After today’s
conversation about liveness as ontology vs. liveness as ideology, I was
reminded of a strange bit of live television from a few years back – the live
debate episode in season 7 of The West
Wing. The episode starts with traditional Sorkin walk and talks as the
candidates take the stage, but for the remainder of the episode, the camera
angles and cuts replicate those of an actual presidential debate. A bona fide
broadcast journalist, Forrest Sawyer, moderates the event. Clearly, the
“liveness” of this episode served as a nifty gimmick, and this episode was
accordingly one of the most widely viewed of the season, but I’m curious about
the other ramifications of the effect of liveness here. There’s an aesthetic of
liveness that the episode depends on for its intended effect; the stationary
cameras and flatness of the images set this episode apart from the show’s
overall rich, single-cam aesthetic, and heighten the stakes by adopting the
formal conventions of an actual debate. I’m interested in the affective power
of “live” aesthetics – lacking the familiar polished look and swelling score
that typify the series, this episode taps into a certain anxiety produced by
live political theater. I find myself skipping over this episode when I rewatch
the series. Perhaps I want to be lulled into complacency by glossy imagery and
the sweet sounds of W.G. Snuffy Walden’s scores. Perhaps those live debate
aesthetics are too traumatic after the 2016 election. I’m wondering whether
anyone can think of other examples of fiction shows that capture a “live”
aesthetic, and whether we can determine where this aesthetic fits into the
ideological effect of “liveness.”
Hmm maybe not entirely the same as what you mention here, but reminds me of Amazon Prime's coverage of the Rose Parade this year with Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon (which I mentioned to you in class!). They took the joke so far, half the audience was unaware of the gag (which resulted in extreme reviews). I don't think I've seen a streaming service host an event like this before, it was actually "live" without any commercial breaks, played on the nature of the Rose Parade telecast and was shot completely straight. Will Ferrell even created a Twitter account that he updated during the broadcast (some interactivity), and a pretty impressive website to go with his host's persona. The two of them even went on Jimmy Kimmel to promote it several weeks before. Tim Meadows made an appearance too. If you read the reviews for the program, it's remarkable to note the stunt went through, and how seriously it offended some viewers (who mention not having cable and how happy they were to have Amazon stream the parade, only to be disappointed by the 'disrespectful' hosts).
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This is my second time writing this post (Blogger fucked up), so this one may be a bit truncated. I’m so glad we’re talking about The West Wing! I’m reminded of the episode “Access” in which a PBS news crew follows then Press Secretary C.J. Cregg in an all-access, behind the scenes special when an hostage situation unfolds in Washington State. While the show is not filmed live like the episode mentioned by Megan, the episode marks its liveness through an inter-title: the premiere special that is the episode has been delayed until after the end of the Bartlet administration due to national security reasons. Perhaps this is better understood as a spatial and temporal proximity than a liveness, but elsewhere, the episode adopts the shaky cam, full frontality of the interview, and an occasional unraveling of or breathlessness around the script.
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