Browning Pixelated

Once upon a time, Gram and Poppy had a radio that connected us to heroes and adventures and fun. There was Dick Tracey, The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet, Smiling Ed and The Buster Brown Gang, Fibber McGee and Molly, and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. I would lean over the arm of the couch close to that magical 12 inch speaker and get lost in story until the ache in my chest reminded me to sit back and breathe.

Then one day Daddy told us about the new kind of radio that would receive pictures along with the sound. Even though Daddy was the smartest guy around, I didn't believe him. I told him that a radio with pictures was not possible. It turned out I was wrong. Soon there was a 12 inch cathode ray tube lighting our living-room, and we could tell the good guys from the bad guys by their hats. Now, seventy years later, we fall asleep watching high definition colour autopsies, and we know the bad guys by their tattoos.

We lost something when radio got pictures. Screenless, it was a wellspring of visual imagination, no imposed point of view, no special effects, no convincing animation of the impossible, just what we could invent for ourselves, which we did until TV did it better. Who would listen to radio when the visual medium effortlessly augments the message even if it diminishes our engagement with the story until we no longer care and head to the kitchen for a snack? Seen one car chase, seen em all. Yawn. Zzzzz.

Oh yes, Browning. Ah, but a man's vision should exceed his screen size, or what's a planet for?

I should explain. Robert Browning wrote a poem in the form of a monologue in which artist Andrea del Sarto speaks to his wife Lucrezia as she models for him. It includes the well-known line "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for," which I borrowed and adapted to my purpose here. Browning used poetry to portray the artist painting his lovely Lucrezia, perhaps as the Madonna, a role to which she may not have been well suited. A more explicit dramatization would require less work for us to get the picture. Try reading the poem and see if I'm right.  Making sense of it takes a bit of effort. You want a movie, don't you?

Now, what have we done to ourselves with 60 inch flatscreen TV, Youtube on cellphone, videos on a whim,  Skype, Facetime, Zoom, 360 virtual reality?

Smile, Lucrezia, while I snap one for the chapel. Good. Now I'll take a selfie for posterity.

We have made images so easy that visual imagination is vestigial. We are not what we once were.

We began enraptured by raconteurs
and blossomed briefly as rabid radiophiles
who went to seed as vapid videophiles.
What's next?
Shall we eschew the ersatz world

of pixelated screens
and be reborn as lovers of story,
too bewitched to breathe,
inner eyes wide open?