How to Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays

How to Be a TV Host

Some time ago, I enjoyed a fascinating experience in the Svalbard Islands, when the local Academy of Sciences invited me to spend several years there studying the Bonga nation, a society that flourishes in an area between Terra Incognita and the Isles of the Blest.

The Bongas' activities are more or less the same as our own, but they have an unusual insistence on the explicit, the declarative. They ignore the art of the implicit, the taken-for-granted.

For example, if we now begin to talk, obviously we use words; but we feel no need to say so. A Bonga, on the contrary, in speaking to another Bonga, begins by saying: "Pay attention. I am now speaking and I will use some words." We build houses and then (with the exception of the Japanese) we indicate to possible visitors the street, the number, the name of the occupant. The Bongas write "house" on every house, and "door" beside the door. If you ring a Bonga gentleman's bell, he will open the door, saying, "Now I am opening the door," and then introduce himself. If he invites you to dinner, he will show you to a chair with the words: "This is the table, and these are the chairs!" Then, in a triumphant tone, he announces, "And now, the maid! Here is Rosina. She will ask you what you want and will serve you your favorite dish!" The procedure is the same in restaurants.

It is strange to observe the Bongas when they go to the theater. As the house lights go down, an actor appears and says, "Here is the curtain!" Then the curtain parts and other actors enter, to perform, say, Hamlet or Le Malade imaginaire. But each actor is introduced to the audience, first with his real first and last names, then with the name of the character he is to play. When an actor has finished speaking, he announces: "Now, a moment of silence!" Some seconds go by, and then the next actor starts speaking. Needless to say, at the end of the first act, one of the players comes to the footlights to inform everyone that "there will now be an intermission."

What particularly impressed me was the fact that their musical shows consist, as ours do, of spoken skits, songs, duets, and dances. But in our country I was accustomed to the idea that two comedians first do their skit, then one begins to sing a song, then both exit as some pretty girls trip on stage and begin a dance, to give the spectator a bit of relief. Finally, the dance ends, and the actors return. In the Bonga theater, however, first the actors announce that a comic skit will now be seen, then they say they will now sing a duet, indicating that it will be humorous, and finally the last actor on stage announces, "Now the dance!" The thing that most amazed me was not that, during the intermission, some advertising slogans appeared on the curtain—they do this in our theaters—but that, after announcing the intermission, the actor duly added, "And now, commercials!"

For a long time I wondered what drove the Bongas to this obsessive clarification. Perhaps, I said to myself, they are somewhat slow-witted and if a person doesn't say "I'm going now" they don't realize that the person is saying goodbye. And to some extent this must have been the case. But there was another reason. The Bongas are performance-worshipers, and therefore they have to transform everything—even the implicit—into performance.

During my stay among the Bongas I also had the opportunity of reconstructing the history of applause. In ancient times, the Bongas applauded for two reasons: either because they were happy with a good performance, or because they wanted to honor some person of great merit. The duration of the applause indicated who was most appreciated and most loved. Again, in the past, wily impresarios, to convince audiences of a production's worth, stationed in the house some ruffians paid to applaud even when there was no motive. When television shows were first broadcast in Bonga, the producers lured relatives of the organizers into the studio and, thanks to a flashing light (invisible to TV viewers at home), alerted them when they were to applaud. In no time the viewers discovered the trick, but, while in our country such applause would have immediately been discredited, it was not so for the Bongas. The home audience began to want to join in the applause too, and hordes of Bonga citizens turned up of their own free will in the country's TV studios, ready to pay for the privilege of clapping. Some of these enthusiasts enrolled in special applause classes. And since at this point everything was in the open, it was the host himself who said, in a loud voice at the appropriate moments, "And now let's hear a good round of applause." But soon the studio audience began applauding without any urging from the host. He had simply to question someone in the crowd, asking him, for example, what he did for a living, and when he replied, "I'm in charge of the gas chamber at the city dog pound," his words were greeted by a resounding ovation. (This used to happen occasionally in the West, as when Bob Hope appeared and, before he could open his mouth to say hello, frenzied applause was already heard in the house. Or a host would say, "Here we are again, folks, like every Thursday," and the public would not only applaud, but split its sides.)

Applause became so indispensable that even during the commercials, when the salesman would say, "Buy PIP slimming tablets," oceanic applause would be heard. The viewers knew very well that there was no one in the studio with the salesman, but the applause was necessary; otherwise the program would have seemed contrived, and the viewers would switch channels. The Bongas want television to show them real life, as it is lived, without pretense. The applause comes from the audience (which is like us), not from the actor (who is pretending), and it is therefore the only guarantee that television is a window open on the world. The Bongas are currently preparing a program created entirely by actors applauding; it will be entitled TeleTruth. In order to feel that their feet are firmly on the ground, the Bongas now applaud all the time, even when they are not watching TV. They applaud at funerals, not because they are pleased or because they want to please the dear departed, but so as not to feel like shadows among other shadows, to make sure they are alive and real, like the images they see on the tiny screen. One day I was visiting a Bonga house when a relative entered, saying, "Granny was just run over by a truck!" The others all sprang to their feet and clapped wildly.

I cannot say that the Bongas are our inferiors. Indeed, one of them told me that they plan to conquer the world. And this idea is not entirely Platonic, as I realized when I came home. That evening I turned on the TV and I saw a host introducing the girls who assisted him, then announcing that he would do a comic monologue, and concluding with: "And now our ballet!" A distinguished gentleman, debating grave political problems with another distinguished gentleman, at a certain point broke off to say, "And now, a break for the commercials." Some entertainers even introduced the audience. Others, the camera that was filming them. Everyone applauded.

Distressed, I left the house and went to a restaurant famous for its nouvelle cuisine. The waiter arrived, bringing me three leaves of lettuce. And he said, "This is our macédoine of laitue lombarde, dotted with rughetta from Piedmont, finely chopped and dressed with sea salt, marinated in the balsamic vinegar of the house, anointed with first-pressing virgin olive oil from Umbria."

1987