Franco regime’s nationalistic, television-generated ‘star system’ were predominantly footballers ­ and bullfighters, idols drawn from the two main patriotic spectacles covered by TVE with the dual aim of entertaining the population and reinforcing the idea of Spain as a nation of strong, valiant men. TVE fed the patriotic recognition of these traditional symbols. The channel organised an ‘artistic delegation’ in the mid-1960s, which undertook a televised tour of several European countries; famous Spanish singers

Goddard.indb 27

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

28  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano

and presenters performed in various cities to ‘brighten up’ the lives of Spanish emigrants. Real Madrid and the Spanish national team: TVE’s football stars The political centralisation of Franco’s regime meant that TVE focused on the teams based in the capital. Indeed, it was Real Madrid which evidently best embodied Spain’s patriotic spirit and its officially approved national identity. Meanwhile, the country’s other great club, FC Barcelona, represented – in the collective imagination at least – a certain dissidence towards the prevalent political centralisation. The team’s unofficial reputation saw it implicitly linked with both Catalonian nationalism and political opposition to the dictatorship. However, while to the people Barça may have been ‘more than a club’, the team’s matches did also receive extensive television coverage. Just as it had done with the club competitions involving Real Madrid, TVE gave extensive coverage to the national team’s involvement in international football tournaments, thus helping to create a symbolic feeling of ‘Spanishness’ both within the country’s borders and beyond. Victory not only made the people happy, but could also help to take their minds off the freedom, political rights and economic welfare that were being denied them. What is more, the local screening of matches involving Spain in those European countries that had opened their doors to hundreds of thousands of Spanish workers was capable of bringing whole families together on a wave of patriotic feeling fuelled by a combination of sporting competition and the nostalgia elicited by being so far from home (Björkin with Gutiérrez Lozano, 2008: 223–7). Franco’s regime ran no real campaign to educate the people about sport or to encourage them to play it. The dictatorship was concerned purely with the patriotism derived from the victories of Spanish stars in major events. TVE also featured other sports, including boxing, the Olympic Games, cycling – in which Federico Martín Bahamontes was the star attraction and the Vuelta a España and the Tour de France the most eagerly watched events – and tennis, where Manuel Santana was the leading player of the 1960s. The harsh reality of life in Spain led many to dream of emulating the footballers and other male sports stars simply as a means of enjoying a better standard of living. In this respect, there was one other pursuit apart from football that nourished the dream of social improvement through God-given talent – bullfighting. Throughout the 1960s, televised bullfights went head to head with televised football in the battle for social supremacy and popular following. It would be no exaggeration to say that, in the

Goddard.indb 28

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

Spectacle and Spanish identity during Franco’s dictatorship   29

early days at least, the broadcasts of bullfights enjoyed even more success than the broadcasts of sporting events. El Cordobés, hero of the most Spanish of televised spectacles In 1962, a Spanish newspaper article claimed that, at the beginning of the decade, the spectacle of choice for Spain’s youth, despite the undeniable interest in football, was bullfighting: Football is the Spanish spectacle par excellence. Football is synony­ mous with Spain itself. It is the national sport.… It stirs strong passions among Spaniards, particularly the older generation, who still idolise the stars of yesteryear. Most young people, on the other hand, prefer bullfighting, hence the lament frequently uttered by men of a certain age that there are no football fans any more. (Diario Sur, 1 September 1962: 3)8

The success of televised bullfighting was due in no small part to the exploits of one Andalusian matador: Manuel Benítez, nicknamed ‘El Cordobés’, one of Spain’s biggest and best-loved stars of the 1960s. El Cordobés was ‘a symbol of the poor boy made good, like Pelé to those who lived in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro’ (Baget Herms, 1993: 150).9 His popularity was derived from his humble origins, his spectacular bullfighting style (histrionic, incredibly daring but, according to the more critical spectators, lacking in artistry), his good looks and, of course, the exposure afforded to him by television. The resounding television success of this most unorthodox of matadors almost surpassed that of the audience’s favourite pastime, football. As one scribe wrote, ‘El Cordobés’ bullfights were never boring’.10 Arguments between his followers and detractors occasionally brought them to blows, while the dates of bullfighting festivals were changed in order to ensure his participation. The feats of El Cordobés were seen as heroic deeds, and television served only to increase the popularity that he was gradually building up in the bullring. This press report describing his performance at the San Isidro festival in Madrid bears witness to how television launched him to stardom in 1960s Spain: Statistics tell us that there are some thirty-two million Spaniards. Now, if we discount the babes in arms, the rest spent Monday afternoon and all of Tuesday talking about one thing: ‘El Cordobés’. You all saw the televised coverage of his performance at Las Ventas bullring, where once again he showed himself to be the antithesis of the true art of bullfighting.… The spectators screamed and howled, and I know of several television viewers who had to reach for their heart medication. I’d go so far as to say that even the bull was spooked by its inability

Goddard.indb 29

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

30  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano to finish off the man beneath its horns.… By the end of the contest, Manuel Benítez looked like he had just returned from the Vietnam war … what with one hand bandaged, his hair a mess and his face caked with sand and sweat.… The man is an incorrigible rebel, of that there is no doubt. (Diario Sur, 27 May 1965: 17)11

This unique celebrity shot to fame just as economic development reached Franco’s dictatorship. Although some considered him a bastion of modernity, the figure of El Cordobés had much in common with other traditional Spanish idols from the world of copla song and Flamenco music. However, he also appeared in films about his own life (Lapierre and Collins, 1967), rubbed shoulders with world-renowned stars at the San Sebastián film festival, and befriended Roger Moore, famous at the time for his television series The Saint. Through his irreverence, and quite possibly unwittingly, El Cordobés provided a typically Spanish link to the modernity that was taking hold of Europe’s youth, who admittedly preferred to identify themselves with a far less stereotypical and essentially more revolutionary brand of idol: the pop star. At a time when the Costa del Sol was becoming a popular destination among foreign tourists, El Cordobés was Spain’s leading exponent of the fashion for long hair that was sweeping the young: It may be a copycat phenomenon, it may be the manifestation of a strange, unstable personality, it may even be a mere sign of the times. Call it what you like, the long-haired look is here to stay. The Beatles made it fashionable, ‘El Cordobés’ brought it to our shores, and it has been propagated by a generation of British girls that can only be described as ultramodern. (‘Long haired on the Costa. Example of the Beatles has spread’, Diario Sur, 10 July 1964: 7)12

Conclusion Television under Franco’s regime, particularly during the rapid econ­ omic and social expansion of the 1960s, was characterised by ­entertainment-filled schedules that afforded privileged status to bullfighting and football, the spectacles used by TVE to consolidate its popularity among early audiences. During the years of economic develop­ment, with the hardships of the post-war period now a thing of the past, TVE’s technology and programmes alike gave the govern­ ment a vital tool with which to promote the image of a ‘modernising dictator­ship’. In spite of the lack of democracy and the persistence of the traditional values still staunchly defended by the regime, TVE played a key role in redefining the main lines of propaganda pursued

Goddard.indb 30

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

Spectacle and Spanish identity during Franco’s dictatorship   31

by the d ­ ictatorship, ensuring that they focused on the superficial rather than the profound. The ‘culture of fear’ imposed upon the Spanish populace during the post-war period was replaced by a new approach, which encouraged apoliticism and promoted an image of ‘harmony’ based on order, authority, tradition and the material benefits generated by economic development. Television helped make the dictatorship socially acceptable and provided a magnificent showcase for a Spain which, inter­nationally speaking, was firmly ensconced in the capitalist camp yet still lacked political liberties and democratic institutions. The football matches and bullfights broadcast by TVE and the ‘star system’ linked to them provided the ideal means of combining tradition with progress. Television had become a multi-class medium capable of attracting a variety of audiences, ranging from the middle classes of the major cities to the working classes who viewed it collectively in rural areas. The Spaniards who took part in or lived through the Civil War were succeeded in the 1960s by a far less politically moti­ vated generation that was more concerned with leisure pursuits in a decade characterised by the boom of tourism, emigration, improved living standards, the emergence of the middle classes and the onset of the consumer economy. These Spaniards, the country’s first television viewers, were the ones who experienced most vividly the use of football, bullfighting and their ‘star system’ as a magic wand to embellish Spain’s image and identity and, by extension, that of Franco’s regime. It is impossible to say for sure whether TVE’s predilection for programmes of this type was part of a specific political plan carried out on the dictatorship’s orders or merely the logical development of a popular television model; probably both of these explanations are reasonable. Politically speaking, 1 May, Labour Day, a date closely linked with the working-class cause, when illegal demonstrations or strikes had been convened to protest against the dictatorship, was inevitably met by an increase, probably contrived by the dictatorship, in the number of football matches or bullfights shown. This fact is used by Spanish historiographers to support the theory that sport was used for political purposes. For example, Shaw (1987) argues that, through a combination of press, radio and television exposure, all strictly controlled by the regime, Franco’s government took advantage of the popularity of the world’s number one sport to carry out what he refers to as ‘low-cost manipulation’ and to extend the official image of ‘Spanishness’. Following this point, the dictatorship could be accused of exploiting the ‘soporific’ effects of football (and also bullfighting) and ensuring that they remained strong over a long period of time. In this way, Franco’s regime benefited from the passion those spectacles aroused among the Spanish people (Pujadas and Santacana, 2001).

Goddard.indb 31

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

32  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano

However, the broadcasting of this form of entertainment could also be seen – either in isolation or in conjunction with a political agenda – as the provision by TVE of a popular television schedule designed to satisfy the demands of a broad, multi-class audience taking its first tentative steps in the new consumer society. In this sense, the importance of these spectacles needs to be appreciated both from the collective point of view and from the individual perspective, which, in the case of bullfighting, was closely linked to the rural experiences of many early viewers in Spain. One of the reasons why television was so enormously popular among the inhabitants of 1960s Spain was that it offered the lower classes a means of escaping their problems. Against a backdrop of economic difficulties and scant leisure options, tele­vision was made popular not by official publicity campaigns or effective press advertising but by the social osmosis brought about by the new medium’s capacity to entertain. This, combined with its indubitably attractive but ultimately less decisive informative qualities, was the crucial factor in the creation of a certain type of consumption which was dominated by specific entertainment genres among ­working-class audiences. Whether for political motives, media reasons, or a combination of the two, the social acceptance achieved by these new televised spectacles aided the swift establishment of the medium. At the same time, in spite of their conservative content, the various types of programming available (music, fiction, entertainment, even the advertisements) brought about the modernisation of Spain’s customs and the relaxation of the rigid moral code observed by the Spanish people – the same individuals who, just a few years later, in the 1970s, would embark upon the political transition towards democracy. Notes 1 This chapter presents results from a research project entitled ‘History of entertainment in Spain during Franco’s dictatorship: Culture, consumption and audiovisual content (cinema, radio and television)’, HAR2008-06076/ARTE. 2 Spanish emigration began in the late 1950s, accompanied by other Mediterranean countries (Portugal, Italy, Greece), which provided labour to more developed capitalist states (France, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland), making possible the economic growth of the latter without the need for expensive labour costs (Babiano and Farre, 2002). 3 See Chapter 3. 4 ‘El fútbol en directo permaneció durante mucho tiempo como ‘un territorio casi exclusivo de la radio hasta inmediatamente después de los Campeonatos Mundiales de Inglaterra en 1966, los últimos mundiales principalmente radiofónicos.’

Goddard.indb 32

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

Spectacle and Spanish identity during Franco’s dictatorship   33 5 ‘Psicosis emocional colectiva, factible y fácil en el hacinamiento masivo de los graderíos’ (Diario Sur, 4 May 1965: 3). 6 The ways in which Spanish audiences understood and responded to early television were the subject of my doctoral thesis, entitled ‘El impacto social de la televisión en España. Sus orígenes en Andalucía a través de la memoria de los primeros espectadores’ (‘The social impact of television in Spain. Its origins in Andalusia through the memories of the first viewers’). Those surveyed and interviewed in that audience research were all persons over the age of fifty-five attending training courses at Andalusia’s universities and at a number of adult education centres in both rural and urban areas of Malaga and Seville. Most of the 539 who were surveyed and the 97 interviewed were women working either on the land or in domestic service and living in villages in Andalusia (Gutiérrez Lozano, 2006: 299–400). 7 Initially, the singer chosen to represent Spain that year was to be Joan Manuel Serrat, a renowned artist born in Catalonia. He intended to sing the same song in Catalan but the managers of TVE refused. Serrat was eventually replaced by Massiel. Her winning song, ‘La, la, la’, even beat Britain’s Cliff Richard and his famous ‘Congratulations’. 8 ‘El fútbol es el espectáculo español por antonomasia. Decir fútbol equivale a decir España. Es el deporte nacional.… Entre los españoles despierta auténtica pasión, sobre todo entre los españoles de edad avanzada, que sienten por algunas figuras del fútbol ya desaparecidas, una veneración real. La juventud, por el contrario ha derivado en su inmensa mayoría hacia los toros, por lo que es frecuente oír lamentarse a los hombres maduros de que ya no hay afición futbolística.’ 9 ‘Un símbolo del triunfo de los desheredados, como el futbolista Pelé lo era para los habitantes de las favelas de Río de Janeiro.’ 10 ‘Con El Cordobés no hay corrida aburrida’ (Diario Sur, 23 June 1968: 5). 11 ‘Parece ser que las estadísticas han reconocido ya que los españoles somos tantos como unos treinta y dos millones. Bien. Pues, descontados los niños de pecho, el resto habló toda la tarde del lunes y el martes entero de un solo y exclusivo tema: El Cordobés. Todos ustedes pudieron ver su actuación en la plaza madrileña de las Ventas a través de la televisión, y pudieron comprobar una vez más que es la negación del toreo puro.… El público chillaba y berreaba, sé de varias personas que seguían la transmisión televisiva que tuvieron que acudir con presteza a sus habituales tónicos cardíacos. Creo que incluso el toro estaba asustado de no haberse cargado ya al hombre que tenía bajos sus astas.… Al finalizar la corrida pudo verse a Manuel Benítez, como si viniese de la guerra del Vietnam…, vendada una mano, despeinado y con cara cubierta de arena y sudor.… No cabe duda de que nos hallamos ante un auténtico revolucionario.’ 12 ‘Puede que sea un fenómeno de mimetismo, puede que haya por medio algo de extraña y cambiante personalidad, puede que sea sencillamente el signo de los tiempos. Lo que queda, de todo esto es, en resumen, el “multipelismo”. Lo han puesto de moda los Beatles, lo ha elevado entre nosotros El Cordobés, lo han propagado las chicas inglesas de una generación que habrían de calificar de “novísimas”’ (‘Multipelistas en la Costa. Cunde el desgreñado ejemplo del los Beatles’.)

Goddard.indb 33

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

34  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano

References J. Babiano and S. Farre (2002), ‘La emigración Española a Europa durante los años sesenta: Francia y Suiza como países de acogida’ (‘Spanish emigration to Europe during the sixties: France and Switzerland as host countries’), Historia Social, 42: 81–98. J. M. Baget Herms (1993), Historia de la televisión en España: 1956–1975 (History of Television in Spain: 1956–1975). Barcelona: Feed-Back. J. M. Baget Herms (1994), Historia de la televisió a Catalunya (History of Tele­ vision in Catalonia). Barcelona: Centre d´Investigació de la Comunicació. J. M. Baget Herms (2001), ‘El legado de la televisión franquista’ (‘The legacy of Francoist television’), Formats 3, www.iua.upf.edu/formats/formats3/bag_a. htm (accessed 17 March 2010). A. Balsebre (2002), Historia de la radio en España. Volumen II (1939–1985) (History of Radio in Spain: Volume II (1939–1985)). Madrid: Cátedra. M. Björkin with J. F. Gutiérrez Lozano (2008), ‘European television audiences: Localising the viewers’, in J. Bignell and A. Fickers (eds), A European Television History. Oxford: Blackwell. J. Bonaut (2008), ‘La influencia de la programación deportiva en el desarrollo histórico de TVE durante el monopolio de la televisión pública (1956–1988)’ (‘The influence of sports programming in the historical development of TVE during the monopoly of public television (1956–1988)’), Comunicación y ­Sociedad, 21(1): 103–36. A. Briggs and P. Burke (2002), De Gutenberg a Internet. Una historia social de los medios de comunicación (A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (Spanish edition)). Madrid: Taurus. V. Camporesi (1999), ‘Imágenes de televisión en el cine Español de los sesenta. Fragmentos de una historia de la representación’ (‘Images of television in the Spanish cinema of the sixties. Fragments of a history of representation’). Archivos de la Filmoteca, 32: 148–62. S. Del Campo (1967), ‘La televisión como medio para la inversión del ocio’ (‘Television as a medium to use leisure time’), in I semana internacional de estudios superiores de televisión (First International Week of Television Studies). Madrid: Ministerio de Información y Turismo. G. Febo and S. Juliá (2005), El Franquismo (Francoism). Barcelona: Paidós Ibérica. J. A. García Galindo, J. F. Gutiérrez Lozano and I. Sánchez Alarcón (eds) (2002), La comunicación social durante el Franquismo (Social Communication During Francoism). Málaga: CEDMA-Cajamar-Asociación de Historiadores de la Comunicación. J. L. Gómez Mompart (2002), ‘Ecosistema comunicativo Franquista y construcción simbólica y mental de España’ (‘The Francoist communicative ecosystem and the symbolic and mental construction of Spain’), in J. A. García Galindo, J. F. Gutiérrez Lozano and I. Sánchez Alarcón (eds), La comunicación social durante el Franquismo (Social Communication During Francoism). Málaga: CEDMA-Cajamar-Asociación de Historiadores de la Comunicación. T. González Aja (2002), ‘La política deportiva en España durante la República y el Franquismo’ (‘Sports policy in Spain during the Second Republic and Francoism’), in T. González Aja (ed.), Sport y autoritarismos. La utilización del deporte por el comunismo y el Fascismo (Sport and Authoritarianism: The Use of Sport by Communism and Fascism). Madrid: Alianza Editorial. J. F. Gutiérrez Lozano (2006) La televisión en el recuerdo. La recepción de un mundo en blanco y negro en Andalucía (Television in the Memory: The Reception of a

Goddard.indb 34

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

Spectacle and Spanish identity during Franco’s dictatorship   35 Black and White World in Andalusia). Málaga: Radiotelevisión de Andalucía (RTVA) and Universidad de Málaga. J. C. Ibáñez (2001), ‘Televisión y cambio social en la España de los años 50. Apuntes sobre el proceso de legitimación del medio televisivo en la dictadura de Franco’ (‘Social changes and Spanish television in the ’50s: Note of the process of television legitimation during Franco’s dictatorship’), Secuencias. Revista de Historia del Cine, 13: 48–67. D. Lapierre and L. Collins (1967), O llevarás luto por mí (Or You Will Go into Mourning for Me). Barcelona: Plaza and Janés. F. A. Martínez and A. Laguna (2002), ‘Planes de desarrollo y medios de comuni­ cación en el último Franquismo, 1972–1975’ (‘Development plans and the media in Franco’s last dictatorship, 1972–1975’), in J. A. García Galindo, J. F. Gutiérrez Lozano and I. Sánchez Alarcón (eds), La comunicación social durante el Franquismo (Social Communication during Francoism). Málaga: CEDMA-Cajamar-Asociación de Historiadores de la Comunicación. M. Palacio (2001), Historia de la televisión en España (History of Television in Spain). Barcelona: Gedisa. M. Palacio (2006), ‘Cincuenta años de televisión en España’ (‘Fifty years of tele­vision in Spain’), in B. Díaz Nosty (ed.), Tendencias ’06. Medios de comunicación. El año de la televisión (Trends ’06. Media. The Year of Television). Madrid: Fundación Telefónica. X. Pujadas and C. Santacana (2001), ‘La mercantilización del ocio deportivo en España. El caso del fútbol 1900–1928’ (‘The commodification of leisure sports in Spain: The case of football 1900–1928’), Historia Social, 41: 147–67. I. Rodríguez and J. Martínez (1992), La televisión: historia y desarrollo. Los ­pioneros de la televisión (Television: History and Development. The Pioneers of Television). Barcelona: Editorial Mitre/RTVE. J. C. Rueda Laffond (2008), ‘La consolidación histórica de la televisión en España. Coherencia e incoherencia del modelo televisivo Franquista’ (‘The historical consolidation of television in Spain: Consistency and inconsistency in the television model during Franco’s dictatorship’). Revista HMIC, 6: 213–23. M. J. Ruiz Muñoz and I. Sánchez Alarcón (2008), La imagen de la mujer Andaluza en el cine Español (The Image of Andalusian Women in Spanish Cinema). Sevilla: Centro de Estudios Andaluces. F. Sevillano (1998), Propaganda y medios de comunicación en el Franquismo (1936–1951) (Propaganda and Media During Franco’s Regime (1936–1951)). Alicante: Universidad de Alicante. D. Shaw (1987), Fútbol y Franquismo (Football and Francoism). Madrid: Alianza Editorial. A. Shubert (2001), ‘En la vanguardia del ocio mercantilizado de masas: La corrida de toros en España, siglos XVIII y XIX’ (‘At the forefront of commodified mass entertainment: The corrida de toros in Spain, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’), Historia Social, 41: 113–26.

Goddard.indb 35

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

3

From puppets to puppeteers: Modernising Spain through entertainment television1 Mar Binimelis, Josetxo Cerdán and Miguel Fernández Labayen

Television under Franco was controlled, censored and propagandistic,2 as many authors have pointed out in different histories of Spanish television (e.g. Baget Herms, 1993; Bustamante, 2006). Although it would be a mistake to question these basic features in historiographic terms, the television of the dictatorship is considerably more complex than many studies have suggested. From the middle of the 1950s, internal tensions in the regime led to a questioning of the founding principles of Francoism at Televisión Española (TVE, the only channel in Spain at that time). Despite the fact that Spanish television had been designed for national purposes, it was also used by Franco to project an international image. This created contradictions between the ideology of the dictatorship and some of the entertainment programmes produced by TVE. In this chapter, we wish to discuss how three producers from abroad – Arthur Kaps, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador and Valeriu Lazarov – created a series of popular entertainment programmes that eroded, challenged or directly contradicted some of the principles on which the regime’s ideology was based. It is no coincidence that all three were foreign. Their accomplishments emphasise how historical memory can define generations: since none of the three had experienced the Spanish Civil War, they did not suffer the trauma that it had generated in several generations of Spaniards (Aguilar Fernández, 2008: 41). As a result, their work did not share the assumptions imposed by the Francoist ideology after the conflict. Franco’s dictatorship and TVE Historians tend to divide the forty or so years of the Franco dictator­ ship (1939–75) into different periods. In the first (1939–53), the dictatorship was at its most brutal. These were years of international

Goddard.indb 36

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

Modernising Spain through entertainment television   37

isolation and autarky, the harshest of the dictatorship because of the repression and the extreme difficulty of acquiring essential goods after the devastation of the Civil War (1936–39). Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that Spain saw itself as a confessional state under Franco. He even talked of the Civil War as the Last Crusade. The relation­ship between the Catholic Church and the dictatorship continued until the end of the regime. In 1953, because of the direc­ tion that the Cold War had taken, the United States and the Holy See accepted Spain back into the international fold, thus initiating a slow but continuing move towards a more open, progressive political system. In this context, in 1956, TVE was created and, in the same year, Spain was admitted as a member of the United Nations. The following year, in 1957, a government was formed that, for the first time, contained members of the Opus Dei.3 The second period ended with the Plan de Estabilización (Stabilisation Plan) of 1959. The 1960s was a decade of economic development (desarrollismo), marked by industrial growth, foreign investment, emigrant workers who brought in foreign currency, tourism and the concentration of the population in towns. Spain became a consumer society and television was its mouthpiece. However, these economic and social changes were not accompanied by ideological and political ones, and this generated tensions that hastened the decline of the dictatorship. From 1973, the regime was referred to as tardofranquismo (late Francoism), an authoritarian regime with clear signs of ageing. Authors working on socio-cultural issues rather than political ones often date the beginning of the transition to democracy to about this time, or even earlier (Vilarós, 1998; Espinet Burunat, 2005). It is a sign of the economic, political and cultural isolation of the country that regular television broadcasts began later in Spain than in other countries in the immediate vicinity. As Palacio (2001) has shown, the setting up of the dictatorship’s television channel was characterised by improvisation, political opportunism and little planning. Thereafter, he elsewhere suggests, there was an extended period during which Franco’s television was in constant transformation – as indeed was the economy as a whole – and Spain at that time was ‘an open society with quasi-democratic practices at its heart’ 4 (Palacio, 2006b: 18). The television structures appropriate to a modern society were not achieved until the last years of the dictatorship and the transition to democracy. Even so, in another work (Palacio, 2006a) the same author indicates a turning point between 1964 and 1965, when the badly funded Spanish television service, with no clear objective, underwent structural change and expansion, and its broadcasts gradually became more and more attractive to the Spanish people.

Goddard.indb 37

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

38  Mar Binimelis et al.

At about this time, José Manuel Fraga, Minister for Information and Tourism from 1962 to 1969, began to use public television as a way to develop a fresh image of the country as a modern one. The goal was to establish an international appeal, to project the image that Spain was a developed country similar to others in Europe. Therefore, local audiences were not thought of as important for some specific programmes. In the end, it was even desirable that few people watched these programmes, since their contents and aesthetics were more closely linked to the international scene than to some of the guiding tenets of Francoism. In this study we focus on the work of three TVE directors and producers, one from each of the periods described by Palacio. From the first period – the period of hardship – we shall discuss Arthur Kaps. His work shows us how, even in those conditions, it was poss­ ible to make entertainment programmes that were alternatives to the dictatorship’s National Catholic discourse.5 Kaps mainly worked on children’s programmes and variety shows in the Miramar studios that had been founded in Barcelona in 1959. He went on to manage TVE’s international relations as director of the Artistic Department at TVE from 1966. From the second, we shall use Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s work between 1964 and 1968 to analyse the period of growth, during which television became Spain’s biggest cultural industry. Finally, we shall study the work of Valeriu Lazarov, who joined the state channel in 1968 and was one of those responsible for turning it into a television service fitting for a modern society. His pop concept of television aesthetics revolutionised not only variety shows but also the way in which critics started to regard television in the 1970s. In the end, despite dubious economic management by Franco’s regime, it was precisely this management that gradually prepared the country for a transition to democracy from the 1950s onwards (Aguilar Fernández, 2008: 233–50). The politics of economic internationalisation that started in the 1950s let in new social and cultural ideas through tourism, migration and import–export deals. These changes would bring about shifts in the mentality of Spanish citizens and would gradually prepare the country for the transition to democracy. Needless to say, state tele­ vision was fundamental in that process. Arthur Kaps and variety shows (1959–66) In 1959, barely three years after TVE had been founded in Madrid, the Miramar studios opened in Barcelona. Francoist authorities took television to Catalonia with the clear purpose of joining the European television network (Eurovision), an issue that became one of the

Goddard.indb 38

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

Modernising Spain through entertainment television   39

g­ overnment’s priorities. It is no coincidence that the official opening of the link – which at the time was not in fact a link at all because the images were sent from Barcelona to France by plane (TeleRadio, 106, 4–10 January 1960)6 – took place to coincide with Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential visit to Madrid in December 1959. The opening of the Barcelona studios was also the first sign of the change that was to come about between 1964 and 1965. The new Barcelona studios enabled TVE to increase its production of programmes. Miramar started broadcasting on 14 July 1959 and soon established itself as a production centre. By November, for example, it had already acquired its first mobile unit (Grau, 2008). It is hardly surprising that a certain competitiveness sprang up between Miramar and the Madrid studios in the Paseo de la Habana, although always on the terms of the Franco authorities and respecting the cen­trality of the facilities in the Spanish capital. The programmes produced in Barcelona soon acquired a personality of their own and provided a subtle counterpoint to the programmes produced in Madrid. Although very little material from this early period has been conserved, reports of the time indicate that there were clear differences between the two models. The work of the Austrian Arthur Kaps at Miramar was decisive in the process of creating these differences. A stage director and composer trained in the tradition of Central European cabaret, Arthur Kaps arrived in Spain in 1942, fleeing from World War II. He was accompanied by the Jewish singer, dancer and comedian Franz Johan, with whom he had been working in the same theatre company since 1934. In the year of their arrival and under the name of Los Vieneses, they put on the musical comedy Everything for the Heart (Todo por el corazón, a Spanish translation of their latest show Alles Für’s Herz). They were a resounding success and, in a country that had recently been devastated by civil war, had no trouble in becoming the kings of the variety show for several decades. TVE soon noticed Los Vieneses. In fact, Arthur Kaps, Franz Johan and other comics from the company had already begun to work with Spanish National Radio in the middle of the 1950s. It was, therefore, natural for them, like other radio professionals, to make the tran­ sition to television when it finally arrived. The first person from Los Vieneses to appear on television was the puppeteer Herta Frankel, also ­Austrian and a member of Los Vieneses since 1943. She took part in the experimental broadcasts in 1952. Arthur Kaps became a producer for TVE when it set up its studios in Barcelona. His work was praised on numerous occasions by the general public (TeleRadio, 208, 18–24 December 1961; TeleRadio, 291, 22–28 July 1963) and he was awarded prestigious professional prizes.

Goddard.indb 39

5/30/2013 1:41:23 PM

40  Mar Binimelis et al.

As a television producer, Arthur Kaps applied the same rules he had been using as a stage director for decades. The key to his success was that his shows were colourful, varied and intelligent, they had good performers and big stages, and they were meticulously produced and elaborated. By taking popular entertainment seriously, he dignified it and created a formula that was held in high regard by audiences.7 Kaps focused on two particular genres. On the one hand, he worked on children’s programmes and made Herta Frankel TVE’s first children’s star, with clearly educational programmes such as Merry-Go-Round (Tiovivo, 1960), Stories by Auntie Cristina (Lo que cuenta la tia Cristina, 1961), Party with Us (Fiesta con nosotros, 1961–66), Day Off (Día de fiesta, 1966–69) and Your Friend Quique (Vuestro amigo Quique, 1962). Although harmless, some of these programmes told of historical figures like Napoleon (12 May 1963), whose stories might be discomforting for the regime’s National Catholic discourse. However, his work as a producer really came to the fore in the genre of the variety show. Presented almost always by Franz Johan and the Italian comic Gustavo Re (a member of Los Vieneses since 1943), programmes such as Tuesday’s Friends (Amigos del martes, 1961), Monday’s Friends (Amigos del lunes, 1963), Night of Stars (Noche de estrellas, 1964–65), Saturday Nights (Noches del sábado, 1966), Europe Nights (Noches de Europa, 1968) and An Evening with… (Esta noche con…, 1969) developed their own particular style. They drew on the tradition of Jewish cabaret and Viennese operetta on which he based his work in the theatre. Despite having definitively settled in Barcelona since the beginning of the 1940s, Kaps never lost touch with these traditions and their performers because he knew that the novelty of his shows depended on them. When he started work in television, then, these top-quality international stars lent his programmes a cosmopolitan, elegant and modern feel that very few other programmes had in these years of television hardship. His shows featured such stars as Marlene Dietrich, Charles Aznavour, Sylvie Vartan, Sammy Davis Jr and Rita Pavone, among others, as well as Spanish performers. Saturday Nights, for example, was divided into four blocks: one of Spanish performers, another featuring Franz Johan and Gustavo Re, and two with foreign artists either in the studio or in footage provided by other Eurovision television stations. Through this popular genre, Kaps helped to construct a wide range of international images other than those of National Catholicism. By providing a variety of cultural options that were quite unlike the Spanish one enforced by the regime, he eroded Franco’s model, thus helping to modernise society and widen its horizons. Of course, some people realised what was happening and the press criticised

Goddard.indb 40

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

Modernising Spain through entertainment television   41

the number of foreigners in Kaps’s programmes, beginning with the presenters themselves (TeleRadio, 334, 25–31 May 1964). The accusations of ‘foreignisation’ became part of the competition between the studios in Madrid and Barcelona. In an interview he gave in 1963, Kaps had to deny not only that Monday’s Friends was at war with Big Parade (Gran parada), the leading variety show produced in the capital, but also that the star of the programme was always a foreigner (Solidaridad Nacional, 9 September 1963). Between 1964 and 1966, a series of changes transformed a model of television that was living on the breadline, and in which Kaps’s productions outshone all others, into a television service that had been economically revitalised and which aimed to become a symbol of the modernisation of the country and its political system. The regime became aware of the role that television could play both inside and outside Spain’s borders, and decided to use it to gain the international recognition that it could not achieve as a dictatorship. Kaps and Narciso Ibáñez Serrador became the leading figures in a policy designed to improve Spain’s image abroad (Palacio, 2001: 148–50), and they would do this by creating television programmes that could win awards at the most prestigious international television festivals: Monte Carlo, Milan, Montreux. Kaps was appointed director of the Artistic Department of TVE in April 1966 and remained in the post until May 1971. Furthermore, in July 1964, TVE opened the Prado del Rey studios in Madrid (with a surface area of 168,000 square metres), thus considerably increasing its production capacity in both qualitative and quantitative terms. The studios in Barcelona were not to undergo a similar change until 1983, by which time the creative competition had come to an end. Also, in October 1964, programmes in Catalonia started to be broadcast in Catalan8 and in November 1966 TVE opened a second channel. Times were changing and TVE had to change with them. In this new framework, Kaps was entrusted with cultivating TVE’s international relations. His achievements, as we shall see below, were considerable and undoubtedly enabled the regime to clean up its image both inside and outside Spain. But they also provided the television audience with other ways of understanding the world, beyond the narrow confines of the more conservative ideologies. Although he continued to produce programmes throughout the 1960s, he did so less and less. His early death (aged sixty-two) in 1974 – a dramatic time in Spain’s history, just one year before the death of Franco – and the fact that he had played a leading role in setting up the television of the dictatorship meant that he soon dis­ appeared from the collective memory.9

Goddard.indb 41

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

42  Mar Binimelis et al.

Narciso Ibáñez Serrador and quality fiction (1964–68) Until recently, the figure of Arthur Kaps has been ignored by academic studies. However, the same cannot be said of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, popularly known as ‘Chicho’. Born in 1935 in Uruguay, he has been described by several studies as a leading figure in Spanish film history (Lázaro Reboll, 2004) and television (Fernández Labayen and Galán, 2006; Gómez Alonso and Palacio, 2006; López Izquierdo and Palacio, 2006). The son of travelling comedians, Ibáñez Serrador spent his childhood surrounded by all things theatrical. He was always on tour with one of his parents, in Latin America or Spain. It was this theatrical world, in which he debuted as a child actor, that enabled him to be in constant contact with popular audiences. In 1963, five years after his first success on Argentine television, he began to work for TVE and his first three series were inspired by his experience in Argentina as a screenwriter and producer. In 1964 he began the series It May Come True Tomorrow (Mañana puede ser verdad), science fiction narratives that were screened under a title that had already been used in Argentina. In the same year, he produced an episodic version of The Story of San Michele, which allowed him to give rein to the more humanistic and didactic side of his character. Finally, he produced Behind the Closed Door (Tras la puerta cerrada, 1964), where he immersed himself in the romantic universe of nineteenth-century horror stories that he had previously cultivated in theatre and television.10 As Chicho was a well respected international director from Argentina, most of these programmes were shot on film – a format used for more prestigious productions. In 1966, Stories to Keep You Awake (Historias para no dormir) was screened for the first time. It was a series that brought together all the various creative areas he had been working on up to that moment: namely, horror stories rooted in romanticism; science fiction; and pessimistic, moralising humanism with touches of humour. All these elements became quite clear from the very first episode in the series, The Birthday (El cumpleaños, 1966). Like many other drama series of the age, every episode was presented by the director. On most occasions, although by no means always, Chicho’s presentation was characterised by black – although innocent – humour, clearly inspired by Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In the first broadcast, after a gag about the limited budget, he introduced the programme’s opening credits, a brief two-part animation that made reference to the two main genres of the series. It began with some black-and-white fade-ins with highpitched electronic music, a reference to the science fiction films that

Goddard.indb 42

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

Modernising Spain through entertainment television   43

had been so prevalent for the last ten years. Then, on a black background, a door creaked open to reveal the title of the programme, which was reduced to dust by a scream. Finally, and now on a serious note, Ibáñez Serrador concluded the presentation by saying: ‘Briefly, then, our aim is to broadcast a suspense series that does not aspire to create great moments of horror but small doses of quality’.11 The series, then, involved not only science fiction and gothic horror but also quality, instructive melodrama and humour. Stories to Keep You Awake was screened for only two seasons (1966–67 and 1967–68) but it became one of Spanish television’s cult programmes.12 In 1967, Chicho reworked the title of the series and produced History of Frivolity (Historia de la frivolidad), a quality comedy musical that ended with a dystopian but humorous scene, designed for international festivals. Between 1964 and 1968, Ibáñez Serrador wrote and produced programmes that, as he made clear in 1968 in the introduction to The Transplant (El trasplante), he regarded as being quite apart from the rest of his work. He qualified them as ‘stories to make you think’. Among these were NN 23 (1965, from It May Come True Tomorrow), The Asphalt (El asfalto, 1966) and The Transplant (from Stories to Keep You Awake) and History of Frivolity. Although these were not the only programmes of his that attempted to be instructive, nor the only ones to be entered for international festivals, they were programmes that were specifically designed to be sent to these festivals. NN 23 and The Transplant both involved dystopias in totalitarian worlds. The former was set in an imaginary Soviet country called Rumalavia, but it was full of images that were clear references to the Spain of the time. For example, the television of the future (an array of electrodes that directly induced images in the mind of the viewer) showed such successful Spanish programmes of the time as Queen for a Day (Reina por un día) and some American series that were then popular. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the programme was that, in this imaginary world, there was a Popular Empire of the Valleys of Andorra, which stretched almost as far as Barcelona. This sort of daring fiction – a future in which Catalonia, independent from Spain, was structured territorially around Andorra – was unparalleled in 1965. The Catalan language itself appeared in the first part of The Alarm (La alarma, 1966). In a live broadcast, a mother was heard saying a few words to her daughter in Catalan. It was thus sug­gested that Catalan was a language that was still widely used in society, even though Franco had prohibited almost any use of it in the media. There was pre-vetting of filmed programmes and the scripts of live shows, but sometimes other messages could slip through by ambiguous meanings and open interpretations. The location of the dystopia in

Goddard.indb 43

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

44  Mar Binimelis et al.

The Transplant was not so clear, but the programme contained all the elements of pessimistic humanism that Chicho had pointed to in his previous work. The story was about a man who was living in a society with few basic human rights and in which cosmetic surgery was the norm. He, however, was forced to sell his organs. The moral of the story focused on social differences and the abuse of power. Nevertheless, he broached the most daring subject in History of Frivolity. He came up with the idea of reviewing the history of censorship through a series of musical items that ridiculed its underlying hypoc­ risy. The programme should have been entitled History of Censor­ship (Historia de la censura), but the regime’s authorities considered this to be excessive. History of Frivolity is a perfect illustration of the double standards of the regime, which was prepared to renounce its ideo­ logical principles in order to win an international award. To satisfy the Monte Carlo festival’s requirement that all competing programmes had to have been aired, the programme was broadcast unannounced late at night in Spain. In the end, History of Frivolity won the Golden Nymph for the best director and was awarded the UNDA prize by the Vatican, which made it easier for it to be broadcast again in better times. The programme also won prizes in Montreux (the Golden Rose and the critics’ prize) and in Milan (best production). Thus, it fully achieved the objective of gaining international prestige but it did also mean that criticism of the practices of the Franco regime was seen for the very first time on Spanish television. As Chicho himself has stated, recalling History of Frivolity’s problems with censorship: I studied who was winning international prizes.… Then I thought that Spain should present something which no one would expect from Spain. And of course, what no one expected was a critique of censorship.… History of Frivolity was programmed late at night, because Monte Carlo’s rules required the programme to be broadcast.… Because it was censored and the idea was not to broadcast it in Spain but abroad.13

On other occasions, the desire to confront the rigidity of Franco­ism was expressed not only in the narrative of a programme but also more formally. The Asphalt used found footage to denounce bureaucratis­ ation and History of Frivolity did the same with censorship practices in the cinema. However, where he excelled himself in the use of these destabilising practices was in his introduction to The Promise (La promesa, 1968), where he assembled and dubbed some images of China’s Cultural Revolution. The most interesting thing about it was how Ibáñez Serrador introduced the images: Facts and figures can be distorted, as can news items and their commentaries. But images cannot. Images always faithfully reflect the

Goddard.indb 44

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

Modernising Spain through entertainment television   45 truth. And this is what I want to show you now: an absolutely authentic journalistic report, which proves how successful our programme has been.14

Then, a reporter announces a mayor who is talking about Stories to Keep You Awake. The next image shows a close-up of a Chinese leader speaking into a microphone. According to the dubbing, he is saying, ‘Fellow townspeople, I encourage you to carry on watching and collecting the marvellous Stories to Keep You Awake’.15 The reverse angle reveals a crowd brandishing a book and shouting ‘We’ve got them!’ (‘¡Aquí están!’). Not only does this poke fun at the mass rallies that were so highly valued by the Franco regime and the claim that television pictures show nothing but the truth, it also points to the popularity of the programme and the fan culture it was generating. Proof of this was that, from 1967, a magazine was published with the same title as the television series. These four outstanding programmes and a few others, such as The Cellar (La bodega, 1966), had the same expressionist look: the scenery was overdone and the actors’ performances were histrionic. On top of this, the programmes belonged to genres that were regarded as harmless by the regime, so it is easy to understand that they had more leeway for criticism than other types of broadcast. Programmes such as History of Frivolity and The Transplant also introduced some features (e.g. musical numbers and the treatment of the feminine body) that were to become essential to Chicho’s most important television programme, and perhaps even the most important programme in the history of Spanish television, the game show One, Two, Three … Answer Again (Un, dos, tres … responda otra vez), which was first screened in 1972 and was exported to many other countries. Thus, as well as Spanish television programmes being awarded prizes at international festivals, their export became another way of claiming a place on the international stage. Valeriu Lazarov and the musical specials (1968–75) Valeriu Lazarov was born in Bârlad, Romania, in 1935 and graduated as a film director at the Institutul de Artă Teatrală şi Cinematografică ‘I. L. Caragiale’, in Bucharest, in 1957. In the same year he started to work for the newly created Romanian television, where he stayed for eleven years and gained considerable prestige. At a national level, for example, he was entrusted with covering General de Gaulle’s visit to Bucharest. Internationally, he was awarded a variety of prizes at the festivals in Monte Carlo, Prague and Cairo in the 1960s. At the Monte Carlo festival in 1968, he coincided with the TVE delegation and a few

Goddard.indb 45

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

46  Mar Binimelis et al.

months later he travelled to Madrid as part of a ‘technical exchange with Romanian television’ (‘intercambio técnico con la televisión rumana’; Cortell Huot Sordot and Palacio, 2006: 38). In August 1968, he produced his first programme in Spain, Nothing Is Lost, Everything Is Transformed (Nada se pierde, todo se transforma), the prelude to his first big hit for TVE, The Unreal Madrid (El irreal Madrid, 1968). Using optical effects, alternating white and black backgrounds, and an imported style that was closely related to pop and psychedelia, Lazarov created a type of musical programme that had never before been seen in Spain. Likewise, the preponderance of the female body and choreography that was both dream-like and sensual made it tremendously attractive to young people and raised debates about the use of such images on state television. In a short note, TeleRadio (167, 4–10 November 1968) announced the possible arrival at TVE ‘of one of the most prestigious producers of musical programmes in the world’ and concluded that ‘it would be no bad thing for leading producers to come to Prado del Rey, although some of the producers already here are of no lesser international stature’.16 Lazarov, then, arrived in Spain as an international star and generated considerable expectations. The fact that he was young and foreign added an aura of mystery to his persona, which exuded exoticism and artistic potential. He inspired admiration and, at the same time, prompted the need for provincial self-justification in the editor of TeleRadio. In the final years of the dictatorship, Lazarov worked within the parameters of vanguardism and internationalism, which earned him considerable prestige. In little less than a year, and after the announcement that he was going to film six ‘science fiction ­musicals’ for German television, people were calling him ‘the new Chicho’ (‘el Nuevo Chicho’, TeleRadio, 606, 4–10 August 1969). Only two years after History of Frivolity had been the biggest television hit in the country, Lazarov had become an emblem of TVE and the depository of a new patriotic know-how. Between 1968 and 1969, and after Nothing Is Lost, Everything Is Transformed, Lazarov directed two one-off broadcasts – The Unreal Madrid and The Latest Fashion (La última moda, 1969) – and two series of summer programmes, Bubbles (Burbujas, 1969) and ­Holidays in Spain (Vacaciones en España, 1969). The opening credits featured carefree pop music and revealed a clear desire to be up to the minute. Such common features of Spanish life as Real Madrid and tourism were subject to new analysis. The Unreal Madrid and The Latest Fashion were designed to win awards at international festivals. Worthy of particular mention is The Unreal Madrid, because of the significance of the Real Madrid football team in the Spanish society

Goddard.indb 46

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

Modernising Spain through entertainment television   47

and culture of the age. The narrative was a parody of a typical sports programme. A commentator announces the members of an imaginary football team called Irreal Madrid, consisting of members of the television crew suitably attired in white. The team’s fans are then subject to a variety of tests: they have to celebrate a goal, boo the referee and cheer on their team. In the background there are numerous sound effects and songs by the leading Spanish artists of the time (Massiel, Peret, Los Bravos). What is more, the wide range of cinematographic techniques that Lazarov used earned him the nickname of ‘Mr Zoom’. The producer himself described the programme as ‘an absurd musical variety show’ (‘un programa absurdo-musical’; TeleRadio, 571, 2–8 December 1968), thus revealing his flair for constructing a highly individual discourse and personality. Girls with footballs as heads and wearing miniskirts hold hands with fans who sport Dalí-type ­moustaches and paint pictures of Amancio, the footballing idol of the time. The relation­ship between Irreal and Real Madrid was immediately obvious. Thus, the programme was a frenzied domestication of sports fans and a passionate review of the behaviour of the supporters of a club that was regarded as one of the best in the world and closely identified with the Franco dictatorship. Both The Unreal Madrid, filmed in black and white, and The Latest Fashion, filmed in colour, won international awards: the Golden Nymph at the Monte Carlo festival and the Bronze Rose at Montreux, respectively. TVE’s progressive, international strategy was still being productive but was now providing viewers with a vision of Spain that included British pop and the new fluctuations in consumption through the world of fashion. Whereas The Unreal Madrid parodied football, The Latest Fashion looked at the role of fashion through a girl’s fantasies, which were choreo­graphed by one of the contributors to Los Vieneses, Gisa Geert. From this point on, the media were full of opinions for and against Lazarov. Of course, much of the criticism xenophobically rejected his work merely because he was foreign and because some critics and viewers were unable to understand his use of the language of television and his pop recycling of national symbols. In the face of such criticism, TeleRadio jumped to his defence, arguing that ‘the fact that he was born in a country in Central Europe and that he received an Anglo-Saxon education enables Valeriu Lazarov to express himself in a way that is totally different from that of any Spaniard with a purely Hispanic tradition, culture and roots’17 (TeleRadio, 593, 5–11 May 1969). In other words, Lazarov did not share the regime’s discourse on Spain. In any case, at this time the regime’s progressive policy was feeding the population with tiny snippets of international popular culture in the domains of music and fashion, and this led to isolated

Goddard.indb 47

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

48  Mar Binimelis et al.

manifestations of modernity in such places as Ibiza and films such as Bring a Little Loving…! (Dame un poco de amooor…!, José María Forqué, 1968) or One, Two, Three … Hide and Seek (Un, dos, tres … al escondite inglés, Iván Zulueta, 1969). In short, there was a tension between those who supported a concept of national identity based on tradition and those who demanded the presence and assimilation of foreign phenomena. During this integration process – which, as we have said, was technological, socio-cultural and economic – Lazarov himself appeared on television to explain that the zoom technique that was so dear to him ‘makes you feel just as dizzy as if you were on a rollercoaster, or even more so’,18 revealing once again how important the concept of leisure was in his world. But the debate did not finish here. In September 1969, TeleRadio published a special issue entitled ‘Lazarov sí – Lazarov no’ (‘Lazarov yes – Lazarov no’). The edition addressed some of the topics that were being discussed by the audience at the time, including Lazarov’s importance for the development of Spanish television. It referred to the Romanian director as a legend, explained his expressive technique by comparing the cinema camera with the television camera and interviewed two critics, a parliamentary representative, a producer (Pilar Miró), a singer, an actor, a priest and members of the general public, thus including a wide array of perspectives on the impact of Lazarov. Lazarov continued to make all sorts of music programmes until the advent of democracy: Pop Special (Especial pop, 1969–70); Passport to Dublin (Pasaporte a Dublín, 1970); Osaka Show (1970); Spanish Way (A la española, 1971); 360° Around… (360° en torno a…, 1972); Ladies and Gentlemen! (¡Señoras y señores!, 1973–76); and others. He was also often selected to direct musical specials and gala events. On 1 January 1976, forty days after the death of Franco, Lazarov worked with other producers on the first programme of the first post-Franco year – symptomatically entitled Happy ’70s (Felices años 70), despite the fact that it was only the middle of the decade. A year later, TVE provided a double schedule with Life Goes On (La vida continua), the New Year’s Eve special for 1976 directed by Fernando Navarrete, and the New Year’s Day special directed by Lazarov. The former was a compilation of various performances (from Tom Jones, Rocío Jurado, Paco de Lucía) that had had problems with censorship or some impact on society, including some directed by Lazarov. It is noteworthy not only that TVE transmitted performances that had caused problems in the recent past, but also that the ironic comments made by the presenters about these problems amounted to timid but incipient suggestions that they had expectations of freedom. For instance, presenter Antonio Garisa, in his toast

Goddard.indb 48

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

Modernising Spain through entertainment television   49

on New Year’s Eve 1976, said: ‘For a 1977 full of oil, democracy … and the return of the miniskirt!’19 Lazarov’s programme showed some of his tour of the United States in two sections entitled ‘The night of the stars’ (‘La noche de las estrellas’) and ‘From Miami, with warmth’ (‘Desde Miami, con calor’). The rest of the programme – ‘The unusual hour’ (‘La hora insólita’) and ‘The hour of nostalgia’ (‘La hora de la nostalgia’) – was recorded in Spain (TeleRadio, 992, 27 December 1976–​2 January 1977). Lazarov, conveniently renamed Valerio, was playing the leading role in the transition of television. Not only did he look at the immediate past, but he also tried to mobilise international culture: Spain was moving from the Jackson 5 to Julio Iglesias by way of Xavier Cugat, the international Spanish band leader. So life went on. Arthur Kaps had literally become part of the ‘history of television’ (TeleRadio, 783, 25–31 December 1972) and Chicho’s family game show was a runaway success. After some time in Italy, Lazarov founded his production company in Madrid, Prime Time Com­ munications. He worked as a director for the private channel Tele 5 and in 1996 he was contracted by TVE to direct the gala event Raise Your Glasses on Our 40th Anniversary (Brindemos por los 40), on the occasion of the channel’s anniversary. In democratic and post-modern Spain, Lazarov’s practices were no longer shocking; rather, they had become part of the institutional discourse of the history of television. Conclusion: Notes on the modernisation of a country Spanish television of the period has been identified totally and absolutely with the Franco regime and its practices of censorship and social control, under which most programmes were produced. While Spanish television was created without any specific goals, little by little it became an important outlet for the regime and its image. Despite most of Spanish television being homogeneous and following the parameters of Francoism, some programmes and creators cannot be classified in such a simplistic way. The struggle between traditional National Catholic ideology and modernisation through the assimilation of foreign influences in Spain found material form in television entertainment programmes. The work of Arthur Kaps, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador and Valeriu Lazarov in the 1960s represents a good example. The incorporation, initial suspicion and final acceptance of these ­foreigners is indicative of the vicissitudes of a country that was pursuing modernisation, often in rather a forced fashion and always against the ideological principles of the most traditional representa­ tives of the dictatorship. So Kaps’s cabaret and operetta of the 1940s

Goddard.indb 49

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

50  Mar Binimelis et al.

were screened at the beginning of the 1960s. Shortly ­afterwards, youth culture and, to some extent, subculture were adopted by TVE with the generic fictions and the pop music of Ibáñez Serrador and Lazarov. It is no coincidence that the first two of these three men had been trained in popular theatre. The democratic expectations that were generated in the Spanish people and their desire to be part of the international community had much to do with their acceptance of the messages conveyed by these three foreigners. In competing for and winning prestigious international television awards, they became Spain’s representatives abroad and, therefore, the representatives of a more progressive regime, which was partly aware of popular culture’s ability to influence people. The tensions created by these producers and their programmes reflect the failure of some sectors in the country to accept a step forward, which revealed the contradictions of a dictatorial regime caught between its ideological principles and the need to adopt the discourses that best brought modernisation and modernity to all strata of society. Notes 1 This chapter was made possible thanks to the research project SEJ 2007/60389, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science. The authors would also like to thank for their support Pilar Gálvez and Ferrán Gómez of the Herta Frankel Puppet Company, Miguel Ángel Martín from the Official Institute of Spanish Radio and Television, and the researchers Concepción Cascajosa, Antonio Lázaro-Reboll and Manuel Palacio. 2 Censorship and ideological control included a wide range of practices during the first years of Spanish television, from news censorship to the prohibition of women exhibiting their bare shoulders in prime-time entertainment shows. 3 The Opus Dei is a prelacy of the Roman Catholic Church. It was founded in 1928 by José María Escrivá de Balaguer and approved for the first time by the Bishop of Madrid in 1941. In 1950, it was recognised as a secular institute by Pope Pius XII and it has always been a major force of economic and ­socio-political influence in Spain. 4 ‘una sociedad abierta con prácticas cuasidemocráticas en su seno’. 5 See p. 18 (Chapter 2) for an explanation of National Catholicism in Franco’s Spain. 6 TeleRadio was the official journal of Spanish radio and television and was first published in January 1957. 7 This occurred at a time when the Franco regime was highly disdainful of popular shows, since everything that showed signs of being popular reminded the new leaders of the democracy they had risen up against, the Second Republic. This has been studied in the cinema by Castro de Paz (2002). 8 After the Civil War, Spanish was the only language allowed in education and the public sphere. As years passed by, some small spaces were opened to other languages, such as Catalan, Basque and Galician. Nevertheless, the title of the first broadcast programme in Catalan – adaptations of classic works of

Goddard.indb 50

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

Modernising Spain through entertainment television   51 Catalan theatre – was in Spanish (Teatro catalán), thus showing not only the contradictions of the Franco regime but also the internal struggles between the various groups of which it consisted. 9 A longer discussion of the role of Arthur Kaps and Los Vieneses in the history of Spanish television can be found in Binimelis et al. (2009). 10 An excellent description of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s activities in these initial years of television, which have been little understood until now, can be found in Cascajosa (2010). 11 ‘En una palabra, nuestra intención es tratar de poner en la pantalla una serie de suspense donde el principal objetivo no sea lograr grandes impactos ­terroríficos, sino pequeñas dosis de calidad.’ 12 The programme was identified to such an extent with the fantasy and horror fiction of its producer that a recent DVD compilation (2003) of some of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s work was given the generic title Historias para no dormir, even though it also included episodes from the preceding series Mañana puede ser verdad and subsequent productions such as El televisor (1974). In fact, the opening titles of Historias para no dormir were to be used on two further occasions: once by TVE itself when four more episodes of the series were filmed in 1982; and again in 2005 when, with a slightly different title (Películas para no dormir), the private channel Tele 5 commissioned Narciso Ibáñez Serrador to produce a new series of six episodes. 13 ‘Yo estudié un poco a quien daban los premios por aquel entonces.… Entonces pensé que España debería presentar algo que no se esperase de España.… Y por supuesto, lo que nadie esperaba es que saliese una especie de crítica de lo que era la censura.… La historia de la frivolidad se emitió fuera de horas, de repente, por que la normativa de Montecarlo obligaba a que el programa hubiese sido emitido.… Por a pesar de haberlo censurado … se pensaba no emitirlo en España y emitirlo fuera. Se emitió a las doce y pico de la noche’ (Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, introducing re-runs of History of Frivolity on TVE). 14 ‘Las cifras y las estadísticas pueden falsearse. Las noticias comentadas, también. Pero las imágenes no. Las imágenes reflejan siempre la verdad con la mayor fidelidad posible. Y eso es lo que deseo ofrecerles a continuación: una nota periodística de aplastante autenticidad. Una nota que demuestra el éxito de nuestro programa.’ 15 ‘Queridos convencinos, os recomiendo que sigáis viendo y encuadernando las maravillosas Historias para no dormir’. 16 ‘uno de los más prestigiosos realizadores de programas musicales que hay en el mundo…. No sería mala cosa que desfilasen por Prado del Rey realizadores de talla, aunque algunos de los nuestros no tengan menor categoría internacional.’ 17 ‘el haber nacido en un país centroeuropeo y recibido una educación ligada directamente a la cultura anglosajona permite a Valeriu Lazarov expresarse de modo totalmente distinto a como lo haría un español con una tradición, una cultura y una raigambre puramente hispánicas.’ 18 ‘algo que marea igual o más que la montaña rusa’. This explanation can be seen at http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=T7zRVoZuImI (accessed 29 October 2008). 19 ‘Por un 1977 lleno de petróleo, democracia… ¡Ah, y que vuelva la minifalda!’

