Political debates as televisual form.

• Author: Conrad, Charles P.
• Position: Special Issue: Political Campaign Debates

Televised candidate debates have become a ubiquitous part of contemporary American politics. Uniquely positioned within a dual context of rational, deliberative decision-making and the hoopla of televised games and sporting events (Germond & Witcover, 1979; Graber, 1984; Jamieson & Birdsell, 1986; Kraus & Davis, 1981; Vancil & Pendell, 1984), debates create distinctive problems of perspective for critics. Typically, studies of televised debates have examined them as rational political discourse, searching for their impact on voter's knowledge of candidates and issues and/or the choices voters make in the privacy of the voting booth.(1)

In this essay I would like to take an alternate perspective. First, I will suggest that all symbolic acts, including televised debates, are both formal and informational texts, and can be understood fully only if critics examine both what Kenneth Burke has called the psychology of information and the psychology of form. Second, I will argue that televisual discourse is defined by narrative form, which entails a set of audience expectations which can be fulfilled only through the development of a particular kind of candidate persona, one which makes traditional forms of argument and evidence use problematic. Finally, I will illustrate this perspective in a reading of the series of debates that took place during the 1984 North Carolina Senatorial race between Jesse Helms and James Hunt. My objective is not to explain the outcome of the race or the impact that the debates had on it.(2) Rather, my goal is to use the debates to illustrate the implications of an alternative critical perspective.

PERSPECTIVE

The Psychology of Form

More than a half-century ago, Kenneth Burke (1931/1968) noted that symbolic acts are defined by their "form," the processes through which they arouse, fulfill, and gratify audience appetites.(3) Humans develop expectations (the synonym for "appetites" that Burke used later in his discussion of form) both through their experiences with the natural world--the rhythms of the tides, the crescendo and climax of sexual experiences, and so on--and through their experiences with symbolic acts (1931/1968, pp. 45-56, 143). Initially, Burke's conception of form focused on the former experiences, but as his thought began to embrace humankind's symbolic ontology, the cultural and ideational aspect of form became more important (Heath, 1979, p. 394). But throughout his discussion of form, Burke differentiated the "psychology of information" and the "psychology of form."

Burke complained that scientific psychology had artificially separated form and subject matter, symbol and information (1931/1968, pp. 30-32). The obsession with information that characterized science in the twentieth century had led "the artist also to lay his |sic~ emphasis on the giving of information" (1931/1968, p. 32). The details of artistic works were offered, "not for their bearing upon the business of molding and meeting the reader's expectations, but because these details are interesting in themselves" (1931/1968, p. 144). Surprise and suspense, the core emotions of a psychology of information, had begun to replace "eloquence," the defining emotion of the psychology of form. While the former depends on fulfilling the requirements of logical form, the latter is achieved through the association or juxtaposition of ideas which "if not logical, is nevertheless emotionally natural" (1931/1968, p. 39). Scientific standards of truth, appropriate to a psychology of information, had been misapplied to art:

Truth in art is not the discovery of facts, not an addition to human knowledge in the scientific sense of the word. It is, rather, the exercise of human propriety, the formulation of symbols which rigidify our sense of poise and rhythm. Artistic truth is the externalization of taste. (1931/1968, p. 42)

In short, the hypertrophy of the psychology of information has led, and inevitably does lead, to the atrophy of the psychology of form (1931/1968, pp. 33, 144).

Human beings are, for Burke, more than information-processing animals. Of course, our experiences do allow us to be gratified by the processing of information, but they also allow us to be influenced the completion of form itself. The appeal of form is independent of the specific items of information that a text provides, because "once you grasp the trend of the form, it invites participation regardless of the subject matter" (1950/1969, p. 58). In this sense, form provides the interpretive frame within which information is read.

