channel vision
Robert Kirby
Unwittingly, last week’s Special Assignment produced a true classic: a documentary about the mysterious deaths, some months ago, of jackass penguins and a brace of pelicans at the East London aquarium.
Headlined The Penguin Murders, I thought I’d strayed into some absurdist private-eye series. How do you even start to take something seriously when the commentary earnestly intones lines like, “Even hardened aquarium staff were deeply shocked by the scene they found”? This followed by several inserts where one of the “hardened” aquarium staff members expounded poignantly on the penguin deaths as if he were describing some sort of sectarian massacre of human beings.
Sara Blecher was the author of this solemn little essay, unwittingly producing one of the funniest programmes we’ve seen on the SABC in years right down to the brooding music stings, the blurred “secret camera” shots, the trembling commentary. At times it seemed to be a deliberate parody of the investigative genre.
It could be argued that by killing the penguins the culprits were performing an act of sublime mercy: in effect liberating these wild creatures from their fulfilling lives in small concrete enclosures. But no such lateral speculation was to sabotage Sara’s vexed inquisition. Instead she cranked in an array of witnesses to the avian genocide, an assortment of East London’s ragged-toothed white trash, eventually honing in on some pathetic girl creature, a participant in the killings.She admitted coyly to having strangled one of the pelicans.
After a baptist minister rather insultingly suggested that the penguin assassins were “ordinary people, just like you and me”, at last came the dramatic crescendo: the hardened aquarium staff member making another appearance to deliver some excruciating banalities. It was all screamingly funny and Sara Blecher deserves some sort of turkey award for having made this highly entertaining half hour.
Along the same lines someone should give producer Anneliese Burgess a similar gong for her weekly introductions to the Special Assignment series. With all her righteous glarings and tortured accent she’s an absolute hoot, a fastidious caricature of the type. Please don’t go away, Annaliese. Your touching little sermons make Tuesday evenings worth waiting for.
You might remember my fulminations a month or so ago about the dreadful televised coverage of the French Open tennis tournament, which had far less to do with showing the matches than it had in providing an opportunity for some wanker director to show off. About the same applies to the more recent American Open, where, as usual, the coverage seemed to have been arranged for the benefit of the commentators.
I don’t know what it is about American sports commentators, but they all exhibit the same resolute inability to keep quiet and let the sport speak for itself. At Flushing Meadows a selection of inane commentators gabbled on at each other, exchanging jokes and reminiscences, commenting on the weather, what sporting celebrities they’d spoken to or seen in the past few weeks, what the players would be wearing at the ceremonies. It never stopped. They drivelled on through all the rallies; if they gave themselves a five-second break it was an occasion.
At Flushing Meadows the cameras used angles and lenses that made it extremely difficult to follow the ball. What it must look like on the decidedly inferior NTSC system in the United States is hard to imagine.
The technology at DStv is quite capable of splitting, giving its viewers an alternative sound channel one where just the tennis and the court calls are offered, without commentary. If they can do it with censored and uncensored movie soundtracks, they can do it with the tennis and, for that matter, with a number of sports where commentators are intrusive. I would love to watch a televised rugby match where the excitement of the action isn’t corrupted by some bozo’s crude attempts to match it in words. At least give us a choice and don’t force these people on us.
Staying on the subject of sport. If I wasn’t such a charitable and forgiving soul I’d say that a certain e.tv sports presenter was, on a couple of occasions these past two weeks, slightly on the wrong side of too many glassfuls. Then I realised that all the slurring and unfocused eyes were more likely Eben Jansen playing the part of the laid-back dude he likes to be seen as.
I hope he doesn’t kick my car in for mentioning this.