1
00:00:04,702 --> 00:00:06,160
DAVID THORBURN:
I'm David Thorburn.

2
00:00:06,160 --> 00:00:10,100
I'm a Professor of Literature
and Comparative Media.

3
00:00:10,100 --> 00:00:11,480
What else?

4
00:00:11,480 --> 00:00:16,516
I've taught the film
experience for, I guess,

5
00:00:16,516 --> 00:00:20,590
38 or 39 years at MIT.

6
00:00:20,590 --> 00:00:24,630
And I've taught a lot of
literature subjects as well.

7
00:00:24,630 --> 00:00:28,030
The story of what made me into a
film scholar or a media scholar

8
00:00:28,030 --> 00:00:32,400
is at least interesting to
me and still surprises me.

9
00:00:32,400 --> 00:00:33,780
I've told it a few times.

10
00:00:33,780 --> 00:00:36,850
But it was actually a somewhat
transforming experience

11
00:00:36,850 --> 00:00:39,030
in my life.

12
00:00:39,030 --> 00:00:41,820
I had been teaching at Yale
for seven or eight years.

13
00:00:41,820 --> 00:00:46,610
And I was offered a chance to do
a visitation at the University

14
00:00:46,610 --> 00:00:49,690
of California in Santa Barbara.

15
00:00:49,690 --> 00:00:52,060
And for the first
time in my life,

16
00:00:52,060 --> 00:00:55,260
I was asked to
teach students who

17
00:00:55,260 --> 00:01:00,140
weren't the product of very
elaborate private school

18
00:01:00,140 --> 00:01:03,110
educations or very powerful
public school educations.

19
00:01:03,110 --> 00:01:05,230
They were smart kids, but
they were less well-read

20
00:01:05,230 --> 00:01:05,850
in some ways.

21
00:01:05,850 --> 00:01:08,782
So I was trying to illustrate--
it was a literature

22
00:01:08,782 --> 00:01:10,240
course, Introduction
to Literature,

23
00:01:10,240 --> 00:01:12,120
or Comedy, or
something like that.

24
00:01:12,120 --> 00:01:14,070
And I was trying to
introduce the students

25
00:01:14,070 --> 00:01:17,520
to the idea of
conventions, what it

26
00:01:17,520 --> 00:01:22,130
means when you begin a
story, "once upon a time,"

27
00:01:22,130 --> 00:01:23,610
and every story begins that way.

28
00:01:23,610 --> 00:01:25,109
Or what it means
when you say, "they

29
00:01:25,109 --> 00:01:27,910
lived happily ever after,"
to take the simplest example

30
00:01:27,910 --> 00:01:29,740
of what a convention is.

31
00:01:29,740 --> 00:01:32,440
I was trying to illustrate
how, in fact, we internalize

32
00:01:32,440 --> 00:01:36,690
these things, and we understand
the narratives of our own time,

33
00:01:36,690 --> 00:01:40,074
in our blood, without
even thinking about it.

34
00:01:40,074 --> 00:01:41,990
And I was trying to
illustrate this principle.

35
00:01:41,990 --> 00:01:44,570
So what I needed to
illustrate the principle

36
00:01:44,570 --> 00:01:46,790
were shared texts.

37
00:01:46,790 --> 00:01:49,780
So I began by asking them--
this was in the 1970s,

38
00:01:49,780 --> 00:01:51,850
in the early 1970s.

39
00:01:51,850 --> 00:01:53,490
And I asked the
students there-- these

40
00:01:53,490 --> 00:01:55,040
are bright California
public school

41
00:01:55,040 --> 00:01:59,680
students-- how many of you have
ever seen a John Wayne movie?

42
00:01:59,680 --> 00:02:02,840
Maybe 10% of the
students-- in 1970.

43
00:02:02,840 --> 00:02:07,590
It's not 2016 now.

44
00:02:07,590 --> 00:02:10,610
Maybe 15% of the students
raise their hand.

45
00:02:10,610 --> 00:02:13,870
Then I said, well, how many of
you have read Huckleberry Finn?

46
00:02:13,870 --> 00:02:15,640
Maybe 30%.

47
00:02:15,640 --> 00:02:18,520
I tried other novels,
classic novels.

48
00:02:18,520 --> 00:02:20,200
I tried Shakespeare plays.

