The historical memory of television is so short that it seems like a fish. Nostalgia – that beautiful medical neologism created in the seventeenth century that is about to become an empty political insult equivalent to a façade – hardly exists, because it usually refers to things that have not even disappeared. There is the return of Sex in New York, which activates barely formed memories about a series that have not even twenty years passed. For platforms, “classic” refers to yesterday afternoon: it seems that the drama series started in The Sopranos, and comedies, in Friends.
The history of television begins in 1927, although its regular broadcasts are from 1937. It is thirty years younger than cinema, but for the majority of the public it is ahistorical, recently invented, without heritage, figures or traditions. That is why the memoirs of Mel Brooks, All About Me!, give an unusual historical perspective. Turns out there was TV before HBO and hardly anyone had heard about it.
Mel Brooks didn’t invent TV at all, but almost. What he did, with notable help from scriptwriters and actors, was to give it a language of its own. Brooks started on NBC in 1949, writing for Sid Caesar on a variety show that was broadcast live from Broadway. The accomplishments we celebrate in today’s series pale next to what he did with Super agent 86 in 1965, applying what he learned in that theater. That comedy was the declaration of independence for television, both radio and cinema. For the first time, viewers were watching something conceived exclusively for that medium. It was not theater or filmed radio, but neither was it a movie. TV will not have the artistic dimension that many attribute to it until it becomes aware of its own history. Thanks, Mel, for remembering.
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