Goddard.indb 51

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

52  Mar Binimelis et al.

References P. Aguilar Fernández (2008), Políticas de la memoria y memorias de la política (Politics of Memory and Memories of Politics). Madrid: Alianza. J. M. Baget Herms (1993), Historia de la televisión en España: 1956–1975 (History of Television in Spain: 1956–1975). Barcelona: Feed-Back. M. Binimelis, J. Cerdán and M. Fernández Labayen (2009), ‘Beyond Franco’s national­ism: Reading modernity in the origins of TVE’, in E. Castelló, A. Dhoest and H. O’Donnell (eds), The Nation on Screen: Discourses of the National on Global Television. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. E. Bustamante (2006), Radio y television en España. Historia de una asignatura pendiente de la democracia (Radio and Television in Spain: A History of Un­ finished Business). Barcelona: Gedisa. C. Cascajosa (2010), ‘Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, an early pioneer of transnational television’, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, 7(2): 133–46. J. L. Castro de Paz (2002), Un cinema herido: Los turbios años cuarenta en el cine español – 1939–1950 (A Wounded Cinema: The Shady Forties in the Spanish Cinema – 1939–1950). Barcelona: Paidós. G. Cortell Huot Sordot and M. Palacio (2006), ‘El irreal Madrid’ (‘The Unreal Madrid’), in M. Palacio (ed.), Las cosas que hemos visto: 50 años y más de TVE (The Things That We Have Seen: 50 Years and More of TVE). Madrid: IORTVE. F. Espinet Burunat (2005), ‘Memòria de la transició (1966–1979): Paraules introductòries a una cronología arbitrària’ (‘Memory of the transition (1966–1979): Introductory words to an arbitrary chronology’), Revista HMIC, 3: 19–68. M. Fernández Labayen and E. Galán (2006), ‘Historias para no dormir’ (‘Stories to Keep You Awake’), in M. Palacio (ed.), Las cosas que hemos visto: 50 años y más de TVE (The Things That We Have Seen: 50 Years and More of TVE). Madrid: IORTVE. R. Gómez Alonso and M. Palacio (2006), ‘Historia de la frivolidad’ (‘History of Frivolity’), in M. Palacio (ed.), Las cosas que hemos visto: 50 años y más de TVE (The Things That We Have Seen: 50 Years and More of TVE). Madrid: IORTVE. J. M. Grau (2008), ‘L’arribada de la televisió a Catalunya’ (‘The arrival of television in Catalunya’), PhD thesis, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona. A. Lázaro Reboll (2004), ‘Screening “Chicho”: The horror ventures of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’, in A. Lázaro Reboll and A. Willis (eds), Spanish Popular Cinema: Inside Popular Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press. J. López Izquierdo and M. Palacio (2006), ‘Un, dos, tres … responda otra vez’ (‘One, Two, Three … Answer Again’), in M. Palacio (ed.), Las cosas que hemos visto: 50 años y más de TVE (The Things That We Have Seen: 50 Years and More of TVE). Madrid: IORTVE. M. Palacio (2001), Historia de la televisión en España (History of Television in Spain). Barcelona: Gedisa. M. Palacio (2006a), ‘Cincuenta años de televisión en España’ (‘Fifty years of tele­vision in Spain’), in B. Díaz Nosty (ed.), Tendencias ’06. Medios de comuni­ cación. El año de la televisión (Trends ’06. Media. The Year of Television). Madrid: Fundación Telefónica. M. Palacio (ed.) (2006b), Las cosas que hemos visto: 50 años y más de TVE (The Things That We Have Seen: 50 Years and More of TVE). Madrid: IORTVE. T. M. Vilarós (1998) El mono del desencanto: una crítica cultural de la transición española (1973–1993) (Disenchantment’s Cold Turkey: A Cultural Critique of the Spanish Transition to Democracy (1973–1993)). Madrid: Siglo XXI.

Goddard.indb 52

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

4

Entertaining the Colonels: Propaganda, social change and entertainment in Greek television fiction, 1967–74 Gregory Paschalidis

Not only did the two most important mass media of the twentieth century, radio and television, develop late in Greece – around a decade later than most other European countries – but, most crucially, they both developed under dictatorial regimes which sponsored and shaped them primarily as instruments of propaganda. Instituted just one month after the establishment of Ioannis Metaxas’s dictator­ ship (4 August 1936–29 January 1941), Greek public radio (YRE, Radio Broadcast Service) began transmitting in 1938, on Greek Independence Day (25 March), with the explicit aim of serving as a propaganda tool for his semi-fascist regime (Petrakis, 2005: 159–62). Thirty years later, on 1 November 1968, the recently established military dictatorship (21 April 1967–23 July 1974) headed by Colonel George Papadopoulos succeeded in ensuring that the army-run television channel – initially TED (ΤΕΔ, Armed Forces Television) and from 1970 renamed YENED (ΥΕΝΕΔ, Armed Forces Information Service) – was the first to start a regular daily programme. Despite its higher level of preparedness, the government-controlled channel – initially EIR (EIΡ, National Radio Foundation), renamed EIRT (ΕΙΡΤ, National Radio–Television Foundation) in 1970 – started its regular daily programme half a year later, in April 1969. The operation of an entirely autonomous army-run radio–­television service is unique in the history of Western broadcasting. Even the US Armed Forces Network, which began operating in 1942, was intended only to serve American army personnel ­stationed abroad. Armed forces radio stations were established with US Pentagon assist­ance in the last year of the Greek Civil War (1949) to help with anti-­ communist propaganda (Zaharopoulos and ­Paraschos, 1993: 40) and expanded during the following two decades of almost-uninterrupted authori­tarian right-wing rule, censorship and political persecution.

Goddard.indb 53

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

54  Gregory Paschalidis

During this period, the existence of an army-run radio network was emblematic of the military’s decisive role as a power broker in the Greek political system. In April 1965, the army leadership was particularly alarmed when the recently elected centrist government of Giorgos Papandreou embarked on the development of a public television network while, at the same time, turning down their demand to expand the Armed Forces Radio into television as well. Taking advantage of that government’s downfall three months later, they rushed to have their own television station ready to begin its ex­peri­ mental broadcasts on 15 September 1965, a few days ahead of the public station (Cheretakis, 1997: 110). This ‘race for television’ leaves no doubt as to what the development of the new medium represented: in those highly volatile and ideologically charged times, all major contenders for power were equally keen to exploit television’s perceived potential for political influence. The difference between the two television channels became evident as soon as they commenced their regular (though still ex­peri­ mental) operation in February 1966. The public channel focused on informational, educational and cultural programmes, while the armyrun channel focused on popular entertainment. This fundamental difference in programming philosophy continued unchanged after the military coup of April 1967, when the army assumed control of the public channel as well. Unsurprisingly, YENED’s emphasis on entertainment allowed it, right from the start, to command by far the largest share of audience viewing. An investigation of tele­vision entertainment during the seven-year dictatorship period must in­ evitably, then, broach the issue of the type and the content of the programmes offered by the army-run channel. It is with this in mind that we choose to focus on the two most popular serials aired by YENED during this period, The Unknown War (O Άγνωστος Πόλεμος) and Our Neighbourhood (H Γειτονιά μας). Their pervasive presence in post-­dictatorship public memory right up to the present day is a sure sign of their impact in the sphere of public sentiment. Moreover, their spectacular popularity has established both serials as symptomatic of the cultural and ideological climate of the dictatorship era, since they were seen to incorporate some of the salient values and ideas of the time. In this way, both serials have acquired something of an iconic status, powerfully evocative of the anomalous condition of the country under the dictatorship. Taking them as objects of our study is, in this sense, the continuation of an already established habit. One of the aims of this reappraisal, however, is to question the desirability and effectiveness of this habit.

Goddard.indb 54

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

Greek television fiction, 1967–74   55

The Unknown War The serial The Unknown War was launched on the evening of 12 October 1971. It was written by Nikos Foskolos (1927–), whose narra­ tive skill and ingenuity had already been tried and proven in the popular media of radio and cinema. His Police Stories (Αστυνομικές ιστορίες), dis­tinguished by its unusual crime cases and multiple plot twists, had been one of the most popular radio series in the early 1960s. In the same decade, he wrote the screenplays for numerous films, mostly romantic and social melodramas, with many of them proving great box-office successes. After conquering radio and cinema, his involvement in the still nascent medium of television was certain to be noteworthy. For its director, Kostas Koutsomytis, the serial was his first sizeable project, while the cast, consisting of experienced actors with notable careers in the theatre and the cinema, did not include any major stars. Combining elements of the spy thriller and the war melodrama, The Unknown War is set in the time of Greece’s involvement in World War II, starting with Italy’s invasion of Greece in October 1940 and ending with the Battle of El Alamein in July 1942. The central characters are Colonel Diagoras Vartanis (Angelos Antonopoulos), chief of the Greek counter-espionage service, his sister Christina (Gelly Mavropoulou) and his closest associate and brother-in-law, Captain Hector Psachos (Kostas Karagiorgis). There was a total of 226 episodes, divided into five series of rather unequal length, with the first three lasting the typical four-month period of a half-season and the final two lasting a full half-year. In each series, the shrewd and tenacious Colonel Vartanis, along with his staff of dedicated officers, successfully confront a series of challenges to national security and make a vital contribution to the war effort, exhibiting unflinching patriotism and exemplary self-sacrifice. More specifically, in the first series (‘Condemned to death’), Christina’s child is kidnapped by Italian spies, who force her to col­ labor­ate with them. In the second series (‘The man with two faces’), the appearance of an Italian spy who is a look-alike of Captain Psachos causes turmoil among his comrades and family. In the third series (‘Suicide order’), Colonel Vartanis uncovers a German spy network by pretending to be a traitor. A new heroine appears in the fourth series, where Virginia Dervou (Jenny Roussea) is entangled in a spying opera­ tion against the German occupation forces (‘There are no borders in Hell’). In the fifth and final series (‘Desert in flames – victory in the Middle East’), our heroes follow the remains of the Greek armed forces to the Middle East, and play a critical role in the events leading to the milestone Battle of El Alamein.

Goddard.indb 55

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

56  Gregory Paschalidis

The audience’s initial response to what was destined to become the highest-rated serial in the history of Greek television was rather subdued. Viewers’ interest picked up gradually, increasing noticeably at the beginning of 1972, when the first series reached its dramatic climax, and turning into widespread frenzy at the start of the second series, when the puzzle of who the real Psachos was became a national obsession. The serial’s phenomenal success led to its rescheduling from one episode to two episodes per week, as well as to an increase in the duration of each episode from half an hour to forty-five minutes. In addition, a repeat showing of both weekly instalments was scheduled on Sunday afternoons. The Unknown War was the first Greek tele­ vision serial to enjoy such extensive airtime. Just as the second series was nearing its conclusion, Romantso, the most popular magazine at the time, with a circulation of well over a quarter of a million, began to publish a novelised version in weekly instalments. This involved a significant expansion of the serial’s script, since Foskolos found here the opportunity to incorporate detailed accounts of the war’s events, as well as to ruminate at length about his characters’ motives and dilemmas. The venture proved extremely profitable, increasing the magazine’s circulation by more than 20 per cent. As a result, R ­ omantso continued this practice until the final series, which ended on 26 February 1974. The popularity of The Unknown War is part of Greek television lore and legend. Twice a week, while Colonel Vardanis’s exploits were screened, streets were deserted, dinners were burned, cinemas and theatres were emptied. The serial’s actors became universally recognised and adored stars, while Angelos Antonopoulos, who played Colonel Vartanis, became a veritable national icon, his interviews and pictures – more often than not in uniform – becoming a regular feature of the popular press. People streamed to watch him live in his theatrical performances, while the popular magazine Vendetta serialised his novelised biography.1 Not surprisingly, in a survey conducted by the reputable news magazine Epikaira in December 1972, Antonopoulos was voted the most talked-about person of the year, leaving far behind the celebrities of sports, popular music and cinema, and even the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church! A few weeks later, Foskolos’s The Brave Die Twice (Oι γενναίοι πεθαίνουν δύο φορές, 1973), a cinematic spin-off of the serial’s second series, in which ­Antonopoulos also starred, was released. By then, and while the fourth series was halfway through, tired by the tight shooting schedule and afraid of being typecast, Antonopoulos expressed his unwillingness to continue in the role (O Tahidromos, 1973a). The offer made to him to appear once again in the fifth and final series was not, however, something he could turn down.

Goddard.indb 56

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

Greek television fiction, 1967–74   57

On viewing the few surviving scenes of the serial, one is struck by their crude, makeshift look. The low production values of Greek serials at the time left no room for impressive set designs, lavish ­costumes or location shooting. A stagy direc­torial style presented the audience with a living-room drama, where everything hung on the actors’ histrionic skill. In these respects, The Unknown War, like most Greek serials of the 1970s, suffered from the same shortcomings as the indigenous films that had been the mass enter­tainment staple of the previous decade. However, in contrast to the unflagging popularity enjoyed by the latter, a humiliating fate awaited the ‘second life’ of The Unknown War. Failing to appreciate the extent to which the army’s image had been discredited by the dictator­ship, in 1987 Foskolos directed a remake of the first two cycles of episodes for the videotape market using an entirely different cast except for the central role, played again by Angelos ­Antonopoulos. Un­daunted by the venture’s market failure, in January 1990 ­Foskolos tried once again to exploit the serial’s legendary popularity by directing yet another remake, this time for the recently launched commercial channel ANT1. The ratings were so low that the serial was cancelled after a few weeks. Colonels on parade?

Since the fall of the dictatorship, The Unknown War has been widely cited as the paramount instance of television propaganda for the Colonels’ junta. Film critic Vasilis Rafailidis’s indictment, written ­ shortly after the restoration of democratic rule, that the serial ‘summarised, in the most characteristic way, the dominant ideology’ of the period (‘συνόψιζε χαρακτηριστικότατα την κυριαρχούσα ιδεολογία’; Rafailidis, 1974: 256), is typical of prevailing opinion since. The serial’s focus on valiant army officers led by a charismatic and paternalistic colonel was widely seen to qualify it as a showcase for the junta, lending a heroic aura to the treacherous Colonels and glamorising their leader, Colonel Papadopoulos. The serial’s tribute, moreover, to the secret war conducted by these paragons of patriotic virtue against the country’s insidious enemies seemed like a thinly disguised legitima­tion of the Colonels’ portrayal of their coup d’état as a necessary counter-measure to a nation-threatening communist conspiracy. The speculation about the serial’s ideological import and impact, however, needs to be tempered by an analytical examination of its context of production and reception. The first step in our attempt to see the ‘big picture’ should, perhaps, be the big picture of cinema. By the time The Unknown War seized the small, quivering screens of television, all of its defining motifs had had a long and pervasive presence in the large screens of cinema theatres.

Goddard.indb 57

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

58  Gregory Paschalidis

As Andritsos (2004) points out, most of the Greek World War II films made between 1945 and the Colonels’ coup greatly exaggerate the mili­tary’s role in wartime resistance, and deal almost exclusively with the purportedly vital contributions to the Allied victory made by the Greek government in exile in the British-controlled Middle East, through the involvement of its heroic army officers in spying networks or sabotage operations. They notably present Greeks fighting in unison against the Axis powers and suppress the extent of collaboration with the enemy, as well as the political agenda of the popular resistance movement and the associated civil conflict both before and after the end of the war (Andritsos, 2004: 82–3). Established in the immediate post-war years, in the tense ideological climate of the Civil War (1946–49), these motifs and silences roughly coincide with those that Pierre Sorlin identifies as characterising most of the World War II films made in Western Europe during the two first and most aggress­ive decades of the Cold War (Sorlin, 1991: 52ff ). In contrast, though, to the decline that this cinematic tradition of representing the ‘secret war’ experienced in most of Western Europe, in 1960s Greece, especially during the first four years of the dictatorship, it enjoyed a renaissance. Foskolos had a vital role in the resurgence and revaluation of this particular iconographical tradition. At first, he dutifully observed its fundamental rules and conventions when writing the screenplays for the highly popular films Concert for Machine Guns (Κονσέρτο για πολυβόλα, 1967), The Avenue of Treason (Η λεωφόρος της προδοσίας, 1969) and Lieutenant Natassa (Υπολοχαγός Νατάσα, 1970).2 Subsequently, when he turned to the project of The Unknown War, he blended all the different motifs in a singularly arresting manner, achieving an effective compendium of post-war stereotypes about World War II. The serial’s long-winded plotline, incorporating all major wartime events, allowed it to function, more than any film, as an exemplary summary of the official post-war narrative about World War II and resistance. In working out this synthesis, Foskolos ­thoroughly mined his earlier cinematic successes for some of the serial’s major storylines and characters. In fact, the serial’s second series was but an adaptation of The Avenue of Treason. Τhe junta encouraged this surge of World War II films and actively assisted in the making of some of them – for example, providing funds, troops and tanks to James Paris’s hyper-nationalist war blockbusters (Soldatos, 1990: 176ff ). Endorsing, moreover, the edifying qualities of these films, the junta decreed some of them obligatory fare for schoolchildren. In this context, the editorial praise for The Unknown War in Macedonia, the best-selling daily newspaper in northern Greece, for ‘providing not only a notable spectacle but also a vital patriotic service’

Goddard.indb 58

5/30/2013 1:41:24 PM

Greek television fiction, 1967–74   59

(‘δεν προσέφερε μόνον ένα αξιόλογον θέαμα εις τους θεατάς, αλλά … και μίαν υψίστης σημασίας πατριωτικήν υπηρεσίαν’; ‘O Vorios’, 1972) seems to voice the regime’s view of it as a valuable means of public instruction. How receptive, however, was the audience to all this? Christos Vakalopoulos, perhaps the most important film and tele­ vision critic of the post-dictatorship years, denies The Unknown War had any appreciable ideological or political impact. If it did, he adds, ‘how can we account for people’s political beliefs at the time or later?’ (‘τότε δεν θα δικαιολογούνταν με τίποτα οι πολιτικές πεποιθήσεις των ανθρώπων εκείνη την εποχή και αργότερα’; Vaka­lopoulos, 1982: 58), hinting at the manifold acts of resistance against the junta and the popular radicalisation that precipi­tated its downfall and marked postjunta political developments. His point becomes especially pertinent if we take into consideration the fact that the serial’s celebration of the Greek anti-fascist struggle offered the audience a wide range of potential identifications. The junta indubitably saw the serial – just as the similarly themed films of the time – as an opportunity to revamp its image with the aura of past heroics. It was for this reason that it constantly reasserted its homage to Metaxas’s regime, which was eulogised by the official narrative as bravely resisting the fascist attack of October 1940. At the same time, however, the still vivid memories of the broad popular basis of the anti-fascist struggle inevitably made the serial deeply engaging in ways foreign to the junta’s interests. The serial’s omissions and silences ensured its non-­controversiality, but also its openness to an uncontrolled variety of readings. There is a noteworthy accord, moreover, between the serial’s textual indeterminacy and the contextual dynamics of the period. The serial’s scrupulous silence about the political issues that divided Greeks during the occupation and ensuing Civil War was in harmony with the conciliatory tone adopted at the time by the dictator­ship, which was undergoing a gradual, internal transformation away from its militarist roots and post-Civil War vindictiveness. Just before the launch of The Unknown War, and a few days after the massive ­anti-junta demonstration which marked George Seferis’s public funeral (22 September 1971), evidencing the failure of the regime to gain any significant legiti­macy, Papadopoulos gave a speech on 30 September 1971 declaring that ‘there is nothing in the past which divides the Greeks’ (‘δεν υπάρχει τίποτα εις το παρελθόν που να διαιρεί τους Έλληνας’; cited in Psiroukis, 1983: 246). He went on to announce the abolition of the infamous ‘certificates of social beliefs’, instituted in 1947, at the height of the Civil War, to keep all those suspected of communist leanings out of the public sector. His conciliatory message reflected a significant shift in the dictatorial regime’s policy, which had become noticeable

Goddard.indb 59

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

60  Gregory Paschalidis

by the spring of 1970 (Psiroukis, 1983: 187ff ). In this new phase of the regime, the emphasis was on gaining l­egitimacy, both i­nternally – by combining a generous social welfare policy with measured steps towards political liberalisation – and externally – by breaking the country’s diplomatic isolation. Through successive reshuffles, Papa­ dopoulos substituted the hard-line militant officers with political personnel, relaxed the rules of censorship and gradually lifted martial law3 – a series of half-measures indeed, but an effort to create at least a semblance of liberalisation and to enhance his role as a political leader. In the autumn of 1973, this effort culminated in his assumption of the office of the President of the Republic and the promise of elections. Nonetheless, Papadopoulos’s liberalisation drive failed to stem the rising tide of popular discontent, as evinced by the November 1973 student uprising, and, moreover, infuriated the hard-liners, leading to his ultimate overthrow by Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis. Before The Unknown War, the only television programme relating to World War II was the series Front Line (Πρώτη Γραμμή, EIRT, 1971), modelled upon Combat (Valoukos, 2008: 352), a highly popular ABC series from the mid-1960s. It was the spectacular popu­larity of The Unknown War that triggered the making of a range of World War ΙΙ serials. In 1973, Greek television was flooded by the likes of Marina Avgeri (Μαρίνα Αυγέρη, EIRT), In Terror’s Net (Στα δίχτυα του τρόμου, EIRT), Occupation (Κατοχή, YENED) and Isidora (Ισιδώρα, EIRT). They all emulated Foskolos’s basic recipe of mixing the familiar motifs of sabotage and spying with heavy doses of melodrama. For it is to Foskolos’s talent for suspense and melodrama that The Unknown War owes its phenomenal success. As Maria Paradisi (2005) demonstrates, the prevalence of the melodramatic code was the major characteristic of the war-related films of the period as well, in which the war served as the dramatic backdrop for a ­romantic story. In this respect, ­Foskolos seems to have struck that ideal balance ‘between psychological involvement, thrill and fun’ (Sorlin, 1991: 79) which was the hallmark of the successful ‘secret war’ films in Europe. It is, in other words, the entertainment value of the serial that explains the national obsession with television wartime drama during the dictator­ship. The other kind of drama that preoccupied viewers at the time concerned not the challenges of the heroic past, but those of their prosaic present. Our Neighbourhood Our Neighbourhood is one of Greek television’s longest-running serials, with a total of 550 half-hour episodes, initially weekly and subsequently twice weekly. It debuted on 24 February 1972, winning

Goddard.indb 60

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

Greek television fiction, 1967–74   61

almost instantly a popularity surpassed only by The Unknown War. Its life span was divided almost evenly between the last two and a half years of the dictatorship and the first three years of the Third Greek Republic, before it concluded on 20 October 1977. Our Neighbourhood was written by Kostas Pretenteris (1926–78), one of the most prolific and multi-talented authors of the post-war generation, with a staggering number of successful contributions to all popular media – theatre, cinema, radio, newspapers, television – and a special talent for comedy and vaudeville. He was, in fact, the first important author to work for Greek television, his comic series Mr Advocate (Κύριος Συνήγορος, 1970–72) being YENED’s first big hit. Our Neighbourhood deals with the everyday problems, relationships and situations of the inhabitants of a fictitious neighbourhood in Athens. The main sites of dramatic action are a coffee shop and a general store, which act as the meeting places of the various characters. Both are located in a small square, marked by the imposing old mansion house of the Delakovia family, who own the two shops as well as most of the surrounding estate. Our Neighbourhood presents all the characteristic conventions of community-focused serials, a highly popular genre of television programming since the early 1960s, whose most famous example is the British classic Coronation Street (1960–). As usual with programmes of this genre, alongside an ever-­ changing variety of supporting characters there is a stable core of main characters, which, in this case, includes the two shopkeepers, Makis (Makis Demiris) and Fanouris (Babis Anthopoulos), the former’s wife Sasa (Sasa Kastoura), Jonathan (Kostas Kafasis) and his girlfriend Rea (Mary Halkia). In keeping, also, with what Jordan (1981) identified as a fundamental convention of Coronation Street, both the main and the secondary characters of the serial are heavily stereotyped, and thus readily recognised character types. The latter owe their recognisability to their origins in the two most popular spectacles of the era, cinema and vaudeville – a condition underscored by the casting itself, since most roles were played by typecast character actors from either cinema or theatre. The same principle held sway when, about a year after the fall of the dictatorship, the serial’s cast was drastically renewed and a score of new characters were brought in, restoring its declining ratings and adding an extra two years to its life. The various concurrent, interweaving and multi-episode storylines primarily concern romantic entanglements, marital or family disputes, and designs for social and economic advancement. At the same time, Rea, cast as the typical soubrette, and her beloved Jonathan’s aspirations to become a popular singer, provide a constant source of comic relief. Focusing on the routine rhythms of daily life, the show follows its

Goddard.indb 61

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

62  Gregory Paschalidis

cast as they form relations and allegiances, gossip about one another, handle personal problems and crises, react to topical events and plan their lives, providing, as is again usual with programmes of this genre, a wide range of situations and issues that the audience can relate to. Generically, however, Our Neighbourhood is a hybrid. The element of social realism that distinguishes the likes of Coronation Street, or, more recently, Eastenders (1985–) and Neighbours (1985–), is here mixed with heavy doses of romantic and situation comedy, as well as hints of the musical. In this respect, Our Neighbourhood represents a highly indigenised form of the community-based soap opera, the primary source of this particular generic mixture being Greek popular cinema. The significance of this mixture is best appreciated if we take into account Our Neighbourhood’s impact on television programming. Just like The Unknown War, Our Neighbourhood provided an effective template for a wave of subsequent serials. Following up on its huge success, YENED went on to air The Kiosk (To Περίπτερο, 1971), Tavern (Tαβέρνα, 1972–73) and The Old Pint (Το παλιό το κατοσταράκι, 1974). The popularity of these was considerable, although it never amounted to anything close to the levels enjoyed by Our Neighbourhood. The same holds for Grocery Store: The People (Ψιλικατζίδικο ο Κόσμος, 1973), which was EIRT’s rather unsuccessful attempt to respond to the competition. It was with The Amusement Park (Λούνα Παρκ, 1974–81), however, that the public channel hit the jackpot. Having commenced just two weeks before the end of dictatorship, it ran for seven years and achieved record popularity. Appropriately enough, this was the only serial that faithfully reproduced the distinctive generic mix of Our Neighbourhood. Order and ordinariness

Lacking The Unknown War’s penchant for army officers and with a life span that stretched well into the post-dictatorship era, Our Neighbour­ hood has been spared the kind of critical opprobrium generated by the former. Critics tended to vilify it mainly on aesthetic grounds, for its shoddy sets, motley crew of characters and vaudeville-style gags and song routines. Being the most successful family-friendly serial of the dictatorship period, one would suppose that its characteristically uncontentious and convivial character made it exactly the kind of anodyne light entertainment that distracted people from harsh reality. It is in this vein that, in a particularly scathing article he wrote when Our Neighbourhood was in its last few months, Christos Vakalopoulos attributed its high popularity to its ability to construct a supposedly familiar, ‘lived’ everyday reality, and to gloss over real social conditions and contradictions through a mix of sentimentalism and populism.

Goddard.indb 62

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

Greek television fiction, 1967–74   63

‘The levelled world of Our Neighbourhood’, he argues, ‘is a world of consensus, of triumphant naturalism, of the stereotype’s horrifying victory’ 4 (see Vakalopoulos, 2005: 148). His perspective clearly draws from the anti-realist critique that, at the time, was advocated by the Greek avant-garde film journal Contemporary Cinema (Σύγχρονος Κινηματογράφος), on whose editorial board he sat. In these terms, the serial’s focus on ordinary people and their everyday lives turns it into a parable of order, a narrative of appeasement and containment. The concerns of anti-realist critique may seem somewhat exaggerated in the case of a serial that so blatantly violates the conventions of realism. The serial’s anchoring in the concrete living circumstances in which the characters are depicted, on the other hand, inevitably raises the issue of its relationship to the actual experiences of everyday life. Given the political circumstances of the period, one may take the absence of working-class characters and the patronising role of the patrician old matriarch Mrs Delakovia as sure signs of the serial’s fundamentally conservative outlook. The prominent representation of the coffee shop itself, the most celebrated site for exchange and dispute in the Greek political tradition, as a place for gossip, flirting and peppy talk, seems to endorse the deformation of the public sphere brought about by the police state, and to mollify the audience’s effective alienation from public life and debate. Similar criticisms, however, have been repeatedly expressed for this particular genre of television entertainment, irrespective of circumstance. Evidently, a much more context-sensitive approach is called for. The overarching theme of Our Neighbourhood is social change. The small community around the square is besieged by changes and novelties that challenge its traditional outlook. New gender roles and family relations, new social mores and values, new work practices and professions provoke crises but also open up new possibilities and opportunities. In this respect, the serial replays many of the familiar motifs and storylines found in Greek popular cinema of the 1960s, whose major socio-cultural function was to dramatise and negotiate – mostly by way of comedy – the conflicts and anxieties caused by the spiralling modernisation of Greek society. It is in the context of this cinematic tradition that the social space of the neighbourhood was established as the preferred site for exploring and representing the manifold implications and complications of modernisation. Intro­ duced as early as 1950 by a landmark film by Giorgos ­Tzavellas, The Drunkard (O Μεθύστακας), the focus on the waning world of the neighbourhood is regularly found in popular cinema after the late 1950s, when the building of modern apartment blocks in place of old housing estates began to transform the urban landscape at an

Goddard.indb 63

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

64  Gregory Paschalidis

a­ ccelerating rate. In all cases, there is a compelling feeling of nostalgia for a fast-disappearing world of traditional neighbourly ties and communal mores. The actual protagonists in all of the above-mentioned serials are in fact social sites that are emblematic of the close-knit microcosm of the neighbourhood – the tavern, the coffee shop, the general store, the kiosk. The nostalgic mood also reverberates in most of the literary and journalistic treatments of the issue, which increased considerably when the dictatorial regime set about spurring economic growth by providing new incentives and concessions to the construction industry. Our Neighbourhood’s conclusion, with the demolition of the coffee shop to make way for a modern apartment building, underscores the idyllic image of lost communal life, which is made even more poignant by the farewell party that brings together the serial’s characters for the last time. Just as in the case of The Unknown War, the primary achievement of Our Neighbourhood lies in its synthetic, compendium-like qualities. If the former offered an effective summary of the official post-World War II national narrative, the latter offered an equally effective summary of the problematics of modernisation that ran through postwar popular culture. This is not to belittle the serial’s own evolutionary dynamic – its success, in other words, in incorporating topical events, new characters and novel issues. The very fact that the serial survived the transition to democratic rule, even adding a working-class character, and, moreover, went on to top the ratings for the 1974–75 season, is proof of its continuing relevance to the wider public’s concerns. The same could be said for its equally successful rival serial The Amusement Park. The latter’s conclusion in 1981 – the year when a socialist government came to power for the first time, with ‘change’ as its central slogan – marks, in effect, the end of a genre. From then on, the hegemonic ascendancy of a progressivist-reformist discourse would radically modify the terms through which social change was represented. Alongside the changed discursive conditions, however, the entertainment value of the genre would also fade away. The generic mix that characterised both Our Neighbourhood and The Amusement Park, based on the tradition of all-family light entertainment, was no longer sustainable in an age when television had to deal with the rise of home video, new entertainment options and audience segmentation. Was the dictatorship televised? According to Gil Scott-Heron’s poem and song from 1970 – famous for castigating television as the privileged site of ruling ideology – ‘The revolution will not be televised’. Dictatorship, by contrast, is widely

Goddard.indb 64

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

Greek television fiction, 1967–74   65

presumed to be always and fully televised. In a more plain but equally ominous fashion, Umberto Eco begins the paper he presented at the ‘Vision ’67’ conference in New York with the observation that: ‘Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country, you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals, in carrying out a coup d’état, still use tanks … [because] a country belongs to the person who controls communications’ (see Eco, 1990: 135). Although this may seem ironically prescient of Berlusconi’s Italy, the Colonels’ coup in Greece six months prior to Eco’s talk, as well as the trail of events leading from Prague (1968) to Tiananmen Square (1989) and Moscow (1993), clearly demonstrate that the use of tanks and the taking over of communications often go hand in hand – perhaps because, as Eco’s argument in that seminal paper goes, media are not all-powerful, since the social heterogeneity of codes ensures a wide and discordant variety of interpretations (Eco, 1990: 138–42). If we take into account the news, information and propaganda programmes of Greek television, which in the period 1970–72 covered 29.7 per cent and 23.5 per cent of the weekly output of EIRT and YENED respectively (Rafailidis, 1974: 255), but also the stringent and often absurd regime of censorship, the dictatorship was most definitely and systematically televised. Things are not so clear, however, when we turn to the fictional and, more generally, the entertainment programmes during the seven-year dictatorship period. Prevailing opinion tends to adopt a ‘seven-year pitch’ view, which reduces television entertainment to ideological manipulation, to more or less consciously designed propaganda (see Komninou, 1999, for example). Given the failure of the dictatorial regime to command wide popular support, on the other hand, one is tempted to counter-pose a ‘­seven-year kitsch’ view, which dismisses television entertainment as nothing but distasteful trash, offensive yet ludicrous and essentially inconsequential trivialities. The best way to get beyond such oversimplifying generalisations is to engage in a close examination of the programmes in question, taking full account of the complexity both of their textual make-up and of their reception. Such an approach, however, meets one insurmountable obstacle: very little programming survives from these early days of Greek television. An alternative line of approach is suggested by Vakalopoulos’ attribution of The Unknown War’s success to the fact that it was the first time the new, domestically based medium of television was used to tell a story that could no longer be found amid the declining fortunes of indigenous cinema (Vakalopoulos, 1982: 58). His assertion may seem somewhat exaggerated, given that in the months preceding the serial’s launch,

Goddard.indb 65

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

66  Gregory Paschalidis

Foskolos’s Lieutenant Natassa scored the biggest box-office success of Greek cinema to date, setting a record that lasted for nearly three decades. As we have seen, moreover, the success of both of the serials in question was critically dependent upon their fundamental congruence and continuity with the popular cinema tradition. We should not overlook, however, the essential point raised by Vakalopoulos: the ‘unknown war’ was mainly one over what would be the dominant narrative institution in Greek society, and it was won by television itself rather than by any particular ideology supposedly conveyed by the serial’s content. It was a war, in addition, whose real ‘generals’ were Foskolos and Pretenteris, the most distinguished representatives of the hitherto dominant institutions of popular cinema and vaudeville. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the war won by television concerned the structure of the mass audience itself. In place of the geographically, socially and culturally segmented audience of the press, radio and cinema, television fostered the formation of a truly national audience. The two serials under discussion proved to be among the most powerful catalysts in this development. The impact of their popularity on cinema attendance was particularly dire. In 1968, the Greek public’s cinephilia reached the record high of sixteen visits per person per year, a level which, according to UNESCO statistics (cited in Kouanis, 2001: 109), was comparable only to that of East European countries (around fifteen visits per person per year). The subsequent drop in cinema attendance that marked the first three years of television was too modest to cause concern. The downward spiral proceeded at an alarming rate, however, from the start of 1972, following the audience’s captivation with The Unknown War. In Cyprus, where the serial also attracted record popularity, cinema owners went as far as to petition RIK (the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation) to move the serial’s scheduled time to any day of the week but weekend evenings. At the close of 1974, both cinema attendance and film production were less than half of what they had been three years earlier. It was during this three-year period that television gained a solid footing in the country’s living rooms. At the end of 1971, there was a total of 270,000 television sets, or 31 sets per 1,000 inhabitants. By the end of 1974, the total had risen to 800,000 television sets, or 89 per 1,000 inhabitants (Cheretakis, 1997: 94–5) – an increase of 300 per cent. The creation of a national audience, sharing daily the same images and stories and getting involved in the same collective representa­tions and fictions, was actively pursued by the junta. In December 1971, a few weeks after Colonel Vartanis first appeared on the television screen, a nationwide radio–television network commenced operation, linking the whole country for the first time to the state-run ­broadcasting

Goddard.indb 66

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

Greek television fiction, 1967–74   67

system. The go-ahead for its installation, which ensured coverage of some 80 per cent of the population, had originally been given by the centre-right government of Kostas Karamanlis in March 1963, but it was left to the junta to revive the project and make it a priority. The rise of a home-centred pattern of family recreation was accompanied by the promotion of a particular kind of entertainment. As we noted earlier, the junta, right from the beginning, defined the function of the army-run channel YENED as providing predominantly popular television, leaving the more ‘serious’ cultural and informational function to the non-army channel, EIRT. In this way, YENED continued the tried and tested tradition of its radio subsidiary, which, in the previous two decades, had succeeded in earning high popularity by offering a variety of music shows, games, sports and radio soaps. From quite early on, then, the army-run broadcasting service had but one major purpose: to win the loyalty of the wider public in order to maximise the reach of its political message. The Voice of America’s patronage during the early stages of army-run radio (Zaharopoulos and ­Paraschos, 1993: 40) may have been decisive here, for it was precisely Voice of America’s emphasis on popular music that characterised its propaganda strategy during the Cold War (Heil, 2003: 288–301). The appearance of the two serials under discussion, in the winter of 1971–72, marks a watershed in the history of Greek television. Their phenomenal success was instrumental in the establishment of popular prime-time entertainment as a cultural institution. At the same time, it encouraged a programming shift to Greek-language serials. The subsequent profusion of Greek serials resembles the record production levels attained by the indigenous cinema industry in the late 1960s. As in the case of the latter, a side-effect of this explosion was the mushrooming of hastily established production companies, the use of inexperienced actors and directors, and a flood of low-cost, poor-quality productions (O Tahidromos, 1973b). The popularity of the two serials, on the other hand, was methodically exploited by the regime, which used both of them as lead-ins for its propaganda programmes. The fifteen-minute programme In The Way of Progress (Στον δρόμο της προόδου) by Nikos Katsaros, as well as the notorious New Horizons (Nέοι Ορίζοντες) by the junta’s principal propaganda auth­ ority Giorgos Georgalas, were both scheduled just before the start – or immediately after the end – of Our Neighbourhood and The Unknown War respectively. Evidently, the almost complete control over primetime television entertainment enjoyed by YENED provided the regime with an ideal opportunity to address the assembled national audience. Formally, YENED’s mission was to provide for ‘the national, moral and social education, as well as the information and entertainment,

Goddard.indb 67

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

68  Gregory Paschalidis

of the armed forces and, secondarily, of the public’ 5 (Alivizatos, 1983: 28, n. 38). However, notwithstanding its official role as a mouthpiece of the army and a propaganda tool for the junta, YENED operated as a typical commercial station, filling its daily programme with popular indigenous and foreign shows and serials, and thus securing the lion’s share of advertising revenue. YENED was, in fact, the first Greek television channel to broadcast advertisements, in September 1968, when it was still in its experimental stage. The fact that the junta pioneered and promoted an aggressively commercial model of popular entertainment is most convincingly demonstrated by its policy of wholesale outsourcing of television production to the advertising industry. By 1972, some 90 per cent of all entertainment programmes were produced by advertising agencies, which had sole responsibility for spot sales and rates (Williams Mestheneos, 1984). In return for 20 per cent of their total adver­ tising revenue, demanded by the army-run channels, the advertising agencies enjoyed, in effect, total control over the kind and quality of television entertainment. This policy, discontinued only when the hard-liners under Brigadier Ioannidis came to power in November 1973 and assumed full control of television programming and its commercial exploitation, may seem rather surprising for a regime keen on consolidating its power and gaining popular acceptance. What we should bear in mind, though, is the pronounced ideological feebleness of the dictatorial regime, underlined by most scholars of the period (for example, see Poulantzas, 1975; Mouzelis, 1978; Charalambis, 1985; Veremis, 1997; Fleisher, 2002). In contrast to their idol Metaxas, the Colonels failed to develop either a mass political organisation or a cogent ideology – that is, apart from a fierce anti-communism and a gaudy nationalism, centred on the cult of the army as the guardian and vehicle of national values and greatness. Hence the host of lavishly organised military parades and ceremonies, and, most tellingly, the extravagant public celebrations taking place every year, on the coup’s anniversary, to celebrate Greek military valour. The Colonels failed, in other words, ‘to build the totalitarian structures for mobilising the masses which would have given a fascist character to their rule’ (Mouzelis, 1978: 128–9). Given ‘their unlimited support to big capital, foreign and indigenous’ (Mouzelis, 1978: 129), their only visibly coherent ideology seems, in fact, to have been nothing more or less than a rampant economic liberalism. In this context, the Colonels’ approach to television entertainment seems to have been a kind of balancing act between commercialism and censorship, business-mindedness and authoritarianism. In a way, something similar occurred also with the two serials in question: in

Goddard.indb 68

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

Greek television fiction, 1967–74   69

The Unknown War we have a balancing act between militarist rhetoric and anti-fascist epic, nationalist myth and melodramatic pathos; in Our Neighbourhood between realism and light entertainment, disquiet, disillusionment and sentimentalist closure. Just like the wider audience, the Colonels were certainly entertained. According to a revelation in Athinaiki one month after the junta’s fall, The Unknown War was Papadopoulos’s favourite show (Dampasis, 2002: 116). The extent to which these serials entertained the ideas, the politics or the interests of the Colonels’ regime, however, is debatable. Notes 1 The author of this novelised biography, published between August and September 1972, was Kiki Segditsa, who wrote the first and rather unsuccessful Greek television serial, The House with the Palm Tree (Το σπίτι με το φοίνικα), aired by YENED in the spring of 1970. 2 Lieutenant Natassa was released internationally with the English-language title Battleship Constantinople. 3 The measure was implemented on 19 December 1971. 4 ‘Ο ισοπεδωμένος κόσμος της Γειτονιάς είναι ο κόσμος της ομοφωνίας, ο θριαμβεύων νατουραλισμός, η τρομακτική νίκη του στερότυπου.’ 5 ‘την εθνική, κοινωνική και ηθική διαπαιδαγώγηση, όπως επίσης και την ψυχαγωγία, κατά πρώτον του στρατιωτικού προσωπικού και, κατά δεύτερο λόγο, του κοινού.’

References N. Alivizatos (N. Αλιβιζάτος) (1983), Κράτος και ραδιοτηλεόραση (State and Radio­television). Athens: Sakkoulas. G. Andritsos (Γ. Ανδρίτσος) (2004), Η κατοχή και η αντίσταση στον ελληνικό κινηματογράφο 1945–1966 (Occupation and Resistance in Greek Cinema 1945–1966). Athens: Aigokeros. D. Charalambis (Δ. Χαραλάμπης) (1985), Στρατός και πολιτική εξουσία. Η δομή της εξουσίας στη μετεμφυλιακή Ελλάδα (Military and Political Power: The Structure of Power in Post-Civil War Greece). Athens: Exandas. M. Cheretakis (Μ. Χαιρετάκης) (1997), Τηλεόραση και διαφήμιση: Η ελληνική περίπτωση (Television and Advertising: The Greek Case). Athens: Sakkoulas. G. Dampasis (Γ. Δάμπασης) (2002), Την εποχή της τηλεόρασης (In the Era of Television). Athens: Kastanioti. U. Eco (1990), ‘Towards a semiological guerilla warfare’, in Travels in Hyperreality (trans. W. Weaver). New York: Harvest. H. Fleisher (2002), ‘Authoritarian rule in Greece (1936–1974) and its heritage’, in J. W. Borejsza and K. Ziemer (eds) (2006), Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes in Europe: Legacies and Lessons from the Twentieth Century. New York and London: Berghahn. A. Heil (2003), Voice of America: A History. New York: Colombia University Press. M. Jordan (1981), ‘Realism and convention’, in R. Dyer (ed.), Coronation Street. London: British Film Institute. M. Komninou (Μ. Κομνηνού) (1999), ‘Τηλεόραση και κινηματογράφος: η

Goddard.indb 69

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

70  Gregory Paschalidis διαμάχη για την ηγεμονία στην περίοδο της δικτατορίας 1967–74’ (‘Television and cinema: The struggle for dominance during the dictatorship, 1967–74’), in A. Athanasatou, A. Rigos and S. Seferiadis (Γ. Αθανασάτου, Α. Ρήγος, Σ. Σεφεριάδης) (eds), Η δικτατορία 1967–74: Πολιτικές πρακτικές – Ιδεολογικός λόγος – Αντίσταση (The Dictatorship 1967–74: Political Practices – Ideological Discourse – Resistance) (2nd edn). Athens: Kastanioti. P. Kouanis (Π. Κουάνης) (2001), Η Κινηματογραφική αγορά στην Ελλάδα, 1944– 1999 (The Film Market in Greece, 1944–1999). Athens: Finatec. N. Mouzelis (1978), Modern Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment. London: Macmillan. O Tahidromos (Ο Ταχυδρόμος) (1973a), ‘Συνέντευξη με τον Άγγελο Αντωνόπουλο’ (‘Interview with Αggelos Antonopoulos’), 984: 58–60 (16 February). O Tahidromos (Ο Ταχυδρόμος) (1973b), ‘Ο πόλεμος των σήριαλ’ (‘Τhe war of the serials’), 987: 14–15 (9 March). ‘O Vorios’ (1972), ‘Η Θεσσαλονίκη και ο κόσμος’ (‘Thessaloniki and the world’), Macedonia, 2 (3 December). M. Paradisi (M. Παραδείσι) (2005), ‘Πόλεμος, δράμα και θέαμα: Η ‘ακύρωση’ ή ‘παράφραση’ της πρόσφατης ιστορίας στις μεγάλες εμπορικές επιτυχίες του ελληνικού κινηματογράφου της επταετίας 1967–1974’ (‘War, drama and spectacle: The “annulment” or “paraphrase” of recent history in the great commercial successes of Greek cinema in the period 1967–1974’), Ta Istorika, 42: 203–16. M. Petrakis (2005), The Metaxas Myth: Dictatorship and Propaganda in Greece. London: I. B. Tauris. N. Poulantzas (1975), La crise des dictatures – Portugal, Grece, Espagne (The Crisis of the Dictators – Portugal, Greece, Spain). Paris: Maspéro. N. Psiroukis (N. Ψυρούκης) (1983), Ιστορία της σύγχρονης Ελλάδας (1967–1974): Το καθεστώς της 21ης Απριλίου (History of Modern Greece (1967–1974): The 21 April Regime). Athens: Epikerotita. V. Rafailidis (B. Ραφαηλίδης) (1974), ‘O προγραμματισμός στην ελληνική τηλεόραση κατά την δικτατορική επταετία’ (‘Greek television programming during the dictatorship years’), in Chroniko ’74, Athens: Ora/Kallitehniko Pnevmatiko Kentro. G. Soldatos (Γ. Σολδάτος) (1990), Iστορία του ελληνικού κινηματογράφου (History of Greek Cinema): Volume 2. Athens: Aigokeros. P. Sorlin (1991), European Cinemas, European Societies, 1939–1990. London: Routledge. Ch. Vakalopoulos (X. Βακαλόπουλος) (1982), ‘Συνέντευξη’ (Interview), Othoni 9: 57–60. Ch. Vakalopoulos (X. Βακαλόπουλος) (2005), ‘Oι παγίδες των σφυγμομετρήσεων’ (‘The polls’ traps’), in H ονειρική υφή της πραγματικότητας (Τhe Dreamlike Texture of Reality). Athens: Estia. S. Valoukos (Σ. Βαλούκος) (2008), Ιστορία της ελληνικής τηλεόρασης (History of Greek Television). Athens: Aigokeros. Th. Veremis (1997), The Military in Greek Politics, From Independence to ­Democracy. London: Hurst. E. Williams Mestheneos (1984), Culture and Society in Greece: The Case of Greek Television. Canterbury: University of Kent. T. Zaharopoulos and E. Paraschos (1993), Mass Media in Greece: Power, Politics and Privatization. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Goddard.indb 70

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

5

Staying outside ‘the egg’: Surrealist entertainment during the Greek dictatorship Christina Adamou

The Greek army dictatorship was inextricably linked to television, which it actively employed – and strictly censored – in propagandis­ ing its ideology. Yet a satirical drama series managed to escape censorship: This One and That One (Εκείνος και … Εκείνος, EIRT [ΕΙΡΤ], 1972–74), broadcast during the Greek army dictatorship, was received by critics and audiences alike as a challenge to the ideology of the regime. Nowadays, This One and That One is thought of as an acclaimed series – one which has been discussed ever since its first airing. As television scripts were censored, the openness and the aesthetics of the audiovisual text proved particularly important in under­mining various aspects of the regime’s ideology. The aesthetics of the series, involving language, humour, visual style and acting, are the main focus of this chapter, as they illustrate how effectively tele­ vision aesthetics can challenge attempts at ideological control. It is also interesting to note that this audiovisual text has never been analysed before, largely because of its unavailability, a difficulty that television scholars wishing to study Greek television during the dictatorship generally face. The archives of the Greek public service television of that era were almost entirely destroyed because the videotapes were re-used. So it is particularly important to place emphasis on the close analysis of any remaining fragments of that period’s television production, including the only surviving episode of This One and That One, recently made available to me by George Michalakopoulos, one of the two actors starring in the series.1 The text ought to be read in relation to the political context of that era as well as the history of Greek television, which was itself largely shaped by the political developments of the time.