49
00:02:20,200 --> 00:02:24,266
Finally, I said, how many of
you have seen All in the Family?

50
00:02:27,300 --> 00:02:29,530
For those in the audience
too young to know this,

51
00:02:29,530 --> 00:02:33,400
All in the Family was a
television program-- a classic

52
00:02:33,400 --> 00:02:34,950
and transforming
one-- that appeared

53
00:02:34,950 --> 00:02:39,000
in 1971 on American
television and involved

54
00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:41,750
a working-class hero who had
never-- such characters had

55
00:02:41,750 --> 00:02:43,320
never appeared on
television before.

56
00:02:43,320 --> 00:02:45,700
It was a very important program.

57
00:02:45,700 --> 00:02:49,740
And, of course, 100% of
the class had seen it.

58
00:02:49,740 --> 00:02:53,520
And I began to take my examples
from television programs.

59
00:02:53,520 --> 00:02:56,430
I talked about the conventions
of situation comedy

60
00:02:56,430 --> 00:02:58,810
as a way of explaining.

61
00:02:58,810 --> 00:03:00,210
And I began to think about this.

62
00:03:00,210 --> 00:03:06,410
And this wore on me-- it wore
in on me as the term went on.

63
00:03:06,410 --> 00:03:09,780
And what I realized was that
the literature of our own day,

64
00:03:09,780 --> 00:03:12,200
the story forms that
belong to my students

65
00:03:12,200 --> 00:03:14,610
and to the generation
of kids I was teaching,

66
00:03:14,610 --> 00:03:18,390
were visual, not literary-- or
at least, many of them were.

67
00:03:18,390 --> 00:03:21,940
And the ones that were shared
100%, shared by everyone,

68
00:03:21,940 --> 00:03:24,400
was certainly televisual.

69
00:03:24,400 --> 00:03:26,200
So I became interested
in television

70
00:03:26,200 --> 00:03:28,330
as a narrative medium.

71
00:03:28,330 --> 00:03:30,220
And then I came to
realize, as I began

72
00:03:30,220 --> 00:03:32,880
to think more seriously
about the role of television

73
00:03:32,880 --> 00:03:36,330
in American life-- remember, by
1970, American television was

74
00:03:36,330 --> 00:03:38,040
deeply embedded
in American life.

75
00:03:38,040 --> 00:03:41,270
It was the dominant form of
entertainment and narrative

76
00:03:41,270 --> 00:03:42,480
in American life.

77
00:03:42,480 --> 00:03:45,570
And in fact, this
initial understanding,

78
00:03:45,570 --> 00:03:48,420
out of which my whole
interest in media developed,

79
00:03:48,420 --> 00:03:51,170
has shaped-- I realize
now, just in talking

80
00:03:51,170 --> 00:03:54,950
about this-- my way of
teaching the course,

81
00:03:54,950 --> 00:03:56,710
the film experience--
and it's one

82
00:03:56,710 --> 00:03:59,460
of the things I think that makes
the film experience unique.

83
00:03:59,460 --> 00:04:01,550
Because I began thinking
about television.

84
00:04:01,550 --> 00:04:02,710
I was not a film scholar.

85
00:04:02,710 --> 00:04:03,840
I was not a media scholar.

86
00:04:03,840 --> 00:04:05,310
I was a literary scholar.

87
00:04:05,310 --> 00:04:07,460
In fact, ironically,
I was a specialist

88
00:04:07,460 --> 00:04:09,960
in the high modern
period, a period of Joyce

89
00:04:09,960 --> 00:04:12,730
and Virginia Woolf
and Picasso, right?

90
00:04:12,730 --> 00:04:15,260
And I knew about
what we might think

91
00:04:15,260 --> 00:04:19,459
of as-- I was an expert
in art-- in forms of art--

92
00:04:19,459 --> 00:04:20,959
that could be thought
to be elitist,

93
00:04:20,959 --> 00:04:24,070
or at least non-accessible
to the ordinary people.

94
00:04:24,070 --> 00:04:27,260
And here I was confronting texts
that everyone could understand

95
00:04:27,260 --> 00:04:28,630
and everyone shared.

96
00:04:28,630 --> 00:04:30,460
We get to think about
them more deeply

97
00:04:30,460 --> 00:04:34,020
and think more deeply about my
own literary education, which

98
00:04:34,020 --> 00:04:36,020
was narrow in some sense.

