a poor player

Dunkirk NY -

In 1952, we didn’t want to do (our sitcom) live – we just didn’t know how to tape things. I don’t know what this show’s excuse is.

When I first heard about the campaign to get me to host Saturday Night Live, I didn’t know what Facebook was. And now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time. -Betty White

This one makes my head hurt. Nothing has ever made me feel more like a cultural anachronism than Betty White hosting Saturday Night Live because of a Facebook campaign. It just makes theatre seem so – well, so pointless.

Deconstructing the technology alone is mind-boggling. Betty White essentially began her television sitcom career in 1952, the year I was born. 2″ quadruplex broadcast video tape did not come on the scene for another two years. If you wanted to tape a television show in 1952, you used motion picture film. In 58 years, the industry has moved from live broadcasting to HD digital recording and broadcasting, with full episodes available worldwide on demand via the internet in digital quality. There is nothing – nothing – in terms of entertainment or art (or in fact almost any other industry you’d care to name) that has developed with that kind of speed. I won’t even mention the saturation factor, only to say that television probably has as near to a worldwide saturation point of 100% as one can reasonably imagine.

And what, you may ask, has this remarkable technology presented to us, its viewing audience? 58 years of Betty White and similar personalities. Betty White has made a career (not to mention a good living) out of playing stereotyped, two-dimensional characters and being on game shows. And simply because she is 88.5 years old and willing to go on live TV and say and do naughty things, she is hailed as a legend. So clearly, her career and her type of work is now the standard to become a legend in the entertainment field. Her SNL appearance was the highest in 18 months (8.8 household rating, 21 share), and even Justin Bieber was moved to tweet, “Betty White Rules!”

Then there is the powerful mobilization capability of Facebook. Given the numerous issues we have on this planet that need serious attention, it’s nice to know that when we need to see a living television legend on SNL, all we need do it use the social networking capability of Facebook, and voila! There she is! World hunger, Haiti, the oil slick in the Gulf and other passing issues will have to wait. Now I am sure that if I created a Facebook group called I Bet I Can Get 10,000 People To Join This Group Against The Oil Slick, the problem will be solved soon after that. If Facebook can get the lengendary Betty White on SNL, it can do anything.

I simply cannot wrap my mind around a culture that can create such amazing technology in so short a time for such trivial things. Betty White is a woman whose life and career spans all this development and represents all that is trivial about it. It’s triviality squared. Matching all this triviality with the triviality of Facebook, and you have triviality cubed. Yet the acceptance of all this triviality in today’s culture makes me wonder what the bigger waste of time truly is: Facebook? Television? or theatre?  -twl