Kathleen Collins - From Rabbit Ears to the Rabbit Hole: A Life with Television

A Life with Television

Kathleen Collins

University Press of Mississippi / Jackson

The University Press of Mississippi is the scholarly publishing agency of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning: Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi.

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of University Presses.

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Copyright 2021 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2021

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Hardback ISBN 978-1-4968-3229-0

Epub single ISBN 978-19-4968-3231-3

Epub institutional ISBN 978-1-4968-3232-0

PDF single ISBN 978-1-4968-3233-7

PDF institutional ISBN 978-1-4968-3234-4

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

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The space between the television screen and whoever happens to be receiving it. I consider it very holy ground. A lot happens there.

FRED ROGERS

Even knowing you are manipulated, you are still as helpless as the male butterfly drawn to painted cardboard.

ANNIE DILLARD

Thank you to the board and staff (and benevolent peer reviewers) of the University Press of Mississippi who saw fit to include this project in their esteemed collection. Katie Keene and Lisa McMurtray were the initial shepherds; then Shane Gong, Lisa Williams, Jennifer Mixon, and their teammates skillfully and seamlessly carried on with production during a global pandemic.

I am grateful for the people in my life who allowed, encouraged, and accompanied me in my television watching, especially my parents, Judy and Jim; Grandma Deedle; Professor Ellen Willis; and my husband, Gerard. A very special afterschool-special thank-you goes to Amy Tucker for stepping up to be my first reader and for her spectacular memory as well as actual archives of relics from our shared past. And a vigorous nod of appreciation for all the razor-sharp TV critics, pop culture writers and podcasters for unwittingly bolstering my endeavor because they take it seriously, too.

From Rabbit Ears to the Rabbit Hole

Its the dead center of a pleasant summer weekday in New York City at the Paley Center for Mediawhich I peevishly wish were still called the Museum of TV & Radioand all the computers in the viewing library are occupied. Every few minutes I look away from my screen and, in the dim light, scan the faces of my headphoned comrades, who, like me, were probably chided as kids to go outside! on a sunny day. Id like to tiptoe around to spy on everyones screen, to see whats making them smile or stare open-mouthed or elbow-nudge their friend or laugh way too audibly. The only screen at which I can sneak a peek is that of the poker-faced guy next to me who is watching the performance of an eighties hair band. Whats on my screen, you wonder? Ill tell you later.

There are other places to go for plentiful and free air conditioning, but something brought these souls hereto watch TV. They could have picked from thousands of programs from the librarys long-tailed collection, a spot check of the entire history of TV, but they opted for that thing theyre watching now. Like choosing ones last meal, its specific, subjective, and revealing. It is the thing you love above all other things. It betrays a slice of the pie of your whole self. This is just one of the many pieces of evidence supporting my thesis: TV matters.

Like every person whos ever written about their childhood, I, too, have warm fuzzy memories of my local library. And while it fits nicely into the narrative of my eventually becoming a librarian, thats not my truest story. I read a lot as a kidmuch more than I do nowbut its TV that tethers me to the core of my young self. The idea of me in front of a TV screen might lend itself to images less aesthetic and wistful than those of a little girl sprawled on the floor of a public library absorbed in the pages of a picture book twice the size of her head, but the truth is rarely idyllic.

This is the third book I have written about television. The first chronicled the history of TV cooking shows. After it was published, a colleague asked me what I was working on next. The TV career of psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers, I told her. Wow, youre really changing tracks! she replied. I was puzzled, because even if she didnt think in Venn diagrams, she had just heard me say the word TV twice in the span of twenty seconds and should have been able to discern a through line. But I suppose what she heard was food and not food. I get it. Food is sexy. And as of about 1998, everyone seems to love talking about it all the time all over the place. So if its in a couplet with another topic, it will beat the pants off that other topic hands down. Food is the sun around which all other topics revolve. Some people referred to me as a food writer after that first book. I disavowed the categorization out of respect to the many wonderful food writers in existence, and also, I am not a food writer, nor was it a book about food. Even more unreasonably and pointlessly, people began asking me for restaurant and recipe recommendations. If I wrote a history book about the Civil War, would I be a logical resource for musket-cleaning techniques? The second book, to my continued dismay, was often erroneously referred to as a biography. It was not one. Both were fundamentally books about TV. But apparently TV as a headliner is hard for some people to get their heads around.

Just to go on a bit more about foodsee? its compelling!despite the currency of food as a subject in the general population, in the world of academia the idea of my book elicited a pleasant chuckle, meaning that when I told fellow faculty members what I was working on, their reaction was one of poorly veiled condescension toward what they likely saw as a silly topic but one they would back-pedalingly argue was a breath of fresh air rustling down their murky halls. Upon introducing myself in a meeting, the college provost said, Oh, the one who wrote the cookbook! Well, no, but yes, I conveyed without bothering to explain that I was that one, but it was not. With regular people, when you tell them youre writing about TV cooking shows, they immediately launch into their own Food Network consumption habits, and at the time I was writing the book (and still is the case as I write this one), the panoply of programs on offer were all of the competition variety. I admitted to an acquaintance that I didnt really like those shows and didnt watch them much. She was stunned and asked why on earth I would write about them if I didnt like them. I should have deployed my Civil Warmusket rejoinder. But her reaction is also an indicator of the low status of popular culture study, as if it can be observed from a fans perspective only, not an analytical one. Obviously, I strongly believe both perspectives are not only possible but necessary. I dont want to kill the joy and pleasure of TV, but if I were to be a committed advocate for anything in this world, it would be for acknowledging how important TV is to our lives, like it or not, and therefore it should not be treated like a scatological event or a balloon animal.