Television Logic and “Quiz Show’s” Prescient Prediction
“I thought we were going to get television. The truth is … television is going to get us.” In another film, this line would have felt hackneyed and cliche, but in “Quiz Show,” the 1994 film directed by Robert Redford, it is forceful and earned.
“Quiz Show’s” plot is complicated, but I will attempt to summarize it in a few sentences. 1950’s NBC quiz show “Twenty-One,” in order to boost ratings, recruits young, handsome WASP academic Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) to be the new star of the show, where he racks up win after win and national stardom by being fed the questions prior to the show’s filming. Van Doren fights a personal battle with his moral conscience and an external battle with his academic father, who disapproves of television and celebrity. Herb Stempel (John Turturo), a neurotic Jew and the show’s previous fraudulent champion, had purposely lost the competition in exchange for an ultimately unfulfilled promise that he would have a future in television, and brings an allegation of fixing to a New York grand jury, which seals the evidence. Dick Goodwin (Rob Morrow), a young Bostonian lawyer, hears about the sealed grand jury findings and, suspecting fraud, begins to investigate the match-fixing on “Twenty-One,” which culminates in the third act, where the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee for Legislative Oversight holds a hearing on fixing in the game show.
Clearly, the film takes upon many hats during its runtime: a comedic tragedy about a man’s fall from grace, a family drama about a son trying to escape his father’s shadow, a legal procedural about a small-time lawyer taking upon forces far more powerful than him. However, it is in the third act that the film’s true subject matter, television and its terrible power, comes into focus.
What is meant to be a hearing that undermines television, that exposes it and reduces its power, instead becomes a showcase of its invulnerability, which lies in its power to create a spectacle and shape narratives. Van Doren admits to his complicity in the scandal, but is exonerated by the committee; he is not a cheater, but a dashing young academic with a great moral conscience. Meanwhile, Stempel shakes and sweats and loses his head in front of the cameras; he is the raving, defeated Jew, in contrast to Van Doren, the dignified WASP. In the end, NBC faces no consequences, and it is Goodwin, who, after his valiant efforts ultimately result in nothing, utters the climactic line mentioned earlier.
Television is put on trial, but it is a sham trial from the beginning. Not only because of the lobbying money the congressmen have received from NBC, but because of the television cameras capturing every moment, turning the trial into a piece of entertainment to be consumed. In “Quiz Show,” television creates a world where entertainment and ratings are the ultimate value, which is a world that takes away agency from both those in front of the camera and those watching the screen. People are no longer individuals with histories and moral codes, but cogs in a system, entertainers and consumers. The logic of entertainment allows television to lie to the public and create moral rot with no consequences. Stempel, Van Goren and Goodwin are ultimately pawns in a game much bigger than them, which renders their particular struggles irrelevant and leaves no room for redemption and a happy ending. Shows like “Twenty-One” will continue, in some form or another, and the public will forget about the cheating and continue to be entertained.
After finishing the film, I could not help but recognize “Quiz Show’s” dour ending as a prescient vision of today’s content-driven media culture. If television created a culture where entertainment is the ultimate value, it is clear that short-form video such as TikTok is the logical end point, and is an ideal form of television. If you want to keep people hooked, to keep their attention, then the best way to do so is to completely take away their agency, to feed them a continuing train of dopamine. Quality does not matter, and ethics definitely do not matter. Is there really much of a difference between Gen X watching TV for six hours a day and Gen Z spending six hours a day on our phones, besides the medium that the entertainment is fed through? Accepting cheating on game-shows like “Twenty-One” because it is “just entertainment” was merely the first point on a continuum that led to the empty, mind-numbing world of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. Goodwin, when he says, “… television is going to get us,” is right in a limited sense, but perhaps his vision is a bit too narrow. It is not television itself that got us, but television logic, the logic of entertainment.
Is this condition inescapable? Are we doomed to television logic controlling our lives, eroding our moral fabric, crushing our individuality and feeding it into ever growing and more complex algorithms meant to capture our attention?
On a broad scale, perhaps yes. I am not sure how society as a whole could change when television logic is so ubiquitous. But on an individual level, there are ways to fight it. You don’t have to become an ascetic or a Luddite or even delete your social media accounts. All it takes is a simple mindfulness about what you consume. Do not shut off your brain. Try to think about the movie, or TV show or even short-form video you are watching. Make it more than entertainment; make it art. The difference between art and entertainment lies not only in form, but in the reaction it engenders in the viewer. Entertainment closes minds and reinforces worldviews, art opens minds and causes you to question the world around you, to find meaning that before went unseen. Such an exercise may sometimes seem useless, and it may feel like you are imputing meaning where there is none. But, in the long run, it will make your life more interesting and meaningful, taking back your agency and individuality from the algorithms that want to wipe them away. Here’s a suggestion for where to start: watch “Quiz Show,” or any other movie, with a friend or family, and discuss your thoughts afterward. Maybe you will enjoy yourself, maybe not. It cannot hurt to try.
Photo Caption: “I thought we were going to get television. The truth is … television is going to get us.”
Photo Credit: Tom Wheatley / Unsplash
