"Lux presents Hollywood”... just hearing those words in the quiet of my room sent a special message. The characters would enter my life during the hour, and I didn’t do homework or chores as I listened to every word. I didn’t like the sinister "The Shadow" and that often was coming on the tiny car’s radio during the trip from my grandfather’s place to ours. "The Battle of the Baritones" was time with my older sister since I always cheered for whichever baritone she didn’t like, as sibling stuff began to take on a different dimension. We did our assigned household chores during that broadcast. I tried to take the living room to dust as that radio had the best speaker in the entire house.
I learned to knit, embroider, do needlepoint during broadcasts we heard as a family. Only “Lux Presents” and also a weekend morning show called "Let’s Pretend" seemed to me to need total privacy.
At age seven, I was taken to the Metropolitan Opera to see "Hansel and Gretel" sung in English. I whispered to my nine-and-a-half-year-old sister that I didn’t understand the language, and the music sounded as if Hansel was a girl as well as Gretel. She teased me about that years later.
Yes, two women had the leading roles, and I was waiting for dialogue rather than understand that singing in English required my attention to grasp the words. At least at the ballet, I didn’t have to figure out anything as the graceful movements and gentle music took hold.
In May 1948, I stared at a test pattern showing on a tiny screen called a television. Nothing would make me give up radio, I thought, looking at that “nothing” that became a piece of furniture in the living room.
In darkened movie theaters, or live stage productions, I was in charge of personal emotional responses. Sometimes that spilled over: while in college, a date took me to the small town near campus to see the film "Singing in the Rain." We exited the movie house and it was raining, and the town had old-fashioned street lights and sidewalks. I embraced a light pole, and began to sing and dance in the rain, splashing the water at the curb, and feeling I really was Gene Kelly.
No matter that my dirndl skirt got soaked, and my penny loafers got soggy, and, in the dorm, there’d be no place to dry them – I wanted the feelings from the film to linger.
With thousands of songs sitting inside a rectangle the size of a credit card, and telephones that take pictures and email them to others minus the need to develop prints, plus television sets so large some hang on a wall and the speakers surround the room – why hasn’t technology allowed TV viewers something very important: to hear words, to respond as one feels, and/or to mute background blaring that’s called music!
Tin cans, as a child, were for collecting for the “war effort.” Currently, “canned” has nothing to do with food preservation but, rather, laughter. A television comedy, so unsure of its content, has a laugh-track doing its “ha ha” after almost every line spoken. Instead of getting into the rhythm of the character’s words, I’m waiting for the sentence to conclude so the ha ha will come on and then be over for several seconds before I’m told to ha ha again as another line gets orated.
Dramas must have producers so insecure about the worth of content that dialogue is drowned out now by repetitive music. No longer the kind of John Williams music added to background, the jarring music is foreground and it’s a strain to follow lines. I don’t want drum beats pounding and pounding because characters are walking – I can see they’re walking. And if there’s a possibility of doom, let me feel it.
A new program aired in the winter of 2014, and I was interested in the interplay among the characters and unusual story line. But I found I could not continue watching the show because the alleged background music made the dialogue so difficult I had to turn up the volume and all that did was cause the disturbing sound track to be even louder. I turned off the show and deleted it from the DVR taping.
Why can’t a drama be treated as a stage play? Give viewers the opportunity to get involved with the story and respond with fear, amusement, caring, dislike, whatever. If any music is needed, it should be so subtle that it enhances; today’s detracts.
So a comedy show insists I ha ha on cue, and a drama obliterates the dialogue replacing engrossing words with constant bombardment of background noise muting characters’ words. I don’t like reality TV, and “Jeopardy” only lasts half an hour of my viewing. I’ve a huge TV used less frequently each season except for old movies.
I’d like to can the canned laughter, and put the sound tracks into a can so I can turn on the television in 2015 and know I can stay in the room for a program.
Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet’s work has been included in hard and soft-cover book anthologies. Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including 12 different divisions of The Smithsonian.