Real Family Values, the GOP and Public TV

Public television and family values.

On some days it reeks of must, timidity and irrelevance. Whatever public television’s failings, however, they’re insufficient at this stage to merit the capital punishment that incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other muscle-flexing conservatives appear to have in mind for the system they mistakenly insist is a hotbed of lefties. Sure, like those Marxists John McLaughlin and Bill Buckley.

No wonder, then, that a recent caller who made a point of identifying himself to me as a conservative Republican was fiercely indignant about Gingrich’s hope to end federal funding of public TV (and, by the way, that other target of right-wing wrath, the National Endowment for the Arts).

“It would be a very misguided, dangerous step,” said the caller, who added that he relishes the cultural sustenance he draws from public TV, the same outfit that many of his fellow conservatives regard as the liberal Antichrist.

In an ideal world, the nation’s troves of artistic and intellectual enrichment would be underwritten by limitless private bequeathals. No government or corporate masters to serve, no irritating pledge pitches for viewers to endure. Just total independence and money, money, money. And speaking of wish lists, it would be swell too, if some of us had awakened this morning and found a zillion dollars on our doorsteps.

But you know how it is. Reality intrudes.

Just what public television would substitute for the massive chunk of federal funds it would lose--Monopoly money, perhaps?--is a question that Gingrich has yet to address. Nor can he in a realistic way, given how charities everywhere are bemoaning the decline in private donations during these lingering economic doldrums.

Public TV traditionally has a battle on its hands from White House and congressional budgetmeisters, whether Republican or Democrat, who prefer giving public funds to ballet rather than to the bold and boisterous. Yet the anti-public TV verbiage is now especially loud and shrill. And as a newer, even more conservative Congress prepares to consider legislation authorizing funds for public TV’s own Big Daddy--the Corporation for Public Broadcasting--the death penalty is at least a possibility.

Oh, Gingrich and Crew would get plenty of fight from his colleagues who still love not only their “Masterpiece Theatre” and “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” but also the votes of upper-crust constituents who regard even a flawed public TV as a personal birthright. If not an instant lethal jolt, though, a slow, gasping, dawdling death may loom, with public TV going semi-comatose as its panicked leaders continue jumping through conservative hoops and shying from controversy in order to convince congressional cost-cutters of the system’s worthiness.

What has this to do with family values?

Only that public TV tonight offers the first of “TV Families,” a rewarding, five-part series of short films from the Independent Television Service (ITVS). It turns out that the possibly endangered Corporation for Public Broadcasting gives about $6 million a year to the non-profit ITVS, which itself was created by Congress in 1989 “to encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and . . . addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities.”

Did someone say “creative risks”? These are words that terrify even public-TV stations themselves.

Yet only recently, ITVS gave public-TV viewers “The Ride,” an arresting series of related documentary films about, for and by teen-agers. Its refreshing brashness represented what public TV should be airing even more frequently.

And much nearer the edge is “TV Families,” small films that depict families mostly in dysfunctional ways rarely seen on television (except, of course, on “Ricki Lake” and “Sally Jessy Raphael”).

Tonight’s “The Secret Life of Houses” is Adrian Velicescu’s challenging film about the overlapping realities and fantasies of a somber 9-year-old (Penny Ryan) left to fend for herself as her mother (Laurie Metcalf) lies critically ill in a hospital. Velicescu creates a drab world of constantly droning TVs where battling guests on daytime talk shows share the extreme dysfunction of little Margaret’s own family. And things get worse for her with the arrival of a predatory aunt (Shirley Knight) who prematurely rifles her sister’s belongings and shops for a casket.

TV is also ever-present in Todd Haynes’ “Dottie Gets Spanked,” which shares an hour in Episode 2 with “Night Ride,” Andrew Garrison’s dreamy slice of boozing, shooting and coming of age in rural Kentucky. In contrast, “Dottie Gets Spanked” is almost surreal, its depiction of the erotic impact that a TV series along the lines of “I Love Lucy” has on a 7-year-old boy, filling the screen with harsh, outrageous images.

A subsequent episode introduces Ayoka Chenira’s bittersweet “MOTV,” in which a loving couple’s lives become a sort of home-video scrapbook before they are victimized by the violent neighborhood they hope to escape. The next grouping is the satirical “A Psychic Mom,” from Shelli Ainsworth and Steve Busa, and Tamara Jenkins’ darkly witty “Family Remains,” whose Gothic tone--a loopy mother and daughter only coexist bizarrely in their creepy house--is enhanced in black and white.

“TV Families” saves its most provocative film for last, concluding with “Terminal, USA,” Jon Moritsugu’s amusing, self-bleeping, self-mocking soap opera whose politically incorrect Asian family communicates mostly through ribaldry and spermspeak . “Married . . . With Children,” eat your heart out.

This series resulted from ITVS asking independent filmmakers to rethink the notion of family. Although their work is uneven, that they were given the opportunity to take chances is gratifying in itself. And a reminder that some members of Congress need to rethink their notion of public TV.

* “TV Families” premieres at 11 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.