Art & Cable

arts agenda

Art & Cable

by Orin Buck

In a column last year I announced the beginning of the Independent Film Channel (IFC). IFC is now available in Ann Arbor on Continental Cablevision as a Premium Channel. According to an IFC representative at the recent symposium on independent film-making held at Detroit Film Theatre (in the Detroit Institute of Arts), Continental is offering IFC throughout much of the approximately 10% of the USA cable market which it owns, so Ann Arbor isn't getting special treatment. Continental has already enriched our lives by providing Bravo (IFC's parent channel), with all its arts programming, in the Basic cable service since it took over from Columbia.

IFC may be the best-ever source of contemporary art on cable television, occupying a neglected corner in the crowded marketplace of cultural products. Independent film is a rich cultural resource that has been mostly excluded from normal distribution channels--by definition it is film made outside of the Hollywood studio system. Our yearly 16mm Film Festival is one of the only places where many independent films can be seen, and since Eyemediae closed in the '80s, we have seen almost none of the latest trends in video art. The moderator at the IFC symposium, Jeff Lipsky, said there are 1,000 independent feature-length films produced yearly in the USA, and of course many more shorter films. Most are seen in their local area.

Independent film is the surest route to film artistry because the individual filmmaker, often with his or her own money, exercises more creative initiative amd control than Hollywood usually allows. IFC's programming list seems to concentrate on features from established art films masters like Kurosawa, Fellini and Bergman (not all of whom were strictly 'independent') and newer works like Drugstore Cowboy and Swingers. They also program documentaries. They program a few of the type of shorts that make the Ann Arbor 16mm Festival so rich. 

I don't have the IFC yet, but last year around this time I gave in and got Basic cable service, knowing that I'd lose at least two months of my waking life until I got over the thrill of mainlining our most popular drug, with full color and HiFi stereo sound, for the first time in years. I lost more like four months,

It's not that TV is addictive (hah!), it's just too much of a good thing. For my own video work I wanted to earn more about how they do lighting and camera work, how they mix the sound, how they are animating the graphics--all that technical stuff--but I also wanted to see what America is watching, because TV and shopping are all we have in common anymore. Every show has different lighting, sound, etc., and a different angle on the evolution of society. I've seen a lot of them only once. But then there are the shows that I want to see more than once.....

Finally, after a year of stupor, I can look at the TV guide and (sometimes) be able to say "Nothing's on." Here are some resulting thoughts on the electronic delivery of culture.

On TV the state of American art at the end of the twentieth century is readily apparent. All aspects of culture are commodities, with traditional Fine Arts serving a small but elite fringe audience, many of whom also partake in more common pleasures like Seinfeld or classic movies. Performing arts and literature get more air time than visual arts, which mirrors local arts attendance. Visual artists want to put their work in cafés because so few people come to see it in galleries. Do more people attend live concerts because it's what they see on TV, or because purely visual, static gallery art bores them?

Where is the best TV art to be found? Segregating artistic media fare from mindless entertainment is not an absolute science. Pure entertainment functions to help workers relax after they've put all of their creative, thoughtful energy into their creative, thoughtful energy into their jobs and families. But with the profound influence of liberal arts education on the secular humanists of Hollywood, very little entertainment is unaffected by Fine Arts traditions, from the framing of shots, to the literary references, to the classically-styled music which is still so common. But for those aware of the contributions of modern Fine Art to the language of the culture, a few areas of TV stand out from the rest.

Everyone comments on how well done many commercials are in comparison to the actual programs. You can enjoy the sophistication of their artistry while you try to shield your mind from their manipulations. Late-night MTV has the wildest, most original ads. The introductory title sequences on some shows (like Media Television or Next Step) and some network IDs (such as the Discovery Channel's and Sci Fi Channel's) are masterpieces of design and montage. It's easy to see where some art school graduates are finding jobs.

Since I last lived with TV, all aspects of TV production have become more spectacular through the use of computers and other rapidly advancing techniques. How'd They Do That? and Movie Magic are shows about these new techniques, and some of the special effects wizards' technical artistry reminds me of Leonardo DaVinci's.

But what makes art important is not mere excellence of technique, but its distilled expression of something important about life.

The Simpsons is still my favorite condensation of the paradoxes and perversions of contemporary American life. Each episode is dense with surreal, satiric depictions of everything from industrial pollution and racism to family loyalty and the American Dream. Like other good art, it is to true-to-life to be reducible to simple moral lessons. Bart is good and bad. Homer the simp has his moments of genius. They embody timeless clichés of male brutishness in contrast to Maggie and Lisa's virtues.

But to escape the propaganda and the shows designed solely to keep you there for the commercials, you still have to go to a few channels that minimize the economic dimension. Public television still offers the best selection of programs without commercial interruption. AMC and Bravo have excellent movies without commercials, and Bravo recently ran David Lynch's Twin Peaks as a daily serial without commercials.

IFC's films are unedited (i.e., uncensored) and uninterrupted by commercials. It's time to gear up for some serious viewing.

IFC Website: http://www.ifctv.com