Goddard.indb 71

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

72  Christina Adamou

The ideology of the Colonels’ dictatorship The Greek army dictatorship, also known in Greece as the Colonels’ dictatorship in order to differentiate it from other dictatorships in the twentieth-century history of Greece, was imposed after a long period of political turbulence that reached its peak in 1965 with the involvement of Constantine, then king of Greece, in the appointment of ministers (Meletopoulos, 2008: 27). The king’s participation led to George Papandreou’s resignation as Prime Minister and to the subsequent formation of short-lived governments. The dictatorship of the Colonels was imposed in 1967 and ended in 1974. Resistance to the dictatorship took various forms: leaflets and cassette players with messages against the dictatorship were dispersed in big cities, bombs were planted and there was an attempt to murder George Papadopoulos, the leader of the Colonels. There were twenty-eight revolutionary groups fighting against the dictatorship. The dictators labelled as a communist, and sent to prison or to exile, anyone suspected of ideological opposition to the regime. Initially, all meetings in public places after sunset involving more than five people and all political discussions were prohibited. Tens of thousands were arrested and 8,270 people were exiled.2 Most people were terrified and there were no mass opposition movements until 1973. Forming a mass movement against the dictatorship was almost impossible, not only because of the threat of arrest and torture but also because of the difficulty of approaching others, since the dictatorship planted police officers and sympathisers of the regime in workplaces and universities. The regime based its doctrine on the motto ‘Greece of the Greek Christians’. Its propaganda was founded upon rescuing Greece from the ‘threat of communism’. For seven years it censored written, audio and audiovisual texts, including books, newspapers, songs, theatre performances and, of course, television. This ideology contained contradictions, arising mainly from the dictators’ effort to appeal to all social classes, professions and ages. Papadopoulos in particular, who has been recognised as the leader of the Colonels’ junta, was neurotic and hysterical. His speeches, which were often broadcast on television, were characterised by an overflow of metaphors and were often hard to make sense of (Meletopoulos, 2008: 147). Their message was deeply capitalist and nationalist. Right-wing principles and a rigid system of values based upon country, family, religion, work, duty, discipline, thrift, monarchy, army and anti-communism were part of the dictatorship’s ideology (Meletopoulos, 2008: 206). Central to it was the relationship between the Greek nation and the Greek Orthodox Church. Although deeply nationalist, the dictators’

Goddard.indb 72

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

Surrealist entertainment during the Greek dictatorship   73

ideology was rather haphazardly related to Greek history. On the one hand, they made references to ancient Greek culture, art or war ethics (Meletopoulos, 2008: 155–211), and occasionally to Sparta or to the imposition of dictatorships in ancient Athens. On the other hand, they avoided references to Athenian democracy. As far as political history was concerned, in an effort to revise the meaning or undermine the importance of the Greek Civil War (1946–49), their approach was even occasionally anti-historical, arguing that there was no past in politics, just present and future (Papadimitriou, 1999: 163). The dictators’ propaganda for the rebirth of a Great Greece, to be supported by good Greek Christians, was inextricably linked to their kitsch aesthetics. These aesthetics were showcased in the annual celebrations of Greek military valour (Meletopoulos, 2008: 256). Crowds of people dressed as warriors from different eras of Greek history would parade around – marching or occasionally representing battles – forming a colourful, excessive and rather badly organised spectacle. In contrast to the kitsch aesthetics of the spectacles that they organised, the dictators themselves quickly stopped wearing military uniforms. They dressed instead in austere suits and wore tight ties, thus building an image of ‘respectable’, ‘law-abiding’ and ‘religious’ citizens. As I will argue, This One and That One represented an implicit challenge to these characteristics of the dictatorship – its extreme right-wing ideology, its practices of social control, the austere lifestyle that it promoted and its kitsch aesthetics. Politics and television It is important to note that This One and That One was the product of a new and censored medium. The birth of television in Greece came just two years before the dictatorship began. It has a turbulent and telling pre-history, as companies were repeatedly invited to plan for the creation of a television network only for its inception to be postponed with ambiguous explanations.3 Eventually, two channels began some experimental trial broadcasts in 1965 – one under the auspices of the armed forces and the other a public service channel, later to become YENED (ΥΕΝΕΔ) and EIRT (ΕΙΡΤ) respectively. Both channels began broadcasting daily evening programmes in 1966. Notably, however, the armed forces channel began experimental and regular broadcasting, as well as broadcasting the news, slightly earlier (Karter, 2004: 13–32). In 1967, the year after regular television broadcasting eventually began, the Colonels’ dictatorship was imposed. Although it was a relatively new medium in Greece, the dictatorship was well aware of television’s power. It is quite telling that one

Goddard.indb 73

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

74  Christina Adamou

of the dictators’ first actions was to change EIRT’s ident to a doubleheaded bird and a soldier, which was the Greek dictatorship’s symbol, accompanied by a military march. EIRT produced light entertainment, current affairs programmes and series, in an effort to ‘inform, educate and entertain’, while YENED, the armed forces’ channel, focused on producing popular series and was also actively involved in political propaganda, transmitting the dictators’ speeches and weekly programmes by and about the navy, air force, police and other uniformed services (Valoukos, 1998: 15). Television was thus assigned a dual role: television broadcasts of the dictators’ speeches, church services and numerous army events were meant to promote the dictatorship’s propaganda, which included ‘patriotic’ and ‘Christian’ ethics, while the numerous broadcasts of sporting events (especially football matches), light entertainment programmes and Greek serials were meant to keep the people happy. As the new sense of national identity was to be formed in opposition to the ‘communist threat’, Greek television continued to import American serials and formats for television game shows. In addition to television’s active involvement in spreading the dictatorship’s propaganda, the advent of television has also been criticised for minimising the public sphere, since people started receiving information about public issues in private. Nevertheless, the main criticism was that television was under the direct and constant control of the dictators, whereas parts of the press, cinema and radio were occasionally able to elude that control and to express, if only implicitly, resistance to the regime (Komninou, 1999: 174–83). However, as I will argue, there were instances when television also undermined the dictatorship’s ideology. As far as entertainment was concerned, the late arrival of television in Greece and a major lack of funding led to early television schedules relying heavily upon films, imported American series and theatrical forms of entertainment. However, television quickly developed and in the years that followed its establishment – 1967–74 – there was a great variety of foreign and home-produced programmes. Serials such as Peyton Place were imported as well as programme formats such as Candid Camera and Bingo. At the same time, there were international collaborations in the broadcasting of big events, such as the Ninth European Athletics Championship, which took place in Athens in September 1969, while EIRT had been connected to Eurovision earlier that year to broadcast the moon landing. This One and That One was a minimalist surrealist text that contrasted aesthetically both with the spectacles organised by the dictators and with imported American programmes and formats. As I will argue, it drew on a theatrical ­tradition of ‘serious’ drama.

Goddard.indb 74

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

Surrealist entertainment during the Greek dictatorship   75

Some Greek talk shows and serials were also produced. The first Greek serial, The House with the Palm Tree (Το σπίτι με το φοίνικα, YENED, 1970), was the story of a female scriptwriter, while the first very successful Greek series, Mr Advocate (Κύριος Συνήγορος, YENED, 1970–72) was a comedy focusing on an excessively talk­ative advo­ cate. The most popular serial during the Greek dictatorship was The Unknown War (O Άγνωστος Πόλεμος, YENED, 1971–74), a spy serial set during World War II (Valoukos, 1998: 16–19, and see Chapter 4). Its popular appeal is highly ambiguous since its protagonist was a colonel, like the dictators. Staying outside the egg As the popularity of The Unknown War implies, the role of television was more complex than a simple generic division of factual programming for propaganda and entertainment to keep people happy might imply. Since television was censored, the openness of audiovisual texts became a critical element during the dictatorship. This One and That One was a satirical series that focused on philosophical – and rather surreal – dialogues between two homeless men, Solon and Lukas. Solon and Lukas live in a park and denounce the goods of consumerist society – Solon having made a conscious decision and Lukas by instinct – in order to retain their freedom. The episodes focus on their philosophical discussions (Valoukos, 1998: 92). I will concentrate on a close analysis of the episode entitled ‘The egg’ in an effort to show the inherent links between aesthetic choices and ideology, since the links between aesthetics and ideology become particularly important in censored texts, which necessarily rely solely on open meanings and aesthetic decisions to convey their ideology. By using the term aesthetics, I am referring to all creative choices in the text, including the script, camera direction, sets, costumes, editing and acting. The series was remade in 1989 and the remake is widely available, but very different from the original series. While the original was in black and white, shot in a studio in single takes, the second version is in colour and shot on location. The scripts for the second series were based on the original scripts yet contain some improvisations by the actors. The aesthetics of the second series are thus more naturalistic, creating allusions to everyday life, whereas the original series was more closely aligned to modernism and theatre, as I will argue. Since it was a modernist text using surreal allegories and open meanings and made no direct reference to the regime, and as those in charge of censoring television, theatre and cinema were not renowned for their smartness or acuteness, This One and That One was able to

Goddard.indb 75

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

76  Christina Adamou

evade censorship. The series referred to society and ‘common sense’ and implicitly called for change. Audiences appear to have received the series as texts that undermined the ideology of the dictatorship, and many wrote letters to the writer and actors to thank them and to express their support.4 However, while this evaluation was commonly made by the audience and is widely accepted (see Valoukos, 1998: 92; Dampasis, 2002: 120–1; Valoukos, 2008: 67), it has never been supported by close analysis.5 Although the original series has been unavailable, it is often mentioned in discourses on television and television studies in Greece and has all the qualifications to be considered part of an academic canon: it is associated with theatre in several respects, including the references it makes to the work of Samuel Beckett; it claims political engagement; and it makes use of the representational qualities of television in adopting minimalist aesthetics and surreal dialogues.6 The series alludes to theatre through its aesthetics as well as through its writer. Although the opening titles were shot on location, the episodes themselves were shot in a studio. The difference in aesthetics between titles and studio is striking, as the first shot of the studio is of blurry, painted trees. We also see Lukas and Solon entering the space, as if they were entering a stage. Furthermore, each episode was shot in a single performance, using simultaneous editing (vision mixing) but not employing any post-production practices. Each of these aesthetic choices suggests parallels between the series and theatrical performance. As Greek television drama was still in an early stage of development, such a ­theatrical approach was not uncommon. However, the studio set seems to foreground it. It is also worth noting that Kostas ­Mourselas, who wrote the scripts for the series, was already established as a playwright and screenwriter when the series was first broadcast.7 He went on writing plays, scripts and literature and remains a well known writer in Greece. His work is characterised by the combination of realism and surrealism or symbolism. As authored drama making references to theatre, the series also seems to claim ‘seriousness’. The series makes allusions to Samuel Beckett’s work through the characters, the minimalist set and the surreal dialogue. A more ­specific parallel has been drawn between Solon and Lukas and V ­ ladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot, since the two homeless men spend the first episode of the series, ‘The bus stop’, waiting at a bus stop. According to George Michalakopoulos, the scriptwriter and the actors were very conscious of the link to Beckett’s work.8 However, despite the remarkable similarities, there are important differences between This One and That One and Beckett’s work, regarding both aesthetics and the openness of the text. The set of the series represents an area within

Goddard.indb 76

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

Surrealist entertainment during the Greek dictatorship   77

a park, containing columns, bars, steps, trees, a bench and two pots of flowers. Although it is minimalist when compared with the detailed home or office sets of Greek television series of the time, its minimalism is nowhere near the one tree in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The dialogues are often abstract and surrealist, yet they contain specific metaphors and allegories, as I will argue, so they do not approach the nonsensical form of Lucky’s monologues, for instance, and their meaning is not as open as Beckett’s work. In that regard, it is interesting to note that This One and That One was created with the intention of providing a text of resistance to the dictatorship’s ideology,9 while Beckett insisted that ‘the early success of Waiting for Godot was based on a fundamental misunderstanding, as critics and public alike insisted on interpreting in allegorical or symbolic terms a play which was striving all the time to avoid definition’.10 Although This One and That One was a modernist satirical series, relying heavily on surrealist dialogue rather than action, its surrealism is commented upon and explained in the text. In the episode at hand, ‘The egg’, the two protagonists are once again in the park and decide to choose human company, warmth and friendship and to remain outside the system, allegorically referred to as ‘the egg’, which would offer them material comforts such as food and nice warm clothes. The series’ opening title sequence follows the protagonists through the noisy, busy and polluted streets of Athens, providing a strong link between the text and everyday life. The two characters move around bustling streets, initially looking at food they cannot afford, then giving each other a flower, but soon they seem harassed by the crowds and by the pollution of the car exhausts and run towards a park. The camera is sometimes placed diagonally in relation to the streets or pans up to buildings and then moves in a full circle around itself. The city thus appears to be a terrifying place. Escaping the crowds and the buses, they end up lying in the park. The negative depiction of the busy city and their rejection of that space and busy way of life in the opening titles already constitute oppositions to the values of work, duty, discipline and saving that were at the core of the regime’s ideology. The studio set, with its columns, plants and bench, also depicts a park. Its minimalism suggests links to modernist theatre (which were lost when the series was remade with greater realism). The columns constitute a visual reference to ancient Greece that may connote democracy. Considering that the regime’s propaganda had an ambiguous relationship with Greek history, claiming that the political history of Greece could start afresh with the ‘Revolution’, as they called the imposition of the dictatorship, this ambiguity may be particularly important. Any references on the part of the regime to ancient Greece

Goddard.indb 77

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

78  Christina Adamou

would either be made to evoke Greek military valour or to allude to the use of dictatorship at times of crisis in ancient Greece, as justification for the regime’s actions.11 The serene, minimalist set evokes a quite different image of ancient Greece – a place likely to host a philosophical discussion. Although the dialogue in ‘The egg’ episode of This One and That One has open meanings and surrealist touches, there are also key metaphors which are explained in the dialogue. The episode begins with Lukas and Solon commenting on a newspaper article on the prolongation of human life to one hundred years. They are around fifty, so they would have to live for another fifty years. Initially, they treat the news with dismay, especially Lukas: Lukas: Solon, I can stand this for another ten years – at the most, but another fifty…. No! I cannot stand this life! I quit! Solon: You quit what, Lukas? Lukas: I don’t quit, I protest! How do they dare prolong my life? Did they ask me?12

However, Solon and Lukas decide that since they have another fifty years to live, they have to do something with themselves. Solon mentions that fifty years is a great deal of time and that they could do anything they want. After going through options which range from selling dried nuts on the street to becoming scientists or astronauts, on the basis of Solon’s argument that they could do anything, they wonder whether the outcome is just a matter of choice and how one person chooses to polish shoes and another to be a judge, a general or a minister. They try to think of what would suit them and conclude that it is too difficult to decide what to do in such a hurry. Towards the end of the conversation, Lukas makes a surreal suggestion: Solon: Leave it up to me. I will look into the matter. Lukas: Solon! Solon! Do you know what it would be nice for us to become? Solon: What? Lukas: Snakes! Snakes! Solon: Snakes? Lukas: Snakes! Yes! Ordinary snakes! 100 per cent snakes! Lie on our backs for eight months! Sleep! Get loads of sleep! Solon: Are you talking about their winter hibernation? Lukas: Yes, their winter … that! Eight months of winter [hibernation] and another four months of spending the summer in the parks! Solon: Yes … yes … of course at first sight it seems rather surreal…. I do not … generally reject it…. Lukas: No roof [over our heads], no clothes, nothing. Get it? This is it!13

Goddard.indb 78

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

Surrealist entertainment during the Greek dictatorship   79

During this sequence, Lukas is sitting on the ground in front of a bench and Solon is sitting next to him, on the bench. The two are shown in alternate medium close-ups, with a camera panning between them, occasionally interspersed with general shots. Both Lukas’s enthusiasm at the prospect of them becoming snakes and Solon’s wonder and disbelief are thus rendered visible. Furthermore, Lukas’s body language as he is sat on the ground, his legs loosely crossed, his arm waving freely, underlines their relaxed way of life and forms a stark contrast to the dictators’ austere ideology and image: they were always seen standing upright and rather stiffly, and often used sharp, quick, small arm movements. Although the audience might not have compared the dictators’ everyday performance to the actors’ performance in the series, the aesthetic contrast connotes the possibility of an entirely different way of life. Solon eventually refuses to become a snake because he cannot go for eight months without coffee. As they are in an open space, the breeze brings different smells. Lukas has a congested nose, but Solon starts smelling various things and describes the smells to Lukas: coffee, ouzo, octopus, smoked mackerel, meatballs and roast. Hungry as they are, they crave everything Solon smells and eventually they start to consider entering the status quo, which Solon describes as a huge egg: Solon: It is all over! We will get in! Lukas: Get in? Where? Solon: I’m telling you it’s over! We’ll get into the status quo. Lukas: What is that? A tavern? Solon: The status quo? It’s an egg! … Solon: If you get in, you’ve made it! Lukas: You’ve made it? So you have everything?! Solon: You have everything! Lukas: And there is such a big egg? Solon: Yes, there is! All you have to do is get in!14

Lukas goes on to explain that the egg contains everything: women, good food and so on. Thus the text explains and comments on its own surrealism – becoming snakes, for example – and also explains its allegories, as with the egg. The series is addressed to a large audience that may have different levels of education. For example, the audience could either identify with Lukas, who is illiterate and asks what the ‘status quo’ is, or with Solon, who explains it. This may partly explain the series’ popular appeal, despite the fact that the allegories used, the surrealism of the dialogue and the minimalism of the series’ aesthetics were very

Goddard.indb 79

5/30/2013 1:41:25 PM

80  Christina Adamou

­ ifferent to mainstream television of the time. The characters’ appeard ance may at first seem alienating to large parts of the audience, as it places them on the margins of society, connects them to young people opposing the dictatorship and contrasts with the dictators’ appearance. Their long, uncombed hair helped to build their characters as poor and homeless, yet long hair was also a sign used by young men at the time to connote open-mindedness and sometimes opposition to the dictatorship. Their hair, together with their old hats, costumes that fitted them badly and loosely tied ties, contrasted with the clean-cut, austere appearance of the dictators and their followers. The loose, ill-fitting costumes also allude to the slapstick tradition (see Neale and Krutnik, 1990: 123), although the text does not make extensive use of gags. However, the slapstick tradition in film, involving Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, for example, is related to being poor and hungry and may bring to mind well liked characters in similar situations. The sequence closest to physical humour is the one where Solon smells various types of food and describes the smells to Lukas, who has a blocked nose. Solon’s facial expressions are rather exaggerated – yet not enough to be ludicrous. Although it may produce laughter, limited exaggeration and the allusion to hunger also invite sympathy. Lukas also participates in the physical comedy as he starts jumping up and down because he is very happy that there are all those wonderful smells. However, the sequence would not be categorised as a gag intended to provoke laughter at the two protagonists, but rather as a sequence provoking recognition of and identification with ‘human traits and foibles’ (see Wells, 1998: 185). Although the physi­ cality and exaggeration of this sequence relate to slapstick comedy, the recognition that Lukas and Solon are hungry and the sympathy that this evokes undercut the laughter that the sequence might provoke. In fact, the smells trigger the discussion about ‘the egg’, which develops until they elect not to enter it despite their hunger. Solon and Lukas overcome their needs, their physicality, in order to stay outside the status quo. So Solon and Lukas are ultimately portrayed as everyday heroes – overcoming their personal weaknesses and human nature to stand up for their beliefs. As far as laughter is concerned, This One and That One uses the unexpected (e.g. becoming snakes) or misunderstandings (e.g. Lukas initially asking whether the status quo is a tavern). However, the text mostly uses verbal wit that may not provoke actual laughter. Laughter seems to function in the text as an unpredictable element that may not be essential to its enjoyment. As television genres have not been sufficiently studied in Greece, yet often follow the same conventions as in British and/or American television, we could use the criteria set

Goddard.indb 80

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

Surrealist entertainment during the Greek dictatorship   81

by Neale and Krutnik to define This One and That One, suggesting that it is mainly a satire, as it ‘mocks and attacks social conventions’ (Neale and Krutnik, 1990: 19). It is worth emphasising here, though, that the characters invite sympathy, not mockery. The aesthetic choices relating to identification with the characters are particularly interesting. There are no point-of-view shots; identification with the characters is invited by close-ups. Yet the feeling of close proximity that the use of close-ups invites can also be seen as an invitation for companionship and empathy. The principle of companionship was particularly important during the dictatorship, since nobody could be sure whether their neighbours, co-workers or fellow students were cooperating with the regime. The notion of harmony between the characters is further supported by their dance. They start dancing a waltz, accompanied by extra-diegetic music, when Solon mentions the need for them to be polite in order to enter ‘the egg’. During the waltz, Solon also mentions that when they enter ‘the egg’ they should not appear to be on a lower level than others or to be a ‘suspect’. The waltz is shot in medium close-ups that dissolve into long-distance takes and vice versa, allowing viewers to watch them dancing in harmony as well as to see their feelings. Although they waltz like a couple, Solon m ­ omentarily turns away from Lukas and addresses the word ‘suspect’ to the camera. Even though it is simply a word addressed to the camera, in an era when anyone appearing to be a suspect was either exiled or sent to jail, and was brutally tortured by the police, its address to the camera and consequently to the audience can be read as an allusion to the dictatorship’s methods of terrorising the people. It may be worth noting here the importance of the actors’ movements and the direc­ tor’s choices. According to Freud: ‘Thinking in pictures is … only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way, too, it approximates more closely to unconscious processes than does thinking in words’ (quoted in Rickman, 1957: 213). Their proximity shows their companionship, while the close-up invites the viewer to share it. The address to the camera, however, is a direct one that appeals to the conscience of viewers and is uttered in a conspiratorial tone that invites them to read a lot into the word. This One and That One thus supports companionship as a principle both on a conscious and on a subconscious level. The choices made in directing the episode are mostly quite conventional, yet some shots travelling behind bars that are part of the set seem out of place in a studio-based, three-camera drama. The camera’s movement initially blocks the audience’s view of Solon and Lukas, displacing them from their usual privileged point of view for a

Goddard.indb 81

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

82  Christina Adamou

moment and then ‘rediscovering’ them. In an era when reportage did not exist in Greece, this movement of the camera had an alienating effect rather than connotations of realism. It calls attention to the fact that viewers are watching a sequence mediated by the camera and by broadcasting. The text alternates between inviting identification and alienation. The ways in which the aesthetics and meanings of the last sequence in the episode complement each other is particularly telling. Lukas interrupts the waltz and protests: Lukas: No! I won’t get into the egg. I’m choking! Solon: Baby…. There’s air-conditioning. Lukas: I want to be able to see! Solon: There’s … there’s television. Lukas: The sky! The trees! Solon: There are…. Lukas: They are fake! Solon: Fake, real, I don’t know, but there are some…. Lukas: Solon, is there going to be enough room in the egg for us both? Solon: For both of us, baby? No. Each one is going to have his own egg. All to himself. Comfort! Lukas: Alone? Solon: Alone. Alone…. Lukas: Not alone, Solon. I don’t want to be alone! I cannot take being alone, Solon! Please, not alone, Solon! Not alone! Solon: Baby … baby … do you want … do you want to stay outside? Lukas: Let’s stay outside! Let’s stay outside! Solon: Get out? Lukas: Out! Out, yes! Solon: We’ll get out, but you should know, Lukas, that outside the egg…. Lukas: Yes…. Solon: We’ll have no armchairs with foam, no coffee, no whisky, no roast, baby! Lukas: Yes…. Solon, Solon, I will be content with little! Solon: Yes, you need to be content with little. Lukas: I will be, I will be, just … please, Solon … outside … outside…. Solon: Outside…. … Solon: So, since that is what you want, so be it…. As long as we hope! As long as we can! As long as we can take it! We’ll stay outside. Lukas: Outside!15

The dialogue is as minimalist as the visual aesthetics. They use short, often unfinished sentences. They also repeat each other’s words. In addition to the emphasis thus given to certain words, such as ‘alone’

Goddard.indb 82

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

Surrealist entertainment during the Greek dictatorship   83

or ‘outside’, this repetition also places emphasis on the unity of their thoughts. Solon’s habit of referring to Lukas as ‘baby’ may evoke thoughts of their being life partners, which of course would undermine the extreme right-wing ideology of the regime. However, the word is often used in Greece between good friends and may be used here simply to emphasise their companionship. The movements of the actors and cameras reveal Solon and Lukas’s closeness and invite the viewer to share it. The style of acting in the series aims to represent a slice of life and to reveal psychological depth. Exaggeration to produce comic effect, as I have mentioned, is limited, but where it is used invites sympathy. The characters move around the set in long-distance shots that bring to mind the theatrical roots of television drama. Yet there are a lot of close-ups and some extreme close-ups that invite identification with the characters’ feelings. The long shots and the medium shots reveal the relationship between the performers’ bodies. They often touch each other, or sit or stand very close to each other, while their bodies, heads or arms point in each other’s direction. Their physical proximity and their movement thus visually affirm their companionship, the importance of which is emphasised in the dialogue. In this sequence, Lukas moves away from Solon to object to enter­ ing the egg. However, Solon approaches him to put his hand on his shoulder and stroke his hair. Although the sequence starts with Lukas in a long-distance shot, we then see the two characters in alternating medium shots and close-ups. The medium shots allow viewers to see Lukas touching Solon’s hand. His body slightly turns away from Solon momentarily, while Solon is focused on Lukas. The actors turn towards each other again when they agree to stay outside the egg, while a guitar can be heard in the background. The angle then changes several times and the camera zooms in on them each time. At the end of the episode, we see them hugging each other in an extreme close-up. The camera is thus turned into a third character that mimics their movement away from each other and towards each other. Consequently, viewers are also invited to participate in the same psychological movements, expressed in space through the actors’ movements and mirrored by the camera. The actors’ light, often gliding and only occasionally flicking movements represent the characters as ethereal creatures. Their movement also uses the whole space freely and they make large, gentle movements with their arms.16 The overall lightness and freedom of their bodies is in contrast to the dictators’ practice of always standing tall and only occasionally making very controlled, sudden and small movements with their hands or arms. Of course, it also provides a contrast to the

Goddard.indb 83

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

84  Christina Adamou

controlled movement of marching; army marches on the streets and on television were commonplace at the time. Conclusion This One’s and That One’s ideology conflicts with the capitalist, individualistic ideology of the status quo and thus with the rightwing principles that were supported by the dictatorship: country, family, religion, work, duty, discipline, saving, monarchy, army and anti-­ communism. Indeed, the main characters’ lifestyle offers a direct challenge to expectations about work, discipline, saving and anti-­communism. The series’ modernist aesthetics clash with the dictatorship’s kitsch aesthetics. Its humour undermines a ‘common sense’ notion of leading a secure, comfortable life, which would prevent active or passive opposition to the dictatorship. Emphasis is placed on the value of companionship and freedom, instead of security and comfort, both through the dialogue and through consistent aesthetic choices. Although the original This One and That One was still celebrated in Greece in 1989, the remade series did not rely on the same modernist aesthetics. In 1972, television was still a new medium in Greece; it was both underfunded and censored, and yet more open to experimentation. Moreover, in a time of terror and ceaseless propaganda for a simplistic, hysterical right-wing ideology, the audience was more likely to read between the lines. The series’ aesthetics set it apart from other Greek productions or American imports of the time, while aligning it with ‘serious’ drama. The minimalism of the audiovisual text invites viewers to pay attention to every object, word or movement, while emphasis is placed on the characters’ companionship or words like ‘suspect’ through creative choices. The surrealism of the text allowed it to escape censorship and, more importantly, to be read by viewers on different levels. Although the dialogue may not seem particularly revolutionary today, or perhaps in 1989, during the dictatorship it was largely interpreted as cultural resistance to its ideology. The audience and the press were able to read it carefully and identify a much-desired message (Valoukos, 1998: 19). This One and That One remains a unique object in the study of Greek television, as its only minimalist, surrealist and yet popular television drama. Although Greek public-service television has consistently continued to produce ‘serious’ drama, it has focused on literary adaptations, costume drama and social realism. Imported American serials and Greek sitcoms or soaps have been the most popular television dramas since the dictatorship. As public television in Greece became stronger and more professional, but also remained

Goddard.indb 84

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

Surrealist entertainment during the Greek dictatorship   85

under the control of successive governments, it became less open to experimentation with different ideologies, forms and aesthetics (see Adamou et al., 2008). Notes 1 I am profoundly grateful to George Michalakopoulos for giving me the only existing episode of the series from his personal archive. I would also like to thank him for giving me the chance to interview him (on 3 December 2008) and for the extremely insightful information he gave. 2 Reportage Without Frontiers: ‘Greece of the Greek Christians’ (episode 3, ET1, tx. 6 November 2006). 3 Part of this section has been published in a different form (Adamou et al., 2008: 79–100). 4 George Michalakopoulos, in an interview with the author. 5 The popularity of This One and That One and its reception by the public were not formally or openly documented at the time, as there were no audience ratings and the press was censored. However, among television historians there seems to be a general consensus for both. Valoukos (2008: 67) suggests that the press of the time supported the series because of its ideology of resist­ ance. George Michalakopoulos mentioned to me that both actors received a large number of letters from the audience encouraging them to continue with their satire. Vasilis Diamantopoulos, the actor playing other protagonist, is quoted in Dampasis (2002: 121) as saying that they were astonished by the audience’s response. 6 There has not been any work on the criteria used to establish a television drama canon in Greece. As Greeks tend to use the same criteria employed in Britain, however, I am referring here to the criteria mentioned by Bignell and Lacey (2005: 4). 7 He had fourteen stage plays and two film scripts to his credit. 8 In interview with the author. 9 George Michalakopoulos, in interview with the author. 10 Quoted in Graver and Federman (1979: 10). 11 An example of such an allusion to dictatorship can be found in a speech by Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos, Minister of the Interior in the late 1960s, in Thematic Evening (Θεματική βραδιά, ET1, tx. 6 November 2006). 12 Λουκάς: Σόλων, εγώ αντέχω το πολύ δέκα χρόνια, αλλά πενήντα χρόνια…. Όχι! Δεν την εντέχω τέτοια ζωή! Παραιτούμαι! Σόλων: Από τι Λουκά. Λουκάς: Όχι δεν παραιτούμαι, διαμαρτύρομαι! Πώς μου παρατείνεις τη ζωή κύριε; Με ρώτησες εμένα. (All transcripts from the audiovisual text have been translated into English by the author.) 13 Σόλων: Άφησέ το σε μένα. Αναλαμβάνω εγώ. Λουκάς: Σόλων! Σόλων! Ξέρεις τι θα ‘τανε ωραίο να γίνουμε. Σόλων: Τι. Λουκάς: Φίδια! Φίδια! Σόλων: Φίδια. Λουκάς: Φίδια ναι! Κανονικότατα φίδια! Εκατό τα εκατό φίδια! Οχτώ μήνες ξάπλα! Ύπνο! Να τρελαθούμε στον ύπνο! Σόλων: Δηλαδή, εννοείς την χειμερίαν νάρκην τους, ε.

Goddard.indb 85

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

86  Christina Adamou Λουκάς: Ναι, αυτό! Χειμερίαν! Οχτώ μήνες ύπνο – χειμερερίαν και τους άλλους τέσσερεις να παραθερίζουμε στα πάρκα. Σόλων: Βέβαια, βέβαια … Εκ πρώτης όψεως βέβαια φαίνεται ολίγον παράλογο … Δεν το απορρίπτω … γενικώς…. Λουκάς: Ούτε στέγη, ούτε ρούχα, ούτε ρούχα, ούτε τίποτα! Κατάλαβες; Αυτό είναι! 14 Σόλων: Τετέλεσθαι! Θα μπούμε! Λουκάς: Θα μπούμε; Πού θα μπούμε. Σόλων: Τέρμα σου λέω! Θα μπούμε στο κατεστημένο! Λουκάς: Τι είν’ αυτό; Ουζάδικο είναι. Σόλων: Το κατεστημένο; Αυγό! … Σόλων: Αν μπεις εκεί μέσα, πάει! Τελείωσε! Λουκάς: Τελείωσε; Τα ‘χεις όλα. Σόλων: Όλα! Όλα! Λουκάς: Και υπάρχει τόσο μεγάλο αυγό. Σόλων: Ναι, φτάνει να μπεις! Υπάρχει! 15 Λουκάς: Όχι! Δε μπαίνω μες στ’ αυγό! Σκάω! Σόλων: Μωρό μου, έχει αιρ-κοντίσιον! Λουκάς: Θέλω να βλέπω! Σόλων: Έχει … έχει τηλεόραση! Λουκάς: Ουρανό! Δέντρα! Σόλων: Έχει…. Λουκάς: Ψέυτικα! Σόλων: Ψεύτικα, αληθινά δεν ξέρω … Πάντως έχει. Λουκάς: Σόλων, θα μας χωράει και τους δυο το αυγό. Σόλων: Και τους δυο, μωρό μου … Όχι. Ο καθένας μας θα έχει από ένα αυγό. Μόνος του. Άνεσις! Λουκάς: Μόνος? Σόλων: Μόνος. Μόνος…. Λουκάς: Όχι Σόλων μόνος. Δεν μπορώ μόνος! Δεν αντέχω μόνος, Σόλων! Σε παρακαλώ, όχι μόνος Σόλων! Όχι μόνος! Σόλων: Μωρό μου … Μωρό μου … θέλεις … θέλεις να μη μπούμε. Λουκάς: Μα μη μπούμε! Να μη μπούμε! Σόλων: Να βγούμε έξω. Λουκάς: Έξω! Έξω, ναι! Σόλων: Έξω, αλλά, πρέπει να ξέρεις, Λουκά, ότι έξω από το αυγό…. Λουκάς: Ναι…. Σόλων: δε θα ’χουμε ούτε πολυθρόνες με αφρολέξ, ούτε καφέ, ούτε ουίσκι, ούτε ψητό στα κάρβουνα μωρό μου! Λουκάς: Σόλων! Σόλων, θα ‘μια ολιγαρκής! Σόλων: Ολιγαρκής πρέπει να ‘σαι! Λουκάς: Από δω και πέρα θα ‘μια ολιγαρκής αλλά, σε παρακαλώ, Σόλων, έξω! Σόλων: Έξω! … Σόλων: Αφού λοιπόν αυτό θέλεις, έστω … έξω! Όσο ελπίζουμε! Όσο μπορούμε! Όσο αντέχουμε! Λουκάς: Έξω! 16 Most terms for the analysis of the actors’ movements have been borrowed from the work of Cynthia Baron and Sharon Marie Carnicke on employing the Laban Movement Analysis as a methodology for the analysis of acting (see Baron, 2008; Baron and Carnicke, 2008).

Goddard.indb 86

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

Surrealist entertainment during the Greek dictatorship   87

References C. Adamou, with I. Gaillard and D. Mustata (2008), ‘Institutionalising European television: The shaping of European television institutions and infrastructures’, in J. Bignell and A. Fickers (eds), A European Television History. Oxford: Blackwell. C. Baron (2008), ‘Η υποκριτική μέσα από το πρίσμα της ανάλυσης κίνησης Laban’ (‘Performance through the lens of Laban Movement Analysis’), in C. Adamou (Χ. Αδάμου) (ed.), Ο ηθοποιός ανάμεσα στη σκηνή και στην οθόνη (Acting on Stage/Acting on Screen). Athens: Kastanioti. C. Baron and S. M. Carnicke (2008), Reframing Screen Performance. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. J. Bignell and S. Lacey (eds) (2005), Popular Television Drama: Critical Perspectives. Manchester: Manchester University Press. G. Dampasis (Γ. Δάμπασης) (2002), Την εποχή της τηλεόρασης (In the Era of Television). Athens: Kastanioti. L. Graver and R. Federman (eds) (1979), Samuel Beckett: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. G. Karter (Γ. Κάρτερ) (2004), Ελληνική ραδιοφωνία τηλεόραση: ιστορία και ιστορίες (Greek Radio Television: History and Stories). Athens: Kastanioti. M. Komninou (Μ. Κομνηνού) (1999), ‘Τηλεόραση και κινηματογράφος: η διαμάχη για την ηγεμονία στην περίοδο της δικτατορίας 1967–74’ (‘Television and cinema: The struggle for dominance during the dictatorship, 1967–74’), in G. Athanasatou, A. Rigos and S. Seferiadis (Γ. Αθανασάτου, Α. Ρήγος, Σ. Σεφεριάδης) (eds), Η δικτατορία 1967–74: Πολιτικές πρακτικές – Ιδεολογικός λόγος – Αντίσταση (The Dictatorship 1967–74: Political Practices – Ideological Discourse – Resistance) (2nd edn). Athens: Kastanioti. M. I. Meletopoulos (M. I. Μελετόπουλος) (2008), Η Δικτατορία των συνταγματαρχών: κοινωνία, ιδεολογία, οικονομία (The Colonels’ Dictatorship: Society, Ideology, Economy ) (3rd edn). Athens: Papazisi. S. Neale and F. Krutnik (1990), Popular Film and Television Comedy. London: Routledge. D. Papadimitriou (Δ. Παπαδημητρίου) (1999) ‘“Και εχρειάσθη η 21η Απριλίου διά να μη απωλεσθή η νίκη του Γράμμου”: η ιδεολογία της μετεμφυλιακή Δεξιάς και η κατάργηση της Ιστορίας στο λόγο της “Επανάστασης”’ (‘“And the 21st of April was necessary to retain the victory at Grammos”: right-wing ideology after the Civil War and the denunciation of history in the “revolution’s” logos’), in G. Athanasatou, A. Rigos and S. Seferiadis (Γ. Αθανασάτου, Α. Ρήγος, Σ. Σεφεριάδης) (eds), Η δικτατορία 1967–74: Πολιτικές πρακτικές – ιδεολογικός λόγος – αντίσταση (The Dictatorship 1967–74: Political Practices – Ideological Discourse – Resistance) (2nd edn). Athens: Kastanioti. J. Rickman (ed.) (1957), A General Selection from the Works of Sigmund Freud. New York: Liveright. S. Valoukos (Σ. Βαλούκος) (1998), Ελληνική τηλεόραση: οδηγός τηλεοπτικών σειρών 1967–1998 (Greek Television: Guide to Television Series 1967–1998). Athens: Aigokeros. S. Valoukos (Σ. Βαλούκος) (2008), Ιστορία της Ελληνικής τηλεόρασης (History of Greek Television). Athens: Aigokeros. P. Wells (1998), ‘“Where everybody knows your name”: open convictions and closed contexts in the American situation comedy’, in S. Wagg (ed.), Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Difference. London: Routledge.

Goddard.indb 87

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

88  Christina Adamou

Videography Ρεπορτάζ χωρίς Σύνορα: ‘Ελλάς Ελλήνων Χριστιανών’ (Reportage Without Frontiers: ‘Greece of the Greek Christians’), episode 3, ET1, tx. 6 November 2006. Θεματική βραδιά (Thematic Evening), ET1, tx. 6 November 2006. Εκείνος και… Εκείνος (This One and That One), EIRT, 1972–74. Εκείνος και… Εκείνος (This One and That One), Remake, ET-2, 1989. Το σήριαλ των Σήριαλ (The Serial of Serials), ET, July 2003.

Goddard.indb 88

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

Part II Eastern bloc

Goddard.indb 89

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

Goddard.indb 90

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

6

Between politics and soap: The articulation of ideology and melodrama in Czechoslovak communist television serials, 1975–891 Irena Carpentier Reifová, Petr Bednařík and Šimon Dominik

During the period of Czechoslovak normalisation2 (1969–89), an important centre of everyday life was the private living room. As David Morley claims, home territories are far from being innocent, neutral spaces isolated from social and political processes (Morley, 2000). The family living room, decorated with floral curtains, plush coverings and wavering bluish light from an old-fashioned television set, vividly epitomises the social climate of that time – a politically motivated withdrawal of the people from a public sphere permeated with communist ‘newspeak’ and their retreat into their own private sanctuary. It was in this environment that the Czechoslovak television serials of the 1970s and 1980s – this chapter’s object of study – were watched on their first showings and turned into a cult genre of the period. Opening a chapter with these recollections might easily attract accusations of mere ‘nostalgia’ – a rather sensationalist demand for kitsch signifiers and easily understood, reified symptoms of the communist past (Boyer, 2006; Enns, 2007; Sarkisova and Apor, 2007). However, post-socialist nostalgia refers to serious and traumatic issues, even though they are displaced within trivial signifiers. The socialist era was consigned to oblivion immediately after 1989, and the urge to integrate the past back into the present clearly does not meet any existing political project. But it is exactly this ongoing post-socialist struggle over the future of the past that inspires us to ask questions about the nature of one of the most eloquent artefacts of the socialist past – the revered television serials of the 1970s and 1980s. Our view of television audiences in socialist Czechoslovakia is in line with Michel de Certeau’s concept of unavoidable everyday ­creativity that forces people to work with ‘what is available for supplies’ (de Certeau et al., 1998: 183). Hence our main interest here is to ask what was available in terms of textual structure and patterns of

Goddard.indb 91

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

92  Irena Carpentier Reifová et al.

ideological meaning in television serials in totalitarian Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s. We begin with a general examination of the status and political conditions of television serial production, before moving to discuss a specific example: using a case study of the serial Muž na radnici (Man at City Hall, 1976), we show how propagandist content was distributed along two types of storyline: ideological and melodramatic. A cult of national seriality It can be argued that the domestic television serial has acquired the status of ‘cult television’ (Reifová, 2001: 170). Television serials always occupied a special position in both production strategies and audience viewing habits in the Czechoslovak television environment. The first television serial, Rodina Bláhova (The Blaha Family), was broadcast in 1959, only six years after television broadcasting had commenced. From its establishment until the political transformation in 1989, Czechoslovak Television (Československá televize; ČST) aired 283 serial dramas (see Table 6.1), the majority of which were broadcast within the two decades after 1968. Table 6.1  Numbers of first showings and re-runs of Czechoslovak television serial dramas, 1959–89

Quantity: n (%) Aggregate length

First showings

Re-runs

Total

151 (54) 62,092 minutes

132 (46) 61,707 minutes

283 (100)

Unlike international discourses on seriality, Czechoslovak television culture has never recognised the subtle genre and narrative specificities by which serial types have commonly been differentiated.3 Any type of television serial – whether rooted in comedy, drama or detective story – has always been referred to as a seriál. Although work on seriality in television and film studies offers a wide variety of sub-genres, English terms cannot fully capture the specificity of Czechoslovak communist serial television. In our opinion, the blanket usage of the term seriál in Czechoslovak discourse can be understood as a symptom of a cult because, through the absence of further categoris­ation, the genre resists any greater fragmentation, pragmatic reflection or deconstruction. So attempts to apply typologies of

Goddard.indb 92

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

Czechoslovak communist television serials, 1975–89   93

seriality that are commonly used elsewhere are inevitably somewhat inaccurate in discussing Czechoslovak serial dramas. When characteristics of form and content (such as episodic structure, length of episodes, number of episodes per season, lack of division into seasons, themes, plots, characters or settings) are combined, the result might be considered a rather unusual national variant of television seriality that cannot readily be fitted within existing classifications. Regarding this problem, the elusive nature of serial genre diversification has been noted before (Oltean, 1993; Koukoutsaki, 2003). We suggest, however, that one of the quintessential markers of the Czechoslovak normalisation serial arises from a peculiar fusion of ideological and melodramatic storylines. Consequently, we consider that the majority of Czechoslovak normalisation seriáls can be situated somewhere between socio-political drama and soap opera. Determining elements of ideological and melodramatic storylines In Czechoslovakia, the exclusive political capital of communist apparat­chiks was derived from the constitution itself – more precisely from its fourth article, implementing the so-called leading role of the Communist Party.4 Therefore, in analysing normalisation television serials, we can assume that any component contributing to the legiti­ mation of the leading role of the Communist Party in Czechoslovak society should be read as an ideological element. So elements of ideological storylines can be identified in terms of how party policy gets to be justified, glorified or merely repeated in the serials’ subject themes and characters, and their qualities, plots and settings. Although ideological storylines governed Czechoslovak television serials produced between 1968 and 1989, they rarely did so without being accompanied by strong dramatic narratives depicting upheavals in the characters’ personal lives.5 Outlines of the serials’ themes were politically approved (and repeatedly supervised in the course of production), but screenwriters were not usually restricted from including ‘soap-like’, romantic and psychological motifs – as long as these were authorised in advance by the Communist Party administration. Even though we situate Czechoslovak normalisation television serials be­ tween politics and soap, their melodramatic lines fit only some aspects of soap opera’s generic conventions and definitions (see Hobson, 2003).6 Hardly any formal attributes of soap opera can be applied to normalisation television serials, except that they attempted to provide realistic dramatised content and episodes usually had open endings (although not so sharply open that they could be described as ‘cliffhangers’). So our association of some aspects of these serials with soap

Goddard.indb 93

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

94  Irena Carpentier Reifová et al.

opera is made solely with reference to the serials’ ­melodramatic content (Ang, 1985). We understand melodramatic storylines as narrative segments concerning the emotional management of male–female relationships. This decision is reflected in the fact that one storyline in these serials was always constructed around a main character and his or her partner of the opposite gender (we can call them alpha-couples consisting of alpha-male and alpha-female characters). This is the case, for example, in the serial which will be discussed later: the city communist mayor Bavor and the female – or rather ‘female position’ – at his side are the alpha-couple in Man at City Hall. Hobson (2003: 53) takes a large family or a small community as typical soap-opera settings; Liebes and Livingstone (1998: 237) elaborate this differentiation further into dynastic, community and dyadic soap operas. Relying on these definitions, we suggest (and show below) that ideological and melodramatic elements were each distributed fairly consistently. Ideological storylines usually developed in a collective environment (most commonly a workplace), while melodramatic lines were concentrated into stories of romantic dyads. Political surveillance in Czechoslovak television ČST strongly supported the reformation policy of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC) during the so-called Prague Spring (January–August 1968). Consequently, it was one of the first institutions brought under strict ideological supervision after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. The re-­established, pro-Soviet power immediately started using the media to promote and legitimise its policy: ‘the broadcasting media were an important tool for the communist regimes; by controlling the news and media outlets they were able to disseminate their propaganda and restrict the flow of the ideas into the region’ (Wells, 1997: 106). Censorship was legally reinstated as early as September 1968, only three months after it was abolished, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CC-CPC) started to demand a pro-Soviet orientation from all the media: ‘The media system was purged of all reformists and was turned into a machine which spouted emotional, ideological propaganda whose intensity remained practically unchanged until the fall of communism in 1989’ (Kelly et al., 2004: 31). In 1970, checks on members of the CPC took place within the ČST staff branch. As a result, the CPC organisation in ČST lost 56.1 per cent of its members compared with 1968. Most were expelled, although some had left the party of their own accord beforehand

Goddard.indb 94

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

Czechoslovak communist television serials, 1975–89   95

(Cysařová, 1998: 45–6); expulsion from the party resulted in dismissal. Staff who were not members of the CPC were subjected to checks on their attitude towards the 1968 reformation policy, which resulted in another wave of sackings. A new system of checks, introduced by the CC-CPC presidium, was adopted for ČST in 1972. All employees had to pass this so-called complex personal assessment every two years, whether they were members of the CPC or not. It mainly evaluated a worker’s political commitment and development (e.g. membership of and position in a trade union or in the Union of Czechoslovak–Soviet Friendship, participation in political training, etc.). Professional quali­ fications and work performance were only of secondary concern. In the same year, the CC-CPC presidium approved a list of thirty-three posts within the management of ČST for which the authorisation of the CC-CPC secretariat was required, including the director-general and his deputies, directors of regional studios and editors-in-chief of individual editorial offices (Cysařová, 1998: 53). The CPC immediately used its newly gained authority to appoint two employees of its Central Committee as deputies to the director-general, in an attempt to strengthen ideological oversight of broadcasting. In general, we can talk about external controls on ČST production, which were carried out by the authorities of the CPC, and internal controls, which were performed mainly by executive staff. For example, it was entirely commonplace for officials from the CC-CPC Department for Mass Media to participate in weekly editorial briefings where the programmes broadcast were assessed (Reifová, 2007: 391). An ambiguous relationship between internal and external ideological supervision of ČST production is evident in the recollections of the widow of Jaroslav Dietl, a successful screenwriter of television serials. Commenting on events prior to the filming of the serial Nemocnice na kraji města (Hospital on the Outskirts) in 1977, Magdalena Dietlová says: Milena Balašová, the deputy for the programme at that time, went totally insane. She got scared and she wanted to put off the shooting. Suddenly she had doubts about whether the script was sufficiently loyal; if it was enough that the main character is a member of the party and whether there should perhaps be something more. Next day she calmed down and the shooting began. What was running through her head; by whom she was scared all of a sudden – I don’t know. Somebody must have disturbed her.7

Three main elements of ideological pressure on television production during the years of normalisation can be distinguished – the institution of the so-called Ideological-Thematic Plan (ITP), the

Goddard.indb 95

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

96  Irena Carpentier Reifová et al.

c­ onstant control of scripts and the process of approval projections. The ITP listed everything that ČST intended to produce in the coming year and was considered absolutely mandatory, as it was authorised by the ideological commission of the CC-CPC. The Plan served as an overview of the ratio of ideology-free programmes on the one hand to politically influenced titles on the other. Only a sufficient repre­sentation of the latter programmes (e.g. films about the history of the communist and working-class movement, biographies of communist officials, etc.) could ensure that there were also opportunities to produce a certain number of programmes which did not relate ­directly to the party line. Script control began in the relevant editorial office. Here, executive staff read and commented on each script that was submitted and its author had to modify it until the head of the office approved it. ČST management provided a further level of control, as only it had the authority to approve programmes for production. Naturally, managers did not look at all scripts, but ideologically important and financially demanding programmes, such as serials, were always examined. The final step was the approval projection process. Newly completed programmes were screened for members of management and sometimes also for CC-CPC officials or even high-ranking politicians. Scarcely any programmes were approved without some changes being ordered. However, even this stage was sometimes not the end. The constant control continued and some programmes were found unsuitable for further broadcasting even after their first transmission. For example, the last episode of the five-part serial Byl jednou jeden dům (There Once Was a House, 1975), set during World War II, had to be significantly modified more than six months after its first screening because party officials considered its depiction of the liberation of Prague by Red Army forces to be insufficiently spectacular. The modification was described as follows: ‘The fifth episode of the serial There Once Was a House was rearranged and thus given an appealing and relevant social form’.8 Man at City Hall: Normalisation serials as ideological and melodramatic Man at City Hall (Muž na radnici, hereafter referred to as MR), one of the early serial dramas from the 1970s, can be used as an example of the narrative combination of melodramatic and ideological storylines. The script was written by Jaroslav Dietl, who is considered to be the most celebrated screenwriter of television serials in Czechoslovak television history.9

Goddard.indb 96

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

Czechoslovak communist television serials, 1975–89   97 Ideological storyline and political surveillance

Using basic methods of television historiography (Godfrey, 2006), we can reconstruct some of the circumstances surrounding the production and ideological supervision of the serial’s content. MR was created as a television contribution to the 1976 elections for repre­sentative bodies, although the elections were not free.10 As described in the ITP, it was to be a five-part serial, called simply Poslanec (Deputy), about a deputy, the chairman of a National Committee. The serial was supposed to show: the everyday activity of deputies and officials in a smaller town, their work with people, as well as conflicts resulting from their concern for the town’s development. The serial is based on authentic experiences of several deputies from the Central Bohemia region, and it was intended for broadcasting during pre-elections.11