99
00:04:36,020 --> 00:04:38,820
As everyone in my
generation was so educated,

100
00:04:38,820 --> 00:04:42,450
we were cut off from the
historical implications

101
00:04:42,450 --> 00:04:43,900
of the texts we studied.

102
00:04:43,900 --> 00:04:46,290
So I began to fill that
in as well, as I began

103
00:04:46,290 --> 00:04:48,010
to learn more about television.

104
00:04:48,010 --> 00:04:50,210
And what I realized,
thinking about television,

105
00:04:50,210 --> 00:04:53,650
was I couldn't understand
television without the movies.

106
00:04:53,650 --> 00:04:56,960
So I then set on a sort of
personal course of education,

107
00:04:56,960 --> 00:05:00,260
and I read very deeply in movie
history and movie scholarship.

108
00:05:00,260 --> 00:05:03,210
And I amplified my own
knowledge of movies

109
00:05:03,210 --> 00:05:07,400
tremendously by constant
viewing of movies,

110
00:05:07,400 --> 00:05:09,710
mostly because I was trying
to understand television,

111
00:05:09,710 --> 00:05:10,280
ironically.

112
00:05:10,280 --> 00:05:12,530
And then I began to
develop a recognition

113
00:05:12,530 --> 00:05:16,170
of what a remarkable cultural
phenomenon the movies were.

114
00:05:16,170 --> 00:05:18,880
I began to generate great
respect for the great movie

115
00:05:18,880 --> 00:05:20,360
scholars.

116
00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:24,110
It was a great era, the
late '60s and early '70s,

117
00:05:24,110 --> 00:05:25,920
for movie scholarship,
because it

118
00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:27,910
had become mature by that time.

119
00:05:27,910 --> 00:05:31,060
And the people writing movie
criticism in the United States,

120
00:05:31,060 --> 00:05:34,700
certainly in the 1970s, were
very interesting critics.

121
00:05:34,700 --> 00:05:36,230
Critics and scholars,
the equivalent

122
00:05:36,230 --> 00:05:38,500
of the literary
scholarship that I

123
00:05:38,500 --> 00:05:41,450
was used to, that I aspired
to write myself, and so forth.

124
00:05:41,450 --> 00:05:43,530
So it was very exciting,
intellectually,

125
00:05:43,530 --> 00:05:45,560
for me to have this experience.

126
00:05:45,560 --> 00:05:49,000
When I got back to Yale,
after my year's visitation,

127
00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:51,520
I introduced a course called
Literature and Popular

128
00:05:51,520 --> 00:05:55,580
Culture in which I explore
these ideas in greater depth

129
00:05:55,580 --> 00:05:58,070
and with greater intensity.

130
00:05:58,070 --> 00:06:00,310
I read some bestsellers.

131
00:06:00,310 --> 00:06:04,250
I ended the course by
looking at The Honeymooners.

132
00:06:04,250 --> 00:06:07,760
And I remember I was
teaching the course in a room

133
00:06:07,760 --> 00:06:09,880
at Yale College called
Linsly-Chittenden

134
00:06:09,880 --> 00:06:12,900
Hall, in which the great
Shakespeare lecture course had

135
00:06:12,900 --> 00:06:14,620
been taught for generations.

136
00:06:14,620 --> 00:06:17,090
And my course, Literature
in Popular Culture

137
00:06:17,090 --> 00:06:18,750
was very popular
with the students.

138
00:06:18,750 --> 00:06:21,070
I had a couple of
hundred students.

139
00:06:21,070 --> 00:06:23,420
And I was lecturing
from the same podium

140
00:06:23,420 --> 00:06:27,810
that legendary figures had
lectured on Shakespeare about.

141
00:06:27,810 --> 00:06:29,790
And one of these
legendary professors,

142
00:06:29,790 --> 00:06:31,170
the man who had
actually hired me

143
00:06:31,170 --> 00:06:35,510
at Yale, Maynard Mack, a
great literary scholar,

144
00:06:35,510 --> 00:06:39,570
poked his head in while I was
teaching The Honeymooners.

