FIRING LINE: DEMOCRATIC CULTURE (TV)
Summary
One in this talk/interview series hosted by William F. Buckley, Jr. In this episode, Buckley's guest is writer/professor Leslie Fiedler. Buckley begins by noting that Fiedler's essay "Love and Death in the American Novel" has become recognized as both highly controversial and profoundly influential in the worlds of literary criticism and academia. Buckley and Fiedler open the discussion by debating the question of whether American culture is too much wrapped up in itself. Buckley claims that Mark Twain was never as interested in how he was perceived by the public as William Faulkner, but Fiedler vehemently disagrees, claiming that Twain was in fact obsessed with being appreciated as more than just a humor writer. After Buckley calls critics a twentieth-century phenomenon, Fiedler launches into a lengthy diatribe about what he sees as the biggest problem in modern cultural criticism: the division between high and popular culture. Fiedler expresses his distaste for what he perceives as the elitism inherent in this distinction. He explains that he has problems with the notion of putting teachers in positions of authority from which they tell students that if they are reading something other than a classic, they shouldn't be enjoying it. Fiedler then talks about his conversion from a "snobbish elitist" to a person who refuses to classify certain types of art as "high." He speaks about his recent obsession with soap operas, which he was always quick to dismiss in the past; about his love for the works of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Dickens, calling the latter the "ultimate author" who bridges the high art/low art gap; and about his realization that there are three types of pornography -- sexual pornography that titillates, horror pornography that scares, and sentimental pornography that makes one cry. Buckley asks whether Fiedler would make any sort of distinction between Eudora Welty and Mickey Spillane, and Fiedler says he would not; he is only interested in making a distinction between good books and bad books. Fiedler then praises the literary movements that eschew irony, citing the works of Henry James and T.S. Eliot as writings that do not talk down to their readers. During a question-and-answer session with a collection of Florida-based academicians and journalists, including Gerald Duchovany, John Taylor, and Stephen Brodeur, Fiedler discusses his love for science-fiction writers like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlen with Brodeur. He also continues to argue the uselessness of the high-culture low-culture divide with Duchovany, using James Fenimore Cooper's novel "The Last of the Mohicans" as an example of a great book with mythopoetic power that is ultimately "pulp," according to many critics' definitions.
(Network affiliation varies; this program was also syndicated from 1966 to 1971 and from 1975 to 1977.)
Cataloging of this program was made possible by Mr. and Mrs. Theodore R. Stanley.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS
- DATE: December 1, 1974
- RUNNING TIME: 0:58:47
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:59801
- GENRE: Talk/Interviews
- SUBJECT HEADING: Literary criticism; Novelists; Popular culture
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1971-1999
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Warren Steibel … Producer, Director
- Paul Sweeney … Associate Producer
- William F. Buckley, Jr. … Host
- Leslie Fiedler … Guest
- Isaac Asimov
- Stephen Brodeur
- James Fenimore Cooper
- Charles Dickens
- Gerald Duchovany
- T.S. Eliot
- William Faulkner
- Robert Heinlein
- Henry James
- Mickey Spillane
- Harriet Beecher Stowe
- John Taylor
- Mark Twain
- Eudora Welty