Groove Tube 2

A VOICE intones, while the Presidential seal flashes on: "We interrupt this program for a message from the President." "I don't want to be in Vietnam," the President whines. "The Vietnam war..." --he searches for a perfectly clear description--"...is like a pebble in my shoe; it's like blowing a wet fart..." "America has balls..."--again he looks for the perfect phrase--"...and if any of you out there take offense at that you can go take a flying shit."

Ken Shapiro's Groove Tube 2 satirizes by rendering the subliminal visible, by making graphic the fears and the personal and institutional dishonesty which everywhere stultify the day-to-day process of living. If the above joke seems in bad taste, it is because Nixon and the war are, themselves, obscene. What Shapiro lacks in propriety, he attempts to make up in truthfulness. The result is an exciting, though certainly not flawless work.

Groove Tube 2, the sequel to Shapiro's first Channel One production Groove Tube, presents a series of video-taped episodes over closed-circuit television. Video Theater reinforces the familiarity of the medium's context by creating a living room-like atmosphere. Only thirty or so viewers watch each set in the main room and, in the smaller room the audience sits on floor cushions before one large receiver.

The incongruity of these episodes' content with America's usual television fare creates a major source of humor, but television is as much Shapiro's vehicle as his target. The romanticization of violence and the artificiality of sexuality portrayed on television are properly depicted as symptoms of broader and more deeply rooted individual and social pathologies.

THE PRODUCTION'S faults frustrate rather than irritate the viewer because Shapiro's basic failure is not taking fuller advantage of the virtually new medium he so provocatively explores The conventional camera work, reminiscent of television's own too frequent artlessness, occasionally detracts from the experience of watching the show exactly as it detracts from the experience of watching television. A film essay to the music of "Gimme Some Lovin'" is a particular victim of such ordinariness. Fortunately only a few jokes are predictable in the same way.

Occasionally, Shapiro's unremitting emphasis on sexuality falls flat, blunting once or twice an otherwise deft satirical job. The sexual overtones of a naked couple's encounter with a fascist Smokey the Bear defuse what could have been a more powerful swipe at the authoritarianism embodied even in the symbol of our national parks.

This question of balance springs from a tension in Shapiro's work, a tension between ideals of consistently hilarious comedy and of valid political and social commentary. Perhaps the two most insightful portions were the ones which tended least to be bombardments of gag lines, in particular, a mock anti-drug program and another "message from the President" on riots in Detroit. Richard Beltzer, who plays the President as well as other roles, delivers his philippics with a devastating sense of timing.

OTHER SCENES, perhaps funnier, evoke laughs because they--and the audience's sensibilities--ignore significant aspects of the issues at hand. For all Shapiro's revelations on the underlying sexual message of commercial television, he exploits women for laughs just the way advertisers exploit women for sales. It is likely that the audience, laughing at a newsclip of a press conference at which the President fondles Shapiro, in drag, as India's woman prime minister, felt subconsciously self-satisfied at having not been offended by Groove Tube 2's breach of conventional taste. It is not likely they would have laughed or felt so entirely sure of themselves had the Prime Minister returned the President's favor, admitting that women have aggressive fantasy-lives as well.

Given these reservations, Groove Tube 2 is exciting, not just in its own right, but as a tantalizing hint of what the video medium may yet produce. Rick Steiner, the owner of Video Theater, who, like Ken Shapiro, began his involvement with films as a child actor, is part of a small group hoping to produce a show for the fall. Much work is also being done by students who find that video is relatively inexpensive and that video theaters and festivals are springing up around the country. Popular reception of the new medium as presented in theaters has been encouragingly enthusiastic; the original Groove Tube ran three years in New York before opening for a long run at Boston's Video Theater. Millhouse, Emilio de Antonio's video production, enjoyed considerable success, probably reaching a broader age group then is likely to patronize Groove Tube 2.

There is no denying that Groove Tube 2 is often hysterically funny, and that alone should make sitting through an hour and a half's comedy worthwhile. The humor is incisive and genuinely inventive. However, while Groove Tube 2 is a successful satirical venture in itself, it is even more important as a clue to potentially more radical developments to come. Shapiro's work--and this represents a sizable achievement--is as challenging in the long run as it is immediately entertaining.