Just Like Television

"This is just like television, only you can see much further."
Being There (1979)

Points for Reflection

David Mitchell's and Sharon Snyder's Narrative Prosthesis, excerpts (DSR 204-18)

1. do Mitchell and Snyder believe that disabled characters are, like racial minorities, too often absent from western narratives?
2. do you concur with Mitchell's and Snyder's assumption that "all narratives operate out of a desire to compensate for a limitation or to reign in excess," in essence dealing with "a deviation from a widely accepted norm"?
3. what four stages do the writers identify in the scheme of narrative structure?
4. what do our writers mean by the claim that "The study of disability must understand the impact of the experience of disability upon subjectivity without simultaneously situating the internal and external body within a strict mirroring relationship to one another"?
5. how does the practice of physiognomy inform disability issues?
6. what array of intangible ideas has disability given metaphorical weight and density to, according to Mitchell and Snyder?

Hal Ashby's Being There (1979)

1. Does Hal Ashby’s brand of humor primarily target our hero and his difference more than those individuals who interact with him?  Are we supposed to be laughing at Chance? 
2. Why name the protagonist “Chance”?
3. How many of the film’s comedic moments rely on characters’ misinterpretations of what Chance has said?
4. At what various people groups does this film take parodic aim?
5. Does the film parody Chance’s preoccupation with gardening and Nature, or validate it? [Eleanor S]
6. What commentary does this film provide on race relations in America?
7. Does the house in which Chance resides at the opening prepare him for the house he occupies after his accident?
8. What various roles has Louise, the maid, apparently played at the house where Chance grew up, and how does this experience shape her later opinion about Chance’s showing up on television?
9. Does the film at any point insert a serious comment or observation, either directly or indirectly, about disability issues?
10. Is this film implicitly agist, or does it find ways to respect and value the experience of those of advanced age?
11. What do we learn about Chance’s mysterious past, and what social mechanisms might explain his lack of any kind of medical, political, or educational paper trail?
12. Does one facial expression dominate Chance’s features throughout the film?
13. Is Chance capable of a full range of emotions?
14. Does Chance’s experience with gardening appear to have shaped his temperament?  Do gardening and his general demeanor share a similar tenor? [Kinsale S]
15. Are we to understand that Chance’s marked cognitive difference is more a function of genetics or of TV watching?
16. What do the patterning of shows and commercials which Chance watches throughout the film reveal about American culture in the late 1970s?
17. What do the patterning of shows and commercials which Chance watches reveal about Chance himself?
18. What types of physical behavior viewed on TV does Chance attempt to imitate, and how does this enrich, or complicate, his interactions with nearby people?
19. Consider the various television commercials and shows Hal Ashby chooses to insert into the flow of this plot.  Can you identify any thematic or stylistic pattern connecting these bits of television culture?
20. What vast array of experiences has Chance never had before the events dramatized by this film, and does this inexperience seem plausible?
21. Does Chance’s preference of sleeping facing a northerly direction indicate something important about his character?  What of his reaction when told that his bed is actually facing west?
22. Which characters in this film refer to Chance as “boy,” and why?
23. Does the non-diegetic background music which plays as Chance prepares to exit the house early in the film capture Chance’s current state of being?  What of the jazzed-funk version of Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” by Eumir Deodato which plays as Chance walks along the street for the first time in his life?  Do these two musical choices adequately reflect, or contrast, Chance’s likely emotional state at this point?
24. Consider those moments in which Chance walks in a straight line, specifically the early shot of him walking along the median of Pennsylvania Avenue, towards the Capitol, and the last shot of him in the film.  Do these two shots serve a similar thematic purpose? 
25. Which characters misinterpret Chance’s straightforward words as intentional humor, and does this distinguish them from those who interpret Chance’s words as deep wisdom?
26. Do Eve’s earliest interactions with Chance offer her better opportunities to identify what’s really going on with him than her later interactions with him at the mansion?
27. Does the film configure Eve as foolish, or can her various misinterpretations of Chance’s words be easily explained away as the results of circumstance?
28. Is Ben a kind man, one with whom the audience should sympathize?
29. Are Ben’s own perspectives on lawyers, business, politics, and the economy, lawyers implicitly approved, or critiqued?
30. Why is the U.S. President so taken by Chance’s observations?
31. When does Dr. Allenby begin to suspect that Chauncey may not possess the mental acumen everyone else assigns to him, and at what point is he quite certain of Chauncey’s mental limitations?  Why might Ashby create such a character as Robert, one who quickly suspects the truth?
32. Does the humor which subtly infiltrates characters’ talk of death seem light-hearted, bitter, somber, or something else?  Does it counterbalance the film’s serious approach to mortality?
33. Does Chance’s appearance on the Gary Burns show cement or destabilize his growing reputation for political acumen?
34. Why might Chance always say he’s “very” hungry or thirsty whenever asked?
35. Does the film appear to give Chance/Chauncey the capacity for sexual desire?
36. Do the songs sung by Mr. Rogers during an early seduction attempt provide a serious or comical counterpoint to what’s happening on the bed?
37. Does Hal Ashby’s film configure cognitive disability as asexual?
38. Is Eve’s early-morning description of a previous evening’s sexual experience intended to be serious or comical?
39. What does Chance’s social success at the political gala suggest about politicians, and does this build upon or refute what we’ve learned of politicians thus far in the film?
40. What do the quotes read at the film’s closing funeral reveal about the character of the deceased?  Are these revelations consistent with what we’ve understood up to this point?
41. Does our final glimpse of Chance flip the entire film on its head, or can we weave this closing shot into the ideas presented throughout the narrative?
42. What kind of commentary on the film as a whole do the closing credits provide, given that they provide outtakes from the making of the film?  Is the soft piano music in the background congruent with the material we’re shown?
    

Being There (1979)
one poster from original film release

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu