The Kovacs Style
In response to Spigel's piece, use this advertisement or another YouTube clip of Kovacs (please post) to discuss how Ernie Kovacs’ artistic experiments with television sound (or silence), aesthetics, and timing dialogue with growing concerns about television’s noisiness and commercialism?
As television's popularity snowballed, its noise problem followed suit. Ads became louder than content, audiences were flocking in droves to boisterous personalities with overwhelming presences. Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason, and Lucille Ball were stars, but certainly not subtle. Ernie Kovacs was the antithesis to the flashy, noisy, overwhelming displays. Kovacs chose to remain silent and center his show around situational slapstick and oddity to create an entertaining product, paving the way for Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean decades later. Kovacs thrived in silence. Without laughter form an audience or a machine, his uncomfortable demeanor was only pushed further into the spotlight. We can see in the above commercial that the cigar company still employs a voiceover to relay the information that consumers would be susceptible to, but Kovacs chooses to twist the typical advertisement showing a cool, calm, and collected salesperson. He fumbles around with the box and drops nearly all of the cigars into a pool of water that happened to be there. He didn't need to tell the audience what was happening or draw attention to it, and his awkward demeanor made a stronger impression as a result. He experienced success doing his job in a way nobody had before him. Kovacs was well ahead of his time, but it wouldn't be possible without the growing distaste with the audio glitz and pizzazz that came before.
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