Something’s Rotten in Relevanceland : Media: Is the TV script our equivalent of Shakespeare? Or just easier on college minds?

“If you back me against a wall,” says a professor at Syracuse University, quoted in the Nov. 13 New York Times, “I would say ostensibly, as a piece of art, ‘Hamlet’ is in some ways superior to ‘Lou Grant.’ ”

While you have him backed against that wall, would you please throw a pie at his face? I’m not mentioning his name because I don’t want to embarrass the committee that awarded him his associate professorship. Out of courtesy, I wouldn’t mention the name of his university, except that hip, now, today teachers like this one can be found all across this great land with its waving fields of television antennas. There has been a natural progression from studying pop culture as a phenomenon, worthy of investigation, to deciding that the subject is more than equal, in fact superior, to its rivals for attention. “Television is our modern art form,” declares the professor. “Rather than fight this, we should recognize it and embrace it.”

We shouldn’t have a problem with recognizing the reality that commercial TV fare gets more attention than any other non-work activity. We might accept the fact that reading, sex, participation in sports, child-rearing and the other active arts have had to yield to the cunning rainbow screen with its many delights. But my question for the professor is: Why do I have to “embrace” it? Why can’t I encourage my children and myself instead to embrace Shakespeare and the rest of the canon (or non-canon) of reading, and also the other sports, pastimes, recreations and challenges previously treasured?

The professor says: “(Television) is where the national dialogue is being carried on.” Why can’t the professor investigate the subject of his fascination without making it the central value of all our lives?

Astute readers with advanced mathematical training will recognize that this is more than one question. There are others, such as the one about whether a university teacher should flatter students by telling them that they are doing the right thing if they direct their academic energies to laugh-tracked series and docudramas, enjoying a clear conscience and proud righteousness because more demanding work is unmodern, out of the loop of our contemporary “national dialogue.” There goes the mob, Bertolt Brecht said, and I must follow them, for I am their leader.

The professor notes that his students find the issues developed (“tackled”) in shows like “thirtysomething”--divorce, cancer, career pressures--more “relevant” than those in “Don Quixote” or “Moby Dick.” Neither Cervantes nor Melville had the guts to “tackle” divorce or the problems of the inner city, snobbishly preoccupied as they were with the questions of human striving, confrontation with the powers of nature and mortality, the risks of separating experience from received opinion. Ahab and Ishmael never confronted cancer on the high seas; Sancho Panza’s marital status doesn’t come into his dealings with an exacting friend.

Yet questions about sexual obsession, fidelity and divorce can be discerned elsewhere in the canon, in “Madame Bovary” or “Anna Karenina”; career pressures and illness are presentcloser to home in the stories told by Mark Twain, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Having learned the lesson presented daily by tabloid journalism, I recognize that it is an obsolete finickiness that led me not to mention the professor’s name; anonymous national dialogue violates our right to know. And anyway, since he has announced his opinion publicly, he would no doubt appreciate another citation to include in his resume. It is Robert J. Thompson, associate professor.

Prof. Thompson sees little difference between classic literature and classic TV. But I wonder if Prof. Thompson doesn’t feel that he is slipping in his effort to embrace the newest form of national dialogue, since “Lou Grant” seems to be more like yesterday’s achievement, not really an up-to-date manifestation of this modern art form, at present superseded by “Beavis and Butt-head” and “Hard Copy.” (If you back me against a wall, I would say that, ostensibly, “Lou Grant,” as a piece of art, is in some ways superior to “Beavis and Butt-head.”)

An opportunity for another piece of art on this subject, a buddy drama perhaps entitled “Hamlet and Polonius,” is suggested by the confrontation between two articulate friends, one older and experienced, the other rash, impetuous, yet not lacking in charm and star appeal for young viewers. Polonius: “Do you know me, my lord?” Hamlet; “Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.”

But of course this story, in which smarm, hypocrisy and delusion play important parts, will need to be moved from Denmark to someplace more cozy and today, like the Syracuse University campus.