A Contribution to an Erotologie of Television

In trying to define the factors pertinent to an erotology of television, it’s convenient to compare it to cinema. The clearest difference between the two is the size of the image. Now, beyond the fact that its reduction on television is an accidental phenomenon that will disappear (at least on big-screen TV), to me, this is not one of the determining factors. Furthermore, the smallness of the screen is a debatable fact and always relative first of all to the spectator’s angle of vision. I’ll agree that a large screen viewed from very far away is not exactly the same as a small screen viewed close up from the same angle, but the fact remains that a photogram of a film is not perceived as a scaling down of the given scene: the mind adjusts by itself. More important than its dimension, perhaps, are the defects to which technology irremediably condemns the television image. The fleeting composition of the image makes the spectator an incurable myopic who hasn’t the option of looking more closely, since he would wind up seeing what’s there even more poorly.

It seems clear right away that this imperfection is ambiguous: indeed, insofar as a certain manner of obstructing the gaze is a well-known law of eroticism, the blurriness of television may serve our purpose, deliberately or accidentally. But it can also be counterproductive, for instance when the precision of a game of hide and seek is central, as in American films whose erotic efficiency is based on nuances of the censorship code. The exact placement of the neckline on a blouse, the significance, intensity, and position of that shadow a few centimeters above it, are often what does the trick entirely. What would be left of this in a blurry image with poor contrast? It follows that suggestiveness on television can only come from the lack of clarity of what is shown, rather than from the precision of what is hidden.

But here again, technological factors seem to me of quite secondary importance. We will reach significant conclusions not by studying differences in the plastic quality of the image, but by examining psychological factors and social impact.

Live broadcast must come first on the list of what is particular to television. Indisputably, our awareness of the simultaneity of an object’s existence with our perception of it constitutes the pleasure principle specific to television and the only thing it offers that cinema cannot. There is no reason such an awareness could not serve erotic sensations. Obviously our feeling is not the same when, let’s say, we’re in front of the image of a nude woman on a film screen as when faced with the reflection of a real woman transmitted to us via a series of mirrors. Let me note in passing that this proves that the real presence of actors is not what constitutes the basis of theater; rather, what counts is their integration in an interplay. Every day television offers us live displays that are not anything like theater. Those American spectators who had the good fortune to not blink at the precise moment when, during a live program, the strap of a dress broke, unexpectedly uncovering a breast in close-up, witnessed a specific moment of erotic television: the time of a naked breast between two changes of camera. Such spectacles are rare and one cannot reasonably count on them. Still, I believe that the mere live presence of human beings on screen carries an emotional factor that needs only a shade to become erotic, if the subject arises.

In the world of cinema there is no lack of beautiful women, but for some time now, “bathing beauties,” or more generally, alluring dancers and the like, have only served as a rhetorical figure on screen, a simple decorative element. I have noticed that there is always something moving and even arousing about seeing a pretty girl in the range of the television camera, although I wonder if this feeling will pass as it becomes more familiar. For example, in the variety shows of André Gillois or Jean Nohain, you can notice a certain brunette, with the figure of a model, who generally stays discreetly in the corner, waiting to appear as needed: she’s the one who hands the prize to the winners of the “find the treasure” game and goes about other menial but elegant tasks. The cameraman never frames her, and she never appears on screen except by chance and always briefly, but this charming figure is like the white chicken who crosses the corner of the screen in some documentary about the tse-tse fly, and which the natives of Bantou-Bantou do not fail to notice, to the detriment of their learning about disease prevention and to the great despair of the missionaries (for more detail see the Revue Internationale de Filmologie).1 Her almost incongruous presence is the very picture of grace selected at random by God (or the Devil) in the thankfully flawed productions of Jean Nohain and André Gillois.2 I am, alas, convinced that such incidents will be become progressively more infrequent. Those filmological missionaries now pay attention to white chickens; in the same way, maybe reading this article will alert the creators of 36 Chandelles or Télé Match to disruptive elements in their programs that they were not aware of. Still, the unexpected will remain prominent in live broadcasting, and the opportunely useless, unforeseen, or absurd presence of some charming person in the frame of the camera will surely be more frequent than a broken strap.