It is not clear when this planned five-part mini-series was extended to an eleven-part regular serial, but even after this change the title Poslanec was still used.12 However, copies of the script issued in the first three months of 1976 already operated with the changed title První muž na radnici (First Man at City Hall), which was later shortened to the final Muž na radnici (Man at City Hall). The intention to broadcast MR during the pre-election period was reflected in very hurried preparations for shooting, as well as a rush during the shooting itself. Scripts were not all provided at the same time – Jaroslav Dietl was still finishing them one by one between January and March, while the actors were already being rehearsed and the stage crew were carrying out inspections of exteriors and props (which continued during the filming itself ).13 Furthermore, the music was not recorded after the editing of the filmed material as usual – recording sessions were carried out before the shooting began and during its opening days. The shooting was conducted at a rapid pace over sixty-eight days, between 15 March and 20 June 1976, and the producers managed to shorten the original plan by one month. Approval projections for the final editing occurred very quickly so that ČST could run the serial at the chosen date during the election campaign in early September 1976. This haste in the completion of the serial and in its entire production is documented in a letter, signed by the chief of the production stage crew, the editor and the director, to the ČST director-general, Deputy Milena Balašová, at the end of May 1976: We need promptly the largest possible capacity for editing all eleven episodes so that we can undertake control and approval projections,

Goddard.indb 97

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

98  Irena Carpentier Reifová et al. and also so that we can get a true picture of the quality and political implications of the entire serial.… We would like to point out that … it is intended as one of the important pre-election campaigns for repre­ sentative bodies for the very beginning of September.14

In the ČST archive, one undated and unsigned page contains a handwritten requirement for four edits in four episodes, which probably comes from the time of the approval projection meetings, and is perhaps related to topics discussed at them. Three of these instructions were actually implemented. Two of them are artistically motivated, but one almost certainly has a political background. According to the script of the seventh episode, one character is supposed to give a reply: ‘Well, you know, such a construction requires enthusiasm and effort. Here it is not enough simply to be turning up like in a factory’.15 Editing for the final version of the episode removed the comparison to turning up at a factory, which was probably read as an insult to the favoured working class by those giving approval. The ideological storyline in MR links factors associated with the work and the political effort of the main character, which the story defines as a struggle for a change. The narrative covers the period between 1971 and 1976. The main character is František Bavor, the chairman of the City National Committee in a fictitious city named Starý Kunštát. In the first year of the story, he is a National Committee deputy, but he has no administrative role and works as a technician in a factory. Starý Kunštát is portrayed as a place with a number of partially constructed buildings from the 1960s which the current city leaders are unable to complete. Consequently, party authorities require a change in the city administration. The serial emphasises clearly that only the arrival of new people in 1971, including Bavor as chairman, sets the wheels in motion. As chairman, Bavor begins to champion the idea of a radical reconstruction of the city. He wants to have the historic centre demolished and to build concrete housing blocks in its place. Within Bavor’s sphere of action, the story progresses via a series of events in which he pushes this objective forward. An important feature of Bavor’s character is his loyalty to his own convictions even in situations which do not bring him popu­ larity. He persuades the town’s citizens of the need to demolish the old buildings. His reasoning is that the interests of the collective should be put above the interests of individuals. Further­more, the narrative constructs its essential story conflict (Bavor’s struggle for the demolition of the old buildings and their replacement by the concrete housing development) on the basis of one of the most typical binary oppositions of modern society – the bluntly presented difference between the aged/old fashioned/backward looking and the new/progressive/

Goddard.indb 98

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

Czechoslovak communist television serials, 1975–89   99

future oriented. Bavor’s reasoning proceeds from the assumption that every sensible, logically thinking person should understand that when it is necessary to create space to build several hundred new flats, the owner of an old property should sell it for a price determined by state authorities and move into a new housing block. In this respect, the serial narrative linked fiction with reality. In the 1970s, there was considerable growth in housing construction in Czechoslovakia and 1,263,000 flats were made available (Kalinová, 2006: 21). The new housing consisted predominantly of concrete housing blocks; in the Czechoslovak conditions of that time, ­system-built concrete flats represented a higher standard of living, and were provided with hot water and central heating. In such communal developments, it was possible to house a large number of people within a relatively short time, which the party favoured as part of a strategy to lessen public discontentment through increased civil well-being. As a philosophy, this was equivalent to Hungarian ‘goulash’ socialism (Varga, 2008: 81), for example. The CPC needed in particular to offer acceptable accommodation to young families because of an increase in the number of children born in the first half of the 1970s.16 The communist regime knew that without substantial housing construction there was a risk of increasing discontentment among young people, so it promoted apartment building even at the cost of demolishing traditional developments and losing the original appearance of towns. In MR, ideological content (defined as a general support for the leading role of the CPC) was mixed with goal-directed agitation (urging the audience towards a particular idea). Through the words and actions of Bavor, MR explicitly agitated in favour of the process which was taking place both in the fictitious story and in real-life Czechoslovak socialism at the same time. Following Koukoutsaki, who identifies ‘social drama’ as part of her innovative typology of serial television sub-genres, the Czechoslovak normalisation series would be a ‘social-political’ drama (Koukoutsaki, 2003: 720). Social issues are always presented in relation to the political line, which guarantees their satisfactory solution. Convergence/divergence between ideological and melodramatic storylines

Besides the ideological storyline (work, political, public), a melo­ dramatic storyline (personal, poetic, private) also appears in MR, as in other normalisation serial dramas. The screenwriter lets the pro­ tagon­ist progress through many personal problems which are centred around the main heterosexual couple – in this case, around Bavor as an alpha-male character and a female who occupies the ‘female

Goddard.indb 99

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

100  Irena Carpentier Reifová et al.

position’ at his side. It is noteworthy that while the ‘alpha-male’ is the constant main hero, the ‘alpha-female position’ comes to be occu­pied by three different women as the narrative develops. Bavor’s wife/archetypal love Ludmila dies at the end of the first episode, in a road accident. He replaces her with a rather shallow dressmaker, Jitka, whom he leaves after they have a disagreement and he discovers her infidelity. Slowly he falls in love with the third woman to take up the alpha-female position, one of the city’s inhabitants-in-need, the lyrical and sensitive Kateřina. In secondary storylines linked with the characters of the main melodramatic line, Bavor’s children are also significant. His daughter Bohunka lacks experience (and obviously a mother’s advice as well) and she falls in love with a local dandy, Vít. But Vít feels more strongly about his career as a car racer and Bohunka becomes a single mother. However, Mikuláš, Bavor’s helper and the main architect of the demolition, later gains her confidence and she enters into a relationship with him in the end. Bavor’s son Přemek wants to take advantage at school of his father’s high position, but Bavor opposes all attempts at favouritism for his son. The ideological and melodramatic storylines do not supplant each other; nor are they simply parallel. On the contrary, they intersect with each other and push each other forward, but mainly they are consequent upon each other. The events of the ideological line, though, have priority in determining causation: movements in the melo­dramatic line are often only a consequence of the events in the ideological line, or they offer particular examples which illustrate the general value systems that underpin the ideological line. The relations of cause and consequence between the ideological and melodramatic lines can be expressed clearly in the form of a table showing how ideological causes and melodramatic consequences are organised in particular episodes (see Table 6.2). As Table 6.2 suggests, events from the ideological line have stronger narrative power. They move the story forward, and they dominate sequences of cause and consequence. Conversely, events from the melodramatic line have a greater dramatic (and often lyrical) value. Nowadays, components of melodramatic storylines in Jaroslav Dietl’s serials are acknowledged as the best in Czechoslovak tele­vision screenwriting.17 What is praised is the emotional realism of the characters, the potential for identification, and the ambiguity and psychological persuasiveness of the characters and the relations into which they enter. Among the characteristics of Dietl’s melodramatic lines, we find some indications of what Western television studies summarise under the term ‘quality television’: ‘a form of television which is seen as more literate, more stylistically complex and more psychologically

Goddard.indb 100

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

Czechoslovak communist television serials, 1975–89   101 Table 6.2  Episode synopses of Man at City Hall illustrating relationships between the ideological and melodramatic narrative lines (NB. For the sake of simplicity, some episodes are omitted from this table) Episode

Ideological line: Causes

Melodramatic line: Consequences

1 Havárie (Accident)

1971: Bavor works in a factory and is a deputy of the City National Committee. Citizens complain that the city has become dilapidated.

Bavor’s wife Ludmila dies in a road accident when she drives into a pipe from the dilapidated scaffolding at an unrenovated house.

2 Rozhořčení (Indignation)

At a civil committee meeting, Bavor criticises leaders of the City National Committee.

Bavor’s colleague Vlasta (another deputy) admires his resolve and is platonically in love with him.

3 Byt (Place to stay)

As chairman, Bavor is visited by Bavor becomes chair of the Kateřina, who has been ejected City National Committee. He from her flat by her husband. organises a survey among Bavor finds her gentleness and citizens which shows their sensitivity attractive. scepticism towards any changes.

6 Vzbouření (Rebellion)

Bavor’s second wife, Jitka (they Bavor champions the city’s married at the beginning of reconstruction, but gets episode 4), accepts the offer of a into disputes with the city senior position in a tailor’s shop council and with the owners in a regional city. Bavor, already of properties assigned for unpopular, fears that he will be demolition. Bavor’s reputation in suspected of favouritism. Bavor’s the city suffers a crisis. loyal vice-chairman, Hlavica, ends his affair with Bára, a young lady from administration, fearing that the difficult situation will damage his communist resolve. Bavor meets Kateřina again. She Opposition to the reconstruction sides with those objecting to project continues. The city reconstruction because her organises a citizens’ meeting at parents would lose their family which young people supporting home. demolition and new housing construction gain the upper hand. Bavor quarrels with his wife Jitka. The reconstruction commences, She claims that his interest in the beginning with the demolition project arises out of a desire for of an old pub in which meetings personal fame. After the quarrel, had often taken place. However, Jitka leaves Bavor. the construction continues to meet many difficulties. The death of Kateřina’s father brings Word spreads through the city Kateřina and Bavor together again that the old teacher, Hanák, has in an intimate and understanding committed suicide because of dialogue. the forced sale of his house. But it transpires that Hanák died from a heart attack. The new housing development is Bavor and Kateřina, and Bavor´s daughter Bohunka with Mikuláš, finished and, amid festivities, is begin new lives together in new handed over to citizens for use. flats in the new housing blocks.

7 Syn (Son)

8 Silvestr (New Year’s Eve)

9 Křížové tažení (Crusade)

11 Setkání (Rendezvous)

Goddard.indb 101

5/30/2013 1:41:26 PM

102  Irena Carpentier Reifová et al.

“deep” than ordinary television fare’ (Jane Feuer, quoted in Akass and McCabe, 2007: 8). In our opinion, the political refinement of Dietl’s serials is em­ bedded precisely in the way that the divergence and convergence between the ideological and melodramatic storylines are managed. Dietl’s main ‘trick’, which made his television drama serials the cult genre of the period, lay in keeping the ideological and melodramatic lines suf­ficiently close for censors to approve but simultaneously distant enough to enable audiences to identify with them. At the moments when the storylines fully intersect, the fragile convergence– divergence equilibrium is disrupted, the propagandistic appeal becomes too obvious and the resulting combination of propaganda and romance renders the scene unintentionally comical. A sequence which illustrates this is the dialogue between Bavor’s second-in-­ command, Hlavica, and his mistress, Bára, in episode 6 (see Table 6.2): Hlavica: I wanted to tell you that this is a historic turning point. Everything is at stake now. Maybe even tonight. At moments like this, it becomes clear who is a good communist and who is not. Bára: Why are you telling me this, what does it have to do with me? Hlavica: I am telling you this because I must not fail. Bára: Fail in what? Hlavica: In the whole idea of the project here and letting down František and history in general. Bára, I have to break up with you.18

In most episodes, however, a more sophisticated relationship of apparent divergence is established between the ideological and melodramatic storylines. They diverge in content but converge in the basic organisation of the intersecting lines within the story. From the latter point of view, the two storylines are closely coordinated and linked by a relationship between causes (located in events within the ideological line) and consequences (developing the story as components within the melodramatic line). In terms of content, though, both lines are quite independent of each other: ideological components involve issues of political significance and melodramatic components involve issues of emotional significance. The level at which the two lines inter­relate is a deeper layer of the story structure, and it is visible only by vigilance or by application of Althusser’s method of ‘symptomatic reading’ (Althusser and Balibar, 1971: 8). Elements of ‘poetics’ (­emotional/ relationship-oriented parts of the narrative), however, are not at all autonomous in these serials, and they make sense only as a consequence or illustration of elements from the world of ‘politics’ (idea/ action-oriented parts of the narrative). Bavor’s first wife and archetypal love Ludmila, for instance, does not die at the end of the first episode in

Goddard.indb 102

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

Czechoslovak communist television serials, 1975–89   103

isolation from the rest of the story. This event in the melodramatic line (death of the first alpha-female) is only a function of the dynamics of the ideological storyline. The city is falling apart and Ludmila pays with her life because she drives into a disintegrating piece of scaffolding. In other words, had it not been necessary to re-establish the eroded equilibrium of the ideological line (the city is falling apart because it is governed poorly; in 1971, it is still in the hands of weak and inconsistent communists from the time of the attempted liberal reform), this tragic event in the melodramatic line need not have happened. Conclusion Our schema of melodramatic and ideological storylines in communist television serials can easily be translated into the terms developed by Newcomb, who worked with concepts of ‘choric’ and ‘lyric’ drama (Newcomb and Alley, 1984: 96). Choric drama is understood as an artistic representation which fully identifies itself with a society’s domi­nant ideology, whereas lyric drama tends to negotiate with the system through individual, personalised voices (Ma, 1996: 46). We operate with the assumption that there is an established overlap between ideological and choric qualities, and between melodramatic and lyric qualities in television dramas. Drawing upon Ma’s application of ­Newcomb’s original dichotomy, we wish to conclude that the particular management of the equilibrium between choric (ideological) and lyric (melodramatic) parts may be one of the narrative strategies creating a productive tension between the dominant ideology in the television text and the contingent reading modes available for the audiences. MR is a typical example of how the melodramatic and the ideological can diverge through their separation into two different storylines, which nevertheless still converge at a deeper level of the narrative structure. The melodramatic voice is plainly present in the communist serials but, at the same time, the lyrical part is funda­ mentally subordinated to the choric, political, ideological storyline through the distribution of cause and consequence. The melodramatic line legitim­ises the ideological line, cooperates with it, and both gain crucial comprehensibility from this mutual relationship. We think that this simultaneous co-presence of the ideological and the melodramatic storylines – as shown in the narrative structure of MR – can explain one aspect of the enormous popularity of the serial genre in the period of Czechoslovak normalisation. The fluctuating convergence and divergence between ideology and melodrama opened the texts up for different reading positions, making the television serials more flexible and thus available for broad consumption.

Goddard.indb 103

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

104  Irena Carpentier Reifová et al.

Notes 1 This chapter is an output from a long-term project devoted to the study of television popular culture (Czechoslovak and Czech serials and series), 1959– 2011, at the Centre for Media Studies (CEMES), Charles University of Prague. As such, it forms part of the research project entitled ‘The development of Czech society in the European Union: Challenges and risks (2005–2010)’, MSM0021620841. 2 ‘Normalisation’ is a name commonly given to the period 1969–89. It was characterised by the restoration of the conditions prevailing before the liberation reform period led by Alexander Dubček (which culminated in the ‘Prague Spring’) and the subsequent preservation of this ‘new’ status quo. 3 Glen Creeber (2004: 8) provides one of the most complete typologies by differentiating the single play, television film, soap opera, anthology series, serial and mini-series. However, sitcom (e.g. Langford, 2005: 15–23) and docusoap (e.g. Bignell, 2003: 198) are missing even here. 4 ‘Vedoucí silou ve společnosti i ve státě je předvoj dělnické třídy, Komunistická strana Československa, dobrovolný bojový svazek nejaktivnějších a nejuvědomělejších občanů z řad dělníků, rolníků a intelligence’ (‘The communist party is the leading force in the society and the state; it is the working class vanguard, a voluntary combat union of the most active citizens among workers, farmers and intelligentsia’) (Ústava Československé socialistické republiky, Zákon č. 100/1960 Sb., kapitola 1, článek 4) (Constitution of the Czechoslovak Socialistic Republic, Law no. 100/1960, chapter 1, article 4). Source: www.psp.cz/docs/texts/constitution_1960.html (accessed November 2008). 5 Unusually, Gottwald (ČST, 1986, directed by Evžen Sokolovský, five epi­sodes) – a period version of the life story of Klement Gottwald, the first Czechoslovak President after the communist takeover in 1948 – may be an example of a television serial in which the ideological storyline was very much to the fore. 6 Dorothy Hobson identifies the following soap opera attributes: transmitted regularly and frequently (often daily), aimed at a female audience, allotted daytime or early-evening slots, a large and scarcely changing cast, continuing over years, produced cheaply and accorded low prestige, concerned with the everyday lives of large families or small communities, attempting to mimic real-time and realistic events, including several interweaving storylines, and employing open endings to episodes (Hobson, 2003: 53–4). 7 Interview with Magdalena Dietlová, 12 July 2006, archive of Irena Carpentier Reifová. ‘Ona najednou znejistěla, zpanikařila, zda je to dost angažované a zda stačí, že primář Sova je ve straně. Po třech dnech si to rozmyslela a natáčení spustila. Co jí běželo hlavou, proč se to stalo, kdo ji najednou polekal, vyděsil, to já nevím. Někdo ji znejistil.’ 8 ‘Podstatným přepracováním V. dílu byl dotvořen seriál „Byl jednou jeden dům“ do výrazné a významné společenské podoby’ (approval projection minutes, 26 February 1976; APF ČT, Red 30). 9 The character of Jaroslav Dietl is so multi-faceted that we cannot address it here in sufficient detail. Dietl participated in anti-occupation broadcasting in 1968 and he was subsequently removed from the in-house CPC organisation at ČST. At the same time, however, he started to accept offers for serial scripts at the beginning of the normalisation era, even though it was clear that he would have to stick to interpretations supporting the party’s dominance of Czechoslovak society. He wrote scripts for seventeen serials for ČST and,

Goddard.indb 104

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

Czechoslovak communist television serials, 1975–89   105 until his untimely death in 1985 (aged fifty-six), he became the most popular, and hence most prominent, author of television dramas to participate in the consolidation of the status quo. For further information, see Smetana (2000) and Cysařová (1998). 10 Citizens could only elect candidates of the so-called National Front, which incorporated approved political parties and social organisations. Not voting in the elections was considered to reflect a negative attitude towards the socialist establishment, so it led to persecution in employment and was recorded in personal files. Consequently, voter turnout was always around 98–99 per cent, and successful candidates got almost 100 per cent of the votes. 11 ‘Seriál měl ukazovat každodenní činnost poslanců a funkcionářů na menším městě, jejich práci s lidmi i konflikty, které přináší starost o rozvoj města. Cyklus je připravován na základě autentických zkušeností několika poslanců středočeského kraje a je zamýšlen k vysílání v předvolebním období’ (Ideově-tématický plán hlavních redakcí dramatického vysílání na léta [­Ideological-thematic plan of drama programmes’ main editorial offices], 1976, 1977–80, p. 45, APF ČT, Ve2 30). 12 See the requisition record for the allocation of graphic artists for the e­ levenpart serial Poslanec from 18 November 1975, APF ČT, Red 281. 13 A. Čapková and D. Hornerová (heads of production for MR), Hodnocení – seriálu „Muž na radnici“ (Assessment of the serial ‘Muž na radnici’), undated, APF ČT, Red 281. 14 ‘Potřebujeme urychleně maximální množství kapacit pro sestřih všech jedenácti dílů, abychom mohli udělat kontrolní a schvalovací projekce a vůbec, abychom si mohli udělat skutečný obraz o kvalitě a politickém dosahu celého seriálu.… Chceme upozornit, že … je určen jako jedna z důležitých předvolebních kampaní do zastupitelských orgánů na samotný začátek měsíce září’ (letter dated 21 May 1976, APF ČT, Red 281). 15 ‘To víš, taková stavba to chce nadšení a páru. Tady to není jako jen tak chodit někam do fabriky’ (MR, script of episode 7, scene 2, p. 6). 16 This increase can be linked partly to pro-population measures (convenient marriage loans, longer maternity leave). In addition, family life represented a form of achievement for many people because they had withdrawn or had to resign from a career or from participation in the public sphere. 17 See Tamchyna (2001), for example. 18 ‘Bára: Proč mi to říkáš, co to má společnýho se mnou? Hlavica: Já ti to říkám proto, že já nesmím zklamat. Bára: V čem zklamat nebo koho zklamat? Hlavica: Tady celou tu myšlenku o tom projektu a taky Františka a vůbec dějiny. Já se s tebou, Báro, musím rozejít.’ (MR, episode 6)

References K. Akass and J. McCabe (2007), Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. London: I. B. Tauris. L. Althusser and E. Balibar (1971), Reading Capital. New York: Knopf Doubleday. I. Ang (1985), Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Routledge. J. Bignell (2003), Introduction to Television Studies. London: Routledge. D. Boyer (2006), ‘Ostalgie and the politics of the future in Eastern Germany’, Public Culture, 18(2): 361–81. G. Creeber (2004), Serial Television: Big Drama on the Small Screen. London: BFI.

Goddard.indb 105

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

106  Irena Carpentier Reifová et al. J. Cysařová (1998), Televize a totalitní moc 1969–1975 (Television and Totalitarian Power 1969–1975). Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny. M. de Certeau, L. Giard and P. Mayol (1998), The Practice of Everyday Life. Volume 2: Living and Cooking. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. A. Enns (2007), ‘The politics of Ostalgia: Post-socialist nostalgia in recent German film’, Screen, 47(4): 475–91. D. G. Godfrey (2006), Methods of Historical Analysis in Electronic Media. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. D. Hobson (2003), Soap Opera. Oxford: Blackwell. L. Kalinová (2006), ‘Bydlení’ (‘Living standards’), in J. Kocian (ed.), Slovníková příručka k československým dějinám 1948–1989 (Dictionary of Czechoslovak History 1948–1989). Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny. Source: www.usd.cas.cz/ UserFiles/File/Publikace/Prirucka48_89.pdf (accessed August 2009). M. Kelly, G. Mazzoleni and D. McQuail (eds) (2004), The Media in Europe: The Euromedia Handbook. London: Sage. A. Koukoutsaki (2003), ‘Greek television drama: Production policies and genre diversification’, Media, Culture and Society, 25(6): 715–35. B. Langford (2005), ‘Our usual impasse: The episodic situation comedy re­visited’, in J. Bignell and S. Lacey (eds), Popular Television Drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press. T. Liebes and S. Livingstone (1998), ‘European soap operas: The diversification of a genre’, European Journal of Communication, 13(2): 147–80. E. K. W. Ma (1996), ‘The production of television ideologies: A comparative study of public and commercial TV dramas’, Gazette, 55(1): 39–54. D. Morley (2000), Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity. London: Routledge. H. Newcomb and R. S. Alley (1984), The Producer’s Medium: Conversations with Creators of American TV. New York: Oxford University Press. T. Oltean (1993), ‘Series and seriality in media culture’, European Journal of Communication, 8(1): 5–31. I. Reifová (2001), ‘Kleine Geschichte der Fernsehserie in der Tschechoslowakei und in Tschechien’ (‘A short history of television serials in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic’), in I. Bock, W. Schlott and H. Trepper (eds), Kommerz, Kunst, Unterhaltung: Die neue Popularkultur in Zentral-und Osteuropa (Commerce, Art, Entertainment: The New Popular Culture in Central and Eastern Europe). Bremen: Temmen. I. Reifová (2007), ‘Sons and daughters of Jacob, the glassworker: Dominant and resistant meanings in television popular fiction after 1985’, Mediální Studia, 4: 376–415. O. Sarkisova and P. Apor (eds) (2007), Past for the Eyes: East European Representations of Communism in Cinema and Museums After 1989. Budapest: Central European University Press. M. Smetana (2000), Televizní seriál a jeho paradoxy (The Television Serial and Its Paradoxes). Praha: ISV. R. Tamchyna (2001), Jaroslav Dietl, www.rozhlas.cz/historie/vyroci/_zprava/8352 (accessed November 2008). B. Varga (2008), ‘Façades: private and public in Kádár’s Kiss by Péter Forgács’, in O. Sarkisova and P. Apor (eds) , Past for the Eyes: East European Representations of Communism in Cinema and Museums After 1989. Budapest: Central European University Press. A. Wells (ed.) (1997), World Broadcasting: A Comparative View. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Goddard.indb 106

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

7

Re-staging the popular: Televising Nicolae Ceauşescu Dana Mustata

The last decade of the communist regime in Romania marks an intriguing moment in the history of the Soviet bloc. In the 1980s, Romania witnessed the growth of an unprecedented personality cult surrounding dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena. The phenomenon took place against a background of substantial economic decline and practices of severe coercion against all factions declared hostile to the regime and its leader. This chapter will look at the ways in which the specific national and historical context of 1980s Romania constructed and redefined popular television. While in Western discourses the popular ‘refers to those cultural forms which, through the rapid and easy dissemination of the mass media, are consumed by large numbers of people’ (O’Shaughnessy, 1990: 89), one may wonder about the extent to which totalitarian regimes, and particularly 1980s Romania in its most coercive period, accommodated popular televisual forms. Launched on 31 December 1956, the Romanian television service was combined with radio under the name Radioteleviziunea Română (Romanian Radiotelevision). It was placed under the supervision of the Radio and Television Committee of the Council of Ministers, which served as an intermediary body between the broadcasting institution and the state. In 1956, Romanian television started out in the same way as any other broadcasting institution in Europe: transferring programmes and personnel from radio to television. Its early period was characterised by relatively liberal programming featuring national as well as foreign content – from factual programmes to entertainment, including variety shows, political satires and drama series. The period from the mid-1960s until the end of the 1970s was the ‘golden age’ of Romanian television, with genres diversifying, television reporting and investigative journalism being developed within the ­ rogramming department and new genres such as the enquête social p

Goddard.indb 107

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

108  Dana Mustata

(current affairs) emerging. A second channel was added in 1968. But at the end of the 1970s, Romanian television entered its dictatorial phase, which lasted throughout the 1980s, when programmes became politicised and were made to please dictator Ceauşescu; the diversity of genres was reduced to political programming alone and broadcast content became scarce. The second channel was shut down in 1985, as were the local stations of Romanian television. Two main factors led to this dictatorial phase of Romanian tele­ vision: the economic crisis the country was experiencing at the time and the rise of Ceauşescu’s personality cult, which peaked in the 1980s. The economic crisis which the country found itself in was caused by Ceauşescu’s efforts to pay off the foreign debts resulting from his previous faulty economic policies. By the early 1980s, the country was ‘experiencing a traumatic economic and moral crisis brought about by the policies of the Ceauşescus’ regime. Material deprivation, social demoralization and official corruption reached unprecedented levels’ (Socor, 1985: 366). The economic crisis, which Ceauşescu attempted to solve by putting a strain on the population’s living standards, also affected the national broadcasting institution. During the 1980s, broadcasting hours were repeatedly decreased. By 1985, the service broadcast only between 8pm and 10pm on weekdays, from 3pm until 5pm and 8pm to 10pm on Saturdays, and from 12 noon until 3pm and 8pm to 10pm on Sundays.1 Back in 1957, Romanian public television started out with 571 transmission hours per annum, which had increased to 1,361 hours in 1971 and 1,642 in 1975, while the peak of transmission hours was reached in 1980, with 5,377 hours.2 The 1,414 hours of broadcasting in 1985 decreased to 1,411 hours in 1986, and to 1,263 hours in 1987 and 1988. As noted, by the mid-1980s, all regional channels of the television service, together with the second national channel, had ceased transmission altogether.3 At the same time, the costs of television production increased dramatically. In 1957, an hour of television cost 11,527 Romanian lei, rising to 68,245 lei in 1975 and 80,800 lei in 1980. Later in the decade, hourly television production costs amounted to 320,300 lei in 1985 and 367,537 lei in 1987.4 Although apparently paradoxical, the direct relationship between the decline in broadcasting hours and the dramatic increase in the hourly production rates emphasises a major shift in the nature of television programming at the time in Romania. Grandiose productions, festive representations and opulent spectacles all in the service of the regime and its dictator became common. Furthermore, live television production was seen as a way of cutting costs and complying with the economic shortages. Indeed, an increase in live broadcasting was demanded to help economise on imported film and programmes that

Goddard.indb 108

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

Televising Nicolae Ceauşescu   109

would previously have been recorded were instead transmitted live.5 In the light of these production practices, an internal Romanian tele­ vision report attested that the service had ‘the lowest audience rate in its history. Programmes [were] forcibly politicised, their quality was low and they no longer captured the attention of audiences, but rather engendered their fury. The entertainment and leisure factor disappeared almost entirely….’6 Under circumstances in which ostentatious politicised television productions became the main attractions in a severely reduced television schedule, but in which audiences no longer showed interest, the question of what could be considered popular television at the time becomes even more pertinent. This chapter will provide a descriptive account of the ways in which political control of television in 1980s Romania led to grandiose representations of the regime and its dictator, Nicolae Ceauşescu. The chapter will go further in illustrating the ways in which such representations, far from being particular to the national and political context of Romania in the 1980s, were in fact quite common televisual representations of totalitarian regimes and dictatorial leaders. What were unusual in 1980s Romania were the omnipresence and strict imposition of such representations on the television screen. Television under control In the 1980s, television representations paying homage to party ideology and the party leader become a politically disputed area. Whether they were broadcast live or pre-recorded, such representations involved specific practices of political control. But live television was considered a particularly vulnerable area, due to its immediate potential for disseminating hostile attitudes against the regime. On 18 November 1975, a roundtable meeting on live television was organised at Romanian Radiotelevision involving officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs as well as from television.7 Discussions at the meeting identified those areas with the highest dissident potential, which were deemed to be live transmissions of official state events, live sports broadcasts and live studio programmes. Live cameras and microphones, outside broadcast vans, and the editing rooms at the Radiotelevision Centre for Distribution and Control were also considered vulnerable to hostile acts. The roundtable drew up several preventive measures. In the event of hostile incidents, the camera ­operators had to act by zooming out, as they had limited possibilities to reframe the shot while live on air. A responsible editor was required to perform as a stand-in inside the television van at a live outside broadcast (OB). In case of an unexpected incident, the stand-in editors

Goddard.indb 109

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

110  Dana Mustata

were required to insert an appropriate image into the programme using the camera they had in their possession. Similarly, a responsible stand-in editor was to be present in the editing room at the studios. At the Centre for Distribution and Control, where the final check was performed, a person in charge could interrupt the live transmission to project a still image. Furthermore, two politically reliable persons had the duty to watch all programmes broadcast on both public television channels. All those in charge of counteracting potential dissident acts during a live broadcast were carefully pre-vetted by the Securitate, the communist secret services, which examined their political past and education as well as the political pasts of their families and immediate relatives. Ideally, such individuals came from working-class families, were members of the Romanian Communist Party, had been active within communist organisations at their workplace or at their educational institutions, had no relatives abroad, had carried out all previous tasks in the service of the party successfully and, in some cases, had collaborated with the Securitate. Building on the results of the roundtable meeting, the Securitate drew up a schematic visualisation of a live transmission involving OB vans.8 According to the schema, images from the different OB vans, together with those from the studios, were routed to the editing room inside Radiotelevision. From here, the output was directed to the ‘general check-up’ point. Before being sent out to the Distribution Centre – on the premises of Romanian Radiotelevision but staffed by the Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications – the content of the broadcast was passed on through a cabin for a final check of content. On top of the Distribution Centre was the distribution point, where the entire broadcasting process could be interrupted by remote control. Once passed through all the check points, the televisual material was finally routed to the transmitter situated on top of Casa Scinteii, the publishing house for the main communist press organ. What is notable in this official elaboration of the process for a live television trans­mission in Ceauşescu’s Romania is the existence of three main interference points that allowed for direct state control: the general check-up point, the cabin for the final contents check and the distribution point operated by remote control. In charge of each of these interference points were politically reliable people, approved by the party and the Securitate on the basis of the criteria described earlier. Political control was thus exercised not only over the symbolic output of Romanian television, namely its content, but additionally over its material infrastructure. While the party’s control over live transmissions focused primarily on counteracting the hostile potential of immediacy inscribed within

Goddard.indb 110

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

Televising Nicolae Ceauşescu   111

the technical process of live production, control over pre-recorded programmes focused primarily on the (self-)censorship of their textual content. Such control took distinctive forms: from pre-screening sessions to the direct interference of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu in the production process. All recorded programmes had as their central locus of control the pre-screening sessions that each one needed to pass through before being broadcast. By 1972, a programme received three or four ‘visas’.9 Only after receiving a first visa was a programme recorded, after which it could be edited. Once it became a finished product, the programme would then be viewed and controlled at various levels by the chief editor, the vice-president and the president of Romanian television. By the end of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, these pre-­ screening control sessions became much stricter and also involved party officials. These changes – part of a decade-long process – were initiated in the aftermath of Ceauşescu’s visit to China in 1971. Inspired by the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Ceauşescu initiated a series of reforms in Romania which also included changes in the organisation of power over the broadcasting institution. Until then, television had fallen under the direct control of the Radio and Television Committee of the Council of Ministers, a government organ which ensured that television broadcasting complied with socialist ideology. In March 1971, however, the Radio and Television Committee turned into the National Council on Romanian Radio and Television, whose composition was to be decided by both the Council of Ministers and the party’s Central Committee. The aim of the Council was to supervise the contents of radio and television broadcasts.10 As well as instituting a more attentive regime of control over television content, such organisational changes also denoted a combined party–state power structure over Romanian television and marked a direct institutional link between television and the Communist Party. In 1973, people from Ceauşescu’s entourage, including his son Nicu, were included as members of the National Council on Romanian Radio and Tele­vision.11 By 1977, a new decree12 affecting the organisation of the public broadcaster placed the institution directly under the super­vision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, an act that marked the exclusive control of the party over television. This centralisation of power in the hands of the party at the end of the 1970s sharpened control over television content. Speaking to journalist Andreea Pora in 2004, Liviu Tudor Samuila, formerly a programme-maker in the variety department of Romanian television, recalled:

Goddard.indb 111

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

112  Dana Mustata There was a pyramidal structure in the way [political] pressures were exercised over programmes. The pre-screening commissions comprised the management board of television, the secretary for propaganda at the party’s Central Committee…. We attended the screenings in fear. If the name of Ceauşescu appeared only ten times, if there was something distracting in the background, these were all considered problematic.13 (Pora, 2004)

Sometimes the problems raised during such screenings related to ideas in the programme that were not entirely in line with socialist ideology. At other times, they involved the use of certain terminology. Words like ‘province’ or ‘territories’ were considered undesirable, for example, as they made reference to the concept of regionalism within Romania, which contravened the socialist view on national unity.14 For the same reason, inhabitants of certain regions were not to be referred to by terms denoting the name of their specific local area. The pre-screening sessions constituted the main platform for censorship inside public television. Paradoxically, in 1977, Ceauşescu passed a bill abolishing censorship (Schopflin, 1983: 167). However, this Act only had the effect of placing censorship practices under a vaguer institutional framework. What was actually abolished in 1977 was the Press and Publications Bureau, the institution hitherto responsible for censorship. Now the Bureau’s personnel were integrated within publishing institutions and communications media, becoming part of the supervision teams operating in every publishing house, in radio and television, and in the editorial offices of the press. With censors now having a direct role in the mass media, self-censorship was further encouraged. Writers and radio and television staff were turned into censors through the promise of a flourishing career. A manuscript needed first to be presented to a group of colleagues, who proved to be much stricter than a professional censor. By the end of the 1980s, the control filters on television programmes were further heightened and became still narrower as the final voice of authority over television programming became Elena and Nicolae Ceauşescu themselves. The television of a personality cult The shifting nature of television control in the 1980s corresponded to the growth of Ceauşescu’s personality cult. During the time of Ceauşescu’s rule, Mary Ellen Fischer, a non-Romanian observer of his leadership, wrote: ‘The Ceauşescu idol [was] created after 1969 and was given a number of faces’ (Fischer, 1981: 127). Omniscience – mostly expressed through his speeches – bravery, devotion and hard

Goddard.indb 112

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

Televising Nicolae Ceauşescu   113

work were all attributes that Fischer assigned to the image of the leader. But the extremes to which the media go in enhancing the total image create skepticism as to its validity even among otherwise sympathetic observers. No one could be quite so brilliant, courageous, hard-working, unselfish, and honest as Ceauşescu is supposed to be. He has indeed become so perfect that he cannot be emulated; rather than an example to be imitated, Ceauşescu has indeed become an idol to be obeyed. (Fischer, 1981: 130)

Throughout the 1980s, Ceauşescu was represented more and more as a perfect idol, a fact which nevertheless served to isolate him from the social reality in the country as well as from the growing civil hostility towards him. Coming to power in 1965 after the death of the former communist leader, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceauşescu initially won not only the approval of his people but also that of international opinion. In 1968, he became a hero when he dismissed the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia as a ‘great mistake and a shameful moment in the history of the communist movement’ (Fischer, 1989: 1). Through the 1960s and 1970s, his independent policy towards the Soviet Union and the visible improvement in living standards in the country ensured the consolidation of his power and led to him winning acceptance within the party and among the masses. By the mid-1980s, however, his decision to pay off the country’s foreign debt had generated severe poverty and scarcity, wiping out Ceauşescu’s previous achievements. The increased measures of coercion instituted in all areas of society, together with the escalation of his personality cult, transformed him into a much-contested dictatorial figure throughout the 1980s. Equally prominent, however, was his wife Elena. She became a public figure in 1971, after which she was promoted rapidly within the party, becoming vice-president of the Council of Ministers in 1980 (Fischer, 1989: 171). By the end of the 1970s, Elena had become a dominant political figure in her own right, almost as much as her husband: Despite the praise heaped upon her by the Romanian press, Elena Ceauşescu is not a popular personality in most of the country. She does not project the practical competence and concern of an Eleanor Roosevelt or the mystical charm and beauty of Eva Peron. Although Nicolae Ceauşescu’s image has become extremely ostentatious and lacking in credibility, it remains more palatable than hers; at least, Romanians say, he earned his high office, rising to the pinnacle of power through hard work and political skill. She, on the other hand, is regarded as the undeserving beneficiary of his generosity. She does

Goddard.indb 113

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

114  Dana Mustata have the revolutionary credentials as a textile worker and communist activist in the 1930s, but those activities are not as documented as her extravagant use of furs and designer fashions in the 1970s and 1980s. (Fischer, 1989: 172, emphasis in original)

With regard to television, the last decade of totalitarian power in Romania was characterised by the personal dictatorial control of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu themselves. Their interference in television connects with the broader practices associated with a ­media-constructed personality cult. Thus Nicolae’s acts of interference correspond to the finishing touches in his direction of his own cult representation. The role that mass media, particularly television, had to play in emphasising Ceauşescu’s invincibility and in supporting his idolisation is demonstrated by the case of the recordings of the Twelfth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party, held in 1979. At the event, Constantin Pirvulescu, a senior party official, spontaneously took the floor and gave a speech denigrating Ceauşescu, pleading against his re-election as the head of the party. He accused the party of neglecting the real problems of the country and being preoccupied instead with the glorification of Ceauşescu. He went further, to condemn Ceauşescu for prioritising his personal interests over the interests of the country. Pirvulescu’s anti-Ceauşescu speech on camera created panic not only within the party but also inside the broadcasting institution. After the incident, Securitate officers took possession of all recordings of the Twelfth Congress and the material was never aired. As a result, these recordings ended up in private hands, which explains why the originals are nowadays not part of the Multimedia Archives of Romanian Television, but are freely available on video-sharing websites such as YouTube. During the proceedings of the Congress, Pirvulescu’s speech was interrupted by the crowds of party members present in the conference room who, at the command of a few agitators, started cheering in one voice for Ceauşescu and his re-election. In itself, the event constituted a clear statement of the invincibility of Ceauşescu and of his support within the party. At the same time, the confiscation of the recordings by the Securitate demonstrated the centrality of television in conveying the appreciation of Ceauşescu to the masses. Indeed, the media played a central role in designating Nicolae Ceauşescu as ‘a symbol of Romania, a symbol of Romanian unity and independence, and a symbol of Romanian prestige and acceptability throughout the world’ (Fischer, 1981: 130). Within television, the broadcasts of events in which Ceauşescu and his wife participated were referred to as ‘actions at zero level’ (Brates, 1992: 23), for which

Goddard.indb 114

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

Televising Nicolae Ceauşescu   115

there were guidelines for control similar to those required for live transmissions. These included: the prior investigation of the places where the broadcast would take place; the verification, selection and approval of the staff involved in such transmissions; the consistent use of the same personnel at these events; and the presence of Securitate officers at transmission sites.15 Stylistically, such broadcasts made use of systematic visual codes that underlined Ceauşescu’s personality cult. The presence of masses of people constituted a common denominator for most such broadcasts, whether one of Ceauşescu’s work visits or the celebration of a national event was being covered. However, the depiction of these crowds depersonalised them through panoramic framing and overhead shots. This created an impression of unity and social cohesion, which was further strengthened by the creation of homogeneous visual impressions through the use of choreography, props or swathes of colour projected by groups of people wearing different work uniforms. Ceauşescu was presented centrally within the frame – whether at a distance from his people, positioned at a balcony allowing him to look down upon the masses, or simply distinguished by the use of red carpets for him to walk on. While the masses themselves were depersonalised, the banners carried by the crowds were often placed in the spotlight, primarily at national events, as though individual identities were subsumed within them. Banners reading ‘Long live Ceauşescu’, ‘Long live socialism’ or ‘Long live Romania’ were constantly placed in close-up at such televised events. So were banners with portraits of Nicolae and Elena ­Ceauşescu. Through the use of such visual representations, Ceauşescu was identified as a beloved ruler of the country, cherished by all and distinguished for his personal and socialist merits. However, such representations of a dictatorial leader on television were not unique to the Romanian context. Ceauşescu’s leadership style evokes comparison with other prominent communist leaders such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao: all four men are the objects of personality cults.… [C]haracteristics of the Ceauşescu cult – icons, scriptures, and infallibility – are reminiscent of the Lenin and Stalin cults in the Soviet Union. Ceauşescu, like the Soviet leaders, is portrayed as a great revolutionary who, despite lowly origins, rose to become a national hero through hard work, courage, and intellectual ability – a socialist Horatio Alger. (Fischer, 1981: 117–18)

Rhetoric of scale and heroic myths were central to representations of dictatorial leaders and of Ceauşescu too. Monumental visuals, enlarged figures and mass panoramas characterised the iconography of dictatorial regimes (Ades et al., 1995). However, these techniques

Goddard.indb 115

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

116  Dana Mustata

of representation, although common in such political contexts, were actually first popularised by American advertising in the 1930s (Marchand, 1986: 269). Visual clichés involving heroic proportions, adoring throngs – tiny human figures placed into large-scale visuals – or illustrations of ‘crowd splendour’ showing masses in motion were common techniques of American advertising at the beginning of the twentieth century. But the massive crowds of tiny, undifferentiated figures paying homage to the heroically scaled product have appeared only infrequently since the early 1930s. This visual cliché may have faded as advertising leaders came to associate such images with totalitarian regimes. (Marchand, 1986: 269)

As such representations of worship abounded on the television screen in 1980s Romania, audiences nevertheless showed profound lack of interest in Romanian television. Instead, the Securitate noted at the time that between six and eight million people in the south of Romania watched Bulgarian television, and three to four million ­Romanians in the south-west watched Yugoslavian television, while the northern and eastern part of Romania looked at Soviet programmes.16 Indeed, the idea of popular television watched by sizeable audiences no longer matched the reality of 1980s Romania, partly because the notion of ‘audience’ came to be tailored to the circumstances of C ­ eauşescu’s personality cult. In the 1980s, Nicolae and Elena C ­ eauşescu became the de facto target audience for Romanian television. In 1985, Radio Free Europe stated on air: ‘Romanian television has the rare privilege of being a private television, a state television representing the viewing taste of one family.’17 A similar point was made by the host of a meeting in Prague of the Organisation Internationale de Radiodiffusion et de Télévision (OIRT), who welcomed the Romanian delegation thus: ‘I salute the numerous delegation of the Socialist Republic of Romania, consisting of one person. It is a one-person delegation, because Romania makes television programmes for one man.’18 Under these circumstances, satisfying the viewing preferences of the leader became the main challenge for the broadcasting institution. Meanwhile, Nicolae and especially Elena became attentive television viewers. Former deputy chief editor in the news department Teodor Brates recalled the couple viewing the broadcast of a meeting between the Bulgarian President Jivkov and Ceauşescu (Brates, 1992: 27). After they watched the televised images on their home screen, a scandal blew up as they saw themselves looking old, wrinkled and gesticulating inappropriately. Those involved in filming the event were threatened with the most severe sanctions. However, a screening of the filmed

Goddard.indb 116

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

Televising Nicolae Ceauşescu   117

materials held at the public broadcaster showed the opposite: the dictatorial couple had been filmed from a distance, from favourable angles and were by no means misrepresented. Upon closer investigation, it eventually emerged that the images watched by the dictatorial family on their home screen belonged to Bulgarian television, and their confusion had been exacerbated by the fact that towards the end of their regime the two were interested only in images, wanting to look good and to be admired by the masses, and therefore muted the sound on their television sets (Brates, 1992: 27). The Ceauşescus’ close attention to television viewing was not uncommon among political leaders. In France, for example, Charles de Gaulle was described as a ‘téléspectateur attentive et fidèle’ (attentive and loyal viewer), being ‘le premier téléspectateur de France’ (the first television viewer of France) (Bourdon, 1990: 20–1). As Romanian television in the 1980s developed as a space for ­mediating a personality cult, Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu became more and more the directing figures behind programmes. A 2006 report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania describes numerous television professionals speaking about the direct interference of the Ceauşescu family in the making of television programmes at the time (Comisia Prezidenţială pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România, 2006: 104). Stefan Dimitriu, a renowned editor and reporter within the social programmes department, confirms that in 1982 he was among many laid off by direct order of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu.19 Nicolae P ­ etrovici, chief editor at the department for social-economic programmes before 1989, explains that entertainment programmes looked rather rigid and sad in the 1980s, largely because Elena C ­ eauşescu did not approve of artists or singers who danced or moved too much in front of the camera.20 Moreover, the numerous events at which Nicolae Ceauşescu gave speeches needed to be transmitted ad litteram and therefore sometimes filled up the whole time period available for television broadcasting. Such transmissions also involved high production costs, a fact which explains the much higher hourly costs for television production in the 1980s compared with previous years. When supposed inadequacies occurred within a programme, direct orders from Nicolae or Elena were transmitted by means of a special telephone, called ‘the short phone’, which only ministers or the state secretary could use. Whenever the office of the director-general of television received a call from this number, it could be expected to contain orders from the highest level.21 Teodor Brates recalls: ‘Elena Ceauşescu gave the order that reporters should no longer be present on camera. If needed, only the hand holding the microphone ought

Goddard.indb 117

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

118  Dana Mustata

to be shown’ (Brates, 1992: 17).22 At the same time, the haircuts and clothes worn by the three or four female presenters whose faces were still allowed to be shown on Romanian television in the 1980s often became objects of hostility for Elena. On occasions, television presenters and even female singers or actresses were taken off the screen at her direct order. For example, presenter Delia Budeanu was moved in the early 1980s from Channel 1 to the second channel for such a reason (Budeanu, 2008: 6). Nicolae Ceauşescu’s centrality to Romanian television was also indicated by the personal radio and television studio, called Studio 1, which was set up for him on the premises of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. It was mainly intended for recordings of ­Ceauşescu’s annual New Year speech, but could also enable the dictator to address the nation at times of national necessity.23 Live television versus Nicolae Ceauşescu Despite the strict controls over television in the 1980s, in December 1989 the collapse of the communist regime and the overthrow of Ceausescu occurred live on television. In fact, the 1989 revolution in Romania illustrates the ways in which live television – a vulnerable issue for the party and its leader – came to constitute itself as a space for subversion against the dictatorial regime. The revolutionary riots started in the west of Romania as early as 16 December 1989, after a group of parishioners opposed the state ­authorities’ eviction of the Hungarian pastor László Tőkés from his own apartment. The Hungarian dissident was punished for having made critical comments about Ceauşescu’s regime in the foreign press. The local protests soon transformed into large demonstrations against Ceauşescu and the communist regime, which extended over the next few days to the major cities of Romania. However, no mention of the civil unrest spreading around the country was made on television until 20 December. On that Wednesday, at 5pm, the public broadcaster announced that the evening news programme would start with a live transmission from Studio 1 (Brates, 1992: 23). The studio was already set up for broadcasting because technical revisions to the recording of Ceauşescu’s New Year speech were taking place there. On the evening of 20 December, Ceauşescu addressed the masses from this studio. The camera portrayed the dictator from the front, framed by symbols such as the national flag, the socialist flag and the state emblem. Elena Ceauşescu, together with six military and Securitate officials, stood at each side of Ceauşescu in immobile, grave postures. During the televised address, Ceauşescu denounced

Goddard.indb 118

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

Televising Nicolae Ceauşescu   119

the social riots as an act of interference in the national policies of the country by foreign elements and announced a mass rally to be held the next day in Bucharest, which was to be broadcast live on tele­vision. The broadcast from Studio 1 ended with a close-up on the flags and the state emblem, visually mobilising the idea of the nation in an upcoming fight against the rioters. The live broadcast of the rally on 21 December constituted a moment of tension in the changing social environment of the Romania of 1989. Even though it was prepared in advance according to the state guidelines for the control of live transmissions, and although people were brought in from their workplaces to cheer in front of the cameras for Ceauşescu, the broadcast failed to reassert the power of the state as Ceauşescu had intended. Instead, it served to mobilise the nation to rise up against the regime. At the rally, Ceauşescu spoke live from the balcony of the Central Committee building.24 He started by thanking the participants and the organisers of the event. In response, the masses carrying banners with socialist slogans and enlarged portraits of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu applauded the leader and chanted for him in one voice. The event was filmed with three cameras. Inside the OB vans, the ­director-general of television, Constantin Petre, and the chief news editor, Ilie Ciurescu, were present (Brates, 1992: 24–5). The deputy ­director-general, Traian Puscasu, was in attendance at the trans­mission studio. During the broadcast, the camerawork lacked flexibility, which was desirable at such events, and mainly switched between frontal shots of Ceauşescu speaking from the balcony and overhead views of the vast masses of people. But early in Ceauşescu’s speech, the live microphones picked up sounds of rioting from the crowds, followed by screaming. At that point, the central camera, although shaky, remained focused on ­Ceauşescu, capturing him scared and confused. Teodor Brates, who was present in the transmission studio, confessed: ‘Neither the personnel in the OB vans … nor us, at studio 5, realised what was really happening in the square. The personnel in the OB vans, feeling the pressure of the crowds, communicated via the radio talkback and asked if there was an earthquake’ (Brates, 1992: 24–5).25 At that point, the shaky camera seemed to struggle to hold on to the image but, although it seemed to lose the shot, it still managed to capture the officials on the balcony fleeing and in panic. Seconds later, the camera managed to reframe and remained fixed on a static image away from the site of the action, in conformity with the protocol for live transmissions. The moment coincided with the interruption of the live broadcast on the home screens. ‘During those approximately three minutes that the broadcast was interrupted, two cameras no

Goddard.indb 119

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

120  Dana Mustata

longer transmitted any images (the cables had been broken by those crowding around the metal towers on which they had been set up), and another one was fixed on the sky, somewhere near the Telephone Palace’ (Brates, 1992: 25).26 However, before the coverage was interrupted, the sound remained unaffected and captured the attempts of Ceauşescu to calm the crowds. When the broadcast was eventually resumed, Ceauşescu con­tinued his speech and promised an increase in pensions, maternity leave and child support. The masses applauded and chanted ‘Ceauşescu and the people’, and the camera went in close on a banner reading ‘Let’s stop the gross interference of imperialist groups in the internal affairs of Romania’. However, this second part of the broadcast showed Ceauşescu stuttering and forgetting his words, while his wife Elena whispered parts of his speech to him. The screams of rioters were still to be heard now and then in the background. Later on, Ceauşescu went on to say that the revolutionary events represented a danger for national integrity and sovereignty, and were aimed at placing Romania under foreign occupation. At the end of his speech, he left the balcony, while the camera zoomed out on the crowds and the mass of socialist banners. The evening news of that day repeated images of Ceauşescu’s speech, but this time with all indications of dissent omitted. The next morning, a communiqué was read on television proclaiming the start of a state of emergency, covering the entire territory of Romania. The morning programme stopped at 11.45am (Brates, 1992: 38), but broadcasting was to be resumed in the early afternoon with a surprise live transmission by a self-proclaimed Free Romanian Television. After Ceauşescu’s mass rally, the street riots had spread throughout the country, and from around midday on 22 December, public tele­vision joined the revolutionary movement. From that point on, Studio 4 became the centre of broadcasting and an immediate focus of expression for revolutionaries. Although it was aimed at reinstating a state of calm and mobilising social cohesion in support of the regime, the live broadcast of 21 December had had the opposite effect. It constituted the first televised event of the Romanian revolutionary movement. It confirmed the magnitude of the anti-communist riots in Romania and mobilised audiences to join street protests. The 1989 Romanian revolution continued to unfold live on national television, culminating with the broadcast of the trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu and their consequent executions.27

Goddard.indb 120

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

Televising Nicolae Ceauşescu   121

Conclusion In a context where the main televisual output was aimed at fulfilling the viewing pleasure of a dictator, and in which the dictator himself was the target audience, popular television needs to be redefined. Rather than being associated with notions of entertainment, leisure and high audience ratings, popular television becomes characterised by the exclusivist pleasing of the political elite. The notion of populus becomes the equivalent in this context to the dictator himself. Consequently, popular television in communist Romania addressed exclusively the tastes and viewing habits of Ceauşescu. Following this line of reasoning, popular television consisted of particular visual aesthetics that were common to representations of totalitarian leaders around the world. Heroic, grandiose repre­ sentations, overhead views of masses of people cheering, and staged television spectacles of masses performing, singing and marching for their leader were all ‘popular’ images in totalitarian regimes around the world. Romania differed in this respect only in the degree to which it exploited these dictatorial representations. The 1980s in Romanian television was the period in which such televisual representations became the norm of television production and reception, so re­ defining the ‘popular’ orientation of a broadcasting institution under a dictatorial regime. Liveness was a common feature of the opulent, grandiose tele­ vision spectacles paying homage to dictator Ceauşescu. It was also the vulner­able zone of television broadcasting in communist Romania, due to its high potential for subversion. For this reason, live broadcasts and their surrounding infrastructure were subject to strict political control. Ironically, it was the live broadcast of Ceauşescu’s last mass rally, on 21 December 1989, which prompted the start of the revolution in Romania and led to the downfall of the dictator. This event illustrates the ways in which the live medium failed to lend itself to previously institutionalised measures of political control and, as a result, achieved subversive effects. Notes 1 Radiotelevision File D135, Vol. 2, p. 291. Bucharest: National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS). 2 ‘Evolutia unor indicatori economico-financiari’ (‘The evolution of some economic and financial indicators’), in Radiotelevision File D135, Vol. 37, p. 93. Bucharest: CNSAS. 3 Radiotelevision File D135, Vol. 2, p. 291. Bucharest: CNSAS. 4 ‘Evolutia unor indicatori economico-financiari’ (‘The evolution of some

Goddard.indb 121

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

122  Dana Mustata e­ conomic and financial indicators’), in Radiotelevision File D135, Vol. 37, p. 93. Bucharest: CNSAS. 5 ‘Nota Nr. 100/0047290’ (13 April 1982), in Radiotelevision File D135, Vol. 2, p. 376. Bucharest: CNSAS. 6 ‘Televiziunea are cea mai scazuta cota de audienta din istoria ei. Programele sunt fortat politizate, calitatea lor e slaba, ele nu stirnesc interesul, ci minia publicului. Factorul de amuzament si destindere a disparut aproape in intregime….’ Nota in Radiotelevision File D 135, Vol. 81, p. 98. Bucharest: CNSAS. 7 ‘Nota Raport 121/TC/VG/24.11.1975’, in Radiotelevision File D135, Vol. 2, p. 200. Bucharest: CNSAS. 8 ‘Anexa la Nr. 00245836/27.11.1975 – Schema realizarii unei transmisii directe de la carele de reportaj’ (‘Scheme for carrying out a live transmission from outside broadcasting vans’), Radiotelevision File D135, Vol. 2, p. 208. Bucharest: CNSAS. 9 This term referred to the label of approval assigned to a programme before it was broadcast. Approval was granted according to political requirements but concerned not only the content but also the stylistic composition of the programme. 10 ‘The new composition of the National Council on Romanian Radio and TV’, Radio Free Europe Research, 1 April 1974. Available via Open Society Archives, www.osaarchivum.org/files/holdings/300/8/3/pdf/52-2-321.pdf (accessed 4 June 2009). 11 Ibid. 12 Decret privind organizarea si functionarea Radioteleviziunii Romane, Consiliul de Stat al Republicii Socialiste Romania, 24 decembrie 1977 (Decree on the organisation and functioning of Romanian Radiotelevision, State Council of the Socialist Republic of Romania, 24 December 1977). 13 ‘Exista o structura piramidala a modului in care aceste presiuni se aplicau asupra emisiunilor. La vizionari venea conducerea TV, secretarul cu propaganda de la CC.… Ne duceam la vizionari facindu-ne cruce. Ba ca aparea numele tovarasului de numai zece ori, ba ca se vedea nu stiu ce in fundal.’ 14 Nicolae Petrovici, former television chief editor, in interview with the author, Bucharest, 10 January 2008. 15 ‘Program de masuri nr. 152/TC/VG/00327843, 1.11.1977’, in Radiotelevision File D135, Vol. 1, p. 90. Bucharest: CNSAS. 16 Note in Radiotelevision File D135, Vol. 37, pp. 107–8. Bucharest: CNSAS. 17 ‘Televiziuea romana are rarul privilegiu de a fi o televiziune de stat privata care raspunde gusturilor unei singure familii.’ ‘Nota nr. 334’ (3 May 1985) in Radiotelevision File D135, Vol. 81, p. 84. Bucharest: CNSAS. 18 ‘Salut numeroasa delegatie a Republicii Socialiste Romania formata dintr-o singura persoana. Este o delegatie de o persoana pentru ca Romania face programe de televiziune pentru un singur om.’ Information (29 May 1986), in Radiotelevision Files D135, Vol. 81, p. 26. Bucharest: CNSAS. 19 Stefan Dimitriu in interview with the author, Bucharest, 17 January 2008. 20 Nicolae Petrovici in interview with the author, Bucharest, 10 January 2008. 21 Ibid. 22 ‘Elena Ceausescu a dat dispozitie sa nu mai apara reporterii in cadrul de filmare, decat cel mult cu mana care tinea microfonul.’ 23 ‘Nota Nr. 100/0047005’ (6 April 1982) in Radiotelevision File D135, Vol. 2, p. 300, Bucharest: CNSAS. 24 Tape B48195, Arhiva Multimedia. Bucharest: Televiziunea Romana.