The major sequence of formal action is convention, "when a form appeals as form. Any form can become conventional, and be sought for itself" (1931/1968, p. 126). Form is not imbedded in the language of all mankind, but resides in the "language of a specific cultural tradition" (1931/1968, p. 85; also see Burke, 1976, p. 63 and 1931/1968, p. 84). It contains the dominant interpretations of reality which characterize a culture, and simultaneously articulates and reproduces those interpretations. It provides a constraint on symbolic action, serving as a tool for an author who "is trying to produce the kinds of effects which the given conventions are best fitted to produce, but it is a hindrance if an audience demands it when the author is trying to produce a different kind of effect" (Burke, 1976, p. 63).

The psychology of form means that audiences will prefer acts which fulfill expectations implicit in the "accepted patterns of language use" and "conventional wisdom" of their society and will interpret ambiguous elements of symbolic acts through a framework provided by those formal conventions (Heath, 1979, p. 392). The genius of Burke's treatment of form was the link that he drew between the textual conventions which characterize an audience's experiences and the interpretive frames implicit in an audience's desires. In the following section I will assume that television is the dominant kind of textual experience of modern American audiences.(4) I shall argue that the dominant textual convention of televisual experience is narrative form. This convention invites audiences to experience and interpret all televisual discourse as narrative and thus to "read" avowedly nonfiction events like political debates as realistic narrative.(5) These formal expectations make characterization--not information or argument--the central element of televised political discourse.

Conventional Form and Televisual Discourse

The openness of televisual texts (Fiske & Hartley, 1978) makes conventional form particularly important to critical analysis. In Burkean terms, televisual texts provide audience members with especially strong invitations to actively intervene and "complete" the form. The flow of televisual texts is segmented; the content of television is conceptually fragmented (Ellis, 1982; Feuer, 1983). Television provides a succession of images which are not directly related to one another (Williams, 1974) and of content segments which shift repeatedly from one topic or plot line to others (Cantor & Pingree, 1983; Flitterman-Lewis, 1983; Nimmo & Combs, 1983; Sperry, 1976). Thus, audience members themselves must make connections among textual segments which are "ambiguous, unconnected or even seemingly random" (Allen, 1987, p. 81) in order to create and maintain a coherent textual world.(6) They are able to do so because of "discursive competencies" that they already possess, competencies based on their prior experience with the conventions of televisual form.(7)

The primary convention in viewers' experience is narrative. Narrative form is omnipresent on television, both in fictional and ostensibly nonfictional discourse (Novak 1982; Thorburn, 1976, 1987):

Television drama is obviously narrative, but so too is news; documentaries impose a narrative structure upon their subject matter; sport and quiz shows are presented in terms of character, conflict, and resolution. (Fiske, 1987, p. 129; also see p. 21)(8)

Viewers learn to read even "nonfiction" performances (e.g., television news) in narrative terms (Fiske, 1987, esp. chp. 7; Kozoloff, 1988; Williams, 1974). Anderson and Meyer note that:

|F~or most individuals, reality programming has little to do with the realms of their actual experience. . . . |for them~ reality programming may show little difference from fantasy programming. . . . |M~ost of our news is presented within this |narrative~ convention. That is, the news story reflects the agents of the story as antagonist and protagonist meet in conflict. . . . One of the purposes of news, then, is to create the conditions under which we can see the |dramatic~ conflict. Whether that conflict is objectively there or symbolically created is a matter of great debate. Whether represented or created, however, the conflict cannot be seen except through the device of the dramatic narrative. (Anderson & Meyer, 1988, pp. 96, 100; also see Carey, 1989, p. 21 and Hall, 1986)

In sum, the information provided viewers of television is inherently fragmented. Consequently, the appeal of televisual texts does not--indeed it cannot--rely on the psychology of information. It depends on the psychology of form, and on the power of conventional form to provide viewers with a frame of reference necessary to integrate the disparate items of information included in the text. In our culture this frame of reference is dominated by realistic narrative. As Burke noted about all symbolic acts, the issue does not involve a choice between information and form. The two are inherently interdependent, an interdependency that foregrounds the psychology of form in the interpretation of televisual texts.

Character and the Narrative Management of Textual Ambiguity

The logic of narrative form allows audience members to develop sensible relationships among the discrete units which comprise the continuous action of formal experience. The conventions of televisual...