How to adapt to the media mass media prestigious cultural productions? This question is key when the intention of disseminating educational or artistic content arises in newspapers, portals, radio or television channels. And the answer, in most cases, points to the impossibility. It is discounted low rating waves scant readings and, above all, there is no confidence in achieving a formula that balances depth, interest and entertainment.
A case of success in this history of dismissed projects and frank failures, were the classes that the writer Ricardo Piglia taught at the Public Television -which summoned him together with the National Library– in 2012 and 2013. The experience was so good that it marked a milestone in cultural productions made for mass media. Today, these classes are invaluable material both as an introduction to the work of Jorge Luis Borges and other authors of the national narrative, as if to illustrate the thought of Piglia himself, one of the most great literary critics of our country.
In this note, those who accompanied the writer in the task, tell how those already mythical sessions were planned and recorded, which anyone can discover or watch again on the YouTube channels of the National Library or Public Television.
The work plan
The first series of four classes, under the title “Scenes from the Argentine novel”was released in 2012 and included Piglia’s readings by authors such as Lucio Mansilla, José Mármol, Eugenio Cambeceres, Roberto Arlt, Rodolfo Walsh, Macedonio Fernández and many more. Each of these classes was structured in three parts. A first moment in which Piglia exposed the subject, a second scene in which she talked with a specialist or writer about the same topic and a third act in which the public present on the floor asked her questions.
Respecting this scheme, the publisher Eterna Cadencia has just published the paper version revised by Piglia and his assistant, Laura Fernández, of those four classes of 2012, with the same title. María Moreno, Juan Sasturaín, Ricardo Bartís and Horacio González were invited to the dialogue in that cycle.
The following year, the same structure was repeated with “Borges, por Piglia”, a series of classes that was much more successful and even won a Martín Fierro as a cultural program.
What was the origin of this unusual project for television? “While I was reading ‘Artificial Respiration’ it crossed my mind that those literary exchanges that were narrated in Piglia’s novel could be transferred to a class in audiovisual format and that Ricardo should be the one to do it,” says Ximena Talento, who in At that time, I was coordinating the communication of the National Library, regarding the first idea that arose about the project. One day, shortly after, Ezequiel Grimson (Director of Culture of the Library), told him that Horacio González, in charge of the institution at that time, was meeting in his office with Piglia. And there they went to tell him about the proposal. “This was the Library, the meetings were always open doors, the ideas circulated and they always sought, collectively, to carry them forward. Ricardo accepted instantly”, explains Talento.
“There was a quick agreement between the National Library and Public Television, that is, between Horacio González and the channel’s director, Martín Bonavetti,” narrates historian Javier Trímboli, who participated in the project. “Ricardo had a wonderful idea: organize a kind of table in which we would talk about his classes and think about where he should go. Those meetings became an oasis of discussion and thought. I think he had recently returned to Argentina after working in the United States and was in the process of reinserting himself into cultural life”.
The good disposition of the writer, his openness, his interest in producing something different within the space of television is something that is highlighted by all those who worked with him at that time.
“I consider it very important to be able to create, within a mass medium such as television, and especially public television, what I would call ‘the form of the class’, which is a form of transmission of knowledge, information and of the experience that has a very long tradition and that, in general, in the mass media has a bad press and is always the object of ridicule or irony”, Piglia replies to an attendee of his classes, when he asks why of the project.
“At some point we had to confront some gaze within the world of television that shouted ‘dissemination’ through the corridors -explains Gabriel Reches, responsible together with Alejandro Montalbán for the production and direction of the two cycles-. But Piglia replied to this that the record in which he was talked about in class was no more complicated than that of conventional sports journalism. There was always in him a way to search for meaning for those who had no prior knowledge or interest in Borges, for example. He had the ability to connect different worlds and layers of complexity.”
Borges, second cycle
The second cycle of classes found Piglia sick (he suffered from ALS until his death in 2017), but the diagnosis was still not certain. The success of this second series was much greater than that of the first. And many believe that the political context favored this good reception. That the most anti-Peronist writer in our history was vindicated by Public Television during a Kirchner government and that a consecrated author like Piglia did it, had to be very attractive to the public.
“I’m glad to meet to talk about Borges on Public Television, where the logical thing would be to talk about Jauretche,” said Piglia himself in the first class.
The production, according to Gabriel Reches, was also more organic. Along with Montalban, they always insisted that the traditional class format could not disappear from the program’s staging. María Pía López (who had also participated in the start-up of the project), Germán Maggiori, Marcos Herrera, Mario Ortíz and other writers were present at the time of the dialogue, in different broadcasts.
“Many people considered that these classes were a cultural asset that had a survival beyond the moment in which the cycles were issued -represents Reches-. Some gestures of a certain audacity on the part of Bonavetti lined up there and the participation of the Library gave legitimacy to the proposal. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do something similar again. Neither we nor others could. It was never done again.”
A demonstration that culture is still a pending account for the big media. And the evidence that quality projects may have a lower rating, but they are never a failure.
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