A Trip to New York

IF YOU WERE at The Game on Saturday and then watched it on the tube on Sunday, you were probably struck by how paltry the teevee blips of spectators were compared to the actuality of people jumping up and down so wildly they fell down the Stadium steps. Or how the cameras missed the fans covering the entire field down to the twenty yard line before the last play. Or how they edited the tape so mechanically that watching it you almost forgot that you had discovered God's existence at the end of the real game.

It was the same thing for anyone who went to the taping of the Crimson's appearance with the Yalie Daily on College Bowl and then watched the program the next day. What flashed by on the television screen was a competitive event in which points and camera exposure were gained by making prescribed responses to specified stimuli. For those in the studio the situation also had an us-against-them tenor, but our opponents were not the so-called Daily News team. The real enemies were the show's producers, the television functionaries who might better be called the Emotion Control Meanies.

The Meanies won because they had an unbeatable System. They intimidated the participants and even the audience into playing their way; no blow was too low. Throughout the afternoon of rehearsing, they utilized oppression by numbers, deploying hordes of little men in tight black suits who had no function other than being more people, adding support to whatever the authorities said and subtracting courage from whatever impulses of defiance the dazed team members could muster. The one assigned to shunt us from room to room had just the faintest suggestion of eyes beneath foot-thick glasses with huge black plastic frames. The curl of his lips when he yanked Dave Gordon half-dressed from the dressing room for the "dress rehearsal" was enough to grow boils on your heart. "Every minute is costing us money," he said on the way through the labyrinthine corridors to the studio. "And if the company loses money, I lose money," He was about 27.

By the time the real show began we were so nervous we were glad at the arrival of 250 new minds to cope with. The audience was one of us. But alas, we were cut off from them by a barrier of Meanies wielding "Applaud" signs and using and clapping to make them laugh. The only way the audience could get its licks in was by responding to something, we initiated.

We were left to the cameramen, whose attention we had to vie for, thereby dividing our forces, and the emcee, a middle-aged man named Mr. Earl whose face looked like a birthday cake with all the candles blown out. As he courteously informed whoever might be interested that the instant recall of answers that we varsity scholars had been displaying was far less significant than the more significant reasoning we were capable of, Mr. Earle's eyes got a bit dreamy, as if he were writing verses for a Valentine's Day card. But when inexpicable laughter came from the audience his face flushed the way it had in the rehearsals when he snapped at us for not pushing our buzzers quickly enough or for inquiring what would happen if the buzzers didn't work.

Mr. Earle certainly wasn't one of the chief Meanies. Before the show he had given us all the tips on winning form he had gleaned from his years of emceeing after he replaced Allen Ludden. Mr. Earle hadn't been able to understand why we didn't seem to care very much about winning, and why everyone was laughing at all the wrong times. But it didn't really matter. The System took care of everything. The System made even James K. (for King) "Jimmy" Glassman want to hit the buzzer and get to say "Richard Nixon" on national teevee. And if any unpardonable breach occurred--for instance if someone being interviewed called Mr. Earle "Mr. Ludden" by mistake--they could erase the tape so smoothly hardly anyone would notice. Right after the show, the producer came up to Mr. Earle. "Okay, let's see what we can do with the tape," he said.

There is a polite convention that everyone thinks, but the System is wise enough to make provisions for the failure of thought. In fact, the System positively thwarts thought. As long as everyone complies to a minimal degree, everything works fine. But it's dangerous to surrender your entire mind to the System. If we had, we might have had to go to Hollywood, or transfer to Yale.