Goddard.indb 122

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

Televising Nicolae Ceauşescu   123 25 ‘Nici cei din carul de reportaj … nici noi, cei din studioul 5, nu ne-am dat seama ce se petrecea cu adevărat in Piaţă. Personalul din carul de reportaj, simţind presiunea mulţimii, intreba – prin mijloacele de intercomunicaţii – dacă nu cumva este un cutremur.’ 26 ‘In cele aproximativ trei minute de intrerupere a transmisiei, doua camere de luat vederi n-au mai redat imagini (cablurile au fost rupte de cel ce se buluceau in jurul turnurilor metalice pe care erau montate), iar una a ramas fixate pe cer, aproximativ in dreptul Palatului Telefoanelor.’ 27 It is not the aim here to discuss the Romanian revolution in depth. For an analysis of the live Romanian revolution, see Mustata (2012).

References D. Ades, T. Benton, D. Elliott and I. B. Whyte (eds) (1995), Art and Power: Europe Under the Dictators 1930–45. London/Stuttgart: Hayward Gallery/Oktagon. J. Bourdon (1990), Histoire de la télévision sous de Gaulle (The History of Television under de Gaulle). Paris: Anthropos/ INA. T. Brates (1992), Explozia unei clipe. 22 Decembrie 1989 – O zi in Studioul 4 (The Explosion of a Second: 22 December 1989 – A Day in Studio 4). Bucharest: Editura Scripta. D. Budeanu (2008), Live. Bucharest: Editura Vremea. Comisia Prezidenţială pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România (Presi­ dential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania) (2006), Raport final (Final Report). Bucharest, www.presidency.ro/static/ ordine/RAPORT_FINAL_CPADCR.pdf (accessed 10 December 2008). M. E. Fischer (1981), ‘Idol or leader? The origins and the future of the Ceauşescu cult’, in D. L. Nelson (ed.), Romania in the 1980s. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. M. E. Fischer (1989), Nicolae Ceauşescu: A Study in Political Leadership. Boulder, CO: Rienner. R. Marchand (1986), Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. D. Mustata (2012), ‘“The revolution has been televised…”: Television as historical agent in the Romanian revolution’, Journal of Modern European History, 10(1): 76–97. M. O’Shaughnessy (1990), ‘Box pop: Popular television and hegemony’, in A. Goodwin and G. Whannel (eds), Understanding Television. London: Routledge. A. Pora (2004), ‘Cei din conducerea TVR erau informatori’ (‘Those in the management of TVR were informers’), Evenimentul Zilei, 26 May. G. Schopflin (1983), Censorship and Political Communication in Eastern Europe. London: Frances Pinter. V. Socor (1985) ‘Romania’, in V. Mastny (ed.), Soviet/East European Survey, 1983– 1984: Selected Research and Analysis from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Goddard.indb 123

5/30/2013 1:41:27 PM

8

KVN: Live television and improvised comedy in the Soviet Union, 1957–71 Andrew Janco

Mass-produced and affordable television receivers began to appear in the Soviet Union in the late 1940s. In 1957, there were about 375,000 televisions in the Soviet Union, and an estimated audience of 1.5 million viewers. By 1965, there were more than 50 million viewers. As in other countries, television sets became a common feature of domestic spaces and a regular source of entertainment. However, there was no popular entertainment on early Soviet television. About 25 per cent of television programming was filled with politically oriented news programmes. Other programmes included scientific lectures, artistic films and classical concerts. Television broadcasting was managed by the Ministry of Culture and was viewed as a tool to deliver party ideology, modern science and high culture to the peoples of the Soviet Union (Powell, 1975). This began to change in May 1957, when television operations were transferred to a new State Committee for Radio and Television. Then, in 1960, a resolution of the Central Committee was prepared ‘On the further development of Soviet television’. The resolution offered a stern critique of existing programmes, charging that ‘Television has not enlisted the greater public’ (Afyani, 1998: 207). Programming did not reflect the interests of common workers or promote worker self-­ expression (samodeyatel’nost’). Soviet Central Television was directed to solicit recommendations and new ideas from the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) as well as social and artistic organisations. It was also told to recruit authors and performers from those organisations. As a result, young actors and artists were taken out of student theatres and their work appeared on television. Several new programmes were created, including a quiz show in 1961 (KVN), a variety show in 1962 (Na goluboi ogonek) and a children’s show in 1964 (Spokonoi nochi

Goddard.indb 124

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

KVN in the Soviet Union, 1957–71   125

malyshei). This was the beginning of entertainment television in the Soviet Union. The first programme to emerge from the 1960 resolution was Klub veselykh i nakhodchivykh (KVN; Club of the Merry and Quick-­ Witted). In the decade between 1961 and 1971, KVN became the most popular programme on Soviet television. A survey of Leningrad residents in 1967 showed that over 70 per cent of television viewers, from a cross-section of ages and occupations, regularly watched the show (Firsov, 1971). KVN was a competition between teams from universities, institutes, factories and workers’ clubs across the Soviet Union. Each team performed comedy sketches as well as improvised segments in dialogue with their competitors. The studio audience also took part in the show. A jury composed of media celebrities awarded points for each segment and decided the winner of each match. KVN was shown once a month across the USSR on live television. Television officials attempted to moderate the content of KVN, but live broadcasts and the ambiguity of humour proved difficult to control. This uncertainty opened a window of relative freedom, which allowed youths of the post-Stalin ‘thaw’ generation to criticise social problems and to test the boundaries of acceptable public discourse. Many of the skits, films and jokes of KVN contained biting critique of everyday problems and social issues. This satire was unique for the time, given that it was the youths themselves who chose the topics and form of critique. They did not follow signals ‘from above’, but rather set the agenda themselves. Political humour was present on the show, and significantly contributed to the show’s reputation as an edgy and unpredictable showcase of student youth culture in the 1960s. The World Festival of Youth and Students and VVV, 1957–61 The origins of KVN date from 1957 and an earlier programme called Vecher veselikh voprosov (VVV; Night of Merry Questions). In preparation for the Sixth World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in July 1957, a Youth Festival Bureau was formed at Central Television. Sergei Muratov, a Central Television employee and student at Moscow State University, was charged with creating youth programming for the Festival. In his search for ideas, Muratov approached Mikhail Yakovlev, Andrei Donatov and Al’bert Aksel’rod, a medical student who was active in student theatre (kapustniki). The trio met in the cafeteria at Central Television to trade ideas. Muratov also met with a Czech film director named Stanislav Strnad. In Czechoslovakia, he learned, there was an extremely popular game show called Hádej hádej hadači (Guess Guess Guesser). The participants for the show

Goddard.indb 125

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

126  Andrew Janco

were chosen from the studio audience. In Poland, the popular show Zgaduj zgadula employed a similar format. So, at nearly the same time that Congressional hearings in the United States were investigating ‘fixing’ and corruption in American game shows, Eastern Europe saw a flowering of the quiz show format. Quite unintentionally, Muratov, Yakovlev and Aksel’rod launched Soviet television into the worldwide phenomenon of audience participation shows. During its short existence, VVV had no set format. The organisers experimented with various forms of audience participation. On one occasion a little parachute was dropped onto the audience and whoever caught it was called on stage to answer questions and win a prize. At other times, television viewers were given a task and told to come to the television studio. In September 1957, the host asked viewers to come to the studio dressed in a wool coat and felt boots. At eight in the evening on a warm autumn night, viewers sped towards the theatre at Moscow State University. Over 500 people took to the stage, waving at the camera and asking for their prizes (Cutler, 1957).1 The screen displayed a still frame for more than an hour. Then it was finally announced that the show had been cancelled for ‘technical reasons’. VVV illustrated both the eagerness of Soviet viewers to participate in the programme and the difficulties of controlling that participation. KVN 1961–65 (Moscow) After the World Festival, the Youth Bureau was reformed and new staff members were hired. Elena Gal’perina was one of these. Gal’perina approached her duties with optimism and energy. ‘I dreamt of a show that would utilise all of the great possibilities of television. I wanted to turn the millions of people watching the screen into witnesses and participants in an action that was organised by television’ (Vasil’eva and Mladkovskaya, 1966: 11).2 Like many of her contemporaries, Gal’perina was interested in television’s power to engage viewers and facilitate participation. As fortune would have it, Gal’perina was not alone in her desire to improve Soviet programming and engage viewers. The Central Tele­vision 1960 resolution ‘On the further development of Soviet television’ offered Gal’perina favourable conditions in which to test her ideas on ‘organised action through television’. She voiced her ideas to Mikhail Yakovlev and began to ask questions about VVV. Several days later, Aksel’rod, Muratov and Gal’perina gathered at Yakovlev’s apartment (Maslyakov et al., 1996: 10). Given the precedent and infamy of VVV, it was no small risk to produce a show that was not only similar,

Goddard.indb 126

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

KVN in the Soviet Union, 1957–71   127

but designed by its creators. However, the Youth Bureau was given significant freedom to produce its programmes and responsibility for the end product rested on the editors at the Bureau.3 Gal’perina was well aware of the difficulties and made specific provisions for the problems encountered by previous programmes. In terms of organisation, KVN was designed as a competitive ‘sport’, with teams. The show was originally broadcast on Channel 2, with a broadcast range that covered Moscow and Leningrad. After the first few programmes, teams from local institutes, factories and organis­ ations appeared before the editors of the Youth Bureau to audition. Within the first two years, the popularity of KVN increased so much that the programme was moved from the studio to a theatre with 1,000 seats (Maslyakov et al., 1996: 16). At about this time, the programme was transferred to Channel 1, which was broadcast throughout the Soviet Union. Across the country, teams were formed at universities and institutes of higher learning (vuzy). Very few advanced to the level at which competitions were televised, but the game itself spread rapidly. Already in 1962, teams were competing in Latvia and Ukraine. In 1964, twelve teams competed on Central Television. The teams that appeared on television were regional or city champions, composed of the brightest authors, actors and musicians from that region, with the backing of local authorities and industries. The programme was divided into standard segments. After a brief introduction, each team performed a six-minute ‘greeting’ (­privetststvie). Later in the programme, the teams performed ‘homework’, which was a fifteen- to twenty-minute skit approved by the programme editors. These two segments allowed the editors some control over what appeared on the screen. To balance the prepared sections, several segments of improvisation were included in the original design of KVN. In the early years, the writers composed scenarios that were meant to evoke humorous responses. In 1962, a segment entitled ‘warm-up’ (razminka) was added to the programme. Initially, when the teams finished their ‘greetings,’ they would exchange quiz questions ‘to get to know each other’. The segment was popular and became a regular feature of the show. The teams prepared questions in advance and received approval from the editors, but the responses were entirely improvised. The questions challenged the other team to think in peculiar ways and articulate a clever or unexpected response. Participants were rewarded for spontaneous and witty responses. For example, during a competition in 1962, members of the audience were asked to come up on the stage and dance. The best dancer would win points for their

Goddard.indb 127

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

128  Andrew Janco

favourite team. The first representative took to the stage and danced with rhythm and grace. It was clear that no one could compete and the stage remained empty. Then a boy with striking red hair took to the stage and danced entirely without rhythm or coordination. The audience laughed sympathetically at the awkward youth. Then the host asked, ‘Where do you study?’ The boy replied, ‘I educated myself ’ (‘Ya … samorodok’) (Aksel’rod et al., 1974: 101). The unexpected reply caused the audience to erupt into laughter. The boy earned points for his favoured team. The exquisite dancer lost. The format of KVN changed little over time. Gal’perina, Muratov, Yakovlev and Aksel’rod were successful in crafting an organised programme that could be planned, rehearsed and effectively monitored. At the same time, segments of improvisation offered uncertainty and an occasion for youths to express themselves in their own words. It is difficult to measure how many people were watching KVN in its first four years. A survey conducted in 1965 of 300 youths (aged ­thirteen to thirty years) in Pskov showed that 189 (63 per cent) watched KVN ‘constantly’, 84 (28 per cent) watched it ‘sometimes’ and only 27 (9 per cent) did not watch KVN at all (Koenig, 1995: 115). One year later, a far more extensive study of 2,245 randomly sampled youths in twenty-five cities showed that 73.9 per cent reported that they ‘always’ watched KVN as opposed to other programmes (Koenig, 1995: 117). KVN was not only popular, it was a programme that viewers watched specifically and consistently. It was an event that took place once a month and people often gathered together to watch KVN. While the ‘core’ audience of KVN was students, the show appears to have had a very broad appeal. In Leningrad, a 1967 survey of television viewers showed that, among a broad sample of city residents, KVN ranked second in overall popularity, behind artistic films. In that survey: an older scholar, candidate of science, indicates his favour for reports from the field, sports programmes, films, KVN and, of course, Svetlana Zhiltsova [the host of KVN].… A cast iron mould maker, middle aged, father of a schoolchild, agrees that KVN, movies and popular music are interesting.… As for a women’s hairdresser, she gets by without serious programmes. KVN, movies, popular music, jazz – this is what she wants to see.4 (Firsov, 1971: 126–7)

While KVN was appealing as a ‘light’ (unserious) programme, satire and jokes that critiqued everyday problems were particularly popular. In the Soviet tradition of student activism, youths called their elders to account. Apartments were too small, there were always queues for goods and the buses were overcrowded. Soviet statistics were absurd. As one joke put it, ‘In the USSR, are there more tractors

Goddard.indb 128

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

KVN in the Soviet Union, 1957–71   129

or rest homes? Exactly the same because rest homes are counted by the day and tractors are counted by every five horsepower’.5 On one occasion, students from the Moscow Petroleum Institute filmed an exposé for KVN on the disrepair and lack of services to be found in Moscow’s railway stations. After the broadcast, the Ministry of Communications requested a transcript of the programme so that it could correct the problems that it detailed (Fere, 1968: 13). In another competition, this same team took to the stage as energetic pirates, fighting boredom and banality. As the notoriety of KVN increased, the editorial office began to receive thousands of letters. Excerpts from these letters indicate that viewers particularly valued the show’s critical satire. In one such letter, G. Voronkova wrote: In the last few episodes of KVN, it has become popular to offer criticism of our social life: sports, services and so on. I think that we need to acknowledge this development. Many are beginning to look upon KVN as a sharp weapon in the struggle against the shortcomings in our lives.6 (Gal’perina and Sergeeva, 1967: 37)

Other letters confirm that satire was one of the most appealing parts of the show for viewers. As one man noted, ‘The best segments of KVN contained burning issues and sharp satire’ (Fere, 1968: 13).7 Satire was also one of the most controversial components of early KVN. A reporter from the newspaper Sovetskaia kul’tura (Soviet Culture) expressed his outrage after a skit in 1963. The staff at KVN prepared a competition in which the participants were asked to rate ten ‘tawdry and tasteless objects’ which they had purchased in stores around Moscow. The objects were scored on a five-point scale. Each team measured the items for tastelessness and relative lack of quality. After much contention, a plastic plate manufactured in the Moscow region was named as the winner. The participants read a congratu­ latory letter to the director of the plastics cooperative on live television: Respected comrade director! We wholeheartedly congratulate you on this great ‘achievement’. Your plastic plate took first place in our competition for the most tasteless object. Thousands of television viewers can confirm that your product had tough competition and that it achieved this honour in a difficult and ‘worthy struggle’.8 (Zolotarevskii, 1963: 2)

It is unknown if the director ever responded to the ‘letter’ or the plate’s celebrity. The tone of the skit was aggressive, both in its language and in its message. The humour employed absurdity and a reversal of Soviet traditions of competition. Rather than ‘showcasing Soviet ­achievements

Goddard.indb 129

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

130  Andrew Janco

in science and technology’ lamented the reporter from Soviet Culture, KVN chose to underscore its failings (Zolotarevskii, 1963: 2). This was not a matter of improvisation, but rather a deliberate act on the part of the show’s writers and editors. The participants found creative and comedic ways of describing the object’s lack of taste, but it was the editors who brought the objects to the studio. This shows a definite element of bravado, particularly when the letter was read to the factory director. The scene not only decried the plate’s lack of taste, but it implicated those responsible for producing such a monstrosity. In its first four years, KVN proved to be an extremely popular programme. Friends would gather once a month to watch it, to see who would win and what would take place. In early KVN, the editors and writers initiated most of the improvisation. As Aksel’rod remarked: ‘The authors of the scenarios tried to create conditions in which humour would emerge in the course of the competition’ (Aksel’rod et al., 1974: 101).9 After two years, KVN moved to Channel 1 and was broadcast across the entire Soviet Union. Teams emerged in Erevan, Tashkent, Minsk and especially Odessa. KVN 1966–67: The Odessa ‘Chimney Sweeps’ Satire and social criticism were an important element of early KVN. By critiquing social conditions, participants spoke of matters of real relevance to viewers. They spoke of the actual conditions of life, rather than the common promises of what life would be like under communism. While critical, the humour brought the satisfaction of voicing discontent and, at the same time, spoke to potential improvements. In contrast, political humour was nearly nonexistent on KVN and Soviet television in general. What did appear was deeply hidden in Aesopian language and slang. Such humour, nonetheless, did exist. One of the most infamous KVN teams, in this respect, was the team from Odessa. Despite earlier scandals at the regional level, the immensely popular Odessa city champions were invited to compete in the 1966–67 season of all-Union KVN against Moscow (MOLMI), Perm, Dnepropetrovsk and Fryazino. The invitation to compete on all-Union KVN was significant. The success or failure of a team could greatly affect the reputation of a university, a city or even an entire republic. In the early years, the director of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MFTI) noted that applications for admissions rose significantly after ‘FizTekh’ were crowned champions of KVN. The effect was not unlike becoming champions of the Soviet Union in football or winning an all-Union chess championship.

Goddard.indb 130

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

KVN in the Soviet Union, 1957–71   131

The new Odessa team was formed from among the various teams and organisations of the local league. The new team was called the ‘Chimney Sweeps’. The name had a simple tone that cast the team as social outsiders and simple people. As their theme song stated, ‘We clean chimneys / And want everything to be clean / We’re always on the edge / And see it all from up above’.10 In total, there were about twenty writers and performers, in addition to the artistic and musical sections of the team (Khait, 1993: 1–2). A sizeable number of the team members were Jewish and this did much to characterise the team and its distinct image and humour. In the 1966–67 season, Odessa was matched against teams with several years’ experience. MOLMI was Moscow’s premier medical school. Fryazino was an important centre of Soviet electronics research and manufacture. Both teams were established organisations. In their competition against Odessa, the team from Fryazino screened a film they had prepared in advance. In the Soviet tradition of social activism, the team gathered a list of men who continually failed to pay their alimony payments. The team travelled to confront each of these men with their neglected children. The film was extremely popular. It combined activism with the fathers’ animated reactions to a camera and their estranged children on the doorstep.11 In the semi-final, Odessa competed against Aleksandr Yangel’s team from Dnepropetrovsk. During the match, Dnepropetrovsk took to the stage singing ‘Mukha, mukha-TsK-tukha’. The audience fell silent. The words were from a popular children’s poem ‘The chirping fly’ (‘Mukha-tsokotukha’). However, the audience reacted to the name of the Central Committee (abbreviated to TsK) with frozen panic. What was the joke? Why did they mention the TsK? This reaction was itself the joke. When the editors approached Yangel after the show, he told them ‘you’re just making that up, I said it correctly’. The joke was ambiguous. Everyone in the audience knew that Yangel had said ‘TsKtukha’ not ‘tsokotukha’, but without recordings or proof the matter was dropped. In May 1967, the Moscow television theatre was filled with more than 1,000 young men and women. Naturally, most were from Moscow, but several hundred fans travelled from Odessa to the capital. The theme of the final competition was announced as ‘Telepathy surrounds us’. Both teams were expected to utilise this theme when composing their ‘homework’. On the stage, Matvei Levinton’s corps of medical students from MOLMI wore their traditional doctor’s gowns. Odessa took to the stage in white shirts and dark ties. Moscow was clearly favoured to win the final. As a matter of honour, Moscow’s premier medical institute could not lose to the ‘Chimney

Goddard.indb 131

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

132  Andrew Janco

Sweeps’ from a provincial town like Odessa. Several days before the competition, the jury met with Vladimir Sokolov, the editor of youth programming at Central Television. ‘Comrades, you understand that during the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution, Moscow simply cannot lose’.12 The jury was instructed to ensure that Moscow won the competition. Yulii Gusman was present at the meeting, as well as a delegate from the Odessa television studio. Both confirm Sokolov’s statement. If Odessa was clearly stronger than Moscow, the jury was instructed to call a draw (Khait, 1993: 22–4). To guarantee that this would not be necessary, Al’bert Aksel’rod was recruited to write materials and prepare the Moscow team for the competition. The ‘Telepathy surrounds us’ theme was also the title of a play that had recently been performed at MOLMI’s student theatre (Khait, 1993: 27). However, Odessa had little to lose and every reason to prove themselves. They took to the stage singing about ‘telepathists’: You saw the examples of hypnosis We scorn those kinds of methods And so that this does not happen again, We’ve got to train some telepathists.

Vy videli naglyadno pro vnushen’e My zlo smeemsia s metodov takikh, I chob takogo bol’she ne sluchilos’, Pridetsia telepatov obuchat’.

It’s open, open a school for telepathists For telepathists? For telepathists! Hurry children to our school, The cock’s already crowed long ago!

I vot otkryta, ryta shkola telepatov Dlia telepatov? Dlia telepatov! Speshite v nashu shkolu vse rebiata, Ved’ petushok propel uzhe davno!

Now all the telepathists are working Some with telephones, some with automatics They connect our friendly signals.

Teper’ rabotaiut vse eti telepaty Kto telefonom, kto avtomatom Osushestvliaiut druzheskie sviazi.

From the very beginning of the song, the Odessa team highlighted its regional character. In the first two lines, there is a blend of official terminology (naglyadno, vnushen’e) with typically Odessa and typically Jewish colloquial speech. The contrast of the two styles of speech had an unsettling yet amusing effect. As the representatives of their region, the ‘Chimney Sweeps’ drew upon archetypal forms of Odessa speech and humour. In addition to the stylistic nuances of the song, there are several semantic word games. The word telepat has multiple meanings. The first refers to telepathy. This was indeed the theme of the competi­ tion. Given this meaning, the song about a ‘school for telepathists’ is amusing. The telepathists go to school and then they go to work as psychic telephone operators, linking all corners of the earth and ‘they connect our friendly signals’. In certain intelligentsia circles, however, the word had another meaning. In this context, the word identified an agent of the KGB. For

Goddard.indb 132

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

KVN in the Soviet Union, 1957–71   133

those who knew this second meaning, the lyrics offered confirmation that this meaning applied as well. ‘Now all the telepathists are working /  Some with telephones, some with automatics.’ The word avtomat is a general term for automated devices, but most commonly refers to an automatic rifle or machine-gun. As such, some of the ‘telepathists’ listen on the telephones and others work with machine-guns. In this interpretation of the song, we find a school of spies who connect all corners of the earth with wiretaps and automatic rifles. On live all-Union television the ‘Chimney Sweeps’ were singing about the KGB. Central Television followed four simple rules that players were asked to respect. Never joke about the Central Committee. Never joke about any members of the Central Committee or the Politburo. Never joke about countries with which the Soviet Union has tenuous diplomatic relations. Finally, never joke about the KGB (Krapiva, 1996: 28–9). In the song about ‘telepathists’, there was one acceptable interpretation and a second interpretation that mocked the first for its naivety and unreality. While the term itself is ambiguous, this type of humour is commonly known as stëb (Matizen, 1993). To speak of a ‘school for telepathists’ is painfully idealistic when it is really a school for KGB agents. For those who understood this subtext, there was a feeling of privilege for having understood the full joke. Following a competition, the jokes and antics would be discussed at work and among friends. In this way, the people who did not understand the subtext during the broadcast learned of it after the fact. Later in the match, Odessa won the ‘captain’s competition’ by two points. To those in the theatre and watching the screen, it was clear that Odessa had carried the competition. However, Moscow could not lose. For the first time in the history of KVN, two champions were declared. Uncertain of what to do, Zhiltsova stood on the stage with two identical boxes, one filled with silver medals and the other with gold. In the 1966–67 season, Odessa rose to the championship through an odd mix of intelligence, political humour and daring. While the team could never win the final event, they forced a draw. For the members of the team and their city, the ‘Chimney Sweeps’ were de facto champions. When Valerii Khait, the team captain, opened Odessa’s box of medals, he was pleased to find that the medals were gold. Pre-recording and the ‘end’ of KVN In 1968, Central Television began to pre-record its programming on videocassette. The ability to record onto videotape meant that shows were no longer broadcast live. KVN competitions were recorded in

Goddard.indb 133

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

134  Andrew Janco

advance, edited and later broadcast to the public. The rehearsals still contained unexpected moments, but many never made it to broadcast. For example, a skit where a couple tries to remember their wedding anniversary was cut. ‘“Was it May 15th?” asks the wife. “No”, answers the husband, “it was August 20th, 1968, a day we shall all surely remember. Even those outside Russia will remember”’.13 The date refers to the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the end of the ‘Prague Spring’. The scene was never broadcast. As another team joked, KVN became ‘a game where one tries to joke and not get cut’ (Marfin and Chivurin, 2002: 312).14 Less controversial jokes did continue to make it onto the air. In 1970, one team joked that: ‘The best place to live is on a desert island, because Friday won’t invite you to work on Saturday’ (New York Times, 1970). This was a reference to the ‘voluntary compulsory’ practice of cleaning public spaces on Saturdays (subbotniki). In January 1968, an article appeared in the Journalist (Zhurnalist) with the title ‘What to do we expect from KVN’? The text was a collection of letters from several prominent theatre directors, humour writers and one of the creators of KVN: Al’bert Aksel’rod. The verdict was unanimous; KVN had lost its spirit of improvisation. ‘The real satire has gone’, wrote Aleksandr Svobodin, ‘The serious issues behind the satire have gone. As a result, KVN is getting dumber right in front of our eyes’ (Fere, 1968: 13).15 Viktor Slavkin lamented that the editors no longer challenged the teams and that the programming had lost its social significance. There was less and less improvisation and fewer surprises. Initially five or six minutes in length, the prepared segments of the show were now fifteen to twenty minutes long. ‘I don’t think it is right to think of it as either performance or improvisation’, responded the senior editor of Central Television. ‘It’s all a question of balance’ (Fere, 1968: 15).16 This may be true, but the terms of the debate – performance (spektakl’) versus improvisation (eksprompt) – tell us how contemporaries viewed the changing face of KVN. Newspaper articles complained of ‘prepared spontaneity and creeping professionalism’. There appears to have been a general consensus that KVN was becoming more predictable and less satirical. The ‘creeping professionalism’ of KVN was partially the result of the increased visibility and importance of the show. Teams began to be better funded, better dressed and far better organised. When a team took to the stage, it defended the reputation of an entire city or republic. In some cases, teams were told to lose to more important cities and universities. Teams stayed in hotels rather than dor­mitories. Team members wore custom-made uniforms and professionally designed costumes. The scruffy aesthetic of amateur theatre was ­replaced by well groomed performers.

Goddard.indb 134

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

KVN in the Soviet Union, 1957–71   135

The loss of ‘spontaneity’ was only partially a result of pre-recording. There was also pressure from participants and their sponsors to focus on prepared numbers rather than the improvised segments of the show. On stage, rather than truly improvising, individual participants began to rely on memorised material written by a staff of writers. By using prepared jokes, a player needed only to fit pre-written material to the situation, rather than compose an original joke on the spot. This was not a new practice, but it became more common over time as participants attempted to improve the consistency of their improvised humour. In 1971, KVN celebrated its first decade on air. A grand anniversary programme was prepared. All of the former hosts were invited. The competition was a gala event. But KVN’s ten-year anniversary was its last. In 1970, Sergei Lapin became chairman of the State Committee on Television and Radio (Mickiewicz, 1984: 647). Shortly after Lapin took office, he called Bella Sergeeva, KVN’s direc­tor since 1961, into his office. Lapin wanted to know the name of an author who had written a particular skit. Sergeeva replied defiantly that she did not know his name. Unable to punish the director of such a popular programme, Lapin fired one of the show’s original editors. For the 1971–72 season, Aleksandr Maslyakov and Zhiltsova were dropped as the hosts. The show came under increasing pressure to change. Lapin estab­lished strict rules of conduct: ‘no beards were allowed, because they resembled Lenin and Marx, Jews were not allowed, and other things’ (Krapiva, 1996: 19–20). Several competitions took place in 1971–72, but none was televised. While the game survived in schools and local competitions, all-Union televised KVN ceased to exist in 1971. The crackdown on Soviet television was not confined to KVN. In 1970, letters from high-ranking officials were published in Pravda decrying Soviet television’s decadent nature and isolation from the interests of the working masses. In 1971, twenty-nine more letters were published. In 1972, more letters were printed and over thirty programmes were cancelled (Egorov, 1999: 23, 29). KVN fell in the field of a far-reaching ‘ideological battle’ (to use Brezhnev’s term) and the end of the post-Stalin ‘thaw’. For more than a decade, KVN continued to be played in informal venues, schools and universities. On 25 May 1986, KVN returned to Central Television. Perestroika offered new possibilities and oppor­ tunities. Maslyakov resumed his post as the host of KVN and continues to host the programme to the present day. KVN remains a beloved game and popular television programme throughout Russia and the former Soviet Union. KVN leagues exist in Russian-speaking communities around the world.

Goddard.indb 135

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

136  Andrew Janco

Conclusion The period from 1957 to 1970 is often regarded as the ‘golden age’ of Soviet television. While the majority of television programming remained unchanged during this period, certain shows, KVN in particular, offered new forms of popular entertainment (see Roth-Ey, 2003: 379). The monological voice of the state broadcaster (diktor) was replaced by young voices eager to push limits and to speak of issues relevant to common Soviet citizens. Comparisons might be drawn to Monty Python or Saturday Night Live during the 1970s. In both cases, televised sketch comedy reflected the voice of youth culture, while also appealing to a broad audience. KVN continues to be a popular programme on Russian television, but the period from 1961 to 1968 was a distinct moment when the show was more than entertainment: it was a unique televised space for the bravado and unease of the Soviet 1960s. Notes 1 Sergei Muratov, in interview with the author, 18 September 2003, Moscow. 2 ‘A mechta beredila dushy. Sozdat’ takuiu programme … takuiu programmu, kotoraia prodemonstrirovala by vo vsiu silu mogushchestvo televideniia.’ 3 Elena Gal’perina, in interview with the author and Olga Livshin, 5 February 2004, Moscow. 4 ‘Pozhiloi uchenyi, kandidat nauk, prizhaetsia v svoikh simpatiiakh k reportazham s mesta sobytii, sportivnym peredacham, kinofil’makh, KVN i, razumeetsia, k Svetlane Zhil’tsovoi… Formovshchik chuguno-liteinogo tsekha, srednikh let, otets shkol’nika soglasen, chto KVN, kino i Estrada – konechno, liubopytno.… Master zhe damskikh prichesok legko obkhoditsia bez ser’eznykh program. KVN, kino, estrada, dzhaz – vot chto ona khochetvidet.’ 5 Efim Aglitskii, in interview with the author and Simon Livshin, 3 January 2004, Washington, DC. Efim Aglitskii was the captain of the KVN team from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MIFI). 6 ‘V poslenee vremia v peredachakh KVN stala chashche razdavat’sia kritika po voprosam obshchestvennoi zhizni: sportu, obsluzhivaniiu i t. d. Mne kazhetsia, eto napravlenie nado privetstvovat’. Mnogie smotriat teper’ na KVN eshche kak na ostroe oruzhie po bor’be s nedostatkami v nashei zhizni.’ 7 ‘I tem ne menee luchshie vypiski KVN soderzhali obraztsy zlobodnevnoi i ostroi satiry.’ 8 ‘Uvazhaemyi tovarishch direktor! Serdechno pozdravlaem vas s krupnym ‘dostizheniem.’ Vasha plastmassovaia tarelka zaniala pervoe mesto v sorevnovanii na samyi bezvkusnyi predmet. Tysiachi telezritelei mogut podtverdit’, chto u vashei produkttsii byli sil’nye konkurenty i chto pobeda dostalas’ ei v trudnoi i ‘dostoinoi bor’be.’ 9 ‘Avtory stsenariia vsegda staralis’ sdelat’ tak, chtoby vo vremia peredachi mog proiavit’ sebia i erudit.’

Goddard.indb 136

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

KVN in the Soviet Union, 1957–71   137 10 ‘My chistim truby / i khotim povsudu chistoti / khodim vsegda po kraiu / i smotrym vse c visoty’. Simon Livshin (member of the Odessa KVN team), in interview with the author and Olga Livshin, 15 July 2003, San Diego. 11 Simon Livshin, in interview with the author and Olga Livshin, 15 July 2003, San Diego. 12 ‘Tovarishchi, vy ponimaete, chto Moskva prosto ne mozhet proigrat’ vo vremia piatidesiatiliia oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii.’ 13 ‘“Piatnadtsatogo maia?” spriashivaet zhena, “Net,” otvechaet muzh, “dvadtsatogo avgusta 1968-go goda, den’, kotorye my naverniaka zapomnim. Ego zapomniat dazhe i za granitsei”.’ Simon Livshin, in interview with the author and Olga Livshin, 15 July 2003, San Diego. 14 ‘Tsel’ igry – poshutit’ i ne byt’ vyrezannymi.’ 15 ‘Ushla nastoiashchaia satira. Ushli ser’eznye ob’ekty takoi satiry. V rezul’tate KVN glupeet na glazakh.’ 16 ‘Mne predstavliaetsia nepravil’noi sama postanovka voprosa: libo teatr, libo ekspromt.… Vsio delo v tom, chto narusheno SOOTNOSHENIE.’

References V. Yu. Afyani (ed.) (1998), Ideologicheskie komissii TsK KPSS, 1958–1964: doku­ menty (Central Committee CPSU Ideological Commissions, 1958–1964: Documents). Moscow: ROSSPEN. A. Aksel’rod, M. Kandror and M. Levinton (eds) (1974), Kurs veselikh nauk (Course in the Merry Sciences). Moscow: Iskusstvo. B. Cutler (1957), ‘Soviet giveaway show takes station off air’, Washington Post and Times Herald, 1 October: A8. V. Egorov (1999), Televidenie mezhdu proshlym i budushim (Television Between Past and Future). Moscow: Voskresen’e. G. Fere (1968), ‘Chto my zhdem ot KVN?’ (‘What do we expect from KVN?’), Zhurnalist, January: 13–16. B. Firsov (1971), Televidenie glazami sotsiologa (Television Through the Eyes of a Sociologist). Moscow: Iskusstvo. E. Gal’perina and B. Sergeeva (1967) KVN otvechaet na pisma (KVN Answers Letters). Moscow: Iskusstvo. V. Khait (1993), ‘“Khait-kompaniya” ili ot Odesskikh trubochistkov do Odesskikh dzhentel’menov’ (‘“Khait and Co.” or from the Odessa Chimney Sweeps to the Odessa gentlemen’), Vsemirnye Odesskiya Novosti, spetsal’nyi KVN-vypusk. M. Koenig (1995), ‘Media reform: The case of youth programming on Soviet television (1955–1990)’, PhD dissertation, Columbia University. V. Krapiva (1996), KVN nashei pamyati (The KVN of Our Memories). Odessa: Astroprint. M. Marfin and A. Chivurin (2002), Chto takoe KVN? (What is KVN?). Simferopol: Blank-Express. A. Maslyakov, M. Marfin and A. Chivurin (eds) (1996), My nachinaem KVN (We’re Beginning KVN). Moscow: Vostok. V. Matizen (1993), ‘Stëb kak fenomen kul’tury’ (‘Stëb as a cultural phenomenon’), Iskusstvo kino, 9: 59–62. E. Mickiewicz (1984), ‘The functions of communications officials in the USSR: A biographical study’, Slavic Review, 43 (4): 641–6. New York Times (1970), ‘“Quick Witted” variety show returns to Soviet TV’, 29 October: 87.

Goddard.indb 137

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

138  Andrew Janco D. E. Powell (1975), ‘Television in the USSR’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 39(3): 287–300. K. Roth-Ey (2003), ‘Mass media and the remaking of Soviet culture, 1950s–1960s’, PhD dissertation, Princeton University. K. Vasil’eva and G. Mladkovskaya (eds) (1966), KVN? KVN … KVN! Moscow: Komitet po radioveshchaniyu i televideniyu pri sovete ministrov SSSR. L. Zolotarevskii (1963), ‘Dlya veselykh i nakhodchivikh’ (‘For the merry and quick-witted’), Sovetskaya kul’tura, 31 January.

Goddard.indb 138

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

Part III German Democratic Republic

Goddard.indb 139

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

Goddard.indb 140

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

9

Undercover: How the East German political system presented itself in television series Sascha Trültzsch and Reinhold Viehoff

Entertainment: The significance of fictional programmes in GDR television The former East Germany – the German Democratic Republic, or GDR – was an authoritarian state governed by the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands; SED). The party and a network of affiliated institutions controlled all media and other forms of public communication. The avowed aim was to propagate the SED’s ideology and guidelines – and one important way of doing so was to ensure that the image of life in East Germany presented in the media fitted the party’s view of how East German reality ought to be. Even though the launch of East German television was timed to coincide with Stalin’s seventy-fourth birthday, on 21 December 1952, it took the government some time to understand quite how powerful a propaganda tool television was (Steinmetz and Viehoff, 2008: 39–41). But by the beginning of the 1970s, officials had recognised the role that television could play in influencing the masses – it was called the government’s ‘sharpest weapon’ (Holzweißig, 2002) – and worked hard to put it to optimal use. East German television, like the entire political and social system of the GDR, is indissolubly tied to the division of Germany after World War II, and through it to the post-war conflict between East and West in Europe. Consequently, the Cold War played an important role in determining the development of the GDR’s main institutions, including its media, from the very beginning. Most East Germans – with the exception of those living in East Saxony in the south and Western Pomerania in the north – could receive West German television broadcasts. The GDR considered this a serious ideological threat and responded by waging ‘class warfare on air’, through the development of

Goddard.indb 141

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

142  Sascha Trültzsch and Reinhold Viehoff

programmes fiercely hostile to any developments and innovations in West German television programmes (Dittmar, 2008). West German programmes were indeed watched by a majority of GDR citizens, and so the dreamed-of monopoly of party-controlled television never came into existence. The West German competition represented a serious hazard, especially for non-fiction programmes such as news. Blatant manipulation of the news through misrepresentation of facts was problematic because viewers were often able to compare the East German reports with information provided on West German television. International events, like the Cuban missile crisis, were at times covered quite differently or not at all by GDR television; but they were perfectly accessible to an audience that virtually jumped the Iron Curtain every night at 8pm to watch West Germany’s main nightly news programme, Tagesschau (Daily News). Such experiences, and other comparable instances of falsifying or denying national events, had long-term consequences for East German television. The audience increasingly lost its trust in the official news. As trust in the news declined, fictional and entertainment programmes became more and more important in the efforts of the authoritarian regime to keep control over the ideological life of its citizens. Fictional programmes can serve a significant ideological function, not only because they are popular with the viewers, but also because their particular relationship to reality makes their manipu­ lation less obvious. While non-fictional broadcasts – like news – are conventionally judged by how close they come to the reality of everyday life, fictional programmes are not. We will refer to this distance between a television programme and reality as the ‘reality gap’. As a matter of literary convention, the success of fictional genres is broadly independent of the reality gap, and instead rests on considerations of internal coherence or general plausibility. By contrast, the success of non-fictional genres is largely measured by how close they come to the reality which they purport to be about. Thus non-fictional genres are subject to negative evaluation when the audience recognises a ‘reality gap’ in a way that fictional genres are not. With East Germans able to compare Western and Eastern news coverage of events, ideological distortions were soon widely detected. As a result, most of the East German news broadcasts had little credi­ bility with viewers – and not only those most obviously dedicated to propaganda purposes such as Der Schwarze Kanal (The Black Channel – see Chapter 10) and Aktuelle Kamera (Current Camera), the GDR’s main news programme. The gap between the way in which the official news presented life in the GDR and the impression available in West German news and in the everyday experience of East

Goddard.indb 142

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

The East German political system in television   143

Germans was simply too revealing. As already noted, fictional programmes, by contrast, appeal to different expectations. The primary criterion of ‘success’ in fiction is not whether it is true to reality, but whether it is engaging, funny, thrilling; in short, whether it is entertaining. Moreover, a fictional story is not obliged to refer to actual events or facts that are provable. This line of argument suggests that, for the East German state, politic­ally separate but linguistically and culturally largely contiguous with its West German neighbour, the transmission of ideological images via fictional programmes turned out to be of the greatest significance. Add to this the general popularity of fictional entertainment with mass media audiences anywhere, and one can assume that the SED and its institutional affiliates entrusted with controlling television were keen on the prospect of socialist entertainment programmes as a means of influencing the masses through covert but permanent exposure to the ideologically correct image of the GDR. Indeed, there were internal discussions within the GDR television institutions about entertainment programming and its propagandistic potential (Mühl-Benninghaus, 2006: especially 25–40; Steinmetz and Viehoff, 2008: 39–40; Pfau, 2009: 107–110), as well as in response to Erich Honecker’s 1971 criticisms of ‘a certain boredom’ (‘eine bestimmte Langeweile’) in their programmes.1 However, it took both time and an evolution of genres to develop entertainment programming that met these requirements and yet was widely accepted by the audience – so widely, in fact, that the productions have been re-run many times and can be seen on German television even now. The SED’s desire to use state-owned television for its ideological purposes forced East German television productions – oriented towards entertainment – to search for a difficult balance between competing demands. On the one hand, there was a top-down requirement imposed by the administration of state and party to introduce ideological propaganda into television programmes, with the aim of forming a socialist population and stabilising the political system with the help of the media. On the other hand, there was a bottom-up requirement to satisfy the audience’s demand for entertainment after a hard day’s work, which was largely incompatible with explicit political education or intellectual propaganda. In response to these contrasting demands, GDR television established a kind of mid-level between these top-down and bottom-up requirements (Hartinger et al., 2004; Trültzsch, 2009a). To create programmes that satisfied the audience’s desire for entertainment, television producers had to modify the strict ideological guidelines of the party and adapt the prescribed images of ‘socialist reality’ to reflect more adequately the everyday experiences

Goddard.indb 143

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

144  Sascha Trültzsch and Reinhold Viehoff

of their audience. Producers and others responsible for television programming were thus caught in a trap. If a programme which promised to be entertaining included too much propaganda, the audience would either simply switch it off or, worse still, switch to a West German channel instead. Yet if a programme was simply entertaining and without sufficient political content, the controlling institutions of the two East German television stations would not accept it for broadcast. This quite strict enforcement of political standards changed only in the mid-1970s, when it was replaced with a somewhat less rigid practice (Trültzsch, 2009b). This process of balanced programme modification and genre evolution led to an overall increase in the number of entertainment programmes over the years. Since the various kinds of entertainment formats seemed to fit the needs of audiences for amusement and, at the same time, to reflect the ideological guidelines that lay in the background, these formats gained in importance. In this way, different kinds of programmes came to represent the ideal balance between the two different demands – and the coordination of both aspects developed within the evolution of a genre of television entertainment. After Honecker’s request for more entertaining programming in 1971, increasing the number of such shows also came on to the political agenda (Steinmetz and Viehoff, 2008: 39–40). In 1955, fictional entertainment made up about 12 per cent of all broadcasts. This rose to 28.7 per cent in 1963 and finally to more than 40 per cent in 1989 (Steinmetz and Viehoff, 2008: 121, 403; see also Schubert and Stiehler, 2004). Together with sports coverage, fictional entertainment programmes saw an increase, and they were used in particular to transport an important ideological message to the audience as part of the format. The expansion in entertainment programming occurred at the expense of informative programmes, whose share fell significantly (Schubert and Stiehler, 2004, 2009). Although these changes occurred across the entire programming output, they were especially prominent in prime time. Table 9.1, which lists the number of television drama series in general and family drama series in particular across different periods, shows an astonishing increase in the number of each. Table 9.1  Numbers of GDR television drama series and family series broadcast, by decade

All drama series Family drama series

Goddard.indb 144

1953–59

1960–69

1970–79

1980–89

 1  1

11  3

15  6

30 22

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

The East German political system in television   145

The ideological image of the socialist family A defining feature of authoritarian regimes is their attempt to control and determine the conditions of their own social and generic reproduction. Consequently, a key target of their attempts at political influence is the family, seen as the primary locus of socialisation for future generations. We can see similar tendencies towards a hierarchi­ cal, determining system in the Third Reich and the early Soviet Union, as well as other, more recent regimes which sought to promote and establish a new type of family. The GDR also lived up to this basic principle of authoritarian regimes, trying to control how families were and shaping the public image of how they should be. To establish a new socialist society, official thinking went, a new type of family had to be established. In 1961, during the presidency of Walter Ulbricht, the SED published a party manifesto containing the ‘Ten Commandments of socialist morality and ethics’ (‘Zehn Gebote der sozialistischen Moral und Ethik’; SED, 1963: 122–4) – a pseudo-religious code of conduct aiming to reshape people’s attitudes to align with socialist aims and principles. So, for example, the Fourth Commandment says: ‘You shall do good deeds for socialism, because socialism leads to a better life for all workers’ (‘Du sollst gute Taten für den Sozialismus vollbringen, denn der Sozialismus führt zu einem besseren Leben für alle Werktätigen’). The Eighth Commandment reads: ‘You shall raise your children in the spirit of peace and socialism so they become educated, steadfast and tough human beings’ (‘Du sollst Deine Kinder im Geiste des Friedens und des Sozialismus zu allseitig gebildeten, charakterfesten und körperlich gestählten Menschen erziehen’; SED, 1963: 122–3, authors’ translation). These commandments, while met with amusement and ridicule by most citizens, had official status and became guidelines for party behaviour and, ultimately, for the decisions of television execu­ tives as well. In 1965, these guidelines were replaced by a definition of the ‘socialist model family’ (‘sozialistisches Familienleitbild’) included in the new Code of Family Law (Familiengesetzbuch; Ministerium der Justiz, 1982). The new model of the family was more pragmatic and avoided the religious style of rhetorical proclamation associated with Ulbricht’s original pronouncement. The main target was to replace bourgeois family structures with socialist ones. The Code of Family Law, and the officially prescribed model of the socialist family that went hand in hand with it, applied until the end of the GDR, in 1990. And even though this official model was no longer publicly propagated after the 1970s, it continued to guide decisions about how the image of the socialist family was to be (covertly) shaped through the media.

