Broadcasting Modernism

4. “Masters of Sacred Ceremonies”: Welles, Corwin, and a Radiogenic Modernist Literature

c h a p t e r 4 8 May 2005 marked the sixtieth anniversary of what is probably the second most famous broadcast in the history of American radio, Norman Corwin’s On a Note of Triumph, commissioned for and broadcast on VE (Victory in Europe) Day. Various commemorative events were planned, including an inevitable “re-creation.” When the public radio producer with the rights to produce that re-creation asked me for advice on how to approach his project I suggested that the literal restaging of the original script which he had in mind might not be the best route. I proposed instead a program that grappled with some of the loose themes and modes of expressions in the original (the costs of war, the debate between intervention and isolation, the It is a theater which eliminates the author in favor of what we would call, in our Occidental theatrical jargon, the director ; but a director who has become a kind of manager of magic, a master of sacred ceremonies. And the material on which he works, the themes he brings to throbbing life are derived not from him but from the gods. They come, it seems, from elemental interconnections of Nature which a double Spirit has fostered. What he sets in motion is the MANIFESTED. —Antonin Artaud “Masters of Sacred Ceremonies” Welles, Corwin, and a Radiogenic Modernist Literature Martin Spinelli 68 aestheticization/anti-aestheticization of conflict, etc.) in a more contemporary setting, perhaps even utilizing the current war for source material. After a moment’s hesitation he assured me that his production was going to be completely “modern” (using the latest digital recording tools, working with computer music, etc.) but that his desire was to be as faithful as possible to the original script. There is a difference, however, between restaging a radio script and re-creating a broadcast event: the former defines radio as a material product, a document or a recording while the latter describes radio as a synthesis among producers, broadcast institutions, and audiences, in short, as a relationship.1 The single most famous broadcast in the history of American radio, the 1938 CBS/Orson Welles/Mercury Theatre on the Air production of War of the Worlds, is famous precisely because it activated (or stumbled onto) a new manifestation of the radio relationship. Because of my emphasis on the radio relationship, literary-radio theoretical models with roots in theatrical/dramatic scholarship are often more helpful than those with roots in poetics. To that end, this essay occasionally uses Artaud’s aborted broadcast of Having Done with the Judgment of God and his earlier investigations into the Theater of Cruelty as points of reference. Reading the achievements and the shortcomings of Artaud’s work in the context of the other two broadcasts—particularly his uses of glossolalia and aggressively abstract voice/language play organized under his larger project of engendering a psychological catharsis in his audience—assists my claim that innovation in this relationship is the distinguishing feature of a radiogenic Modernist literature rather than solely an experimental formal quality at the level of word or sound.2 While previous studies of War of the Worlds have been successful in describing the extent of the panic and the nature of the response in particular individuals, no sustained attempts have been made to describe the causes of those effects in Modernist, or even in simply “literary,” terms. The situation is similar with On a Note of Triumph. Reviews in the immediate wake of the broadcast and Corwin biographies decades later have settled for describing it as a moving social statement or a historic monument to be cherished. This essay attempts to redress the balance by offering for the first time sustained andthoroughclosereadings/listeningsofeachofthesebroadcasts,andbydoing so in Modernist literary and theatrical terms. But while Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty is used as a template for analyzing and delineating much of the Modernist character and appeal of these other two broadcasts, the circuit of appreciation is reciprocal: the studies of the accomplishments of War of the “Masters of Sacred Ceremonies” 69 Worlds and On a Note of Triumph suggest explanations for Artaud’s limited success (on both radio and the stage) in mobilizing in his audiences the shock, catharsis, and transformation described as his explicit goal in his essays and letters. While each of these three broadcasts takes a different mode of audience address, has a...