RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

Jelašin Sinovec

ON THE ATTRIBUTION OF ”TELEGENITY”

It is my opinion that he most precise and the most comprehensive definition of the television medium so far has been given by Igor Mandić in his essay ”Mysterium Teievisionis” (Review Mogućnosti, Split, 1972) in the part in which he discusses the ”telegenity” of sports events and concludes that basketball, unlike football, has a telegenic attribute that I would name the ”electrifying”. Basketball is ...”simple and mosaic-like, it is quivering and fiery, tense and capricious: all reactions аге quick and electrical, all relations simpie, but possible in infinite variations... in its nervousness and instability, its quiverness and variability - it is a clash of sparkling associations dashing through the minds of those of us that have not became too lazy yet”, says the author (I. Mandić, op. cit, VIII Television and sports). Television is an electrical medium. I will call it and mention itfurther as MEPS - Medium of the Electronic Picture Slide, projected into the distance. What should, thus, the specific iconoscopograph - let us give this name to this arabesque specific to television be in order to be "telegenic”? What the quoted author lucidly remarked will guide our further definitions and penetration into the essence of the TV medium. The example of football and basketball transmitted through TV, contains the the postulation of the essential relation of conditional and immanent ”telegenity”. While a football match, with its heavy mechanical instrumentaria, can only conditionally be ”telegenic” -

86