My example, though, fails to be convincing because the object in this case is enjoyable, even clearly desirable. It must be proven that eroticism can arise from presence alone, as it can in a painting’s pictorial quality (and not from the beauty of the model). Dare I take the extreme example of the coronation of the queen of England? You can be sure I would not have the bad taste to say that this might suggest any impure thoughts, but in the end a quite sublime eroticism accompanies the myth of the princess, as evidenced in so many popular tales (and as well exploited in Roman Holiday).3 Television allowed us to live a few hours of intimacy with a queen, and I do mean her intimacy, first because television divided the spectacle into millions of individual images, but most of all because it reconstituted their duration. Despite the poor resolution of the image, one could discern, with troubling indiscretion, the progress of the fatigue that came over the face of Elizabeth. It was an extraordinary instant when, with the enormous crown hiding her feminine hairdo, the face, with its drawn features, suddenly began to resemble that of the dead king. And it did so in such a way that in itself, royalty changed it.4

No doubt, then: television’s “live-ness” [le direct] constitutes a determining factor in its erotic possibilities, this term being taken, as you will have understood from the outset, in its broadest sense. But the “presence” of the object relates only to the form, or the support, if you will, of the feeling. We still need to define the content, and here sociology necessarily intervenes.

Due to its technological and economic basis, television is fundamentally condemned to being watched by families. The size of the image limits optimal viewing to the normal number of family members, that is, from two to five or six spectators. Since the way it is used generates TV’s programming, there ensues a virtual censorship that limits television’s audacity to a level comparable to the kind of cinema directed toward family audiences. We should, however, give French television its due, noting that it does create programs “for adults” while suggesting that children go to bed first; still, since this can’t be enforced, any licentiousness remains of a rather intellectual nature and hardly affects the mise-en-scène.

One should not assume, however, that the family nature of television is limited only to its subjects: ad usum Delphini.5 In the last resort, it is less because of children that virtual censorship was instituted than because of their married parents, that is, because of the psychosociology of the conjugal couple. I can think of no better example than that of the figure of the speakerine.6

If television were cinema, the ideal speakerine would be someone more or less like the music hall presenter: a pretty girl in a bathing suit, agreeable and spirited. Of course you can imagine options that are more intimately persuasive, in the genre of the “White Tooth Smile,” for example, but the speakerine quickly installs herself in the mind of the television viewer as a figure from his private life: a person whose daily visits must be suitable for the whole family, especially for the wife. This amounts to suggesting that the male viewer must have no guilty conscience about wanting to see the speakerine enter his dining room day and night, since this would quickly create awkwardness, even domestic disorder. In other words, the speakerine must inspire the sympathy of the husband but not the antipathy of the wife.

This psychological requirement eliminates certain types of women I call “a-conjugal,” which includes, precisely, the greater part of the feminine ideals of the movie screen. The speakerine must be pretty and gracious but in no way lead the viewer toward imaginary adultery. With this in mind, French television possesses two superlative speakerines, Jacqueline Joubert and Catherine Langeais.

About the first, I readily grant that both her physical qualities and what shines through of her character identify her as a perfect wife. Pretty, energetic, with a confident but not provocative grace, she has the authority and assurance that mark a good hostess, capable at once of working outside the home while also keeping house, raising beautiful children, and still keeping an eye on her femininity. Of course such an ideal figure raises the danger of irritating any wife who might imagine her husband making a comparison. And I have noticed that Jacqueline Joubert’s popularity is not unanimous or complete among women. But in general, rather than envying her, the female viewer identifies with this ideal of conjugal femininity, unconsciously considering herself to be the Jacqueline Joubert of her husband. At the same time, she would not mind the presence of Joubert herself, since this is the type of woman one marries, one whose romantic life could only be that of the most transparent morality. If, despite everything, the husband has impure thoughts, he clearly is getting his money’s worth, in a virtual sense. To make things even more perfect, Jacqueline Joubert is married to Georges de Caunes, as all viewers know (and can almost see).7 She takes great care to keep us more or less directly up to date with her family life. This is not the same as the famous American series I Love Lucy, in which the protagonists seem to give us daily confidences about their conjugal life; instead it is a discreet sketch of such a life, adapted to the French temperament and to the needs of the role of the speakerine. Thanks to allusions to her family, Jacqueline Joubert is a friend of the family, a friend whose husband is named Georges and whose son is named Patrick. Her regular presence at the hour when the family is gathered before the television set is thus congenial, modest, and exemplary.

The case of Catherine Langeais is altogether different, yet she too is perfectly satisfactory. Perhaps less obviously pretty than Jacqueline Joubert, but nonetheless gracious, Catherine charms primarily by the intelligence that her beauty conveys. She has a bit of the “blue stocking” about her, which makes her perfect for presenting “intellectual” shows, such as those about bridge or chess. She is, if you will, a strong-headed woman, and if not the ideal spouse for the average French tele-viewer, for other reasons she is at least someone you could invite over to the house. The feelings that she inspires must include admiration from women and respect from their husbands. Furthermore, she is one of those who puts a man in his place with tact, finesse, and firmness. You can tell that she would never inspire indecent desires, spite, or jealousy. Unlike Jacqueline Joubert, we know nothing about her private life, a this discretion being consistent with her character.

