The
Radio as an Apparatus
of Communication
by Bertolt Brecht; July 1932
In
our society one can invent and perfect discoveries that still
have to conquer their market and justify their existence; in
other words discoveries that have not been called for. Thus
there was a moment when technology was advanced enough to produce
the radio and society was not yet advanced enough to accept
it. The radio was then in its first phase of being a substitute:
a substitute for theatre, opera, concerts, lectures, cafe music,
local newspapers and so forth. This was the patient's period
of halcyon youth. I am not sure if it is finished yet, but if
so then this stripling who needed no certificate of competence
to be born will have to start looking retrospectively for an
object in life. Just as a man will begin asking at a certain
age, when his first innocence has been lost, what he is supposed
to be doing in the world.
...As
for the radio's object, I don't think it can consist simply
in prettifying public life. Nor is radio in my view an adequate
means of bringing back cosiness to the home and making family
life bearable again. But quite apart from the dubiousness of
its functions, radio is one-sided when it should be two-. It
is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out.
So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over
from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest
possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network
of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive
as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well
as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating
him. On this principle the radio should step out of the supply
business and organize its listeners as suppliers. Any attempt
by the radio to give a truly public character to public occasions
is a step in the right direction.
...Whatever
the radio sets out to do it must strive to combat that lack
of consequences which makes such asses of almost all our public
institutions. We have a literature without consequences, which
not only itself sets out to lead nowhere, but does all it can
to neutralize its readers by depicting each object and situation
stripped of the consequences to which they lead. We have educational
establishments without consequences, working frantically to
hand on an education that leads nowhere and has come from nothing.
...The
slightest advance in this direction is bound to succeed far
more spectacularly than any performance of a culinary kind.
As for the technique that needs to be developed for all such
operations, it must follow the prime objective of turning the
audience not only into pupils but into teachers. It is the radio's
formal task to give these educational operations an interesting
turn, i.e. to ensure that these interests interest people. Such
an attempt by the radio to put its instruction into an artistic
form would link up with the efforts of modern artists to give
art an instructive character. As an example or model of the
exercises possible along these lines let me repeat the explanation
of Der Flug der Lindberghs that I gave at the Baden-Baden
music festival of 1929.
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[Brecht
repeats here the second,
third and fifth paragraphs of
'An Example of Pedagogics' ]
...'In
obedience to the principle that the State shall be rich and
man shall be poor, that the State shall be obliged to have
many possibilities and man shall be allowed to have few possibilities,
where music is concerned the State shall furnish whatever
needs special apparatus and special abilities; the individual,
however, shall furnish an exercise. Free-roaming feelings
aroused by music, special thoughts such as may be entertained
when listening to music, physical exhaustion such as easily
arises just from listening to music, are all distractions
from music. To avoid these distractions the individual shares
in the music, thus obeying the principle that doing is better
than feeling, by following the music with his eyes as printed,
and contributing the parts and places reserved for him by
singing them for himself or in conjunction with others (school
class).'
...Der
Flug der Lindberghs is not intended to be of use to the
present-day radio but to alter it. The increasing concentration
of mechanical means and the increasingly specialized training
-tendencies that should be accelerated- call for a kind of
resistance by the listener, and for his mobilization and redrafting
as a producer.
...This
exercise is an aid to discipline, which is the basis of freedom.
The individual will reach spontaneously for a means to pleasure,
but not for an object of instruction that offers him neither
profit nor social advantages. Such exercises only serve the
individual in so far as they serve the State,a nd they only
serve a State that wishes to serve all men equally. Thus Der
Flug der Lindberghs has no aesthetic and no revolutionary
value independently of its application, and only the State
can organize this. Its proper application, however, makes
it so 'revolutionary' that the present-day State has no interest
in sponsoring such exercises.
...This
is an innovation, a suggestion that seems utopian and that
I myself admit to be utopian. When I say that the radio or
the theatre 'could' do so-and-so I am aware that these vast
institutions cannot do all they 'could', and not even all
they want.
...But
it is not at all our job to renovate ideological institutions
on the basis of the existing social order by means of innovations.
Instead our innovations must force them to surrender that
basis. So: For innovations, against renovation!
['Der
Rundfunk als Kommunikationsapparat' in Bjitter des Hessischen
Landestheaters Darmstadt, No. 16, July 1932]
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