145
00:06:39,570 --> 00:06:44,060
And I had actually dragooned
the medial people at Yale

146
00:06:44,060 --> 00:06:46,700
to give me a reel-to-reel
tape recorder so I could

147
00:06:46,700 --> 00:06:48,120
tape the stuff off the air.

148
00:06:48,120 --> 00:06:52,070
Mack saw this and later
called me into his office

149
00:06:52,070 --> 00:06:55,110
and expressed great
disappointment over the fact

150
00:06:55,110 --> 00:06:58,800
that I was polluting
this environment.

151
00:06:58,800 --> 00:07:01,710
So we then had a
serious conversation.

152
00:07:01,710 --> 00:07:04,620
And I said to him, what
did he actually think

153
00:07:04,620 --> 00:07:07,190
Shakespeare's environment was?

154
00:07:07,190 --> 00:07:09,970
And that was when it struck
me how narrow my education had

155
00:07:09,970 --> 00:07:10,470
been.

156
00:07:10,470 --> 00:07:13,750
Because he really had not--
even though he was a great man--

157
00:07:13,750 --> 00:07:15,260
he knew the history.

158
00:07:15,260 --> 00:07:19,190
But he somehow had managed to
disconnect the literary power

159
00:07:19,190 --> 00:07:21,570
of Shakespeare from
the fact that it

160
00:07:21,570 --> 00:07:24,390
was done on this
incredibly popular stage,

161
00:07:24,390 --> 00:07:27,380
and it was so sensational,
and it was so much more

162
00:07:27,380 --> 00:07:30,600
like television or
the movies than it

163
00:07:30,600 --> 00:07:34,680
was like some process of
sitting in a library in wood

164
00:07:34,680 --> 00:07:38,790
paneled splendor reading
words in silence-- that's

165
00:07:38,790 --> 00:07:40,630
not what Shakespeare was.

166
00:07:40,630 --> 00:07:43,910
And that began to lead
me into recognitions

167
00:07:43,910 --> 00:07:46,150
of the importance of
popular culture, the fact

168
00:07:46,150 --> 00:07:49,860
that most high culture was
a form of popular culture.

169
00:07:49,860 --> 00:07:52,220
I became much less
apologetic than most teachers

170
00:07:52,220 --> 00:07:54,240
of popular culture are.

171
00:07:54,240 --> 00:08:03,280
And so when I came to MIT in
the mid-- I came to MIT in 1976.

172
00:08:03,280 --> 00:08:05,280
And I was already in
the throes of this.

173
00:08:05,280 --> 00:08:08,340
But it was, I think, fortunate
for me and fortunate for MIT,

174
00:08:08,340 --> 00:08:11,320
in one sense, because MIT's
literature program was much

175
00:08:11,320 --> 00:08:13,070
more open than Yale's had been.

176
00:08:13,070 --> 00:08:15,570
And they were interested in my
work on television and media.

177
00:08:15,570 --> 00:08:19,390
That was one reason they
wanted me to come here.

178
00:08:19,390 --> 00:08:23,220
And it was much less hidebound
about literary and historical

179
00:08:23,220 --> 00:08:24,010
study here.

180
00:08:24,010 --> 00:08:27,120
So it gave me a chance to--
and I introduced a course

181
00:08:27,120 --> 00:08:27,860
in television.

182
00:08:27,860 --> 00:08:29,630
And that was one of
the very first courses

183
00:08:29,630 --> 00:08:33,780
in an the American Academy that
studied television programs

184
00:08:33,780 --> 00:08:34,970
for their content.

185
00:08:34,970 --> 00:08:35,830
Now, that's common.

186
00:08:35,830 --> 00:08:38,454
It's thought to be-- of course,
everybody takes it for granted.

187
00:08:38,454 --> 00:08:40,280
But at that time, it
was a very rare thing.

188
00:08:40,280 --> 00:08:44,240
And what I also did was take
a course that I inherited from

189
00:08:44,240 --> 00:08:46,780
my wonderful colleague--
still teaching here in his

190
00:08:46,780 --> 00:08:50,410
80's-- Alvin Kibel, a course
called the film experience

191
00:08:50,410 --> 00:08:54,470
which was of a course, that was
not intended for all students

192
00:08:54,470 --> 00:08:57,920
but a small one I transformed
it into a general introduction

193
00:08:57,920 --> 00:09:02,000
to film and I've taught it
almost every year since.