Goddard.indb 145

5/30/2013 1:41:28 PM

146  Sascha Trültzsch and Reinhold Viehoff

The following five points sum up the official model of the socialist family (see Gysi and Meyer, 1993; Pfau et al., 2004). 1. The socialist family has to be based on marriage. 2. Socialist parents should bear two or three children. 3. Women in a socialist family should be employed full-time – despite having children. 4. The man and the woman in a socialist family have completely equal rights and have to share the household chores equally. 5. Finally, the socialist family is fully integrated into society – that is, the family is only one collective branch (Kollektiv) among others and is obliged to be open to cooperate with all other branches of society (such as the ‘Brigade’, a branch defined by cooperative working outside the family). Especially in the 1970s, this model of the socialist family was regularly propagated and held up for emulation in the media and in official speeches by leading party members. The model is crucial for the analysis of family series. The SED had authority over the means of television production and, finding that controlling families ‘on screen’ was substantially easier than controlling their counterparts ‘in reality’, the party made ample use of this authority to shape public perception of socialist life. Empirical data on family life in the GDR reveals the gap between ideology and reality for a large number of families (Steinmetz and Viehoff, 2008; Trültzsch, 2009a). Most couples did indeed get married – although often through lack of choice, as getting an apartment was virtually impossible for unmarried couples. Yet the GDR also had a very high divorce rate – in 1980, it ranked fifth in the world for the number of divorces per citizen (Gysi and Meyer, 1993: 145). Compared with West Germany, it was an astonishingly high rate. Thus one might conclude that marriage in the GDR was not pri­marily a matter of romantic love but was often motivated by economic reasons. Furthermore, after 1975, the average number of children never exceeded 1.9 per family (Geißler, 2002: 53).2 Other elements of the official model of the family were also questionable. Nearly every woman had a job, but a large number of them were employed only part-time, and women on average earned about 20–30 per cent less than their male counterparts (Sørensen and Trappe, 1995: 219). All the same, this was still a lower gender pay gap than was common in West Germany at the time. Gender equality, although prominently proclaimed in law, remained a fiction. In 1970, nearly 80 per cent of women reported that they did all the housework, without any help from their husbands (Kahl et al., 1984: 95–100). Outside the family,

Goddard.indb 146

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

The East German political system in television   147

integration into socialist society was meant to be realised through work collectives (Arbeitskollektive), as well as the state-owned kindergartens, day-care centres or schools where children spent most of the day. Yet empirical studies by social scientists show that, at least from the mid-1970s, many families sealed themselves off from wider society (Schneider, 1994: 25; Sparschuh and Koch, 1997: 101). Over the years, the family as the private place of retreat became more and more important. And the party was not amused. Even these few indicative examples suffice to illustrate the gap between ideological guidelines and reality of East Germans’ Lebenswelt (‘lifeworld’) with regard to family life. The specific norma­ tive framework set by party guidelines pushed East German family television series towards a unique aesthetic and cinematic style, trying to balance the expected demands from top down and bottom up. At the same time, it is surprising how fast the socialist television family came to resemble the bourgeois family. The content and televisual aesthetics of family series increasingly approximated the style and content of famous West German productions – especially in the late 1980s. It is this process of change that we want to outline in the following discussion of some characteristic series. Genre evolution: Towards undercover propaganda in family series The 1960s: The wagging finger

It took East German television producers a while to develop a successful strategy for hiding ideological messages behind an enter­ taining story. In the first family series, Heute bei Krügers (Today at the Krüger’s), broadcast from 1960,3 every episode includes overt reflections on the commandments of socialist morality and ethics. The party’s ideological point of view is directly present, and dominates the programme’s aesthetic and cinematic arrangement. The Krügers have already embraced socialist values and they become the archetype of the socialist family. The plot often involves colleagues and neighbours who have issues with the new ethics and must still undergo the ­requisite change in attitudes and behaviour to realise socialist ideals in their private lives. The Krügers make it their business to brief all of these people on the new – socialist – way of living and thinking, often invading their private sphere to achieve this aim. In one episode, for example (episode 11, 19 November 1961), the Krügers investi­ gate – and essentially sit in judgement over – colleagues they accuse of frequent absenteeism. The explicit presentation of socialist values such as the dignity of work and the solidarity of the working class makes up a large part of the programme – occasional short ­humorous

Goddard.indb 147

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

148  Sascha Trültzsch and Reinhold Viehoff

passages do not really disguise the propagandistic intentions. In another episode (episode 10, 1 November 1961), the Krügers spell out the negative impact of listening to West German radio and watching West German television to their next-door neighbour, Mrs Schmidt, who enjoys East German entertainment programmes but also watches news on the hostile capitalist channels. In discussing the issue with Mrs Schmidt, Mrs Krüger draws a parallel with the Olympic Games of 1936. Like the Nazi regime, Western governments intentionally use entertainment to cover up the problems that exist in people’s everyday lives. Instead of mentioning the USA or West Germany by name, in this context Mr Krüger just refers to them as ‘the devil’. These examples indicate how omnipresent the propagandistic intent is in these initial programmes, often bringing them closer to non-fiction or educational movies than to entertainment. At times it even goes beyond this. In the episode mentioned above, Mrs Schmidt has been hoarding washing powder and other goods because of information spread by West German news that there will soon be a shortage of goods. The West German media had warned of such a shortage when reporting on the possibility of a military conflict following the dispute between the USA and the Soviet Union over nuclear weapons4 as well as the confrontation between Soviet and American troops at the Berlin border in October 1961.5 But, the episode suggests, it is really Mrs Schmidt and others like her who are causing the shortage of goods such as soap in the shops (the famous ‘deficit’). At the end of the episode, Mr Krüger points out that the coverage in West German news is a lie – it is destructive propaganda and (it is claimed quite liter­ally) only East German news reports can be trusted. Such blatantly ideological points are further enforced by a rather flimsy dramatic set-up that lacks almost all entertainment value. One may reasonably assume that such series did not properly satisfy the audience’s desire for entertainment, especially if they are compared with West German series from the same time, like Die Familie ­Hesselbach (The Hesselbach Family, 1961–63), which are rather more humorous and gently entertaining. Unfortunately, however, there is no material (such as letters, critiques or research data) in the archives to prove this thesis. The members of the Krüger family act like agents of the state deputies of the SED – they fight for the implementation of the new socialist ideology (Weltanschauung) and this fight is the main topic of every episode. The inner dynamics of the family, a matter of particular importance in bourgeois thinking, is not even granted a minor part in the story. Instead, the series stresses the duty of the socialist family to take care of and ‘educate’ those who have not yet internalised the new

Goddard.indb 148

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

The East German political system in television   149

way of life. In pursuit of the overarching task of creating a socialist society, private family life – as well as light entertainment – is neglec­ ted. Again, one may assume that this series was only partly accepted by the audience, since its content is primarily, and often exclusively, ideological in orientation. To encounter socialist sloganeering, it was quite unnecessary to watch a family drama on television, given the omnipresence of political slogans in the GDR. While this early series openly focused on re-education and the responsibility of socialists like the Krügers to actively help with the socialist project, later series began to take a different approach. As further series were developed, the style and content changed and the genre evolved. While entertainment elements became more prominent and the shows became funnier, educational and ideological elements were aesthetically disguised and hidden through integration into coherent family stories that more closely approached everyday life in the GDR. The early 1970s: More humour

A first remarkable change can be found in the family series Die lieben Mitmenschen (Our Dear Fellow Men), broadcast from 1972.6 The family still remains secondary in the storyline, which instead focuses on the establishment of the socialist social order. But, whereas the Krügers were the pioneer socialist family surrounded by many (still) bourgeois people, the new programme begins from a rather different premise. A whole socialist universe is presented, and the audience is thus shown the ‘socialist reality’ propagated by government. All the ‘dear fellow men’ have turned into socialists, who have internalised the new morality, live in a socialist family and conform to the ideologically prescribed model of behaviour. Thus the opening scene of the series shows different people, from different social milieus, happy to live in the socialist East German state. The episodes are means to reflect the diversity of a developed socialist society, and (unimaginable in previous programmes) even depict long-haired young men in leather jackets – who are not being judged negatively. The series questions clichés and deals with some of the social and cultural complexity that persists even under socialism. Entertainment is placed more in the foreground than before, and the ideological message is pushed more to the background. The stories focus in a humorous way on the challenge of overcoming the few remaining relics of the traditional bourgeois order. The basic set-up of Our Dear Fellow Men is this: Carola Bärenburg, the aged but self-confident and intelligent widow of a professor of medicine, still has strong ties with the old bourgeois order and its

Goddard.indb 149

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

150  Sascha Trültzsch and Reinhold Viehoff

values. Hans, her young nephew, comes to town to study at the local university and lives in a room in Mrs Bärenburg’s flat. He confronts her time and again with the socialist point of view, the values and conventions of socialism, and the great advantages that life in the GDR brings with it. Over time, and rather spasmodically, Mrs Bärenburg too turns into a socialist and is integrated into her neighbourhood community. Her continuing adherence to the old society in the middle of a new socialist reality is explained in terms of the typical isolation of an aged widow – and thus her predicament becomes personal and unique, allowing the episodes to leave the ideological messages in the background. Although an improvement over earlier programmes, the series is only a step along the path of genre evolution, since much of the content is still dominated by political issues. In this family series, family relations provide a frame for the plot rather than driving the plot itself. The families depicted live up to the official standards: they are based on marriage or at least the intention of marriage, they have two or three children, the women work full-time and they are, most importantly perhaps, open to collective, societal contacts. Yet the main dramatic focus is on the activities of single actors and their efforts to overcome the few remaining residues of bourgeois life. But this happens in a humorous way, without explicit negative judgement of the characters who fail to live up to the social­ ist ideal. The social conflicts and disagreements put on screen are presented as individual problems or challenges that do not cast doubt on the system in general, and are therefore (partly) acceptable to the audience and the SED. The late 1970s: Moderation in the countryside

This tendency evolves and continues in another series with fairly dramatic themes. Die Lindstedts (The Lindstedts), from 1976,7 is set in the countryside. Of course, the Lindtstedts are committed socialists, especially because of the blessings of modern collective farming. Again and again, the advantages of the farming cooperative (the so-called LPG, Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft) are mentioned, and small-scale farming based on private property is marked as outdated and unprofitable. Farmers still working their land the traditional way must be convinced to give up their property and join the state-owned collective farms – this is one of the Lindstedts’ aims. The opening episode – as an outline of the rest of the series – shows the benefits of modernisation through collective farming that occurred during the 1950s, when the East German agricultural sector was fundamentally transformed through collectivisation. The series can be seen as a look back on the 1950s and 1960s, to the birth of

Goddard.indb 150

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

The East German political system in television   151

the GDR. The opening scene shows a traditional farming village, with dilapidated houses and horse-drawn carts. These images, which represent the now superseded bourgeois past, have a strongly negative connotation. A leap in time shows the new (socialist) village, with modern combine harvesters, modern houses, grain silos and large, modern animal breeding facilities. The message, which returns in all episodes, is clear: the socialist economy and way of life are clearly superior to their capitalist counterparts. In the episodes of the Lindtstedts, the ideological elements are hidden in the background and serve as an invisible accompaniment to the family entertainment. In this respect, the environment of the series is different and so its dramatic structure has changed too. Whereas in the earlier series the developed socialist society still had a few cracks which had to be overcome by the family for the sake of the socialist state, now the dramatic potential in ideological issues is largely reduced – so that families are no longer significantly responsible for the success of the new socialist society as a whole. Our Dear Fellow Men used the aged widow to carry an ideological message, but now real achievements in technical innovation and progress are used as an underlying theme to integrate ideological elements. Both series can be seen as steps towards entertaining drama, with fewer propagandistic elements. One is more focused on modern city life and a unique, old-fashioned bourgeois woman, while the other is more concerned with the benefits of modernising rural villages by demonstrating the benefits of the socialist system. Changes to programmes and politics in the 1970s and 1980s Significant changes to the characters, content and visual aesthetics of East German television series occurred at the beginning of the 1980s. The move, already mentioned, towards placing ideology in the background and covering up the political message with light enter­ tainment continued. More and more often, everyday life and the private lives of families were the focus of the story. With the ideological message convincingly masked by an improved dramaturgy, it became possible for the family series to raise minor critical issues that would previously have been strictly taboo. Small deviations from the rigid ideological imperative were shown with humour – and, more surprisingly, without being judged negatively. In the earlier series, such imperfect characters were introduced into the series only to re-educate them and to demonstrate a change in their values and identification with the socialist political programme. But now these figures were integrated as an alternative – capable of being accepted

Goddard.indb 151

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

152  Sascha Trültzsch and Reinhold Viehoff

for their amusement value – beyond any strict ideology. Such criti­ cal elements, and the presence of coherent characters who do not fit the rigid role model of the socialist family, helped to increase the approval of such television shows among their intended audience. At last, viewers were provided with cues that allowed them to identify with the characters. As a result, audience approval of these series rose overall, although the relevant data include peaks and troughs (Pfau, 2004: 60). These changes in television correlate with changes in policy that occurred when, in 1971, Walter Ulbricht was replaced by Erich ­Honecker as head of party and state. Honecker lamented the dis­ appoint­ing lack of entertainment on East German television (see above, and note 1) and, after some years’ delay, the producers of tele­ vision shows responded to this challenge and modified their aesthetic and visual strategies. Series attempted to be more humorous and en­ gaging in style, with propaganda taking a back seat. This new focus gave authors, script writers, script editors and directors more scope to allow for greater variety in storylines, characters and plots for new series, and eventually to diverge from the strict ideological model. Of course, beneath this veneer of entertainment, the positions and ­ideology of the party were still propagated. The Lindstedts can be under­stood to be a consequence of these changes – offering a less ideological presentation of a common family life – but in the following years the changes went even further. At the same time, the reality of life in the GDR changed as well. Under the strains of life in an authoritarian regime, an increasing number of citizens took refuge in the inner circle of the family, which thus became more important to them than social and politically organ­ised concerns. This development peaked in the early 1980s. The shelter of the family became a place of retreat – a site of splendid isolation from outside influence (see Gysi et al., 1990: 34; Schneider, 1994: 25). Two main reasons for this development can be identified: first, citizens were disappointed with the project of socialism under Ulbricht, due to the lack of any visible progress; and secondly, they did not see their hopes for improvement fulfilled under Honecker, the new head of state. Honecker had promised more artistic freedom and prosperity. But soon the former was suspended and replaced by more stringent censorship and bans on movies and artists; and although prosperity did indeed increase, the country’s industry remained in a dire state and people remained disappointed with their standard of living. The ongoing retreat into the family unit went hand in hand with a shielding against other societal issues. Beyond the family, the other main social grouping that mattered to people was their work

Goddard.indb 152

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

The East German political system in television   153

collective, which for many had taken on the character of circles of friends (see Helwig, 1984: 5–6; Kahl et al., 1984). Family television series mirror these changes. The socialist model family is increasingly absent from their storylines and characters retreat from the public sphere, no longer holding positions in party, unions and so on, and instead focus their emotional and psychic energy on events in their family. There was a revival of traditional bourgeois family values. At the same time, the aesthetics of the series became more and more similar to their Western counterparts as producers struggled to prevent East Germans from simply switching to West German channels. Increasingly, the only difference between West and East German productions was that the latter had to find plots that fitted in with the non-Western reality of the GDR. The remaining ideological elements were wholly confined to the background. The 1980s: New subjects

The series Familie Neumann (Neumann Family), broadcast in 1984,8 gives an impression of how important the inner circle of the family had become not only in reality but also for family life on screen, and how the entertaining aspects had attained absolute priority. Ideo­logical elements are only reflected in attitudes and surrounding factors, but are nowhere central to the plot. The episodes drew pictures of an idyllic family life that became typical for most subsequent series. The plot of every episode focused on relations within the nuclear family. Problems of parenting, relationships, housework and other minor difficulties of everyday life were dealt with and solved in each episode. Neither problems within the work collective nor neighbourhood issues were of importance, let alone political issues in a wider sense. This tendency towards a bourgeois lifestyle was promoted by the changing professions of the series’ main characters. While in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly working-class or upwardly mobile individuals were shown; by the 1980s, the central characters were increasingly middle-class people with traditional bourgeois needs and wishes. For example, the Schön family – principal characters of the series Barfuß ins Bett (Barefoot to Bed) (1988 and 1990)9 – is descended from a long line of physicians. With their habits, artistic tastes, lifestyle, attitudes and values, they can surely be labelled as a normal, bourgeois, middle-class family. Similar examples can be found in several other programmes. All of these changes foreground entertainment. The working-class characters of yore were a good choice for transporting the ideology of the revolutionary class; but when it comes to offering relatively light entertainment, the well situated middle-class family seems to provide a better background. The progress towards

Goddard.indb 153

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

154  Sascha Trültzsch and Reinhold Viehoff

more entertaining programmes continued. In the 1980s, ideological elements were no longer present even in dialogue or the assemblage of characters. They persisted only in strong affirmative opinions of the GDR, in the attitudes of the protagonists and in the message that underlies every plot: the GDR is a Heimat (home) worth living in, and problems are only minor challenges that make it even more appealing. Conclusion The evolution of television in socialist East Germany is best understood as resulting from the interplay of two elements. First, East German television was in part a response to Western productions, with which its output was widely compared and contrasted. Tele­ vision producers in the GDR always had to react to and compete with Western television innovations, and even scheduling decisions were made in light of Western programming. Secondly – and even more importantly – television was integrated into the overall purpose of the socialist state and the socialist party. Several planning entities controlled the orientation of television in general, and censorship ensured that every single television show fitted into the propagandistic plan of the party. This second aspect in particular changed over the years, however. While the general aims remained the same, the strategies used to achieve them were adapted to the growing need to attract and entertain an audience that was increasingly switching to West German media. Changes in content and aesthetics were made to increase audience approval of the programmes; and propagandistic elements could no longer be foregrounded, but had to be placed in the background, increasingly covered up by less explicitly ideological storylines. The evolution of East German family series reflects both strategic changes and developments in East German society in general. In the 1960s, as television series were first produced, they put particular stress on the uniqueness of socialist society. They depict perfect socialist families, closely connected with other socialist institutions and keen to help in developing the socialist society. In line with the party’s family model, television families saw themselves as one collective among others and receptive to the social and ideological influences of society at large. This gives these early series a uniquely East German style. The story is exclusively located in the GDR, as reflected in the constant presence of its organs of control (the state as well as ideologically inclined neighbours) and the lack of consumer goods and services, as well as the social welfare benefits on which East Germany prided itself. The ideological message is direct, sometimes even aggressive, and usually dominates the storyline.

Goddard.indb 154

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

The East German political system in television   155

When Erich Honecker took over as head of party and state in 1971, many things changed significantly in the GDR and these changes were reflected in television. Overt ideological propaganda and influence upon the private sphere were reduced. Accordingly, the political instrumentalisation of family life diminished and many citizens withdrew from public life to the privacy of family life. Honecker’s new economic and welfare policy gave a little more wealth to the people and therefore unintentionally promoted this development – at least for a short period. These changes also deepened social stratification and produced more visible disparities among citizens. Consequently, there was a return to more conservative, traditional and bourgeois values and family structures. Even though the SED never gave up ­officially on the family model it had initially propagated, the model was rarely publicly promoted after the end of the 1970s. In 1972, a reform of television programming was supposed to help make television more entertaining and popular, thus discouraging people from watching West German programmes. As a result of the new guidelines, television shows changed. In the family series, the model family was somewhat disguised and better integrated into stories of everyday life that were entertaining or humorous in their own right. Additional pressure on East German television came from West German television, where the number of entertainment shows rose from the beginning of the 1980s – also reaching a large audience in East Germany. To keep its intended audience from watching Western programmes, East German television had to keep up with international developments in television entertainment. Ideological guidelines and the socialist model family had to be abandoned, and series reflected more closely the reality of everyday life in the GDR. Families on screen (like their counterparts off screen) lived lives more separate from the socialist collectives, embraced a more bourgeois lifestyle and were less explicitly committed to a strict socialist ideology (Weltanschauung). The content, character range and conflicts that drive East German family series in the 1980s are quite similar to those in West German television. In line with trends in television aesthetics everywhere, more episodes of one series were broadcast, plots were interwoven and episodes frequently ended with a cliff-hanger to encourage the audience to return for the next episode. The ideological message, which was forced into the background, was now primarily reflected in the attitudes of the protagonists and the general settings of the plot, which were meant to show the GDR as the unquestioned Heimat, dear to those who lived there.

Goddard.indb 155

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

156  Sascha Trültzsch and Reinhold Viehoff

Notes 1 At the eighth party conference in June 1971, Erich Honecker, head of state and secretary-general of the Socialist Unity Party, said: ‘Unser Fernsehen, das auf gute Leistungen zurückblicken kann, sollte verstärkt bemüht sein, die Programmgestaltung zu verbessern, eine bestimmte Langeweile zu überwinden [und, d.A.] den Bedürfnissen nach guter Unterhaltung Rechnung zu tragen’ (‘Our television, which can look back on good work in the past, should increase its ambitions to raise the quality of its programming, to overcome a certain boredom and to better fit the needs of good entertainment’) (Honecker, 1975: 9). For the context to Honecker’s speech, see Hickethier with Hoff (1998: 384); and Steinmetz and Viehoff (2008: 280–5). 2 The mean number of children per family was 1.5 in 1975, 1.9 in 1980, 1.7 in 1985 and 1.5 in 1989 (Geißler, 2002: 53). 3 Twenty-five episodes, broadcast October 1960 to June 1963. 4 Culminating in the Vienna Summit on 4 June 1961. 5 On 27 October 1961, Soviet and American tanks stood face to face at Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin. 6 Ten episodes, broadcast November 1972 to January 1973 (first seven episodes) and August to September 1974 (final three episodes). 7 Seven episodes, broadcast October and November 1976. 8 Seven episodes, broadcast August to October 1984. 9 Fourteen episodes broadcast June to August 1988 (first seven episodes) and March to May 1990 (seven episodes).

References C. Dittmar (2008), ‘Das feindliche Fernsehen. Das DDR-Fernsehen und seine Strategien im Umgang mit dem Fernsehen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’ (‘The hostile television: GDR-Television and its strategies in dealing with the television of the Federal Republic of Germany’), PhD thesis, Martin Luther Universität, Halle. R. Geißler (2002), Die Sozialstruktur Deutschlands: Die gesellschaftliche Entwicklung vor und nach der Vereinigung (The Social Structure of Germany: Social Development Before and After Reunification) (3rd edn). Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. J. Gysi and D. Meyer (1993), ‘Leitbild: berufstätige Mutter – DDR-Frauen in Familie, Partnerschaft und Ehe’ (‘Role model: Working mother – Women in the GDR in family, partnership and marriage’), in G. Helwig and H. M. Nickel (eds), Frauen in Deutschland: 1945–1992 (Women in Germany: 1945–1992). Berlin: VCH. J. Gysi, U. Hempel, D. Meyer and N. Staufenbiel (1990), ‘Die Zukunft von Familie und Ehe: Familienpolitik und Familienforschung in der DDR’ (‘The future of family and marriage: Family politics and family research in the GDR’), in G. Burkart (ed.), Sozialisation und Sozialismus (Socialisation and Socialism). Weinheim: Juventa. W. Hartinger, S. Pfau, S. Trültzsch and R. Viehoff (2004), ‘Familie in der DDR und ihr Leitbild: Methodische Vorstrukturierungen’ (‘Family in the GDR and the family role model: Preliminary methodical considerations’), in R. Viehoff (ed.), ‘Die Liebenswürdigkeit des Alltags’: Die Familienserie Rentner haben niemals Zeit (‘The Kindness of Everyday Life’: The Family Series Pensioners Never Have Time). Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag.

Goddard.indb 156

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

The East German political system in television   157 G. Helwig (1984), Jugend und Familie in der DDR: Leitbild und Alltag im Widerspruch (Youth and Family in the GDR: Model and Reality in Conflict). Köln: Edition Deutschland Archiv. K. Hickethier with P. Hoff (1998), Geschichte des deutschen Fernsehens (History of German Television). Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler. G. Holzweißig (2002), Die schärfste Waffe der Partei: Eine Mediengeschichte der DDR (The Sharpest Weapon of the Party: A Media History of the GDR). Köln: Böhlau. E. Honecker (1975), Reden und Aufsätze. Band 1 (Speeches and Papers. Volume 1). Berlin (DDR): Dietz. A. Kahl, H. S. Wilsdorf and H. F. Wolf (1984), Kollektivbeziehungen und Lebensweise (Collective Relationships and Way of Life). Berlin (DDR): Dietz. Ministerium der Justiz (1982), ‘Kommentar zum Familiengesetzbuch der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik vom 20. Dezember 1965 und zum Einführungsgesetz zum FGB der DDR’ (‘Commentary on the Code of Family Law of the GDR and on its introduction’) (5th revision). Berlin (DDR). W. Mühl-Benninghaus (2006), ‘Von den Schwierigkeiten mit der Unterhaltung’ (‘On the difficulties with entertainment’), in W. Mühl-Benninghaus (ed.), Drei Mal auf Anfang: Fernsehunterhaltung in Deutschland (Three Times Started: Television Entertainment in Germany). Berlin: Vistas. S. Pfau (2004), ‘Kleingartenidylle? Die Familienserien Geschichten übern Gartenzaun und Neues übern Gartenzaun’ (‘Allotment idyll? The family series stories over the garden fence and news over the garden fence’), in C. Dittmar and S. Vollberg (eds), Alternativen im DDR-Fernsehen? Die Programmentwicklung 1981–1985 (Alternatives in GDR Television? Programme Development 1981– 1985). Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. S. Pfau (2009), Vom Seriellen zur Serie – Wandlungen im DDR-Fernsehen (From Serials to Series – Changes in GDR Television). Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. S. Pfau, B. Raue and S. Trültzsch (2004), ‘Der Traum vom neuen Menschen: Sozial­ istisches Menschenbild und Familienleitbilder in der DDR’ (‘The dream of a new human: Socialistic conceptions of men and the family role model in the GDR’), in R. Viehoff (ed.), ‘Die Liebenswürdigkeit des Alltags’: Die Familienserie Rentner haben niemals Zeit (‘The Kindness of Everyday Life’: The Family Series Pensioners Never Have Time). Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. N. Schneider (1994), Familie und private Lebensführung in West- und Ostdeutschland (Family and Private Lifestyles in West and East Germany). Stuttgart: Lucius und Lucius. M. Schubert and H.-J. Stiehler (2004), ‘Programmentwicklung im DDR-­Fernsehen zwischen 1980 und 1985. Programmstrukturanalytische Betrachtungen zur zweiten Programmreform’ (‘Programme development in GDR television between 1980 and 1985: A programme analysis regarding the Second Programme Reform’), in C. Dittmar and S. Vollberg (eds), Alternativen im DDR-Fernsehen? Die Programmentwicklung 1981–1985 (Alternatives in GDR Television? Programme Development 1981–1985). Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. M. Schubert and H.-J. Stiehler (2009), ‘Program structure analysis of the GDR television 1956 to 1991’, in U. Breitenborn and S. Trültzsch (eds), ‘Popular culture and fiction in four decades of East German television’, SPIEL (Siegener Periodi­ cum für Internationale Empirische Literaturwissenschaft), 25(2): 259–72. SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) (1963), ‘Programm der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands. Einstimmig angenommen auf dem VI.

Goddard.indb 157

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

158  Sascha Trültzsch and Reinhold Viehoff Parteitag der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands’ (‘Programme of the Socialist Unity Party. Unanimously accepted at the 6th Party Convention of the SED’), Berlin (DDR), 15–21 January 1963. A. Sørensen and H. Trappe (1995), ‘Frauen und Männer: Gleichberech­ tigung – Gleichstellung – Gleichheit?’ (‘Women and men: Equal rights – equal treatment – equality?’), in J. Huinink and K. U. Mayer (eds), Kollektiv und Eigensinn (Collectives and Obstinacy). Berlin: VCH. V. Sparschuh and U. Koch (1997), Sozialismus und Soziologie: Die Gründer­ generation der DDR-Soziologie (Socialism and Sociology: The Founding Generation of GDR Sociology). Opladen: Leske und Budrich. R. Steinmetz and R. Viehoff (eds) (2008), Deutsches Fernsehen Ost: Eine Pro­ grammgeschichte des DDR-Fernsehens (East German Television: A Programme History of GDR Television). Berlin: VBB. S. Trültzsch (2009a), Kontextualisierte Medienanalyse: Mit einem Anwendungs­ beispiel zum Frauenbild in DDR-Familienserien (Contextualised Content Analysis: With an Example of Use for the Image of Women in GDR Family Series). ­Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. S. Trültzsch (2009b), ‘From strict socialist to bourgeois: Changing family values on East German television’, in U. Breitenborn and S. Trültzsch (eds), ‘Popular culture and fiction in four decades of East German television’, SPIEL (­Siegener Periodicum für Internationale Empirische Literaturwissenschaft), 25(2): 225–34.

Goddard.indb 158

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

10 Agitprop gone wrong: Der Schwarze Kanal

Frank Engelmann-del Mestre

If you are familiar with The Muppet Show, you will have an idea of its characters Statler and Waldorf, the two elderly men who relentlessly heckle the stage cast from a safe distance. The two curmudgeons are immune to any kind of criticism, and despite their disgust for the show they return each episode. Peculiar as it may sound, Statler and Waldorf could be a remarkably close representation of one of the best-known political journalists in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler (1918–2001) wrote, hosted and edited the weekly agitprop television programme Der Schwarze Kanal (The Black Channel) from 1960 until 1989, in which he tried to denounce West German television by means of agitation and propaganda. His work left an indelible mark on the German television landscape, which is today characterised by the inter-relatedness of media in the two former German states (Grape, 2000). It might then be surprising to find a chapter on an agitprop programme here, because this book sets out to investigate the role of popular television within authoritarian regimes of Europe. Popular television, though, does not only involve light entertainment; it can also include popular awareness of certain well known public figures. In von Schnitzler’s case, he was the only television personality who found his name on demonstrators’ banners during the regular 1989 Monday anti-government demonstrations in the GDR (Hickethier with Hoff, 1998: 505), which is an indicator of how widely he was known in East Germany. Perhaps even more revealing is what was written on those banners. The demonstrators jokingly suggested that von Schnitzler should join The Muppet Show (Diekmann, 2000: 182). This observation is noteworthy for two reasons. First, GDR citizens watched and were familiar with West German television (including children’s shows). Secondly, von Schnitzler seemed to have failed in

Goddard.indb 159

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

160  Frank Engelmann-del Mestre

his anti-Western propaganda. In view of that, this chapter investigates where and why von Schnitzler and his programme failed. It seeks to explore some of the programme’s digitised scripts1 in order to analyse various features of The Black Channel. Analysis of its format demonstrates that The Black Channel perhaps lacked certain aesthetic qualities which could have made the programme more attractive and enjoyable to watch. It also shows that the programme’s ­editorial concept seemed to lack a genuinely innovative style which could have set it apart from similar programmes. Moving on to provide an analy­sis of von Schnitzler’s propagandist style and his choice of topics, the chapter seeks to isolate von Schnitzler’s self-conception of what journal­ism ought to do, and why, in his view, Western journalism failed to be truthful. With von Schnitzler’s self-conception of journalism identified, the chapter finally turns towards the programme’s overall negative reception, which could hold the key for an understanding of why von Schnitzler failed. Format and concept: The programme as ‘sewage plant’ The Black Channel was broadcast every Monday, after the screening of a popular classic UFA movie. It started at approximately 9.30pm – the time varying according to the length of the preceding film. Govern­ ment officials in the GDR probably believed that this prime-time spot would attract most viewers, including those in West Germany who could also receive GDR programmes. Another reason for this choice of time could have been that the most important, and therefore most dangerous, West German political programmes were also broadcast on a Monday evening (Ludes, 1990: 279), which meant that von Schnitzler could kill two birds with one stone. Nonetheless, it could be argued that he did not attract as many viewers as his Western colleagues, for a number of reasons which will be discussed below. Gerlof calls the programme’s workmanship cheap, but its effect unsettling (1999: 84). The programme would start with an animation of a black eagle landing on a roof-top antenna. The visual symbolism of this threatening bird of prey was accompanied by the sharp sound of an untuned piano harshly striking the notes of the highly controversial ‘Deutschlandlied’.2 The scene was set perfectly for von Schnitzler, who would cast out the menacing bird. He would achieve this entirely by the power of political commentary and the use of supposedly sound arguments. Von Schnitzler would simply sit on a chair, without a distracting background image or a big table between him and his viewers, as if he wanted to make sure that nothing would divert his audience’s attention. At the end of the programme, the black eagle would shift its

Goddard.indb 160

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

Agitprop gone wrong: Der Schwarze Kanal  161

feet and eventually fall off the antenna, as if von Schnitzler’s victory over Western media needed even more illustration. The aesthetic simplicity of the programme was also reflected in its overall concept. The driving editorial idea was to show excerpts from West German television programmes, which were re-edited and commented on by von Schnitzler. Interestingly, this was not von Schnitzler’s own idea. The West German programme Die rote Optik (The Red Viewpoint), presented by Thilo Koch, had used a similar technique two years before the launch of The Black Channel, only in this case GDR news programmes were re-edited in order to educate West German citizens about their socialist neighbour (Levasier, 2007: 237). However, it could also be argued that von Schnitzler was inspired much earlier, when he worked for the German Service of the BBC in London, where he also received his first training in journalism. An inno­vative feature of the wartime BBC programme Hitler vs. Hitler was the use of authentic soundbites, which demonstrated ‘the contradictory nature of the Führer’s promises, the inconsistency of his decrees, or the hypocritical character of his statements’ (Rebien, 2003: 164–5). It is reasonable to assume that later in his career von Schnitzler adapted the BBC’s editorial technique to present Western media. Working for The Black Channel, he could similarly attribute a certain level of authenticity and legitimacy to his media analysis, in order to illustrate the contradictory nature of the West. Above all, von Schnitzler could always claim that he did not produce the news; he only fought against lies, corrected misrepresentations and helped balance biased opinions (von Schnitzler, 1995: 112). The editorial concept of The Black Channel may not have been unique at the time, but the way in which excerpts were re-edited, commented upon and eventually distorted by von Schnitzler certainly was quite innovative. The editorial treatment frequently resulted in a propaganda montage characterised by a series of decontextualised excerpts which were often cut back to back, so that the audience was sometimes exposed to short snippets from three or more different programmes. Gerlof identifies a four-step method in von Schnitzler’s method of organising his commentary: he starts with a quote or excerpt from Western television which is presented out of context; this is followed by von Schnitzler’s claim that the excerpt is a lie; he then gives a myriad of reasons (often using a wealth of background information that the audience could not verify) to explain why the excerpt shown is a lie; and finally he concludes that Western media must tell lies because capitalist media are essentially anti-socialist media (Gerlof, 1999: 87). Occasionally, von Schnitzler would not use the original audio track but comment from off screen instead. This raises the question of how

Goddard.indb 161

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

162  Frank Engelmann-del Mestre

von Schnitzler intended to unmask Western media if his programme needed to manipulate authentic sources. There is no obvious answer to this question, but the first episode of The Black Channel, from 21 March 1960, might provide an indication. As an introduction to the programme, von Schnitzler says: The Black Channel which we refer to … is filled with filth + sewage; … It is the Channel which West German television uses to broadcast their programmes: The Black Channel. From today on, we will attend to it every Monday at this hour, as a sewage plant in a way – in a figurative sense.3 (DSK #1, 21 March 1960: 1)

This statement makes von Schnitzler’s position with regard to Western television unmistakably clear: he regards all of it as sewage. It seems his understanding is that his role is to cleanse television. In a later episode, adopting a similar rhetorical stance, he even demands that the soiled ether be cleaned (DSK #1348, 14 July 1986: 9). ­Generally, The Black Channel was perceived by him to be a medium of the word, not of the image (Levasier, 2007: 242–3), which is probably why he paid little attention to the visual appeal of the programme, or indeed the selection of snippets from West German television. If this is true, however, it suggests that von Schnitzler’s own commentary was most important to him. So an analysis of his commentary needs to address his style as well as his choice of topics in order to arrive at a full appreci­ation of the programme’s effect. Style and topics: If it is West German, it is wrong The style of von Schnitzler’s commentary has been described as emphatic, aggressive, sardonic and curt, and always delivered with a slight lisp (Gerlof, 1999: 84). A further characteristic was an odd rhetorical combination of carrot and stick. He would often attack Western politicians and journalists not on grounds of what they said. Instead, he joked about their names, mocked their appearance or made fun of their rhetorical skills (Gerlof, 1999: 84). Similarly, he would often behave like a docile and omniscient father, who patiently listens to and understands the childish ideas of Western media, only to return to his aggressive and precocious style in the next sentence. The episode that deals with the assassination of John F. Kennedy is but one example of this type of polemic technique. Von Schnitzler deeply regrets Kennedy’s death and honours him as a great statesman, only to praise the assassin a second later: ‘a special rifle, a scope – 150 metres distance – Kennedy shot in the head.… This is perfectly organised,

Goddard.indb 162

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

Agitprop gone wrong: Der Schwarze Kanal  163

determined’4 (DSK #189, 25 November 1963: 2). Von Schnitzler’s style of commentary, however, changed over the decades. In retrospect, three separate phases with regard to his style can be identified. It seems that von Schnitzler’s approach to his commentary throughout the 1960s was very simplistic, inasmuch as he claimed that he saw no need to differentiate between one or another Western personality because everybody was the enemy (von Schnitzler, 1992: 54). He had to change his disproportionate aggressiveness in the 1970s when the two German states entered a new era of unprecedented exchange and diplomacy. Gerlof observes that he did not change his belligerent style completely, but that he selectively became more pragmatic and cautious (1999: 114). This may be true to a certain degree, as von Schnitzler simply stopped attacking individual politicians and journalists; however, the programme’s manuscripts from the 1970s show that he had a tendency to use rather generalised terms, such as ‘Western media’ instead of individual journalists’ names, or the ‘Federal Government’ instead of the names of individual members of the government. The core of his aggressive and polemic style, however, had hardly changed. The final stylistic phase, from the mid-1980s until the end of The Black Channel, was influenced by the general political agenda for further harmonisation of relationships between the two German states. Von Schnitzler called upon reason, dialogue and mutual credibility whenever he addressed the enemy (1992: 58). His belligerence towards the Western system may have changed into more peaceful polemics. However, during this period he increasingly attacked his East German audience, who only saw cynicism where he intended satirical commentary (Levasier, 2007: 245). With regard to his target audience, von Schnitzler also had to change the programme. The programme was created in 1960 with the West German audience in mind, in order to demonstrate how they were corrupted by West German propaganda (Levasier, 2007: 239). It is not surprising that von Schnitzler, the chief commentator of GDR television, was identified to take on the task of inventing The Black Channel.5 Only a decade later, West German television programmes could more easily be received in the GDR and their overall popularity grew rapidly. The GDR government saw a need to put a different spin on these so-called ‘enemy broadcasts’ in order to provide a corrective authority for West German media influence (Hickethier with Hoff, 1998: 283). As a result, von Schnitzler started to adapt his programme to his East German audience in an attempt to unmask Western propaganda and to protect East Germans from its malicious influence. In doing so, he proved that he was flexible to some degree because he adapted his programme to different national audiences. Yet the heart

Goddard.indb 163

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

164  Frank Engelmann-del Mestre

of the programme did not aim at audiences or target groups; instead it aimed at the re-education of its viewers. In the light of von Schnitzler’s function as a corrective authority, he could be conceived as someone whose journalistic ambition emanated from the search for the truth, or the correct version thereof. One could also argue that he understood himself as a defensive force, as someone who fought for the educational cause of socialist humanity (Lee, 2003: 197). That is to say, von Schnitzler’s work could merely respond to the alleged lies spread in Western media, which would have had a dramatic effect on his programme. If this is true, von Schnitzler could not actually set the topical agenda for individual episodes himself but only react to the random topics that Western television had offered to him over the course of the previous week. Nonetheless, if (like von Schnitzler) you believe that everything in the West German media is sewage, you would always find something that irritated you. It is then perhaps no surprise that von Schnitzler was always able to identify topics of interest, such as the exercise of influence of Western media and politics on East German affairs, the image of the GDR in the West, the fascist and revanchist nature of the West German political system, or the war-mongering behaviour of Western politicians. While one might expect such topics to be part of any propaganda programme, von Schnitzler also addressed more mundane topics, including youth culture, the education system, popular music and sport, to name only a few. This observation is remarkable, because it underlines once more von Schnitzler’s view that everything which came from the West was worthless and, for that reason, worthy of his commentary. However, others have argued that there is method in von Schnitzler’s seemingly arbitrary way of selecting topics. Gerlof suggests a simple ABC rule for the decisive factors in von Schnitzler’s choices when she agrees with some Western intellectuals who identified Arbeitslosigkeit (unemployment), Berufsverbot (occupational ban) and Chaos (chaos) (1999: 104). These ABC topics can today be understood only in a comparison of the two German states. Whereas unemployment was a recurring problem in West Germany, the state-controlled market economy of the GDR officially provided employment for everyone. After the West German 1972 Radikalenerlass (anti-radical decree), many communists were forced out of their jobs in the public sector. In the GDR, by contrast, occupational bans were officially unheard of. So unemployment and occupational bans could readily have constituted the primary basis for von Schnitzler’s aggressive analysis of West Germany. It could also be argued that these two topics do not address the topical richness and complexity of the programme. The final topic in Gerlof ’s ABC rule, however, subsumes everything else under the

Goddard.indb 164

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

Agitprop gone wrong: Der Schwarze Kanal  165

category of chaos, which may provide a better insight into the reasons behind von Schnitzler’s choice: he wanted to present only the chaotic side of the West German way of life – its ‘filthiness’. Kroneberg (2002: 237) believes that it is not of primary importance to look at how von Schnitzler commented on certain Western television programmes and their topics, but rather at which television programmes he chose to use in The Black Channel. Von Schnitzler did not only use excerpts from Western programmes which dealt with contemporary political issues. He also found that apolitical journalistic programmes, such as health and sports programmes, could be a source of controversy (Grape, 2000). The controversies he observed in both political and apolitical programmes often scrutinised the purpose of journalism itself. Viewed in this light, von Schnitzler may not only have understood himself as a defensive political commen­ tator on everyday and political topics, but perhaps more notably as a defensive journalist who used The Black Channel to ponder the very nature of journalism, the ideas it entails and ultimately the illegitimacy of Western journalistic practices. Journalistic self-image: Von Schnitzler as politician-journalist A very general observation by von Schnitzler was that political and economic forces subdue journalism. He claimed that mass media would always bear the characteristics of the society in and for which they work; hence capitalist media could only be anti-socialist and anti-communist (cited in Gerlof, 1999: 87). While his statement as a whole may be logically valid, his premise is based on the assumption that journalism is a victim of its system and, therefore, cannot be independent. If this assumption were applied to GDR media, the result would be similar. This, however, would defy von Schnitzler’s ambition to uncover the truth, because by that understanding he could only provide a different version of it. On the one hand, providing a better version of the truth is no contradiction to the common socialist worldview (Nähle, 2005: 25); on the other hand, von Schnitzler claimed that he did not invent the Feindbild (portrait of the enemy) of the West, but the Feindbild was, in his view, a logical necessity which stemmed from the existence of two neighbouring yet irreconcilable ideologies (von Schnitzler, 1992: 45). But this raises the question of how von Schnitzler tried to prove that his journalism was superior to Western journalism, which was, according to him, nothing but a ‘pollution of the mind’ (DSK #1097, 27 July 1981: 8). Throughout the editions of The Black Channel, four recurring argumentative themes can be identified which von Schnitzler used to

Goddard.indb 165

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

166  Frank Engelmann-del Mestre

demonstrate why Western media failed to be independent and truthful. The first theme deals with the editorial treatment of footage. For example, von Schnitzler (DSK #893, 4 July 1977: 5) quoted an article by film-makers whose footage from their film about youth in the GDR was used in the West German political programme Report: Report drastically demonstrated to us, the film-makers, how they conducted themselves with journalistic carelessness; we are surprised how [the meaning of ] our own film material is turned into the opposite by means of commentary from off screen and editorial montage.6

The claim against Western journalists here is that they used editing irresponsibly in order to agitate against the GDR. Von Schnitzler could use this argument frequently if he wanted to put West German news coverage of the GDR into the right perspective and, therefore, diminish its sphere of influence. The second theme addresses the economic constraints of Western media. For instance, von Schnitzler claimed that Western media could not properly fulfil their function of independent news coverage because all Western media follow similar economic principles, namely that the very few control the many (DSK #718, 14 January 1974: 3). This statement addressed the West German economic situation, where only a few publishers existed, responsible between them for countless newspapers and political journals. In television, Schnitzler argued that broadcasters’ income was directly linked to the popularity of their programmes and, therefore, to the advertising economy. The third theme charges Western journalism with being a smokescreen for true democratic values. Von Schnitzler (DSK #797, 28 July 1975: 4) accused journalists of using certain topics as a Feigenblatt (fig leaf ) in an attempt to conceal the real problems of West German society. This also related, in his view, to the values of a democratic society, where the system’s capability for self-criticism is a hollow exercise because self-critical thinking is never applied to crucial, societal topics. The fourth and final accusation against Western journalism claims that Western journalists were not neutral reporters, but that they became actively involved with historical and political events; in so doing, they illegitimately claimed ‘information territory’. Von Schnitzler (DSK #825, 16 February 1976: 5) argued in a more general sense that wars always started with the claiming of foreign territory; by analogy, Western media had started a war (of information) by claiming the territory of truth. Von Schnitzler later supported this notion when he asserted that West German journalists actively inter­ fered with internal GDR affairs – for example, when they allegedly

Goddard.indb 166

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

Agitprop gone wrong: Der Schwarze Kanal  167

helped to organise the fall of the Berlin Wall and invented GDR civil rights activists in their programmes (quoted in Ludes, 1990: 283). In short, von Schnitzler seemed to believe that Western media made up news through either manipulation or interference, or that they failed to present the news truthfully because of economic constraints or because the press in West Germany was not free. If one applies von Schnitzler’s criticism of Western journalism to his own journalistic practice for The Black Channel, one can easily see that all of his accusations also apply to him. That he used editorial montage and off-screen commentary to misrepresent statements by West German politicians and journalists has already been mentioned. On the second theme, while there may not have been any economic or commercial constraints behind The Black Channel, it could be argued that von Schnitzler found himself in a political force field. Boyer (2003: 530) notes that many GDR journalists felt ‘the presence of Schere im Kopf (scissors in the head) that careful attention to their professional role as party-journalists had cultivated in them’ (italics in original). As a result, von Schnitzler had to be just as well adjusted and subordinate as any other GDR journalist, although he described his political position in a television interview thus: ‘I don’t think this way because I’m here, but I’m here because I think this way’7 (quoted in Rörig, 1997). However, others suggest that higher members of the S ­ ocialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands; SED) were not always pleased with his programme (Nähle, 2005: 28; Levasier, 2007: 243–4) and von Schnitzler had to send out several letters of apology, so he could hardly be thought of as an entirely independent journalist. Thirdly, his programme, like many of the other GDR political programmes, did not openly address the political and economic shortcomings of the GDR (Gerlof, 1999: 88). By pointing a finger only at the West, von Schnitzler’s programme was as much a smoke-screen as the Western programmes he accused of hiding the truth. Finally, his assertion that Western media fought a war to claim the territory of information and truth stands in contradiction to many of his statements. For example, after an analysis of the editorial wrongdoings of Report (see the example above), he concluded that capitalistic information and lies are identical, inasmuch as socialism, peace and the truth are identical (DSK #893, 4 July 1977: 6). Furthermore, the programme was intended by von Schnitzler to be an ideological attack, where action was to be taken by him and not by the enemy (Levasier, 2007: 239). Consequently, he claimed the truth and the territory of information for his programme as well, and perhaps more persistently so. How could von Schnitzler blame Western journalism for its methods but at the same time employ similar ones? The answer will probably

Goddard.indb 167

5/30/2013 1:41:29 PM

168  Frank Engelmann-del Mestre

be impregnated with the same double standards. He firmly believed that journalism was a means of exercising power and an instrument of class struggle (von Schnitzler, 1995: 62). Moreover, he considered himself a politician-journalist who needed to paint as attract­ive a picture of socialism as possible (von Schnitzler, 1995: 190). It seems that he never thought that journalism could or should be based on principles of independence. In one episode of the programme, he even claimed that freedom of the press in West Germany was an attack on freedom as such (DSK #1141, 7 June 1982: 2). It could, then, be argued that von Schnitzler regarded his journalistic activity as ­ superior because he thought he was aware of the limitations and constraints of political journalism, whereas he considered his Western colleagues to be blinded by the glowing promise of freedom of the press. Perhaps von Schnitzler cannot be criticised for believing he was a more conscious journalist, or for fighting against the threat of Western media. Yet he could be criticised for ignoring the fact that most of his GDR audience were familiar with the Western television programmes that he tried to denounce. It is remarkable to note in this context that from the mid-1980s the GDR government decided to feed West German television into their cable network in an attempt to depoliticise and satisfy its citizens (Lee, 2003: 39), with the result that 85 per cent of all GDR households could freely watch Western television by the end of the decade (Lee, 2003: 43). Meyen (2002: 217) discovered that a majority of the GDR audience did not trust news programmes from West Germany, inasmuch as they perceived them to be propaganda from the other side; there is even evidence to suggest that the GDR audience switched away from Western programmes if these dealt with political affairs (Meyen, 2002: 215). It might then be safe to conclude that von Schnitzler was successful in his consistent fight against Western journalism. In the same study, however, Meyen (2002: 210) also found that a majority of the GDR audience did not generally agree with GDR political journalism and its one-sided, monotonous news coverage. These results indicate that The Black Channel, as one example of GDR political journalism, needs to be examined in more detail with regard to its reception and its impact on everyday life. Ratings and refusal: The programme’s reception No viewing figures are available for the first years of the programme, but in the late 1960s viewer ratings for The Black Channel were rela­ tively high, with an average audience share of 15 per cent; quite a few editions were rated over 20 per cent, and as high as 30.1 per cent on 2 December 1968.8 The relative popularity of the programme in its first

Goddard.indb 168

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

Agitprop gone wrong: Der Schwarze Kanal  169

years could be explained by audiences finding either the format or von Schnitzler’s style of commentary to be fairly novel and captivating. However, it is more likely that a lack of choices for the audience contributed to the programme’s popularity. After the launch of the second GDR television station, DFF2, in 1969, which broadcast in colour for the first time, people in the GDR had a choice. Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that The Black Channel lost a considerable proportion of viewers throughout the 1970s. Early in 1970, GDR television authori­ ties were already concerned because the programme would mainly attract core audiences, such as members and sup­porters of the SED, but even these loyal audiences would rate the overall quality of the programme as average or merely satisfying (Nähle, 2005: 77). More importantly, perhaps, Levasier’s analysis of viewing figures from the mid-1970s suggests that the programme failed to attract large numbers of workers, women and young people (2007: 292–3). Thus it failed to appeal to the backbone of GDR society. In the 1980s, viewing figures arrived at a continuous low, with an average audience share of approximately 5 per cent. The programme’s declining popularity was in keeping with the general rejection of GDR television by GDR citizens. Lee claims that GDR television at that time was commonly filled with propagandist ideology and social­ist indoctrination, which did not satisfy the audience (2003: 34). On 1 May 1989, one of the most important national holidays in the GDR, only 0.5 per cent viewed von Schnitzler’s programme. One can only speculate about the reasons for this particularly low rating, but it may have been a collective sign of protest by GDR citizens: they may not have been entitled to genuine democratic elections, but at least they had a choice when it came to watching television. This is also reflected generally in the ratings for the first half of 1989, which showed an average of about 4 per cent. Yet the final ten editions of the programme (from 21 August to 30 October 1989) attracted an average of 9 per cent of viewers. This could be explained, again in a speculative manner, by GDR citizens seeking access to all sources of information, including state-controlled programmes, at a time when the state was about to collapse, as GDR refugees streamed abroad and mass demonstrations took place in its major cities. The generally low ratings are quite surprising, inasmuch as GDR authorities put certain mechanisms in place in order to ensure that as many people as possible would watch the programme. For example, watching The Black Channel used to be effectively a compulsory activity in many student halls and army barracks, because knowledge of von Schnitzler’s latest snippets of information could make life easier, especially if one needed to pass exams in political education (Meyen,

Goddard.indb 169

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

170  Frank Engelmann-del Mestre

2003: 130). The compulsory watching of the programme, however, was not restricted to those who had completed their secondary education. There is evidence that even schoolchildren from the age of fourteen were expected to be familiar with von Schnitzler’s views. A regular segment of the programme called ‘Portrait of the enemy’ was frequently discussed in schools as part of Staatsbürgerkunde (a GDR school subject which was dedicated to political education), and thus the programme contributed significantly to the more general hate education of the GDR (Rodden, 2006: 108). Unfortunately, little else is known about the programme’s reception in the GDR. Most of the available information is based either on interviews with GDR citizens or on letters sent to von Schnitzler. Nähle’s analysis of these letters suggests that von Schnitzler was well known in both West and East Germany, and his programme was received with both great enthusiasm and strong disapproval on either side (2005: 75–6). Meyen’s analysis of several interviews suggests that The Black Channel was received as informative and educational by some, whereas others watched it as a form of entertainment, probably because they found von Schnitzler to be laughable (2003: 130). There is even evi­ dence that some people in areas where West German television could not be received watched the programme in order to have at least some second-hand exposure to Western media (Meyen, 2003: 131). Overall, the results are inconclusive and at times contradictory, so it is hard to tell how effective The Black Channel really was. Uwe Johnson, the German novelist and writer, doubted that von ­Schnitzler’s polemic style would have had any effect, even in cases where von Schnitzler’s choice of criticism seemed appropriate (Nähle, 2005: 75). Hubris and self-denial: Von Schnitzler’s failure How did von Schnitzler assess his propaganda work, and how was he perceived after the programme was cancelled? Perhaps not surprisingly, there is no evidence that von Schnitzler ever regretted his work for The Black Channel. In the programme’s final edition, von Schnitzler summarised his work of the past and revealed his plans for the future: It’s not the case that I have anything to regret. Dealing with the oftentimes inconvenient truth is hard, yet satisfying.… Therefore, the art of doing the right thing correctly and quickly and plausibly is required. In this sense, I will continue my work as communist and journalist to fight for the only alternative to inhumane capitalism: as a weapon in the class struggle to promote and defend my socialist home country.9 (DSK #1519, 30 October 1989: 3)

Goddard.indb 170

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

Agitprop gone wrong: Der Schwarze Kanal  171

His statement alludes to one of Boyer’s (2003: 524) observations, namely that most GDR journalists regarded themselves as Partei­ soldaten (party soldiers), who would relentlessly argue and fight for the case of the party. Evidently, von Schnitzler regarded himself as a party soldier. Even after the GDR ceased to exist, he would keep his promise and publish three books before his death, in which he often rebuffed criticism of his programme and himself. Schlesinger asserts, for example, that von Schnitzler was convinced that all mistakes of social development were rooted outside the socialist system (1991: 28), so he, as a socialist insider, could not be blamed. Yet von S ­ chnitzler was not merely confined to publishing books in the years following the fall of the GDR. He experienced a recurrent interest in himself and his work throughout the 1990s, arising from a feature documentary about him and numerous interviews. It also seems that his appearances in the limelight – although they offered him the chance to put his programme in a different perspective – stimulated him to further agitation against the Western system. Speaking in a radio interview on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, von Schnitzler still disclaims any shame and remorse. On the contrary, he finds solace in letters from viewers who admire him for his radical foresight. Von Schnitzler even starts to quote one letter from memory: ‘We have neither wholeheartedly and nor frequently watched the Channel, but what you used to tell us about the ailments and inhumanity of capitalism was the whole truth, we only witness it now with our own eyes’10 (quoted in Bertram, 1994: 19). As a result, von Schnitzler presents himself as a dogmatist who believes he alone was in possession of the truth. Consequently, it could be argued that von Schnitzler’s hubris eventu­ally caused his failure. This is quite a common assumption among academics, journalists and contemporary witnesses. Nähle (2005: 78) finds suggestive evidence in newspaper articles from 1989 that von Schnitzler’s demagogic style and pretentiously omniscient attitude repelled his audience. Similarly, Gerlof (1999: 106–7) specu­ lates that von Schnitzler could have avoided some of the animosity he received if he had been more critical of the situation in the GDR. In a later interview, von Schnitzler compared the GDR with the mytho­ logical character Icarus: the GDR proved that socialism could take off. Adding to this statement, Christoph Diekmann, the interviewing journalist, implies that The Black Channel could have been the metaphorical fire that made Icarus’s wings melt (Diekmann, 2000: 186). In an interview with John Rodden (2006: 327), a former GDR citizen says: The Black Channel was supposed to show the blackness of capitalism – its dark side – which indeed it did. But it naively blackened capitalism by

Goddard.indb 171

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

172  Frank Engelmann-del Mestre showing only its dark side, in direct contrast to almost everything else that [GDR] citizens saw on screen.… It didn’t balance out the glamour of what we saw on West German television; it reinforced it, because it seemed such a pathetic attempt to undercut it. (Italics in original)

Finally, the German author Thomas Brüssig (in Gerlof, 1999: 83) summarises von Schnitzler’s legacy as follows: ‘Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler was a monster – he is a fossilised monster now.… He was the frightening example: if someone like him praises communism, he makes communism impossible.’11 These opinions from a number of different sources suggest that, more than anything else, it was von ­Schnitzler who must be blamed for the failure of The Black Channel. This tentative conclusion, however, can be based only on circumstantial evidence. Boyer rightfully cautions against media studies’ propensity to re-interpret programmes from the past. He claims that any attempt to reconstruct a collapsed state or its media through knowledge based on archival documents, historical narratives and personal memories faces particular methodological problems which will often lead to a complementary ‘salvage anthropology’ (Boyer, 2003: 514). Consequently, this chapter must also keep in mind the limitations of an analysis which deals with a country that no longer exists and with a programme that split opinion. So the question arises: to what extent could von Schnitzler be blamed for the failure of The Black Channel? On the one hand, von Schnitzler was acutely aware of his viewer ratings, and he must have known (whether from letters, Western television or hearsay) what not only West German journalists and politicians but also his own compatriots thought of him. Continuing to produce The Black Channel in the same manner over almost thirty years was therefore a risk to its propagandist intentions. On the other hand, von Schnitzler seemed wholly convinced of his editorial decisions and propagandist actions, so perhaps he could not properly assess the fatal effect he had on the programme. Von Schnitzler’s rhetorical style has been identified as a mixture of disproportionate aggressiveness and an excessive disregard for viewers’ background knowledge. It could be argued that his supercilious and confrontational style gradually contributed to his own failure, because neither the West nor the East could identify with von Schnitzler’s ambition to ‘clean the ether’. His attacks against Western journalism were ineffective inasmuch as he employed similar methods himself, so he could not establish the programme as a truthful source of information. Despite a decline in popularity and falling viewer ratings, the format and the editorial concept of the programme remained virtually unchanged for almost thirty years, which might be regarded as another example of von Schnitzler’s obdurate character.

