At a Loss for Words: Televisual Liveness and Corporeal Interruption

Spring 2010 117 At a Loss for Words: Televisual Liveness and Corporeal Interruption Alla Gadassik1 Introduction In the closing days of 2004, the New York Times published a list of “TV’s Best Live Moments” from the preceding year.2 By the night of its release, the list already seemed outdated, as television networks scrambled to bring viewers the first live reports from a devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean. However, even before its historical relevance became superseded by the natural disaster, the list already presented a very peculiar survey of television.After all, no major events or catastrophes from the previous year were included in its inventory of captivating spectacles—not Hurricanes Jeanne or Ivan; not the publicized funeral of Ronald Reagan or the much-discussed re-election of George W. Bush; not the historical Olympic Games in Athens or the self-congratulatory Academy Awards. Not a single important live broadcast was featured in the newspaper’s year-end reflection. Instead, the list consisted entirely of much more banal events that somehow attained mythical status in public discourse. These included, among others: Janet Jackson’s bared breast,Ashlee Simpson’s lip-syncing embarrassment, Jon Stewart’s political commentary on CNN’s Crossfire, and Scott Peterson’s cold response to his death penalty sentence. This strange selection, which emerged amidst wider coverage of feel-good holiday stories and year-end recaps, is by no means an accurate representation of national political values. Nor do I think that its contents can simply be ascribed to journalistic contempt for television. After all, many of the selected televised moments did receive a frenzy of public attention, and were widely circulated or discussed by multiple media. Instead of dismissing these moments as historically irrelevant products of cultural consumption, I argue that they expose the significant role of interruption in establishing and maintaining the effect of television “liveness.” The attraction of television liveness, as an ideological (or simulated?) media construction, depends precisely on such brief, unexpected ruptures in Alla Gadassik is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Screen Cultures at Northwestern University in Chicago. She is interested in the encounters between bodies and technologies in early cinema and new media and her primary research considers filmmaking and animation as technologically mediated kinetic performances. She is excited to participate in this interdisciplinary issue, which bridges media studies and performance studies. In addition to pursuing an academic career, Alla also makes digital animation films. She can be reached at gadassik@u.northwestern.edu. 118 Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism television’s controlled daily flow. In particular, these moments, which elicit fascination among media commentators and viewers, are predominantly constructed around representations of affective corporeal disruptions­ —bodies out of control, often caught by cameras that are searching for something else. The interplay of continuity and interruption is a distinguishing, though not technologically determined, televisual mode. The appeal of television liveness (its appeal to and for viewers) is the possibility that anything could happen, that real events or accidents could break through the carefully managed stream of information. Even when television is no longer broadcasting “live,” it relies on this promise (it draws on it and mythologizes it) for its claims of accessing the real. At the center of this promise is the televised unruly body, composed for performance but capable of disruption. These are exactly the type of corporeal disruptions that are captured in the New York Times list: Janet Jackson’s technological “wardrobe malfunction,” during which the celebrity’s body becomes uncontained and uncontainable;Ashlee Simpson’s awkward flailing dance, which the singer performs upon realizing that she is caught lip-syncing; Jon Stewart’s frustrated critique of Crossfire theatrics and his refusal to produce jokes on the show.3 Although these examples are drawn from live broadcasts, they reflect a model of affective disruption that extends to a much broader range of television programming. I will return to them throughout the article, to analyze what they reveal about the role of (failed) performance in generating effects of presence and authenticity.4 Our experience of television liveness is linked to our encounter with “unscripted” affective moments, when words fail and something else breaks through: gasps, pauses...