I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Jerry Harp’s last post–especially the first paragraph. I love his sense that the show Seinfeld, ultimately, is all form–and the notion that something could make palpable effect almost exclusively of form struck me again reading Roger Rosenblatt’s opening piece in the KR summer issue, ‘Just Not For Us.’ It is a two-voiced collage of journalistic clich??s, with a professor figure calling out half of each, and an buoyantly eager class singing back the expected predicate. (There are 27 exclamation points in their responses!). I’m imagining a class room that looks a lot like the upper deck; instead of ‘Peanuts, he-uh!’ there’s a tweed-clad teacher snaking through the crowd, exercising the class in the art of vacant meaning.
There are different ways to understand the professor’s question for the class in the first line: “Are you ready to exert our influence?” Placed before what follows, you can read the line as a critique of instruction in journalism programs, or a critique of the discipline of journalism–but ultimately it seems a critique of language itself. It seems a critique of language’s instabilities and eventual failures to ever do exactly what we hope it will, for everyone, forever. And in this way, Rosenblatt’s piece strikes me as being about itself–the form is the content–in the way each line intended by the journalist to have maximum effect has a terrible accident on the way to the Bank of Reader’s Emotions and Trust, and there’s a crafty non-payout. Again. And again.
What the form of Rosenblatt’s piece suggests for me is this: it makes me think first of who defines the language and terms we use to receive information about current events, and secondly, whether or not it is good enough. What are my standards? What do I really learn from the same tired language constructions tagged to each current event or campaign speech? How culpable am I for not questioning it?
This is why I like Rosenblatt’s piece so much–the way the form of his piece makes meaning, and the way the form of his piece is ultimately arresting. You get the sense he stopped flippantly–that this could have gone on till the cows come home. Or the fat lady sings. Or until we have stayed the course. Or until the mission is accomplished, etc., etc.
(Coincidentally, it is a somewhat amusing game to try this call-and-response out on someone who hasn’t yet read the piece–you be the professor, and see how close your partner can get to all 27 responses. So far, my results have been devastating.)