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[1970] and . . . well, I think that's a real problem now. And the other problem is that few people are even criticizing this phenomenon.
MacDonald:
How do you account for the fact that
Roots
was so popular? I believe some episodes had the largest audiences in the history of American TV. Do you think that's a function of people's hunger to deal with that issue?
Watkins:
I don't know what goes on in the minds of other people. All I can do is guess. I think it's certainly partly what you said; in fact, it must be very strongly what you just saidespecially on the part of black people. I regret to say I also think it is part of the whole attraction that film has these days for people. I think we're on a high as far as film is concerned, but I think this high is going to break sooner or later, because the rhythms are getting faster, and people are being overstimulated by more and more audiovisual stuff now. I think it's got to break sooner or later. But I also speculate whether the Hollywood people have found a pattern of rhythms that from a film language point of view simulates a kinetic experience. You've got so much happening; the cutting is going so rapidly; you've got so many climaxes; you never have silence; you have dialogue thrown backwards and forwards, cut, response, cut, response, whang, climax, car chase, violence; you're hauled around, cutting, cutting, cutting. I'm beginning to think we're being attracted to television and cinema by a kind of flicker.
MacDonald:
It's kinetic enough to keep you watching, without getting you deeply involved.
Watkins:
I think it's important to keep throwing one's mind over one's shoulder to the cinema. I'm getting to be more worried now about the cinema, because I think many people have an in-built reservation about television. Of course, if you watch
I Love Lucy,
you take that on your own shoulders, but when you're watching something about history, or the newsthat's where it really gets bad. But at the same time, I think the cinema is getting into a terribly dangerous state. It's so obviously picking up these rhythms from TV, though you can really speculate which came first. One of the things we talked about in the Columbia course was a theory I had, that the cutting rhythm of somewhere between five to seven seconds average shot comes from television. Well, I thought I had better check this out, so we studied a series of films:
Birth of a Nation
[1915], some silent newsreels of the pre-First World War period, some American newsreels of the early sound period, and the German newsreels of the Second World War. And I was wrong. It was pretty constant all the way through. As I remember, even the silent newsreels cut every eight seconds. Here's a good stopper of conversation: when you look at Nazi propaganda filmsLeni Riefenstahl, for exampleyou're looking at the basic cutting rhythms that you see today in
Roots
.