![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Tu ne peux pas passer ta vie dans une voiture qui parle
I need a copy of Cocteau's The Art of Cinema. As quoted in Rubén Gallo's "Jean Cocteau's Radio Poetry" (The Sound of Poetry/The Poetry of Sound ed. Marjorie Perloff and Craig Dworkin, 2009) with additional text patched in from the snippets I can view on Google Books:
Genius cannot be banned on the grounds that it opens the way to errors. At present, everything that is invented belongs to a realm of genius that is necessarily dangerous, but one cannot condemn it. It would be ridiculous to do so. Radio is pernicious if it flows into every home like a stream of lukewarm water. It is very important if it brings culture to people who had no conception of culture. All this seems patently obvious to me, but some people say radio is essential, and others that it is harmful. Radio is neither essential nor harmful. It is an invention of genius, and consequently a dangerous one. Everything useful may be considered useless. Poetry, for example, is naturally useless; but it is not beautiful for that reason. It is beautiful because it is a distinct language, not a dead language, but a living language that seems dead. It is a language that takes time to unravel. People are accustomed to assess everything against a single measure of speed. There are many different kinds of speed. People always judge things as a whole and say 'radio is good', or 'radio is bad', when it would take hours to explore the matter.
It is certainly true that individuals have been influenced by the world of sound, but sometimes for ill, because the radio is so widespread and extensive that it tends to obey: to obey its listeners, when it would be better if the listeners were to obey it. In other words, if one could reach a high level of creation through sound apparatus, this would be an excellent achievement. But unfortunately, since one is constrained to go along with the present moment in fields such as this, there is a tendency, as I have said before, to respond to demand. It would be difficult to create a living radio as long as it requires written scripts. Reading gives the radio a sort of tedious banality, even with an expert reader. It is above all a medium of improvisation. On the other hand, I know that it is impossible to base a programme on chance. These are the reasons why I have never seriously thought about radio.
Radio is terrifyingly intimate. The whole problem is that it has to enter a room and impose itself in such a way that those who listen to it set aside whatever was on their minds, and let themelves be captivated by whatever is on ours. An off button is so easy to turn. On the other hand, if the radio is just a background accompaniment to people's own private concerns, it loses all interest and becomes just another tap in the house.
In analyzing this passage, the article claims, "Like Orson Welles, Cocteau believed the most interesting use of the medium would be to jolt listeners out of complacency . . . Cocteau was in fact arguing for what other critics called 'radiogenic experiments'—works, like The War of the Worlds, conceived specifically to exploit the possibilities offered by the broadcasting medium."
Which raises for me the obvious question: Did Cocteau ever hear the Mercury Theatre's War of the Worlds? Or is the author just drawing the parallel from aesthetics and likelihood? It doesn't seem unreasonable. Cocteau certainly knew Welles; he wrote in a foreword in 1950, "I wanted to give a rapid portrait of a friend whom I love and admire, which is a pleonasm where Orson Welles is concerned, since my friendship and admiration are one and the same." (And now I never need to define pleonasm again.) But the article doesn't say and I can't, at least on the internet, find evidence that he heard either the original broadcast or a recording afterward. Inquiring minds are awake at this hour. Anybody know?
Genius cannot be banned on the grounds that it opens the way to errors. At present, everything that is invented belongs to a realm of genius that is necessarily dangerous, but one cannot condemn it. It would be ridiculous to do so. Radio is pernicious if it flows into every home like a stream of lukewarm water. It is very important if it brings culture to people who had no conception of culture. All this seems patently obvious to me, but some people say radio is essential, and others that it is harmful. Radio is neither essential nor harmful. It is an invention of genius, and consequently a dangerous one. Everything useful may be considered useless. Poetry, for example, is naturally useless; but it is not beautiful for that reason. It is beautiful because it is a distinct language, not a dead language, but a living language that seems dead. It is a language that takes time to unravel. People are accustomed to assess everything against a single measure of speed. There are many different kinds of speed. People always judge things as a whole and say 'radio is good', or 'radio is bad', when it would take hours to explore the matter.
It is certainly true that individuals have been influenced by the world of sound, but sometimes for ill, because the radio is so widespread and extensive that it tends to obey: to obey its listeners, when it would be better if the listeners were to obey it. In other words, if one could reach a high level of creation through sound apparatus, this would be an excellent achievement. But unfortunately, since one is constrained to go along with the present moment in fields such as this, there is a tendency, as I have said before, to respond to demand. It would be difficult to create a living radio as long as it requires written scripts. Reading gives the radio a sort of tedious banality, even with an expert reader. It is above all a medium of improvisation. On the other hand, I know that it is impossible to base a programme on chance. These are the reasons why I have never seriously thought about radio.
Radio is terrifyingly intimate. The whole problem is that it has to enter a room and impose itself in such a way that those who listen to it set aside whatever was on their minds, and let themelves be captivated by whatever is on ours. An off button is so easy to turn. On the other hand, if the radio is just a background accompaniment to people's own private concerns, it loses all interest and becomes just another tap in the house.
In analyzing this passage, the article claims, "Like Orson Welles, Cocteau believed the most interesting use of the medium would be to jolt listeners out of complacency . . . Cocteau was in fact arguing for what other critics called 'radiogenic experiments'—works, like The War of the Worlds, conceived specifically to exploit the possibilities offered by the broadcasting medium."
Which raises for me the obvious question: Did Cocteau ever hear the Mercury Theatre's War of the Worlds? Or is the author just drawing the parallel from aesthetics and likelihood? It doesn't seem unreasonable. Cocteau certainly knew Welles; he wrote in a foreword in 1950, "I wanted to give a rapid portrait of a friend whom I love and admire, which is a pleonasm where Orson Welles is concerned, since my friendship and admiration are one and the same." (And now I never need to define pleonasm again.) But the article doesn't say and I can't, at least on the internet, find evidence that he heard either the original broadcast or a recording afterward. Inquiring minds are awake at this hour. Anybody know?
no subject
Which raises for me the obvious question:...
I wish I had an answer for you. I hope you can find out something more on the subject.
People always judge things as a whole and say 'radio is good', or 'radio is bad', when it would take hours to explore the matter.
For some reason this line particularly struck me.
I hope you can get a copy of the book before too much longer.
ETA: Une voiture qui parle? Pourquoi? C'est une voiture qui pense, aussi?
no subject
No, it just has radio in it.
no subject
Oh, I see!
That's an interesting way of putting it, and really makes an odd sort of sense, once one steps outside of the mindset of a world where cars "always" have at least a radio.
And, needless to say, it's much better than Knight Rider, the 80s television show with David Hasselhoff and the talking car.