Goddard.indb 172

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

Agitprop gone wrong: Der Schwarze Kanal  173

It now seems ironic that an agitprop programme may have failed primarily because of its host, because that would defy his overriding intentions. However, there is also the possibility that the propagandist intentions of The Black Channel never were realistic ones. After all, the majority of GDR citizens had access to Western media. They could therefore witness Western journalism in its original context, which may have helped them better to understand how and why von Schnitzler’s counter-propaganda worked. From this point of view, it is hard to understand why von Schnitzler believed he could deceive a whole nation. Maybe he thought that he could succeed if he tried hard enough. Unfortunately for him, it seems that the harder von ­Schnitzler tried to paint a portrait of the West German enemy, the more he created a very different enemy portrait, namely his own. Notes 1 Ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and after the end of The Black Channel, the Deutsches Runkfunkarchiv (German Broadcasting Archive) made available digitised copies of all surviving manuscripts of the programme (see Grape, 2000, for details and hyperlink). Whenever a digitised manuscript is quoted, the following format will be used: (DSK #no, dd month yyyy: p), where no indicates the number of the programme’s episode, dd month yyyy the date of the first broadcast of this episode, and p the page number of the pdf document. 2 The black eagle is meant to represent the eagle on the German coat of arms, whereas the third stanza of the ‘Deutschlandlied’ is the West German n ­ ational anthem. Although earlier editions used a more neutral jazz theme, the ‘Deutschlandlied’ played on an untuned piano became the musical leitmotif of the programme from the 1970s until it was cancelled. Interestingly, von Schnitzler made it clear in the last episode of the programme that the music was meant to refer to the first stanza of the anthem, which used to be sung during the time of the Nazis. 3 ‘Der Schwarze Kanal, den wir meinen, … führt Unflat + Abwässer; Es ist der Kanal, auf welchem das westdeutsche Fernsehen sein Programm ausstrahlt: Der Schwarze Kanal. Und ihm werden wir uns von heute an jeden Montag zu dieser Stunde widmen, als Kläranlage gewissermaßen – im übertragenen Sinne.’ (This and subsequent translations are by the author.) 4 ‘Spezialgewehr, Zielfernrohr – 150m Distanz – Kopfschuss für Kennedy … Das ist perfekt organisiert, zielbewußt.’ 5 Von Schnitzler started his television career on the GDR news programme ­Aktuelle Kamera (Current Camera), for which he once critically commented on the West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer by using and interpreting quotations taken from one of Adenauer’s speeches. This re-­ different style of political commentary was well received by members of the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands; SED), with the result that they planned to start a regular programme with von Schnitzler as chief political commentator (Gerlof, 1999: 69). 6 ‘Mit welcher journalistischen Leichfertigkeit Report hier vorging, wird einem

Goddard.indb 173

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

174  Frank Engelmann-del Mestre als Filmemacher besonders drastisch demonstriert, sieht man überrascht, wie eigenes Filmmaterial durch Übertextung und Schnittmanipulation in sein Gegenteil verkehrt wird.’ 7 ‘Ich denke nicht so, weil ich hier bin, sondern ich bin hier, weil ich so denke.’ 8 Retrieved from www.dra.de/cgi-bin/zuschauerforschung/sehbeteiligungs​ kartei.​ pl?​ Filecode=PURHA02 (accessed 7 April 2009). Unless otherwise stated, this and subsequent audience share (Sehbeteiligung) data are taken from the digitised files of GDR television viewer ratings, part of the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv (German Broadcasting Archive). GDR viewing figures are thought to be fairly reliable because they were intended only for leading officials at DFF, the GDR broadcaster, and some members of government agencies. For a more detailed analysis of viewer ratings, see Nähle (2005: 75–6) and Meyen (2003: 127–8). 9 ‘Nicht, daß ich etwas zu bereuen hätte. Der Umgang mit der oft unbequemen Wahrheit ist schwer, aber befriedigend. … Es bedarf also der Kunst, das Richtige richtig und schnell und glaubhaft zu machen. In diesem Sinne werde ich meine Arbeit als Kommunist und Journalist für die einzige Alternative zum unmenschlichen Kapitalismus fortsetzen: Als Waffe im Klassenkampf, zur Förderung und Verteidigung meines sozialistischen Vaterlandes.’ 10 ‘Wir haben Ihren Kanal nicht immer gern und auch nicht oft gesehen, aber was Sie damals über die Gebrechen und die Unmenschlichkeit des Kapitalismus gesagt haben, das war die reine Wahrheit, das erfahren wir ja jetzt am eigenen Leib.’ 11 ‘Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler war ein Monster – jetzt ist er das Fossil eines Monsters…. Er ist das abschreckende Beispiel: Wenn so einer den Kommunismus preist, macht der den Kommunismus unmöglich.’

References L. Bertram (1994), Huhu, liebes Radiovolk – Audienz beim Frühstückdirektor (Yoohoo, Dear Listeners – An Audience with the Breakfast Director). Berlin: Links. D. Boyer (2003), ‘Censorship as vocation: The institutions, practices, and cultural logic of media control in the German Democratic Republic’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45(3): 511–45. C. Diekmann (2000), Das wahre Leben im falschen – Geschichten von ostdeutscher Identität (The Real Life in the Wrong One – Stories About East German Identity). Berlin: Links. K. Gerlof (1999), GegenSpieler – Gerhard Löwenthal und Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler (Opposite Numbers – Gerhard Löwenthal and Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuchverlag. A. Grape (2000), Die digitalisierten Sendemanuskripte: Der schwarze Kanal 1960– 1989 (The Digitised Manuscripts: The Black Channel 1960–1989). Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, http://sk.dra.de/ (accessed 20 February 2009). K. Hickethier with P. Hoff (1998), Geschichte des deutschen Fernsehens (History of German Television). Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler. E. Kroneberg (2002), ‘Auf dem Fernsehschirm: Ost – Exempel der Magazinkritik im Tagesspiegel (1965–1990)’ (‘On the television screen: East – examples of criticism of magazine programmes in the newspaper Tagesspiegel (1965–1990)’), in A. Kreutz, S. Pollert and D. Rosenstein (eds), Fernsehen im Magazinformat. Zur Geschichte, Produktion und Kritik von Magazinsendungen des DDR-Fernsehens (1952–1990/91) (Television in a Magazine Format: On the History, Production

Goddard.indb 174

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

Agitprop gone wrong: Der Schwarze Kanal  175 and Criticism of Magazine Programmes in GDR Television (1952–1990/91)). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. W.-S. Lee (2003), Das Fernsehen im geteilten Deutschland (1952–1989): Ideo­ logische Konkurrenz und programmatische Kooperation (Television in the Divided Germany (1952–1989): Ideological Rivalry and Programmatic Cooperation). Potsdam: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg. M. Levasier (2007), ‘Der schwarze Kanal – Entstehung und Entwicklung einer journalistischen Kontersendung des DDR-Fernsehens’ (‘The Black Channel – Creation and development of a journalistic counter-programme in GDR television’), in Jürgen Wilke (ed.), Journalisten und Journalismus in der DDR: Berufsorganisation – Westkorrespondenten – ‘Der schwarze Kanal’ (Journalists and Journalism in the GDR: Professional Organisation – Western Correspondents – ‘The Black Channel’). Köln: Böhlau. P. Ludes (1990), DDR-Fernsehen intern: Von der Honecker-Ära bis ‘Deutschland einig Fernsehland’ (GDR Television from the Inside: From the Honecker Era to ‘Germany, United Television Land’). Berlin: Volker Spiess. M. Meyen (2002), ‘Kollektive Ausreise? Zur Reichweite ost- und westdeutscher Fernsehprogramme in der DDR’ (‘Collective departure? On the scope of East and West German television programmes in the GDR’), Publizistik, 47(2): 200–20. M. Meyen (2003), Einschalten, Umschalten, Ausschalten? – Das Fern­sehen im DDR-Alltag (Switching On, Switching Over, Switching Off? – Television in GDR Everyday Life). Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. K. Nähle (2005), ‘Der schwarze Kanal’ – Ein politisches Magazin des DDR-­ Fernsehens (‘The Black Channel’ – A Political Magazine Programme in GDR Television). Marburg: Tectum. K. Rebien (2003), ‘Burned bridges. The rise and fall of the former BBC journalist Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler in East Germany’, in C. Brinson and R. Dove (eds), ‘Stimme der Wahrheit’ (Voice of Truth): German-Language Broadcasting by the BBC (Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 5). Amsterdam: Rodopi. J. Rodden (2006), Textbook Reds: Schoolbooks, Ideology, and Eastern German Identity. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. H. Rörig (1997), ‘“Hygiene im Äther” oder die verpasste Realität – Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler und der “Der Schwarze Kanal”’ (‘“Hygiene in the ether” or the missed reality – Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler and the “The Black Channel”’). Medienobservationen (Media Observations), www.medienobservationen.unimuenchen.de/artikel/tv/Schnitzler.html (accessed 30 March 2009) F. Schlesinger (1991), ‘Schwarzer Kanal, heute zum letzten Mal’ (‘Black Channel – Today for the last time’), in P. Hoff and D. Wiedemann (eds), Medien der Ex-DDR in der Wende (Media of the Former GDR During the Wende). Berlin: Vistas. K.-E. von Schnitzler (1992), Der rote Kanal – Armes Deutschland (The Red Channel – Poor Germany). Hamburg: Edition Nautilus. K.-E. von Schnitzler (1995) Meine Schlösser oder wie ich mein Vaterland fand (My Castles, or How I Discovered My Fatherland) (2nd edn). Hamburg: Edition Nautilus.

Goddard.indb 175

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

11 Popular music on East German

television: Constructing the televisual pop community in the GDR Edward Larkey

Popular music in the GDR media was always subject to intense political scrutiny so that Western influences, if they could not be prevented altogether, would at least be incorporated into discursive structures largely controlled by the ruling Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands; SED). Before the 1970s, television programmes were supposed to help develop a musical alternative to capitalist pop music, to distance GDR music from international models, and to modernise the Schlager, the traditional form of German popular music.1 Prior to the creation of the political magazine show RUND in 1973, programmes like Palette der Jugend (Palette of Youth) or Basar (Bazaar) were supposed to combine ‘political informa­ tion’ with different forms of popular music, but also to steer youths away from what was called ‘beat’ music (the Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc.). Music programmes like Notenkarussell (Carousel of Notes) or ­Schlager 68 used different geographical settings as narrative framings for performances in order to accentuate the ‘modern’ and ‘socialist’ orientation of this aesthetically conservative music form. After 1970, television programmes in the GDR tried to interact more productively with international models and promote a GDR pop music community that would give its own specific music a stylistic profile and identity within the framework of the international models. Henceforth, music policies were designed to offer a wide variety of music experiences, including political folk song, Schlager, classical and Volksmusik (German folk music), while acknowledging and instrumentalising young people’s musical interests in ‘beat’. These policies are reflected in the television programmes discussed below, whose contents range from Schlager, via pop and youth magazine shows in the 1970s like RUND, to more modern pop music programmes in the 1980s such as Stop!Rock. Rock bands as well as

Goddard.indb 176

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

Popular music on East German television   177

individual vocal artists were featured in these programmes. However, GDR pop acts featuring single vocalists with playback tapes were cheaper, more politically controllable and more dependent on official management and broadcast agencies to facilitate studio productions. In the 1980s, many of the mid-level domestic rock bands and pop acts suffered a severe drop in popularity, and cultural authorities felt obliged to promote them in radio and television programming to counteract the predominance of Western popular music on GDR dance floors and in private record collections. Together with GDR radio stations (see Larkey, 2007)2 and the Amiga label of the VEB Deutsche Schall­platten record company, the television staging of popular music helped to construct the dominant discourse surrounding popular music in the GDR. The electronic mass media as well as each individual vocal artist or rock band had the task of mediating between two competing foundational discourses – a state security discourse on the one hand, and the international music industry discourse on the other. These two discourses helped to form the constraints and conditions determining how popular music was staged on East German television. This state security discourse was the substrate for discourses and narratives on the role of popular music in GDR society, and was concerned with preventing at all costs the kinds of rebellious behaviour seemingly connected with popular music emanating from Western media. Various methods were used to enforce it, including policing of concerts, observation and prosecution of recalcitrant rock bands and their audiences, and censorship of music lyrics and performance behaviours.3 In the 1950s and 1960s, the physically active and emotionally expressive movement associated with rhythmically charged music in­itially contradicted conservative notions of civilised and reflexive music aesthetics modelled on the behaviour of classical music audiences or even those for traditional German Volksmusik. Party functionaries were concerned that Western media, intent on exposing undemocratic tendencies within the GDR government and ruling party, would interpret and publicise raucous behaviour at public concerts as representing oppositional youth cultural movements. From the 1950s onwards, the popularity of Western artists among East German audiences was seen as a statement of the political loyalties of youths. The second discursive strand was that of international popular music, embedded within narratives that included notions such as ‘fun’, ‘drive’ and ‘popularity’. It was also manifested in the classifications of different styles and genres of popular music used by the media and audiences to characterise music sounds and behaviours (e.g. hard rock, disco, punk, new wave, pop and rock), against which GDR cultural

Goddard.indb 177

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

178  Edward Larkey

bureaucrats attempted to impose alternative designations: instead of ‘rock’ or ‘pop’ music, the GDR media preferred the term ‘dance music’ (Tanzmusik) well into the mid-1970s; instead of ‘band’, GDR media attempted to impose the term ‘dance ensemble’ (Tanzensemble or Tanzcombo); instead of ‘disc jockey’, the ridiculously complicated term ‘recording entertainer’ (Schallplattenunterhalter) was propagated in official documents and broadcasts. The GDR radio broadcasting networks were the most significant producers of popular music – quantitatively because they had the highest output among the three institutions (the radio networks, the Amiga label, television broadcasts); qualitatively because the radio stations produced recordings for all three of them.4 GDR television broadcasting depended on radio for high-quality stereophonic productions until the 1970s because it lacked the facilities to produce more than monaural recordings. In addition, television broadcasts were politically more sensitive than radio broadcasts because of their visual elements, which, along with the musical sound components, were markers of youth cultural identities and loyalties. Affiliations with the international beat culture propagated by the media industries of the West could be much more clearly indicated visually than in sound alone. Clothing, musical instrumentation, performance behaviour and sound were the primary indicators of a youth culture – originating outside the borders of the GDR and imported into the country by Western media – that SED functionaries considered a pernicious and subversive ideological influence. From the mid-1950s, one of the primary goals of GDR popular music policies was the creation of a national popular music community. In the 1960s, this community was to be formed separately from, and in opposition to, Western capitalist music influences and its commercial industries.5 Edification strategies were devised to wean susceptible youth away from the sounds and culture of Western models of popular music, and towards acceptable models of bourgeois and socialist realist art, sanctioned and promoted by party bureaucrats.6 From the 1970s to the early 1980s, this aim was modified to incorporate the modern musical sounds of the Western popular music industry with as few of the concurrent cultural trappings of fashion and rebellious behaviour as possible. While popular music tastes were still directed away from Western music and towards more ‘civilised’ music forms – in which GDR audiences were to be educated and trained – the GDR strove to establish a competitive roster of pop music bands and vocalists who would dominate the repertoire of radio, television and recording media, aided by the legal stipulation that that repertoire was to be 60 per cent from socialist countries and 40 per cent from

Goddard.indb 178

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

Popular music on East German television   179

Western capitalist ones. By the 1980s, this GDR ‘national’ popular music community explicitly included relationships with the Western commercial popular music industry, while, at the same time, opening up slightly to include more critical narratives previously barred from the airwaves and vinyl recordings. Television programming focused primarily on competing with popular commercial models from the Western countries in both sound and visual aesthetics. However, programmes excluded many of the critical narratives characteristic of the nascent but active GDR independent scene7 as inappropriate for such a politically and socially representative medium. The 60–40 decree was liberalised to encompass total repertoire in the medium in question rather than being applied within particular broadcasts. This chapter will analyse the types of aesthetic and narrative framing devices at work in three programmes: Carousel of Notes, a monthly thirty-minute programme from the late 1960s which featured Schlager music; RUND, from the mid-1970s, which marked a breakthrough in its inclusion of ‘beat’ bands from the GDR and other socialist countries, as well as commercial acts from Western countries, including Middle of the Road, Hot Chocolate and others; and Stop!Rock, a popular music hit parade show from 1983, which featured rock acts from the GDR. The framing devices determine the way in which music is presented and how its narratological coherence is constructed in the broadest sense. In the case of political magazine shows, they include the political features and reports preceding and following the music selections. In addition, they comprise the way that bands or vocalists are filmed and staged, the interaction of the audience with the artists, and the type of music selected for presentation by the programme makers. Finally, framing devices can be identified in the settings and geographical locations chosen for musical performances. These spaces contextualised and visualised the role of popular music in GDR society and the relationship of music to society. Analysis of these framing devices helps to reveal how political control was exerted over the aesthetics of the rock and pop medium in television, and how popular music was constructed as a discourse within the GDR media. The analysis reveals that different aesthetic narrative framing devices contextualised popular music within a particular discourse according to historically contingent notions of how the music was to function in GDR society. So, in the 1960s, popular music was embedded within a discourse of GDR society as an alternative German socialist modernity, in which a new and improved, socialist-oriented Schlager was to become the centrepiece of a popular music aesthetic representing the ­ emonstrating socialist new socialist state.8 Therefore, new locations d

Goddard.indb 179

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

180  Edward Larkey

economic and cultural accomplishments formed the backdrop and narrative bracket for edification strategies, in contrast to what was considered to be the culturally inappropriate and politically dangerous youth culture from the West. In the 1970s, on the other hand, popular music was considered part of a politically progressive, socialist entertainment and consumer culture capable of coexisting alongside the capitalist youth entertainment culture. GDR popular music was to evolve into stylistically diverse yet identifiable musical forms reflecting differing aspects of GDR reality within a politically affirm­ative framework. Henceforth, it was possible to feature a measure of rock and pop music in television programming as long as it represented neither the largest nor the most controversial element of the music selected. From the mid-1980s until the demise of the country in 1989, GDR pop music moved closer to more commercial models typical of capitalist cultural industries (Hesmondhalgh, 2002: 56), with a small but healthy ‘independent’ sector harbouring narratives more critical of GDR reality than previously permitted. Despite this, it was still subject to political constraints regarding lyrics and musical styles, under the watchful yet controlling eyes of the Stasi.9 A cultural industries approach10 underlies the analysis that follows because of the explanatory strength that it offers in relation to the tendencies towards commercialisation,11 liberalisation and even privatisation that were emerging in the GDR pop music sector during the 1980s. Popular music as a discourse of an alternative socialist modernity: Carousel of Notes The 1 October 1969 broadcast of the monthly television programme Carousel of Notes was filmed in the early morning hours at the Alexander­platz city railway station in Berlin. The pending arrival of the first local train (known in Berlin as the S-Bahn) at approximately 4am formed the narrative thread weaving together musical performances by vocalists Fred Frohberg, Helga Depré, Britt Kersten and two other vocal groups. One of these was a student political folklore group named ‘Aurora’ after a Russian battleship in the 1917 revolution. Throughout the broadcast, the performances were punctuated by intermittent announcements of the progress of the train as it passed the stations along its route. The show was hosted by a male and female Schlager vocal duo, Monika Hauff and Klaus-Dieter Henkler, who sang several of their own songs – starting with the introductory tune called ‘S-Bahn fahren ist schön’ (‘Riding the S-Bahn is beautiful’). They also conducted short interviews with the other vocalists as well as with a handful of employees at the railway station: the ­stationmaster, a

Goddard.indb 180

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

Popular music on East German television   181

train engineer and a ticket collector. All songs were accompanied by a playback tape and performed before dawn in very cold weather next to the tracks on the upper level of the roofed-over, yet open and unheated, railway station. The timing of the filming was partly a practical measure to avoid the large numbers of daytime commuters who would have disturbed filming. Most of the performers were wearing winter coats and vapour from their breath could be seen while they were speaking and singing. With the arrival of the first train, at 4am, the show concluded with a panorama shot of performers bidding each other farewell next to the train tracks. While most of the songs were in the Schlager style, several were German or other folk songs. In one segment, Henkler also introduced a series of songs presented mostly without visually supported performances, while standing in front of a row of record players in a record shop on the ground floor of the railway station. Henkler played only the first few bars of these songs – one by Thomas Natschinski (the closest song to what might be considered ‘beat’ music at the time), a Schlager song by popular teen heart-throb Frank Schöbel, another by Ina Martell, a Schlager tune by an unnamed foreign vocal group, and a song by the winner of the 1968 Schlager competition, Helga Depré, called ‘Ein grosser Regenbogen’ (‘A large rainbow’). The last was the only one in the series with a visual accompaniment: a pre-recorded film segment of the singer strolling through an urban shopping street. Singe-Club Aurora, the student acoustic folk group, concluded the series of record presentations, singing a Polish navy tune with a martial rhythm while climbing the stairs of the train station from the ground level to the track level in a transition to further performances next to the tracks. The introductory song by Hauff and Henkler was emblematic of the way in which the show was conceived. The song started off with their ascent on the escalator of the Alexanderplatz railway station to the upstairs track level at the beginning of the show, trailed by the other participants in the live broadcast, singing the song. Visually inter­spersed during this song and others in the programme were scenes filmed at various S-Bahn stations during peak rush hours, of people hurrying to trains, waiting for trains, getting in and out of them, and so on. The lyrics described riding the S-Bahn as ‘beautiful’ and ‘fun’, reliable, cheap, quick and safe, and attempted to construct a romantically tinged notion of modernistic urban life through the S-Bahn experience.12 The effort to create an urban romantic feeling for the S-Bahn corresponded with measures to incorporate popular songs into a modernist reading of the urban metropolis appropriated by the communist government. During the rush hour, and particularly during the winter months, when snow and ice could lead to ­breakdowns, any

Goddard.indb 181

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

182  Edward Larkey

romanticised notion of the S-Bahn as something ‘beautiful’ might have seemed like a cruel joke to many of its passengers. Hauff and Henkler also performed a song called ‘Verliebt in Berlin’ (‘In love in Berlin’) while sitting on a bench on the platform, further underscoring the one-dimensionally portrayed romantic vision of living in a socialist urban centre that was cultivated by the show. One of the last songs, by female vocalist Britt Kersten, was about waiting for someone to arrive at the railway station. During the final bars of the song, the actual S-Bahn train did arrive at the station, signalling the conclusion of the show. There was little explicit mention of politics during the programme, but indirect references to GDR politics were made through the music and the staging of the show. For one thing, the S-Bahn symbolised the GDR’s mastery of a modern transportation and economic system, and justified and legitimised the political domination of the SED. Further references were made through the inclusion of songs from the GDR’s political allies of Cuba and Poland, along with explicit mention of the accomplishments of the personnel working at the railway station: the stationmaster received party awards for her service and the twentyfour-year-old train engineer was a top-performing worker himself at such a young age. Finally, a short interview with singer Fred Frohberg revealed that he was an instructor at a Leipzig music school, where he trained future vocal entertainers. Presenting the programme at the Alexanderplatz railway station also embodied a strategy for depicting a ‘realistic’ and socialist alterna­ tive to what was perceived as the cheap commodification of music in the capitalist entertainment industry, which strove to create an illu­ sory, ‘glamorous’ but alienated entertainment world separated from the majority of working people. The railway station was a familiar part of the daily experience of many East Berliners, who would change between the S-Bahn line and two East Berlin Underground railway lines, or on to trams and buses stopping nearby, while travelling to and from work. There was no extra sprucing up of the train station for the filming, and it was presented in all of its sparse and understated industrial glory of girders, benches and railway tracks. Popular music as a discourse of socialist consumerist modernity: RUND The replacement of SED leader Walter Ulbricht by Erich Honecker in 1971 was accompanied by a shift in policies away from expanding the industrial base of the country and towards increasing opportunities for the consumption and production of consumer goods. Honecker

Goddard.indb 182

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

Popular music on East German television   183

initiated talks with Western powers for the purpose of achieving diplomatic recognition for the GDR. Ultimately, these resulted in a series of agreements among the four powers of World War II (the Four Power Agreement on Berlin), a transit agreement between East and West Germany for Western travellers to West Berlin, and diplomatic recognition of the GDR by most Western countries, including its de facto recognition by the West German government. Within this context, radio and record studios began producing a broader range of popular music by GDR bands, and a wider selection of music from Western bands – many of which had previously been banned or restricted from radio and television programming – was broadcast in the GDR media. In the summer of 1973, East Berlin hosted the Tenth World Festival of Youth and Students, and this was accompanied by the creation of a new youth political magazine programme in GDR television, RUND, an abbreviation for Rythmus (rhythm), Untersuchung (investigation), Notizen (notices) and Disco­ theque (Freudl, 1996: 105). RUND was one of the first efforts to include the more popular GDR bands in television programming, along with the inclusion of popular commercial acts from the West, as well as rock and pop acts from other socialist countries. This marked a distinct reversal of cultural and media policies propagated by more conservative sectors within the political, educational and police bureaucracy, who considered these forms of music to be a fifth column of imperialist influence-peddling within the socialist countries. However, Honecker could count on a broad cross-section of youth, along with other sectors of the political elite, to counteract the conservatives, with the goal of achieving greater credibility and a larger viewership for the GDR electronic media as political arms of the government. Protests by antagonistic viewers against the visual presentation of the music were able to restrict its quantity, but could not stop youth popular music television programming altogether. Nevertheless, RUND combined music and politics in such a way as to create a politically affirmative platform for presenting the most popular representatives of GDR popular music as well as the most innocuous commercial acts from the West. A socialist modernity could now be created which included a more open accommodation of Western music and cultural influences, albeit under the watchful eye of GDR cultural and political authorities. This formed the basis for a consensus on an institutional popular music aesthetic that emphasised melodic (melodiebetont) and lyric (specifically, ‘song-like’ – liedhaft) components over rhythmic ones, which were considered less civilised and Western in origin. Song lyrics politically themselves were subject to topic constraints regarding ­

Goddard.indb 183

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

184  Edward Larkey

explicit articulations of social and political problems in the GDR (e.g. environmental degradation, inability to travel to the West, lack of freedom of expression, consumerist attitudes in the GDR public, and others). ‘Editorial boards’ (Lektorate) in each of the media institutions policed the song lyrics and the sound parameters of the productions. These restrictions led to a popular music aesthetic that employed metaphors concerning personal relationships and nature to convey socially critical lyric content, while the emphasis on melody served as a musical compromise between various constituencies involved in both the technical and aesthetic production and the consumption of music in the media institutions. Each new production represented a renegotiation of this consensus between the political authorities, the bands and vocalists, and their respective audiences. These arrangements formed the basis for politically aware and affirmative, yet stylistically diverse, forms of GDR youth popular music in the 1970s, which competed for legitimacy with Schlager, political folklore and Western pop music in programming selections. This was reflected in the monthly youth television show RUND. The first RUND show was broadcast from the television studios in the Berlin district of Adlershof on 27 January 1973.13 Its first year featured the preparations for, and then reflection about, the Tenth World Festival of Youth and Students and its aftermath, particularly in solidarity with members of the Chilean left who participated in the festival and found themselves stranded as a result of the Pinochet junta’s coup d’état against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. The analysis here will focus on a programme from 21 December 1974, recorded in the municipal arena of the district capital city of Suhl.14 One of the features of this venue compared with a small television studio was the space available for the audience to dance. Unlike Carousel of Notes, in which no audience was present, the RUND programmes made a point of filming audience members prominently as they listened or danced to the music and interacted with rock bands and vocalists, focusing on good-looking – largely female – members of the audience. The narrative concept of this particular show centred around a project of the Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend; FDJ), the youth organisation of the SED, to help construct a gas pipeline called the Drushba Trasse (Friendship Pipeline) through the Soviet Union to the GDR. In addition to sending work brigades to one of the construction sites, the FDJ, and particularly the RUND team, came up with the idea of purchasing and equipping a small truck as a mobile discotheque for the entertainment of those working on site. Besides calling on audience members to bring their vinyl recordings to the live

Goddard.indb 184

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

Popular music on East German television   185

broadcast to donate them to the discotheque, the three hosts of the programme proposed that television viewers and representatives of youth brigades in factories and shops throughout the country should support the initiative. During the broadcast, the hosts reported on the progress of these efforts and used these reports to further advertise the campaign. In addition, each of the performing bands and vocalists received a gift from different FDJ groups in the district after their performances, and contributed their own songs on tape or record to the mobile disco project. The show’s music selections included not only GDR bands but, as part of the ‘Intertalent 74’ music competition among the socialist countries,15 vocal artists from Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, along with the Hungarian rock band General. Finally, the Scottish band Middle of the Road performed three songs live. The show was introduced musically with an instrumental piece by Carlos Santana (not identified as such by the hosts) used as background music for a dance performance by members of the television ballet troupe. Rock and pop tunes overwhelmingly outnumbered Schlager-oriented ones among the music selections. Many of the songs were sung in the vocalists’ native languages. Interspersed between the music performances were the hosts’ song introductions, the presentation of gifts to the artists from factories in the area, interviews with workers participating in a local apartment construction project, a conversation with the mayor of the city of Suhl, an announcement about the Third Festival of German–Soviet Friendship in Halle to be held in spring 1975, political information about progress at the pipeline construction site in the Soviet Union from an FDJ secretary there, and information about contributions to the mobile discotheque. The repeated calls for donations, the recurring announcement of the television station’s telephone number and the incessant reporting of the progress of the campaign created a competitive, politically charged frenzy framing the music performances. The discotheque vehicle itself was presented in late spring 1975 during a live broadcast of RUND at the festival in Halle. Popular music as a discourse within a socialist cultural industry: Stop!Rock During the 1980s, the GDR moved closer to a commercial model for popular music16 and further away from its original goal of develop­ ing an alternative to the Western entertainment industry. It was a period in which compact discs and videocassette recorders became widespread in the West, the digitisation of music production made

Goddard.indb 185

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

186  Edward Larkey

great strides, and cable and satellite television made borders more ­permeable than ever. The technology gap between the GDR and Western media increased substantially, as GDR music was not available on CD and videocassette recorders were not manufactured or imported into the country for consumer use. The 1980s saw perceptions of the cultural industries changing too. Increasingly, they were recognised as a significant site for the social and economic reproduction of the capitalist system (Louw, 2001; Hesmondhalgh, 2002), with the creative sphere accorded a greater degree of relative autonomy. However, the GDR cultural and political bureaucracy was slow to realise that the social management of symbolic goods was a separate sphere of cultural activity from that of political propaganda, and that certain critical narratives in rock songs would not fundamentally threaten the political system but might, instead, contribute to its perceived authenticity, credibility and legitimacy. So it was not surprising that the Stasi – the State Security Service – not only monitored and infiltrated the ‘independent’ and even the mainstream scene with informants – the so-called inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (‘un­ official collaborators’) – but also played a significant role in promoting a kind of semi-legal tolerance for the bands in the independent sector. Equating rock and pop songs with political propaganda, as had been done for the first thirty-five years of GDR history, became increasingly difficult to justify during the 1980s. Many of the established rock bands were unable to address the deteriorating political and economic situation in the country, either musically or through critical lyric content, via the conventional pop music aesthetic rooted in the 1970s. So the mid-1980s witnessed a severe reduction in the popularity of GDR rock bands, even though the goals of the cultural authorities – creating a mainstream pop with a distinct GDR identity – seemed to have been attained in the late 1970s once and for all. However, the advent of punk and new-wave music in the West, with its more concrete, direct, recalcitrant and unpretentious attitude towards the social and cultural mainstream, posed a severe challenge to the romantic, melodic and metaphor-laden mainstream pop in the music of ‘first generation’ bands. A new genera­ tion of new-wave-influenced bands arose, and others evolved more socially and musically innovative lyric messages. Furthermore, the healthy and diverse ‘independent’ scene that developed alongside, and dependent upon, some sectors of the mainstream was a part of the cultural and, to a certain extent, the political opposition that eventually brought down the GDR government in 1989. With the advent of punk and new wave, the GDR cultural authorities completely abandoned earlier edification strategies. Furthermore, the restrictive policies of

Goddard.indb 186

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

Popular music on East German television   187

the editorial boards and cultural bureaucrats were loosened, with the result that song lyrics developed both by ‘independent’ bands and by more adventurous established bands were able to address issues that had previously been taboo – environmental damage, alcoholism, the division of Berlin and increasing signs of a political and social crisis. Consequently, these bands could maintain credibility as an authentic expression of youth culture in the face of a deepening economic and social crisis unfolding until 1989. Although many of these new bands could be heard on radio, television continued to exclude the independent scene from its programming. In addition, a change in the political economy of media song production and consumption took place in the GDR. In 1984, the West German constitutional court approved the establishment of private media outlets to compete directly with public-service broadcasters. This profoundly influenced the programming policies of the GDR media (Larkey, 2007: 208–81) because media competition between the East and West always resulted in each side making tit-for-tat changes in both radio and television programming. In addition, the Geneva Frequency Conference approved the use of the 100–104 MHz FM radio frequencies in Europe, which induced the GDR authori­ ties to expand broadcasting capabilities to counteract the expected increase in the influence of Western broadcasters. This led to the creation of the youth radio broadcasting network Jugendradio DT 64 and the corresponding need to produce radio receivers for the new frequencies. The pressure to fill extended broadcasting hours with music programming – an increase from eleven to twenty-four hours daily between 1986 to 1989 – opened up an opportunity for private studios in the GDR, painstakingly assembled by the most prominent GDR rock bands with travel privileges to the West. In order that these purchases remained as inconspicuous as possible, these bands would surreptitiously sell or exchange a couple of pieces of electronic equipment or instruments with East German bands without travel privileges, and on their visits to the West buy ‘replacements’ with which to equip the new studios.17 These private studios, of which there were more than ten, began to supply an increasing amount of music on commission to the radio and television networks, supplementing the output of state recording studios and leading to more musical and lyrical experimentation. They were subject to less editorial and aesthetic control, and were able to circumvent the official state media when necessary in order to supply the independent scene. Finally, the few most successful GDR rock bands established working relationships with Western tour managers and record companies, and Western sound engineers were utilised for their p ­ roductions, which

Goddard.indb 187

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

188  Edward Larkey

were released in both the West German and the GDR markets. This meant that the most successful international sound models found their way into GDR pop music on television much more rapidly than ever before. Instead of trying to distance GDR bands from the international sound models, as in the 1960s, the cultural authorities were interested in their quick appropriation and reproduction by domestic bands whose international reputation would garner them more d ­ omestic credibility and popularity. The end result of this situation was the establishment of a GDR pop mainstream on the one hand, deeply subsidised by the GDR cultural authorities, with sounds largely derived from the West and innocuous lyrics, while, on the other, a healthy and stylistically eclectic ‘independent’ scene arose on the margins, parts of which would be co-opted by state media outlets, primarily radio. GDR television programming was largely exempted from this liberalisation because of its political sensitivity as a window for the West into GDR life. Stop!Rock was an hour-long chart television show featuring ten film clips from recent concerts by various rock artists. Each clip was separ­ ated from the previous one by an animated cartoon segment lasting between thirty and sixty seconds, making humorous comments on the music as well as explaining how viewers could rate the music. At the end of the programme, after all ten of the clips had been played, a short summary of them was shown. The analysis below focuses on the edition from January 1983, the first one to be broadcast. The opening and closing credits were initiated by a stylised go-kart race in blue and violet hues. Each song was introduced by a stop sign drawn in animated fashion with the number of the song in the series superimposed on it. Each stop sign took from three to five seconds to be drawn and then fade out while the song started. After each song were short cartoon segments lasting between eight and forty-three seconds, providing information on how the chart placements would be determined, or introducing, commenting upon or illustrating the next or previous song. In addition to the ten current songs, of which five would be chosen for chart placement in the next show, one other film of a band was shown – an oldie from an earlier period in GDR rock music. This was a song by the band Electra called ‘Tritt ein in den Dom’ (‘Step into the cathedral’), controversial at the time of its production in 1972 because of its obvious religious references in the atheist state, but no longer so at its release on the LP Electra 3 in 1980. After all eleven film clips had been shown, the final cartoon explained the voting procedure (for the third time) and the prizes that those voting could win (posters, an LP record, single records, a day with the rock band City). Finally, there was a ten- to fifteen-second

Goddard.indb 188

5/30/2013 1:41:30 PM

Popular music on East German television   189

r­ ecapitu­lation of each song before the closing credits were shown and the go-kart race segment was repeated. The most critical song among those presented on the programme was by the band SET, from Leipzig – a parody about working on a hydraulic press in a factory. The song, called ‘Die Stanze’ (‘The press’), involved a worker standing every day at the press stamping out pieces of metal ‘like bugs’, who becomes so obsessed with his work that he dreams of taking home the machine to use in his spare time, but it is too big to move. The refrain of this new-wave-style song – ‘and it goes boom – boom, boom, boom’ – described the noise made by the press. The final line of the song proclaims that working on the press will ultimately do him in (‘dieses Bum, bringt mich noch um’). This was no longer a socialist realist narrative which declared the unbridled heroism and romanticism of the proletariat building socialism in East Germany. Instead, it criticised the obsession with the technology of production and the blind emphasis on increasing industrial output that had lain at the heart of GDR economic and political strategies since its inception. However, as the sole critical song during show, this message could be successfully masked by the other, less critical songs. The repertoire for this broadcast was remarkable compared with earlier programmes described in this chapter, due to its exclusive focus on rock music, the use of the term ‘rock music’ to denote the kind of music played and the stylistic breadth of the music featured. The programme represented an effort to create a GDR rock mainstream from a variety of musical and cultural sources, to provide an avenue for such music to accumulate symbolic value and ‘popularity’, albeit via official state media vested with the task of co-opting bands into an affirmative political stance, and to adapt the international format of the chart broadcast to establish a mechanism for constructing both ‘innovation’ and ‘obsolescence’ in the GDR pop sector.18 Several radio programmes were already broadcast with this in mind (Larkey, 2007: 136–9) and Stop!Rock represented an effort by television authorities to achieve their own competitive advantage by featuring film clips of well known bands with visual imagery.19 Conclusion The continuous cross-border influence of West German media within East Germany meant that East German policies striving for discursive closure (Louw, 2001: 114) were doomed to failure. In a continuing effort at least to approach this goal, television programming tried to serve the needs of youth popular music culture by controlling the circulation of music in the country, a central tenet of cultural industry

Goddard.indb 189

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

190  Edward Larkey

thinking as explained by Hesmondhalgh (2002: 56). But as the growth of private recording studios and the rise of an independent sector in the 1980s illustrates, more autonomous creative opportunities evolved in the GDR as well. However, the SED tried to maintain a semblance of control over these processes by creating spaces in the symbolic sphere in the form of the television shows discussed here, seeking to renegotiate its control over the circulation processes in the mass media. East German rock and pop musicians became a part of the new, flexibly networked, relatively autonomous international elite in the creative sphere, and competed for influence with the older managerial elite, whose top-down, command-like management style (including the style of government adopted by the ruling party in the country, the SED) was more typical of earlier periods of capitalist development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Television, while not the most prominent means for distributing rock and pop music within the GDR, was nevertheless one component of a larger state apparatus – involving live performances, recordings, radio programming and even the cultural bureaucracy with the task of policing it – which evolved from the 1950s to regulate its circulation and retain discursive hege­ mony over its narratives. In the face of competition from Western media outlets – including television programming – which continually undermined that hegemony, the suppression of alternative critical narratives had the opposite of its intended effect, serving to discredit or undermine the authenticity, credibility and pop culture legitimacy of those featured in the state media outlets, particularly on the influential medium of television. Notes 1 The Schlager developed from operetta, cabaret and film tunes from the early 1900s until the end of World War II. After the war, many of the four-four beat, non-syncopated song compositions dealt with escapist tendencies, as romantic diversions from the rebuilding of both East and West Germany. GDR cultural bureaucrats were especially interested in distinguishing the East German Schlager from that of the West, but these efforts proved largely fruitless. There was always a large audience for West German Schlager in the East. The Schlager was able to compete successfully with rock and pop music in Germany until the early 1970s. See Bardong et al. (1993). 2 Larkey (2007) also lays out many of the hypotheses, concepts and explanations used in this chapter in greater detail. 3 For instance, there were strict guidelines for the visual presentation of rock bands on television, requiring hairnets for long-haired musicians and the stipu­lation that musicians could not jump around on stage or engage in acrobatic stage antics.

Goddard.indb 190

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

Popular music on East German television   191 4 A peculiarity of the GDR domestic market was that music popularity was not measured by record sales but by the number of postcards sent in to the radio station, a completely opaque means for constructing popularity and obviously the object of manipulation by cultural and television authorities. Vinyl records were not produced to feature new music and accompany bands on tour but, instead, to document the repertoire of a band long after the song had been presented. The newest songs were usually first recorded by the radio station studio (or, later, a private studio commissioned by the radio station), which provided the record company, Amiga, with a tape for release as a record if there was a need. Only the most successful bands had the opportunity to record a new LP regularly every two years. Most GDR bands had to settle for radio releases, singles or EP recordings or compilations alongside other artists. 5 This approach united both cultural conservatives, opposed to non-elite enter­ tainment and artistic culture, and some Marxist cultural critics such as Adorno and Horkheimer, who considered a cultural industry to be a purely capitalist phenomenon (Adorno, 1991). It meant that any alternatives were rooted in an artisanal approach to the production, distribution and consumption of popular music, a historically obsolete foundation which proved inadequate for the task and which prompted the spontaneous growth of culture industry structures, despite the efforts of party functionaries to curtail and prevent them. 6 Socialist realism was considered class-based art that reflected the interests and needs of the working class, which the GDR defined as advocating Parteilichkeit (‘partisanship’) and Volksverbundenheit (‘associated with the people’), and containing ‘socialist ideas’ (see Olbrich et al., 1977: 573). Since socialism supposedly resolved the contradictions in capitalist society between socialised production and the distribution of wealth, socialist realism was ‘translated’ through the cultural policies of the Honecker period to mean that social problems would be viewed in a ‘non-antagonistic’ fashion. This meant that individual problems were just the problems of individuals (who failed to realise that they needed to conform). Social problems were to be depicted in an ‘optimistic’ (and thus solvable) manner by the artists, who would otherwise be condemned as ‘nihilistic’, ‘pessimistic’ or even ‘enemies of the working class’. 7 For further insight into the GDR independent scene, see Greiner-Pol (2000), Rauhut and Kochan (2004) and Galenza and Havemeister (2002). 8 Schlager lyrics were frequently the object of criticism by television audiences throughout the 1960s. Most of the lyrics did not live up to the demands of cultural bureaucrats for rejuvenation, innovation and political awareness. See Sheet No. 54, DRA Standort Potsdam-Babelsberg, Historisches Archiv, H008-02-04-0037. 9 Applying the term ‘independent’ to this music sector is perhaps a misnomer, since it was highly dependent on the state and the media for many of its recording and performance opportunities. For example, no band or vocalist was permitted to perform or broadcast live without a performance licence. ­Musicians had to renew their annual performance licences by performing in front of a district cultural committee and submitting their repertoire for the musical and lyrical components to be approved. In the 1980s, performance licences could be awarded for shorter periods of time, sometimes even twentyfour hours or a week, if a band was considered particularly problematic by the authorities, which were increasingly reluctant to prohibit them outright. 10 Three different aspects of the cultural industries approach form the reference for this analysis: (1) the notion that modern-day cultural industries i­ ncorporate

Goddard.indb 191

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

192  Edward Larkey a flexibly networked, international elite of those in the creative sphere, with a relatively large degree of autonomy (Louw, 2001: 62–3), who compete with the previous managerial elites who operate on a command-style, top-down type of management; (2) an understanding that ‘loose control of creative input, and tighter control of reproduction and circulation’ (Hesmondhalgh, 2002: 56) is characteristic of this new phase; (3) the recognition that the cultural industries have an increased significance in the reproduction of the capitalist system (Hesmondhalgh, 2002: 97). 11 The concept of commercialisation underlying this analysis is not based on the direct influence of the advertising industry on programming, but on the penetration of the commodity logic of capitalist market production into the popular music sector (see Larkey, 2007: 27). 12 The S-Bahn system was split by the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, although the Western S-Bahn was actually run by the East German rail authorities. The GDR ‘capital city’ of East Berlin had its own S-Bahn portion, which signified a pulsating, modern urban metropolis on a par with its Western counterpart on the other side of the Wall. 13 For an overview and analysis of this particular show, see Larkey (2009). 14 Beginning late in 1973, the programme developed a routine of recording in various venues in different cities of the GDR each month, sometimes in openair venues and sometimes in municipal arenas or even larger dance halls. 15 This involved asking viewers to select ten relatively unknown newcomers (Nachwuchsinterpreten) by postcard. See ‘Ablaufplan, rund XX’, DRA Standort Potsdam-Babelsberg, Historisches Archiv, E081-09 07/0001, pp. 1–2. 16 This procedure is scrutinised in greater detail in Larkey (2007). 17 This sounds easier than it actually was, since importing musical equipment, amplifiers, mixing desks and other accessories was a ‘grey area’ in the GDR legal system. It was illegal for GDR bands to import musical instruments into the country by themselves. They could buy instruments at special stores for Western currency, although that was practical only for those with relatives in the West or those with an independent income in Western currency. Relatives at retirement age could make smaller purchases in the West for their younger family members when they visited West Berlin or West Germany. Finally, the few bands with travel privileges – in 1984, there were just five – bought new equipment in the West while they were on tour, and sold their old equipment to bands without travel privileges. 18 The GDR pop music sector was always catching up with innovative impulses, such as disco and new wave, from the West. With no foundation in a market economic model, the concept of overproduction of recordings and making music obsolescent through a sales-based, quantitative chart listing mechanism did not function as it did in a capitalist country. Consequently, other mechanisms for creating obsolescence and innovation had to be introduced to the GDR media and music sector to construct these categories of value propagated in the West. 19 A similar television programme called Bong was created at the same time as Stop!Rock. Bong was also a chart listing show featuring a combination of live studio and film clip presentations of pop music vocalists. It had both a moderator and a live studio audience, while Stop!Rock had no visible studio audience.

