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By
Mitzel
I like you too! For 40 years I have been a dear friend of public broadcasting. There was once a time when it was the right and proper thing to do, even back when it was called Educational Television, a phrase that now
seems an oxymoron. I still watch today-- "The Civil War," the Presidents, all the animal shows-- "Pity the poor butterfly as it heads into the spider's sticky web"-- and these days so many of my dear PBS programs are brought to
me by mega-corporations, food behemoths, the oil folks, foundations with more money than Croesus and with agendas I cannot fathom-- though few pass the famous Smell Test.
But the Voice Over also informs dear screen-addicted folks, such as I, that funding is also made available by Viewers Like You. We all know what a problem the word "like" can be in the AmeriKan language:
an adverb, an adjective, a verb, a suffix, and in the vulgar form like all over the place. I have sent my small checks to my local PBS station. But that phrase chills: are there other "Viewers Like Me"? I could be sitting in
my comfy TV-watching chair, in lace-embroidered panties and tit-clamps, doing my nails, sipping a martini, sniffing poppers, and jerking off. Viewers like me? "You," too, can be a troublesome word. Is the
You in Viewers Like You singular or plural? This opens up a vast Pandora's Box, and "box" in this instance may be perceived as indelicate-like.
TV is two-way. No, dear, not the 'Net, with your little camera at home which allows you to pull pud-- but is it "real" "time"?-- with your buddy in Amsterdam. No, broadcast TV. Some look. Some are seen. I
am a TV child of the 50s. I remember, as a tot, seeing those "audiences" on Art Linkletter's "House Party." Where did they come from? Once or twice a year, I come across Bob Barker on "The Price is Right," and the audience
is filled with the very same people. Is there a machine which spits out people who want to be in studio audiences? My dear friend Felice Picano, the great gay American writer, one told me he was wangling to get
on "Jeopardy!," a popular TV quiz show, as a contestant. We were having lunch, and I remember my first impulse was to say: "No, Felice, don't!" But I didn't. Why get on TV when all those people are looking? Isn't there a
better way?
Who are The Viewers Like You or Me? Or is this just another media trick? Aristotle had a theory of communication: communicator, communicatees, and the medium, though these were not his words.
The speaker, the listener, and the forum. That sounds better. For over 125 years, we have had electronic mediators, first the phone: "Watson, Come Here, I'm Coming!"-- yes, Virginia, our first phone call was Phone Sex. Then
the movies. Then Mr. Tesla and the radio. Then TV.
Have you ever been on the TV? Screen images like you. Is it you who are the subject? Or is the viewer, the voyeur, the one who gets satisfaction? It's like the "problem" in watching porn videos: who,
if anybody, is being "satisfied"? I worry about my friend Felice Picano getting on "Jeopardy!" Can he be certain that he will be watched by Viewers Like Me? How does a minority culture, such as ours, fit into a mass
medium? Is "Ellen" enough, good as it has been this season? The right fit has yet to be found-- odd, isn't it, in a medium older than I am.
In contemplating the problem posed by a phrase like Viewers Like You, I reach that porous area in gay life where the Subject-Object boundary slides into relativity. I will give an example. Back in the 70s,
the Good Gay Poets hosted a poetry reading featuring the fabulous Taylor Mead. In attendance that night were many other literary swells, including the equally fabulous John Wieners. After the reading, we all moved on to
the mansion occupied by the Fort Hill Faggots to watch "Saturday Night Live," wherein Taylor Mead was featured in a taped segment. Wieners sat next to Mead as the segment came on. John was suddenly agitated. He got up
and paced about the room; he said: "Taylor, you've on TV and here in the very same room!" Trust that savant Wieners to get it right: viewers like you watching subjects like you-- both are you! The circle has closed. It was
the most perfect TV-viewing moment of my life.
As to Picano? I hope he gets on "Jeopardy!" His categories can include: "Hot Gay Dance Spots in New York in the 70s." "Violet Quill Scribes." And "Sex Acts To Remember." If he wins, he can get the
Paul Lynde square on the new updated all-gay "hollywood squares," a pure sop to Viewers Like Me, all of us.
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