While recovering from a devastating arm injury and surgery, I’ve become reacquainted with an old friend this week: television. That glowing, pixilated, square passageway to realms of enchantment and reruns. I’ve noticed, however, that an increasing number of images on my transistor tube-powered altar of entertainment aren’t as square as they could be. A lot of stuff on TV is squashed between two long black boxes. This mutilation of television’s square-shaped heritage is typically referred to as “letter-boxing.” It is a legacy of the divide between TV and its illegitimate sire, feature films.
I find this trend revolting. In the so-called golden age of movie magic, before the advent of television, theater screens were square, not rectangular, or widescreened, as they are today.
Television’s creators made it square to resemble motion picture screens, but movies saw how television improved the medium and grew envious. So to increase the cache of movie-going, as more dignified and expansive than television’s mere square, movie executives and theater owners made movie screens wider. To fit post-TV movies onto a television screen, you have to chop the end off, making the image square. Snobby movie folk insist that to appreciate a film fully, you have to see it letter-boxed, because otherwise, you’re being cheated of what the director wanted you to see. They’re probably right.
But, outside of the feature film context, the letter-box is utterly senseless, because all you’re doing is cutting off the top and bottom parts of the TV image. Certain pompous music videos, documentaries and television shows (like “ER”) letter-box their program, as though to say, “We’re not just TV. When you’re watching us, it’s as good as the movies. We’re really that good.” If I tried to put big, pointless black bars at the top and bottom of my column I’d be harangued by my readers and horse-whipped by my editor.
To help while away the hours of mindless healing, my brother gave me a set of “Babylon 5’s” first season. On the DVD, the episodes are, unlike their originally pristine, broadcast format, letter-boxed. So some chump network guy said, “Let’s destroy one-third of the original image to fool people into thinking they’re watching a movie!” These arrogant network swaggers are doing more than just mutilating TV’s geometrically pristine image and cheating their viewers of one-third of their screen. They’re trying to imitate a parent medium that doesn’t carry any more cache than it did when they first widened the screen for their bad actors and slow stories.
Movies are stupid and long and boring and expensive. Give me television! Where no problem is too big that it can’t be fixed in 22 minutes, and my dear friends return in sequels week after week.
Letter-boxing: it’s not just a poor directorial decision, it’s a crime. Let the revolution begin.