Goddard.indb 192

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

Popular music on East German television   193

References T. W. Adorno (1991), The Culture Industry. London: Routledge. M. Bardong, H. Demmler and C. Pfarr (eds) (1993), Das Lexikon des deutschen Schlagers (The Lexicon of German Schlager) (2nd edn). Mainz: Schott. B. Freudl (1996), ‘Bodo Freudl, Chefredakteur des Jugendfernsehens der DDR’ (an interview with Bodo Freudl, editor-in-chief of youth television), in L. Müller and P. Wicke (eds), Rockmusik und Politik. Analysen, Interviews, Dokumente (Rock Music and Politics: Analyses, Interviews, Documents). Berlin: Ch. Links. R. Galenza and H. Havemeister (2002), Feeling B. Mix Mir einen Drink: Punk im Osten (Feeling B. Mix Me a Drink: Punk in the East). Berlin: Schwarzkopf and Schwarzkopf. A. Greiner-Pol (2000), Peitsche Osten Liebe: Das Freygang-Buch (Peitsche Osten Liebe: The Freygang Book). Berlin: Schwarzkopf and Schwarzkopf. D. Hesmondhalgh (2002), The Cultural Industries. London: Sage. E.Larkey (2007), Rotes Rockradio. Populäre Musik und die Kommerzialisierung des DDR-Rundfunks (Red Rock Radio: Popular Music and the Commercialisation of GDR Radio Broadcasting). Berlin: LIT-Verlag. E. Larkey (2009), ‘Popular music in East German TV: Pop as propaganda’, in U. Breitenborn and S. Trültzsch (eds), ‘Popular culture and fiction in four decades of East German television’, SPIEL (Siegener Periodicum für Inter­nationale Empirische Literaturwissenschaft): 25(2). E. Louw (2001), The Media and Cultural Production. London: Sage. H. Olbrich et al. (OR Autorenkollektiv) (1977), Lexikon der Kunst (Lexicon of Art): Volume 4. Leipzig: VEB Seemann Verlag. M. Rauhut and T. Kochan (eds) (2004), Bye Bye, Lübben City. Bluesfreaks, Tramps und Hippies in der DDR (Bye Bye, Lübben City: Blues Freaks, Tramps and Hippies in the GDR). Berlin: Schwarzkopf and Schwarzkopf.

Goddard.indb 193

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

Timeline Berber Hagedoorn and Peter Goddard

This timeline is intended as a guide for readers, placing the events covered in this book in the wider context of key developments in television and politics in the countries covered (Spain, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Romania, the USSR, East Germany) and in Europe as a whole. It covers the period from the end of World War II until the early 1990s, by which time authoritarian regimes had vanished from most of Europe and the structures of television that they had established in the countries covered had been dismantled. We wish to thank contributors to this book for their help in compiling this timeline (in particu­ lar, some Soviet dates and events were retrieved and translated by Andrew Janco from http://tvmuseum.ru).

1945 8 May  World War II ends in Europe with the surrender of Nazi forces. 24 October  The United Nations (UN) is founded. Czechoslovakia, Greece and the USSR are among its founder members.

1946 February  Spain: Franco’s dictatorship, which gained control of Spain in April 1939, is condemned by the UN, with countries encouraged to remove their ambassadors from Spain.

1948 25 February  Czechoslovakia: The communists seize power and a totali­ tarian regime is established. 7 March  USSR: Regular public television resumes after a wartime shutdown, broadcasting from Moscow and Leningrad, although test broadcasts had recommenced in May 1945.

Goddard.indb 194

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

Timeline  195 10 June  Spain: The Philips Corporation demonstrates television at a Madrid trade exhibition. 8 August  Spain: RCA mounts a failed attempt to televise a bullfight.

1949 29 June  USSR: First outside broadcast coverage of a live football game. 7 October  GDR: The socialist German Democratic Republic (East Germany), led by President Wilhelm Pieck, is established at a provisional parli­ament, making permanent the post-war division of Germany.

1950 12 February  The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is founded as a confederation of broadcasting organisations from the Western and Mediterranean regions of Europe to foster cooperation in technology and programming. Its television programming network becomes known as Eurovision. The Greek public broadcaster EIR (then limited to radio) is among twenty-three founder members. The EBU supersedes the Organisation Internationale de Radio­diffusion (OIR), founded in 1925, which now continues as a parallel organisation with membership limited almost exclusively to socialist Eastern European states. 11 June  GDR: Responding to developments in West Germany, where Nord­westdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR) would begin test television broadcasts on 25 September, construction of a GDR television centre in Adlershof commences.

1951 22 March  USSR: Creation of Soviet Central Television, with the former Moscow television service renamed Programme 1. July  Spain: Creation of the Spanish Ministry of Information and Tourism, the organisation that controls the Franco government’s information policy. 20 December  GDR: Experimental test television broadcasts begin.

1952 21 December  GDR: Start of regular public programming (on Stalin’s birthday). Although still described as ‘testing’, two hours of programming per day are transmitted, including the news programme Aktuelle Kamera (Current Camera). From a limited transmission range in Berlin, the network is ex­ tended to cover most regions of the GDR by 1956.

1953 1 May  Czechoslovakia: The state-run Československá televize (ČST) begins experimental television broadcasting in Prague. 26 September  Spain: The Pact of Madrid, a US–Spanish agreement to provide aid and trade to Spain, marks the return of Spain to the international community. Countries begin to reinstate their embassies in Spain.

Goddard.indb 195

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

196  Timeline

1954 25 February  Czechoslovakia: Regular television broadcasting commences in Prague, and is extended throughout the country by 1956. 6 June  Coverage of the Narcissus Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, is the first official Eurovision transmission.

1955 11 February  Czechoslovakia: An ice hockey match between teams from Prague and Sweden is the country’s first outside broadcast. 1 June  USSR: Coverage of the arrival in Moscow of Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh is the country’s first live field report to be broadcast. December  Spain: Citing financial difficulties, the country’s First National Television Plan recommends that television should be introduced gradually. Nevertheless, TVE (Televisión Española, Spain’s public television company) joins the EBU. 14 December  Spain and Romania become members of the UN.

1956 3 January  GDR: With the launch of DFF (Deutscher Fersehfunk; German Television Broadcasting), regular television broadcasting begins. 24 May  The first Eurovision Song Contest, a televised song competition organised by member countries of the EBU, takes place. It has been broadcast annually ever since. 28 October  Spain: TVE begins regular television broadcasting in Madrid, although the signal is only gradually extended to the remainder of the country. 31 December  Romania: Radioteleviziunea Română begins its first regular television service. Initially, TVR (Televiziunea Română) broadcasts to an area of Bucharest.

1957 1 May  Coverage of the European Boxing Championship in Prague, Czechoslovakia, is the first live broadcast across the entire Eurovision network. 16 May  USSR: The newly created State Committee on Radio and Television takes over the operation of television services from the Ministry of Culture. 28 July  USSR: Soviet Central Television covers the 1957 World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow. Each day, more than 50 programmes are broadcast from more than 100 locations throughout the city. September  Romania: 16 mm film replaces 35 mm film as the standard for television recording, enabling programme material to be recorded outside the studio and a diversification of television forms.

Goddard.indb 196

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

Timeline  197 15 September  Spain: Telediario, the main news programme of TVE, is broadcast for the first time.

1958 27 April  Spain: With television now extended to Zaragoza, TVE broadcasts live football for the first time. The first live bullfight broadcast also takes place in 1958. 7 October  GDR: With approximately 300,000 television sets now registered, DFF starts to repeat evening programmes the following morning.

1959 15 February  Spain: Television broadcasting is extended to the Barcelona and Catalonian regions in order to boost connections with the Eurovision network, and a new, Barcelona production centre (the Miramar studios) is opened to create programmes for the whole country. 21 December  Spain: The visit to Madrid of US President Eisenhower con­ fers international recognition on Franco’s dictatorship. TVE’s images of the visit are sent to Italy by plane to be re-broadcast via the Eurovision network. This is the first time that TVE offers recorded images to the Eurovision network and the first time that TVE’s work is seen outside Spain.

1960 14 January  USSR: Soviet Central Television begins experimental broadcasting in colour. 28 January  The OIR, renamed OIRT (Organisation Internationale de Radio­ diffusion et de Télévision), establishes Intervision as an Eastern European equivalent of the Eurovision network, facilitating the exchange of television programmes among its member countries. Its founder members are Czechoslovakia, GDR, Hungary and Poland. 2 March  Spain: Spain’s first live international broadcast to the Eurovision network is a football match between Real Madrid and Olympique Nice. On 18 May, Real Madrid’s European Cup Final victory over Eintracht Frankfurt is the first international broadcast to be seen on Spanish television via the Eurovision network. 21 March  GDR: First broadcast of Der Schwarze Kanal (The Black Channel) – see Chapter 10. 4–26 September  Greece: Following abortive attempts to develop television broadcasting in 1952, 1953 (when CCTV is exhibited), 1955, 1958 and 1959, the first experimental broadcast in Greece takes place during the International Trade Fair in Thessaloniki. 5 October  Spain: TVE premieres Perry Mason, the first hit American series on Spanish television. 15 December  The wedding of Baudouin, King of Belgium, to Spanish aristo­crat Fabiola de Mora y Aragón is broadcast live throughout Europe via

Goddard.indb 197

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

198  Timeline the Eurovision network. In Spain, it is watched by a huge audience and is regarded as a watershed in the popularisation of television.

1961 14 April  USSR: Soviet Central Television broadcasts live coverage of the arrival in Moscow of Yuri Gagarin following his pioneering space flight, and of the parade in Red Square in his honour. 13 August  GDR: Borders with West Germany are closed and the building of the Berlin Wall commences. 1 September  Czechoslovakia: ČST reaches its millionth subscriber. October  Spain: A new transmitter in Guadalcanal (Seville) brings television to Andalusia, as part of the gradual introduction of television throughout the regions of Spain. 8 November  USSR: First broadcast of KVN (Klub veselykh i nakhodchivykh; The Club of the Merry and Quick-Witted) – see Chapter 8.

1962 1 January  USSR: Licence fees are abolished and licensing of television and radio receivers is ended. 25 December  Spain: Franco’s first Christmas message is shown on TVE.

1963 3 November  Greece: George Papandreou’s liberal Centre Union Party (Ένωση Κέντρου) wins the national elections. His progressive policies arouse much opposition in military circles and from the King. 23 November  USSR: Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Soviet Central Television broadcasts a ceremony in his honour live from the United States via satellite.

1964 18 July  Spain: Spain celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the victory of Franco’s forces in the Spanish Civil War. Franco visits TVE, wearing the uniform of a naval admiral, to mark the opening of new Madrid studios. Earlier in the year, production centres open in the Canary Islands and Catalonia. 18 September  Greece: Although there is no Greek television service, the wedding of King Constantine II is televised and broadcast throughout Europe via Eurovision.

1965 22 March  Romania: Nicolae Ceauşescu comes to power as general secretary of the Communist Party following the death of his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej.

Goddard.indb 198

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

Timeline  199 15 July  Greece: The King forces Papandreou to resign. A royalist govern­ ment is formed and political instability in Greece ensues. September  Greece: The state-controlled EIR channel (Ethnikon Idryma Radio­fonias, Εθνικόν Ίδρυμα Ραδιοφωνίας; National Radio Foundation) and the army-run TED channel (Tileorasis Enoplon Dynameon; Τηλεόρασις Ενόπλων Δυνάμεων; Armed Forces Television) begin experimental trial broadcasts. 15 November  Spain: Following experiments earlier in the year, TVE launches a second channel, initially known as ‘UHF’. It is renamed TVE2 in 1966 and begins daily broadcasting to the whole nation. According to a Spanish Institute of Public Opinion survey, half of the households in large cities now have television, but only 30 per cent in smaller cities and 5 per cent in villages. 15–18 December  GDR: After a short period of greater artistic freedom (1963–65), the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands; SED) moves to tighten censorship of cinema and television to remove material that was seen as too critical or non-socialist.

1966 23 February  Greece: EIR, the public service channel, commences a daily experimental television service. A similar service from the army’s TED channel begins four days later. 18 March  Spain: A new press law relaxes censorship slightly, allowing newspapers to carry mild criticism of the country’s social circumstances, although TVE’s news remains completely controlled by the Franco regime. 31 December  Greece: There are now 13,000 television sets (1.5 per 1,000 population).

1967 21 April  Greece: The start of the Greek military junta. Following a coup d’état, the army dictatorship of Colonel George Papadopoulos is imposed. 10 October  USSR: Regular colour television broadcasting is introduced in the Moscow and Leningrad regions. Colour transmission is extended gradually to other regions until 1976, by which time there are colour services throughout the USSR. 25 October  USSR: Partially deployed since 1965, the Orbita system involving communication satellites and local downlinks is completed, bringing regular television programming from Moscow to most of the USSR.

1968 5 March  Romania: The annual international music festival Cerbul de Aur (the Golden Stag) is staged for the first time. Organised by TVR, it is the first international television event to take place in Romania. Although suspended by Ceauşescu in 1971, the festival resumes in 1992.

Goddard.indb 199

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

200  Timeline 20 March  Spain: The newspaper La Vanguardia publishes an article entitled ‘Los silencios informativos de TVE’ (‘News hushed up by TVE’), which criticises the manner in which the reality of Spain is depicted by TVE. 29 April  Romania: The TVR channel is renamed Programul 1 (Channel 1) and begins broadcasting daily. Three days later, a second channel, Programul 2, is launched. Between 1966 and 1972, a modern, purpose-built television centre is built in Bucharest. Opened in 1969, it is modelled on the BBC Television Centre and designed with the help of specialists from the Austrian broadcaster ÖRF (Österreichischer Rundfunk). 21 August Czechoslovakia: Armies from five Warsaw Pact countries (Bulgaria, GDR, Hungary, Poland and the USSR) invade Czechoslovakia to terminate the democratising process of the so-called Prague Spring. Until 26 August, Czechoslovak television maintains free improvised broadcasting, resisting the occupation of the country and the re-imposition of restrictions on free speech. In Romania, Ceauşescu gives a public televised speech condemning the invasion of Czechoslovakia. 1 November  Greece: The army-run TED channel begins regular broadcasts, superseding the experimental service it has been running since 1966. TED is renamed ΥΕΝΕΔ/YENED (Ypiresia Enimeroseos Enoplon Dynameon; Υπηρεσία Ενημερώσεως Ενόπλων Δυνάμεων; Armed Forces Information Service) in 1970.

1969 29 March  Spain: Having won in 1968, Spain hosts the Eurovision Song Contest in Madrid. Using equipment borrowed from the West German public broadcaster ARD (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland), TVE transmits the contest in colour to the EBU network and beyond, but it is seen only in monochrome in Spain, where colour tele­vision has yet to be introduced. April  Greece: The state-controlled EIR channel begins regular broadcasts, superseding its earlier experimental service. It is renamed EIRT (National Institution for Radio and Television) in 1970. 20 July  Romania: Although it is widely broadcast live elsewhere in Europe (including in Spain), Romania is the only Soviet bloc country to transmit the Apollo mission to the moon live on television. 3 October  GDR: Official launch of DFF2, the second television channel, which broadcasts in colour from the outset. The launch is timed to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the GDR. 31 December  Greece: There are now 96,000 television sets (11 per 1,000 population).

1970 Spain: The social penetration of television reaches 40 per cent of the popu­lation, with greater concentration in the most populated regions and economically advanced cities.

Goddard.indb 200

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

Timeline  201 14 February  Czechoslovakia: Although still broadcasting domestically in monochrome, ČST televises the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships (held in the High Tatras) in colour for foreign broadcasters. 10 May  Czechoslovakia: ČST2, the second Czechoslovak television channel, is launched, transmitting in monochrome.

1971 3 May GDR: Erich Honecker replaces Walter Ulbricht as Party Chief and criticises ‘a certain boredom’ (‘eine bestimmte Langeweile’) in the programmes of East German television. The period 1971–72 sees the introduction of reforms in response to Honecker’s critique, aimed at creating more entertaining programming. 6 July  Romania: Inspired by a visit to China, Ceauşescu gives a speech initiating a set of cultural reforms known as the ‘July theses’. Television is envisaged as a principal agent of the new reforms, taking on a more strongly propagandist role in disseminating Marxist–Leninist principles. 1 August  Spain: TVE broadcasts the first episode of the popular series Crónicas de un pueblo (Chronicles of a People) which runs until 1974 and promotes the lifestyle sponsored by the Franco regime. Critics point to the entrenched conservatism of such television fiction.

1972 USSR: Despite its popularity, KVN is banned as offensive and anti-Soviet. 11 February  GDR: DFF (Deutscher Fernsehfunk) is renamed Fernsehen der DDR (GDR-Television, known as DDR-FS). The renaming represents the abandonment of DFF’s objective of serving audiences in both German states. 24 April  Spain: Experimental colour broadcasting begins in Spain with the TVE game show Un, dos, tres … responda otra vez (One, Two, Three … Answer Again). This entertainment show becomes one of the most successful formats in Spanish television history, and versions are produced in several other Western European countries.

1973 27 January  GDR: The first broadcast of the youth political magazine RUND, in preparation for the 1973 World Festival of Youth and Students in East Berlin in the summer of 1973, introduces a short period of cultural liberalisation. 31 March  Spain: The TVE current affairs news magazine Informe Semanal (Weekly Report), still running on TVE-1, has its first broadcast. 9 May  Czechoslovakia: ČST2 commences regular colour broadcasting. 31 May USSR: The State Committee on Radio and Television signs a cooperation agreement with NBC, the first such agreement between Soviet and US broadcasters. 18 September  GDR: Both the GDR and West Germany become members of the UN.

Goddard.indb 201

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

202  Timeline October  Spain: Spanish National Radio (Radio Nacional de España; RNE) and TVE are combined to form a single entity, Radio Televisión Española (RTVE). 25 November  Greece: Following anti-dictatorship student protests, Brigadier Ioannidis, a hard-line member of the Greek junta, overthrows Papadopoulos’s government and installs a repressive regime which reinstates military law. 20 December  Spain: Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco, widely seen as Franco’s likely successor, is assassinated in a terrorist attack by ETA.

1974 6 April  Greece: EIRT broadcasts the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time. The following month, the broadcaster is renamed ERT (Ellinikí Radiofonía Tileórasis; Ελληνική Ραδιοφωνία Τηλεόρασις; Hellenic Radio Television). 24 July  Greece: Following the disastrous invasion of Cyprus, the Greek military junta collapses and a national unity government committed to ­ democracy is formed. Despite this, YENED retains its identity and link to the military. 31 December  Greece: There are now 800,000 television sets (89 per 1,000 population).

1975 Spain: By 1975, nearly 20 per cent of TVE programming is broadcast in colour. By 1976, the figure is close to 40 per cent. 9 May  Czechoslovakia: ČST1 commences regular colour broadcasting. 11 June  Greece: The newly adopted constitution requires television to be ‘under the immediate control of the state’, with provisions ensuring that programming quality reflects the ‘social mission’ of broadcasting and the ‘cultural development’ of Greece. 20 November  Spain: Franco dies. The Spanish transition to democracy begins.

1976 13 November  GDR: In removing citizenship from the dissident singer-­ songwriter Wolf Biermann, the GDR marks a return to suppression of dissent and repression of dissidents.

1977 15 June  Spain: The first democratic elections since Franco’s dictatorship are won by the UCD (Unión de Centro Democrático; Union of the Democratic Centre), headed by Adolfo Suárez, the existing head of government and once director-general of TVE under Franco. While the count takes place, TVE broadcasts an entertainment show, Party Tonight, featuring well known figures of Spanish music such as Julio Iglesias.

Goddard.indb 202

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

Timeline  203 24 December  Romania: A decree placing broadcasting under direct super­vision of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party is issued, replacing the previous party/state system of regulation. This marks the strengthening of political control over television.

1979 January  Greece: Regular colour television broadcasting begins.

1980 10 January  Spain: A legal framework for RTVE is approved, resolving its hitherto problematic legal status and establishing it as a public entity in its own right, independent of direct state control. One effect of this is to reduce the centralism of Spanish broadcasting, creating more space for regional content.

1981 23 February  Spain: Television plays a significant role in a coup d’état attempt led by disaffected members of the armed forces. TVE cameras broadcast the armed takeover of the national parliament by Lieutenant-Colonel Tejero and 200 members of the Guardia Civil in Spain. Later that evening, a speech by the President of Catalonia calling for peace is broadcast throughout Spain. Finally, the King makes a televised address condemning the coup and supporting democracy.

1982 13 June  Romania: Broadcasting of the FIFA World Cup is forbidden on Romanian territory, creating enormous dissatisfaction among television audiences. 5 September  USSR: The first ‘Telemost’ or ‘Space Bridge’ is held between US and Soviet artists. These were satellite videoconferences held between groups in various countries during the Cold War to foster dialogue and understanding. November  Greece: YENED’s military links are ended, and the channel comes under the control of ERT, where it is renamed ERT-2. The ERT tele­ vision channel continues as ERT-1. 13 December  GDR: ‘Alternative programme reform’, aiming to give viewers real viewing alternatives within the two GDR channels, is introduced. In an attempt to deter the public from watching Western stations, DDR-FS broadcasts more entertaining fiction and the second channel is redesigned with this purpose in mind. 31 December  Spain: Following the formation of an autonomous regional government, the Basque parliament launches its own public television service, Euskal Telebista, broadcasting in Basque. Other autonomous regions that have their own language soon follow: TV3 in Catalonia (on air 11 September 1983) and TVG in Galicia (25 July 1985).

Goddard.indb 203

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

204  Timeline

1983 Romania: Colour television transmissions begin, using the PAL system, in contrast to other Soviet bloc countries, which favour SECAM. But colour is predominantly reserved for coverage of Ceauşescu and major propaganda programmes.

1984 1 January  GDR: The West German Constitutional Court allows privately owned television stations to broadcast, introducing a stronger focus on enter­ tainment programming. This decision has consequences for the content of television in both West Germany and the GDR.

1985 Romania: As part of Ceauşescu’s ‘energy-saving programme’, designed to eliminate national debt, TVR2 is suspended. Broadcasts on TVR1 are restricted to 8pm–10pm on weekdays, 3pm–5pm on Saturdays, and 12pm–3pm and 8pm–10pm on Sundays.

1986 13 September  USSR: After a hiatus lasting fifteen years, KVN returns to Soviet television as censorship is relaxed in the era of glasnost.

1987 Romania: Annual broadcasting hours on Romanian television are a mere 1,263 in 1987, a dramatic fall from their peak of 5,377 in 1980. October  Greece: ET3, a third ERT channel, is launched, broadcasting nation­wide from Thessaloniki to counter the Athens-centric focus of the other two channels.

1989 28 February  Spain: Further regional television channels commence broadcasting, beginning with Canal Sur in Andalucia. Later in the year, Telemadrid (2 May), for the Madrid region, and Canal 9 (9 October), for the Valencia region and broadcasting partly in Valencian, are launched. Both are public television stations, owned or facilitated by their respective regional governments. 4 September  GDR: Amid growing political unrest, demonstrators begin to meet regularly in front of the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig every Monday. This triggers regular protest demonstrations in other GDR cities and, together with a mass exodus of GDR citizens via Hungary and Austria, leads to the resignation of Honecker on 18 October. 30 October  GDR: The 1,519th and final instalment of Der Schwarze Kanal is broadcast. 3 November  GDR: Heinz Adamek, the director-general of the State Committee for Television since 1954, is dismissed. As the GDR collapses, DDR-FS

Goddard.indb 204

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

Timeline  205 increasingly reports news without censorship, television programmes become more critical and open, and DDR-FS becomes almost completely independent of the state. 9 November  GDR: Fall of the Berlin Wall. The GDR opens its borders to West Germany for the first time since 1961. East Germans can now travel freely to the West. 17 November  Czechoslovakia: Police forces suppress a student demonstration in Prague, the beginning of days of protests which lead to the collapse of the communist regime eleven days later. 20 November  Greece: The entertainment-based Mega Channel is launched, taking advantage of the legalisation of non-public broadcasting. Its rival, Antenna (ANT1), follows on 31 December. 16 December  Romania: Protests against the regime start in Timişoara, sparking a growing revolt over several days which is not quelled by the deployment of the army. 21 December  Romania: Ceauşescu holds a mass rally in Bucharest to condemn the Timişoara uprising which is broadcast on live television. The broadcast is interrupted after elements in the crowd begin jeering and loud bangs are heard, forcing the Ceauşescus to leave the balcony temporarily – see Chapter 7. The crowd takes to the streets and fights with security forces into the night, joined by citizens alerted to the protests by the broadcast. 22 December  Romania: Following continuing rioting in Bucharest, the Ceauşescus flee the capital. At 1pm, there is an unscheduled broadcast from Studio 4 by the self-proclaimed Free Romanian Television, marking the end of public television’s allegiance to the regime. TVR-1 now becomes a platform for revolutionary voices and news of the collapse of the Ceauşescu regime. 25 December  Romania: Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife Elena are sentenced to death by a military court and executed immediately. 29 December  Czechoslovakia: Václav Havel becomes President by a ­unanimous vote of the Federal Assembly, retaining the post after the democratic elections of 8/9 June 1990.

1990 25 January  Spain: Following the award of the country’s first commercial television licences, Antena 3 is the first on the air. It is quickly followed by Tele 5 (later Telecinco, on air 3 April) and Canal+ (14 September). 4 March  GDR: DDR-FS reverts to its earlier name of Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF) in anticipation of German reunification. 18 March  GDR: The country’s first free parliamentary election is held. 14 May  Czechoslovakia: The nation’s third television channel, OK3, is launched on a frequency previously blocked by Soviet broadcasting. 20 May  Romania: Democratic presidential and parliamentary elections are held. Ion Iliescu is installed as the first President of post-communist Romania.

Goddard.indb 205

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

206  Timeline 4 September  Czechoslovakia: Television channels are reorganised to reflect the new federal state. ČST1 continues to broadcast nationally but is renamed F1, while ČST2 is divided into a Czech channel, ČTV, and a Slovak channel, S1. 3 October  GDR: Reunification of Germany: the two German states unite to form one sovereign state. With German reunification, DFF ceases to be the state broadcaster of the (former) GDR. 15 December  GDR: DFF1 is shut down and ARD, the West German broadcaster, takes over its frequencies. DFF2 continues to carry some East German programming until its closure at the end of 1991.

1991 1 July  Czechoslovakia: Slovak Television (Slovenská Televízia, STV) is created from the Slovak portion of ČST. S1 becomes STV1, and is joined by TA3, a non-public Slovak news channel, in September 1991 as a legal framework for commercial television in Czechoslovakia is established. 25 December  USSR: Gorbachev accepts the dissolution of the USSR and resigns as President. 27 December  USSR: Soviet Central Television is dissolved, with its channels renamed as Ostankino Television, Moscow Television and Leningrad Television.

1992 1 January  Czechoslovakia: Czech Television (Česká Televize; ČT) commences broadcasting as a public service broadcaster to the Czech portion of the country in succession to ČST. Initially, it continues to operate the F1 federal channel, but this is discontinued when the country is divided into separate states. 3 April  USSR: The first licences are issued for independent (non-state) television in Russia. Among the first to launch is TV-6 (ТВ-6), which commences broadcasting at the start of 1993. 11 October  Romania: Iliescu wins a second term as President but, with TVR still controlled by the state, there are accusations that public opinion has been manipulated.

1993 1 January  The OIRT is merged with the EBU. With the merger, the principal Romanian, Czech, Slovak and Russian broadcasters join the EBU. 1 January  Czechoslovakia: The federation is dissolved and the Czech and Slovak Republics are established as independent states. 20 June  Czechoslovakia: Premiéra TV commences broadcasting as the first private television station in the Czech Republic.

Goddard.indb 206

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

Index

Adamek, Heinz 204 Adamou, Christina 9 Adorno, Theodor 191n5 Aksel’rod, Al’bert 125–6, 128, 130, 132, 134 Alfred Hitchcock Presents 42 Allende, Salvador 184 Althusser, Louis 102 Amiga (record label) 177, 178, 191n4 Andritsos, George 58 Anthopoulos, Babis 61 Antonopoulos, Angelos 55, 56, 57 Arias Salgado, Gabriel 23 Atlético de Madrid 22 audience surveys 6–7 Aurora (folk group) 180, 181 Aznavour, Charles 40 Baget Herms, Josep Maria 18, 29 Bahamontes, Frederico Martin 28 Balašová, Milena 95, 97–8 Barcelona, FC 28 Baudouin, King of Belgium 197–8 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 3, 4, 161, 200 Beatles, The 176 Beckett, Samuel 9, 76–7 Belgium, Spanish immigrants to 20 Benitez, Manuel see El Cordobés Berlin crisis (1961) 148, 198 Berlusconi, Silvio 65 Biermann, Wolf 202 Bignell, Jonathan 2, 9–10 Bingo (US television format) 74

Goddard.indb 207

Boyer, Dominic 167, 171, 172 Brates, Teodor 116, 117–18, 119–20 British television advertising on 5 popular television 3, 4 soap operas 62 US cultural imperialism and 5 see also BBC Brüssig, Thomas 172 Budeanu, Delia 118 Bulgaria 116–17, 185 Candid Camera (US television format) 74 Carrero Blanco, Luis 202 Ceauşescu, Elena 107, 111, 112–20, 205 Ceauşescu, Nicolae see Romanian Ceauşescu regime Ceauşescu, Nicu 111 Certeau, Michel de 91 Chaplin, Charlie 80 Chile 184 China 65, 111, 201 Chivurin, Andrey 134 choric drama 103 Ciurescu, Ilie 118 Cold War 37, 58, 67, 141 Constantine, King of Greece 72, 198, 199 consumerism Francoist Spain and 8, 19, 31, 37 GDR and 8, 182–5 Western television and 4–5, 8

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

208  Index copla 10, 21, 27, 30 Corner, John 3 Coronation Street 61, 62 ČST (Československa televise) see Czechoslovak television Cuba 142, 182 Cyprus 66, 202 Czechoslovak television audiences 91 censorship 96–103 channels 201, 202 chronology 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 202 game show 125–6 Ideological Thematic Plan 95–6, 97 ideology and melodrama convergence/divergence 99–103 Man at City Hall (Muž na radnici) 96–103 serials 93–4 Man at City Hall (Muž na radnici) episode synopses 101 ideological storyline 97–9 ideology and melodrama 96–103 political surveillance 97–9 soap opera setting 94 political surveillance 94–6 Man at City Hall (Muž na radnici) 97–9 quality television 100–2 serials 8, 10 Blaha Family, The (Rodina Bláhova) 92 cult 92–3 ideology and melodrama 93–4, 96–103 overview 91–103 popularity 92, 103 statistics 92 There Once Was a House (Byl jednou jeden dům) 96 typologies 92–3, 99 Czechoslovakia communist regime see Czecho­ slovakia under communism partition 206 post-communism 205, 206 post-socialist nostalgia 91 television see Czechoslovak television

Goddard.indb 208

Czechoslovakia under communism censorship 94 chronology 194, 198, 205 Communist Party, power 93 end of regime 205 housing construction 99 normalisation period 91 pop music competitions 185 post-communism 205, 206 Prague Spring 94, 104n2, 134 Soviet invasion (1968) 65, 94, 113, 134, 200 Davis Jr, Sammy 40 DDR-FS (Fernsehen der DDR) see GDR television De Gaulle, Charles 45, 117 Demiris, Makis 61 Depré, Helga 180, 181 DFF (Deutscher Fersehfunk) see GDR television Diekmann, Christoph 171 Dietl, Jaroslav 95, 96, 97, 100–2 Dietlova, Magdalena 95 Dietrich, Marlene 40 Dimitriu, Stefan 117 Donatov, Andrei 125 Dubček, Alexander 104n2 East Germany see GDR Eastenders 62 Eco, Umberto 65 Ed Sullivan Show, The 27 Eintracht Frankfurt 197 EIRT (formerly EIR) see Greek tele­vision Eisenhower, Dwight D. 19, 39, 197 El Cordobés (Manuel Benitez) 29–30 Electra (rock band) 188 Ellis, John 1–2, 19 European Broadcasting Union (EBU) 195, 196, 200, 206 Eurovision 22, 27, 38–9, 74, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 202 Fere, G. 129, 134 Fickers, Andreas 2, 9–10 FIFA World Cup 22, 203 Fiorentina 22 Firsov, Boris 128 Fischer, Mary Ellen 112–13, 114, 115

5/30/2013 1:41:31 PM

Index  209 flamenco 27, 30 Flores, Lola 27 Foskolos, Nikos 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 66 Fraga Iribarne, José Manuel 20–1, 38 France 20, 25, 117 Franco, Francisco see Spanish Francoist regime; Spanish Francoist television Frankel, Herta 39–40 Freud, Sigmund 81 Frohberg, Fred 180, 182 Gagarin, Yuri 198 Gal’perina, Elena 126–8, 129 Garisa, Antonio 48–9 GDR (German Democratic Repub­lic) 1989 Monday demonstrations 159 agriculture 150–1 authoritarianism 141 Berlin Crisis (1961) 148, 198 Berlin transit agreement with German Federal Republic 183 child care 147 chronology 195, 202 civil rights activists 167 Code of Family Law 145 Cold War 141 consumerism 8, 182–5 diplomatic recognition 183 divorce rate 146 fall of Berlin Wall 167, 204–5 family as place of retreat 147, 152–3 Festival of German–Soviet Friendship (1975) 185 Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend) 184–5 Friendship Pipeline (Drushba Trasse) 184 gender equality 146 German reunification 205, 206 influence of Western media 164 journalism 167, 171 Jugendradio DT 64 187 marriage 146 pop music competitions 185 discourses 177–8 popularity 186, 191n4 Stasi 180, 186

Goddard.indb 209

television see GDR television Ten Commandments of Socialist Morality and Ethics (Zehn Gebote der sozialistischen Moral und Ethik) 145 UN membership 201 youth culture 9, 177, 178 GDR television 1972 reform 155 access to television from German Federal Republic cable network 168 choice 8, 10 class warfare on air 141–2 credibility of news 168 impact 12, 154, 155, 189–90 preventing 153 response to The Black Channel (Der Schwarze Kanal) 159–68 stylistic convergence 147 warnings 148 Aktuelle Kamera (Current Camera) 142, 173n5, 195 Alternative Programme Reform 203 audience surveys 168–70 Black Channel, The (Der Schwarze Kanal) 7, 142 agitprop 159–73 compulsory viewing 169–70 failure 171–3 final edition 170, 204 format and concept 160–2 hubris and self-denial 170–1 impact 170 journalistic self-image 165–8 models 161 politician-journalist 168 ratings 168–70, 172 satire on television from German Federal Republic 159–68 scheduling 160 ‘sewage plant’ 162, 164 style 162–3, 172 target audience 163–4 themes 165–7 topics 164–5 visual symbolism 160–1 channels 200, 203 choice 8, 10 chronology 196, 197, 199, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205

5/30/2013 1:41:32 PM

210  Index family drama serials 8, 10 1960s 147–9 1970s–80s evolution 151–4 1980s new subjects 153–4 Barefoot to Bed (Barfuß ins Bett) 153–4 early 1970s 149–50 ideological image of socialist family 145–7 late 1970s 150–1 The Lindstedts (Die Lindstedts) 150–1, 152 Neumann Family (Familie Neumann) 153 Our Dear Fellow Men (Die lieben Mitmenschen) 149–50 significance 141–4 statistics 144 Today at the Krüger’s (Heute bei Krugers) 147–9 undercover propaganda 147–51 general rejection by audiences 169 German reunification and 205, 206 ideological control evolution 151–4 fictional programmes 141–4 humorous approach 149–50 image of socialist family 145–7 news manipulation 142–3 strategies 154–5 ‘wagging finger’ approach 147–9 pop music and 9, 10 alternative socialist modernity 180–2 Bong 192n19 Carousel of Notes (Notenkarussell) 176, 179, 180–2, 184 changing policies 176–7 competing with the West 179, 187 creation of national music 178–9 framing devices 179–80 overview 176–90 RUND 176, 179, 182–5, 201 Schlager 176, 179, 180–2 socialist consumerism discourse 182–5 socialist cultural industry discourse 185–9

Goddard.indb 210

Stop!Rock 176, 179, 185–9 terminology 178 Western influences 176 post-communism 205 second channel 169 Geert, Gisa 47 General (rock band) 185 Geneva Frequency Conference 187 Georgalas, Giorgos 67 Gerlof, Kathrin 160, 161, 163, 164, 171 German Democratic Republic see GDR German Federal Republic Berlin Crisis (1961) 148, 198 Berlin transit agreement with GDR 183 German reunification 205, 206 occupational bans 164 Spanish immigrants to 20 UN membership 201 unemployment 164 German Federal Republic television GDR access to cable network 168 choice 8, 10 class warfare on air 141–2 credibility of news 168 impact 12, 154, 155, 189–90 preventing 153 response to The Black Channel (Der Schwarze Kanal) 159–68 stylistic convergence 147 warnings 148 Hesselbach Family (Die Familie Hesselbach) 148 Monday political programmes 160 Red Viewpoint, The (Die rote Optik) 161 Report 166, 167 Germany Democratic Republic see GDR Federal Republic see German Federal Republic Nazis 148, 173n2 Olympic Games (1936) 148 reunification 205, 206 Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe 113, 198 Gómez Mompart, Josep Lluís 26 Gorbachev, Mikhail 206 ‘goulash socialism’ 99

5/30/2013 1:41:32 PM

Index  211 Greece ancient Greece 73, 78 chronology 194, 198, 199, 203, 204, 205 cinema 65–6 Civil War 53, 58, 59, 73 dictatorship see Greek dictatorship television see Greek television United States and 53 World War II 55, 58, 59 Greek dictatorship (1967–74) aesthetics 73 chronology 199, 202 cinema 65–6 control of television 73–5 Greek Orthodox Church 72 ideology 72–3 parades and ceremonies 68 radio services 53–4 resistance 72 televising dictatorship 64–9 television see Greek television Greek television advertising 68 American imports 74 audience 66 channels 53–4, 67, 73, 199, 200, 204, 205 chronology 195, 197, 199, 200, 202 EIRT (National Radio–Television Foundation, formerly EIR) changes of names 200, 202 creation 53, 73 ident 74 mission 67 output 74 propaganda 65 WWII serials 60 Eurovision 74 function 12, 73–5 origin of television service 8, 53–4, 197, 199 Our Neighbourhood (H Γειτονιά μας) 54 balancing commercialism and censorship 68–9 overview 60–4 popularity 62–3 social change 63–4 political control 69, 73–5

Goddard.indb 211

propaganda 57–60, 65, 71 serials Amusement Park, The (Λούνα Παρκ) 62, 64 House with the Palm Tree, The (Το σπίτι με το φοίνικα) 69n1, 75 Mr Advocate (Κύριος Συνήγορος) 61, 75 popularity 65–6, 67 production values 57 soap operas 62 WWII related 60 serious drama 84 televising dictatorship 64–9 This One and That One (Εκείνος και … Εκείνος) 9, 71 aesthetics 75–85 Beckett influence 76–7 censorship and 73, 76 ‘The egg’ 75–85 ideology 77, 84 minimalist dialogue 82–3 resistance text 77, 84 slapstick tradition 80 surrealism 74, 75, 77–9, 84 surviving episode 71 Unknown War, The (O Άγνωστος Πόλεμος) 54, 75 audience 66 balancing commercialism and censorship 68–9 overview 55–60 political impact 59 popularity 56, 75 production values 57 propaganda 57–60 YENED (Armed Forces Information Service, formerly TED) advertising 68 creation 53, 73 mission 67, 68 output 74 popular serials 54–64 propaganda 65, 74 Gusman, Yulii 132 Halkia, Maria 61 Hall, Stuart 3, 5, 9 Hauff, Monika 180, 181, 182 Havel, Václav 205 Henkler, Klaus-Dieter 180, 181, 182

5/30/2013 1:41:32 PM

212  Index Hesmondhalgh, David 190 Hitler, Adolf 161 Hitler vs. Hitler (BBC radio programme) 161 Ho Chi Minh 196 Hobson, Dorothy 104n6 Holmes, Su 4 Honecker, Erich 143, 144, 152, 155, 156n1, 182–3, 201, 204 Horkheimer, Max 191n5 Hot Chocolate (pop group) 179 Hungary 99, 185, 197 Ibáñez Serrador, Narciso 38, 41, 42–5, 49, 50 Iglesias, Julio 202 Iliescu, Ion 205, 206 Ioannidis, Brigadier 68, 202 Italy 65 ITV (Independent Television, UK) 3, 4, 5 Janco, Andrew 9 Jews 135 Jiksov, Todor 116 Johan, Franz 39, 40 Johnson, Uwe 170 Jones, Tom 48 Jurado, Rocio 48 Kafasis, Kostas 61 Kaps, Arthur 38–41, 42, 49 Karagiorgis, Kostas 55 Karamanlis, Kostas 67 Kastoura, Sasa 61 Katsaros, Nikos 67 Kennedy, John F. 162–3, 198 Kersten, Britt 180, 182 Khait, Valerii 133 Koch, Thilo 161 Koukoutsaki, A. 99 Koutsomis, Kostas 55 Kroneberg, Eckart 165 Krutnik, Frank 81 Laffond, Rueda 21 Lapin, Sergei 135 Larkey, Edward 10 Laurel and Hardy 80 Lazarov, Valeriu 38, 45–9, 50 Lenin, Vladimir 135

Goddard.indb 212

Levasier, Marc 169 Levinton, Matvei 131 Liebes, Tamar 94 Livingstone, Sonia 94 Los Bravos (pop group) 45 Lucia, Paco de 48 lyric drama 103 Ma, Eric K.W. 103 Marchand, Roland 116 Marconi 18 Marfin, Mikael 134 Martell, Ina 181 Marx, Karl 135 Marxism 191n5 Maslyakov, Aleksandr 135 Massiel (María de los Ángeles Felisa Santamaría Espinosa) 27, 47 Mavropoulou, Gelly 55 Metaxas, Ioannis 53, 59, 68 Meyen, Michael 170 Michalakopoulos, George 71, 76, 85n5 Middle of the Road (pop group) 185 Miramar studios 38, 39 Miró, Pilar 48 Monty Python’s Flying Circus 136 Moore, Roger 30 Morley, David 91 Moscow Institute of Physics and Tech­nology 130 Mourselas, Kostas 76 Mouzelis, Nicos 68 Muppet Show, The 159 Muratov, Sergei 125–6, 128 Mustata, Dana 7 Nähle, Kirsten 170, 171 Napoleon 40 Natschinski, Thomas 181 Navarrete, Fernando 48 Nazis 148, 173n2 Neale, Steve 81 Neighbours 62 Newcomb, Horace 103 nuclear weapons 148 Olympic Games (1936) 148 Olympique Nice 197 Opus Dei 37 Orbita system 199

5/30/2013 1:41:32 PM

Index  213 Organisation Internationale de Radio­ diffusion et de la Télévision (OIRT) 116, 195, 197, 206 O’Shaughnessy, Michael 5, 107 Palacio, Manuel 19, 37, 38 Papadopoulos, George 53, 57, 59–60, 69, 72 Papandreou, George 54, 72, 198, 199 Paradisi, Maria 60 Paris, James 58 Patakos, Stylianos 85n12 Pavone, Rita 40 Perestroika 135 Peret (Pere Pubill Calaf ) 47 Petre, Constantin 118 Petrovici, Nicolae 117 Peyton Place 74 Philips 18, 195 Pinochet, Augusto 184 Piquer, Concha 27 Pirvulescu, Constantin 114 Pleck, Wilhelm 195 Poland 126, 182, 185, 197 popular television audience surveys 6–7 authoritarian Europe and 6–10 meaning of popular 2–6 national identity and 5–6, 10 top-down television 3–5, 7–8 Western television 3–6 Pora, Andreea 111 Pretenteris, Kostas 61, 66 Puscasu, Traian 118 Radio Free Europe 116 Rafailidis, Vasilis 57 RCA 18, 23, 195 Re, Gustavo 40 reality gap 142–3, 147 Real Madrid 22, 28, 46–7, 197 Reina, Juanita 27 Rodden, John 171–2 Rolling Stones, The 176 Roman Catholic Church 18, 37, 38, 40, 49 Romania Ceauşescu regime see Romanian Ceauşescu regime De Gaulle’s visit 45

Goddard.indb 213

origins of television service 196 post-communism 205, 206 UN membership 196 Romanian Ceauşescu regime Chinese visit 111 downfall 7, 118–20, 205 economic decline 107, 108, 113 personality cult 107, 108, 112–18 Press and Publications Bureau 112 Soviet relations 113, 200 Television see Romanian television under Ceauşescu twelfth Communist Party Congress 114 Romanian television under Ceauşescu audience research 10 censorship 111–12 chronology 199, 200, 201, 203, 204 golden age 107–8 international alternatives 116 live television 109–11, 121 live transmission of Ceauşescu’s down­fall 118–20, 121 origins 107 personality cult 112–18 political control 7, 109–12 popular television, meaning 107, 121 production costs 108–9 programme quality 109 restricted service 8, 108, 204 Roussea, Jenny 55 Russia 206 Samula, Liviu Tudor 111–12 Santana, Carlos 185 Santana, Manuel 28 Saturday Night Live 136 Schlager 176, 179, 180–2 Schlesinger, Franz 171 Schnitzler, Karl-Eduard von 159–73 Schöbel, Frank 181 Scott-Heron, Gil 64 Seferis, George 59 Segditsa, Kiki 69n1 Sergeeva, Bella 129, 135 serials 8, 9 see also specific countries SET (rock band) 189 Sevilla, Carmen 27

5/30/2013 1:41:32 PM

214  Index Shaw, Duncan 31 slapstick tradition 80 Slavkin, Viktor 134 Slovak Television 206 Sokolov, Vladimir 132 Sorlin, Pierre 58, 60 Soviet Central Television see Soviet television Soviet television audience surveys 125, 128 chronology 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 201, 204, 206 function 9–10 image of socialist family 145 KVN (Klub veselykh i ­nakhodchivykh; Club of the Merry and Quick-Witted) 124–5 (1961–65) 126–30 (1966–67) 130–3 continuation 135, 136, 204 end 135, 201 Odessa Chimney Sweeps 130–3 popularity 9, 128–30, 135 pre-recording 133–5 popularising 124–5 VVV (Vecher veselikh voprosov; Night of Merry Questions) 125–6 Soviet Union 1993 revolution 65 Berlin Crisis (1961) 148, 198 Ceauşescu and 113, 120 chronology 194, 203, 206 dissolution 206 Festival of German–Soviet Friendship (1975) 185 Friendship Pipeline (Drushba Trasse) 184 invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968) 65, 94, 113, 134, 200 Jews 135 KGB 132–3 nuclear race 148 Perestroika 135 television see Soviet television US relations 148, 203 ‘voluntary compulsory’ work 134 World Festival of Youth and Students (1957) 125 youth culture 125

Goddard.indb 214

Spain post-Franco 202, 203, 204, 205 television channels 204, 205 see also Spanish Francoist regime; Spanish Francoist television Spanish Francoist regime Andalusia 20, 23, 25, 26 Catholic Church 18, 37, 38, 40, 49 chronology 194, 198, 202 Civil War 17, 26, 37, 39 consumerism 8, 19, 31, 37 economic miracle 19, 20–1 emigration from 20, 31, 37 evolution of dictatorship 36–8 Falange 18 films 48 international relations 10, 19, 31, 195, 197 Madrid Pact (1953) 195 modernisation 19, 20–1, 49–50 Stabilisation Plan (Plan de Estabiliz­ ación) 19, 37 television see Spanish Francoist television transition to democracy 32, 37, 38, 202 UN membership 19, 196 Spanish Francoist television American imports 21, 197 Andalusia 198 audience surveys 6, 24 bullfighting 10, 19, 21, 23–4, 31 popularity 24–6 stars 28–30 Catalan language 33n7, 41, 43 censorship 17–18, 44, 48 children’s programmes 40 Chronicles of a People (Cronicas de un pueblo) 201 chronology 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201, 202 copla 10, 21, 27, 30 economic symbolism 20–1 Eurovision 38–9 expansion 19 expressionism 45 flamenco 27, 30 football 19, 21, 22–3, 31 critique 46–7 popularity 24–6 stars 28–9

5/30/2013 1:41:32 PM

Index  215 Franco’s Christmas messages 21, 198 Franco’s dictatorship and 36–8 function of television 12, 17–19 game shows 26, 45, 49, 201 horror stories 42–3 Ibáñez Serrador, Narciso 38, 41, 42–5, 49, 50 Kaps, Arthur 38–41, 42, 49 Lazarov, Valeriu 38, 45–9, 50 model 17–19 musical specials 45–9 national identity and 10, 19, 23–4, 26–8 periods first 18–19, 37, 38–41, 197 second 42–5 third 45–9 popularity of television 7 propaganda 17–18 quality fiction 42–5 science fiction 42 sport 22–4 popularity 24–6 stars 28–30 targeted audiences 17 transition to democracy 37, 38, 39, 49 TV clubs 25 TVE (Television Espanola) 17–32, 36–50 variety shows 38–41 youth culture 49–50 Stalin, Joseph 141, 195 Stasi 180, 186 Strnad, Stanislav 125 Suárez, Adolfo 202 surrealism 74, 75, 77–9, 84 Svobodin, Aleksandr 134 Switzerland 20 Sylvania 18 Tejero Molina, Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio 203 television studies, transnationalism 1–3 Tôkés, Lázló 118 Tour de France 28 transnational television studies 1–3 TVE (Television Espanola) see Spanish Francoist television

Goddard.indb 215

TVR (Televiziunea Romană) see Romanian television under Ceauşescu Tzavellas, Giorgos 63 Ulbricht, Walter 145, 152, 182, 201 United Kingdom see British tele­ vision United Nations 19, 37, 194, 196, 201 United States advertising techniques 116 Armed Forces Network 53 Berlin Crisis (1961) 148, 198 Cuban missile crisis (1962) 142 cultural imperialism 5 GDR television and 148 Greek Civil War and 53 Madrid Pact (1953) 195 nuclear race 148 popular television 3, 4 Soviet relations 148, 203 Spanish relations 19, 37, 39, 195, 197 television advertising 5 television exports 5, 21, 74 television game shows 74, 126 Voice of America 67 Vakalopoulos, Christos 59, 62–3, 65–6 Valoukos, Stathis 85n5 Vartan, Sylvie 40 VEB Deutsche Schallplatten (recording company) 177 Vieneses, Los 39, 40, 47 Voice of America 67 Vorios, O 59 Voronkova, G. 129 Vuelta a España 28 Wells, Alan 94 West Germany see German Federal Republic Western media consumerism 8 GDR and 8, 10, 12, 154, 164, 176–80, 183, 185–90 meaning of popular 107 points of resistance 5, 9, 11 pop music 176–80, 183, 185–90 popular television 3–6

5/30/2013 1:41:32 PM

216  Index popular versus quality 8 quality television 100–1 use of entertainment 148 West German see German Federal Republic television WWII films 58 see also specific countries World Cup (football) 22, 203 World Festival of Youth and Students (1957) 125 (1973) 183, 184

Goddard.indb 216

Yakovlev, Mikhail 125–6, 128 Yangel, Aleksandr 131 YENED (formerly TED) see Greek television youth culture 9, 49–50, 125, 136, 164, 177, 178, 180, 187 Zhiltsova, Svetlana 128, 133, 135 Zolotarevskii, L. 129–30

5/30/2013 1:41:32 PM