Let me excuse myself in advance for what I am going to say about the third, Mlle. Jacqueline Caurat. I ask that, where appropriate, the reader, and she herself, not forget that I am speaking here only of the fluorescence of the cathode ray tube and of the psychological phenomena that crystallize around it: any correlation between my personal feelings and what I feel I can write as a television critic can only be accidental. Bearing this in mind, let me contrast Mlle. Jacqueline Caurat to her colleagues; she is a troubling figure. She was doubtless chosen for her professional qualities and her charm, but perhaps this charm was not analyzed prudently enough. Mlle. Jacquline Caurat is what one could call a spicy brunette. A fetching beauty spot underlines the vigor of her undeniably sensual smile. It is not that her comportment is the least bit immodest – on the contrary, a slight timidity clearly testifies in her favor – but I am not sure that this timidity might not give the viewer certain ideas that Jacqueline Joubert and Catherine Langeais discourage in different but clear-cut ways.

Perhaps we must deduce from this that cinema is in fact much more social than we normally admit or, better, that its individualism is dialectically linked to its mass character. In the darkened cinema, I have the feeling that the starlet incarnates my dreams because she incarnates the identical dreams of the several hundred people who surround me. But with the speakerine, who talks to me every day and looks me in the eyes, even if I know that her image is repeated on hundreds of thousands of little screens resembling the facets of an enormous fly’s eye, I am conscious that it is I who am looking at her. All she has in front of her eyes is a metal box, a machine that delivers her instantaneously to my gaze. This extraordinary power, which brings me control over her, entails something indecent by its very nature, something that cannot bear that the one who is delivered to us this way should lay herself open to our imagination by provocation, or, in what amounts to the same thing, by passivity.

It is easy to experience the imaginary reciprocity of the television image. Frequently it happens that on the street or at a reception I approach someone I think I know, or I pull back my offer of an inopportune handshake at the last minute, finding myself in the presence of people I have never seen except on television. This mental illusion is particular to television; it doesn’t exist in cinema. Poor at remembering faces, when standing before someone who looks familiar, I often ask myself whether they are from my school days or from my stint in the army. To this list I now need to add “from television.”

Let me conclude. From our example of the speakerine we can see how much the eroticism of television is restricted by the psychology of its live broadcast and the sociology of its home consumption. But when it comes down to it, all restrictions are ambiguous and engender their own compensations. Chaste by necessity, television takes from that very chastity the principles of its erotology.

P.S.: It remains to dream up a kind of television that, adhering to its psychology, is liberated from its sociology. In matters of eroticism, such TV would far surpass the most specialized (i.e., niche) cinema.8 But one can hardly imagine, at least for the present, clandestine television. I will advance just one suggestion in support of this absurd hypothesis. On television you sometimes have to sit through “interludes.” This is the name for snippets of films where nothing happens except some gratuitous action: a fire burning, fish in an aquarium, a windmill in the breeze, the hand of a potter shaping clay, and so on. These little inserts amuse the eye between two programs when the second is late in coming. Along these lines one can imagine a striptease number, one complex enough to extend beyond the time of the longest intermissions, so that the appearance of the expected show would interrupt the striptease at an unforeseen moment, but of course always too soon. Still, one time, by chance, one may see a bit more. Then perhaps one day, even…

• 1Bazin is recalling two rather racist studies: John Maddison, “Le Cinéma et l’information mentale des peuples primitifs (notes sur les travaux du Colonial Film Unit du Gouvernement Britannique),” Revue Internationale de Filmologie, volume 1, nos. 3–4 (October 1948), especially pp. 307–308; and “Cinéma pour Africains” in volume 2, nos. 7–8 (October-December 1951), 277–281.
• 2The reference to grace is an allusion to Saint Augustine’s way of characterizing Adam and Eve’s original sin as a felix culpa, a happy fault, because it resulted in the coming of a divine savior. Here the mistake in the framing brings with it the lucky glimpse of grace, a beautiful woman.
• 3Roman Holiday (1953) was directed by William Wyler and starred Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.
• 4“Tel qu’en lui-même la royauté le changeait.” Bazin here varies Mallarmé’s famous last line of his “Le tombeau d’Edgar Poe”: “tel qu’en lui-même enfi n l’éternité le change.”
• 5This phrase, literally “for the Dauphin’s use,” refers to the cleaned-up classics that Louis XIV’s son, the Dauphin, was allowed to read.
• 6An institution of French TV from the outset, the speakerine, always an attractive woman, announced the evening’s programs at intervals each night.
• 7Georges de Caunes was a highly visible figure on early French TV who married the speakerine Jacqueline Joubert. Their son, Antoine, has become an even more visible TV personality in recent years.
• 8Bazin writes only “le cinéma le plus specialisé,” meaning pornographic films aimed at a small sequestered audience, as opposed to television’s ubiquitous broadcast.