Radio as Art and Persuasion: Listening Response Essays

Radio as Storytelling and the Art of the Invisible

Like all artistic media, radio possesses subtle and unique elements that distinguish it from other forms such as the written word, television, or film. Nowhere must the radio producer be more aware of radio's uniqueness than in the radio documentary. The most intriguing of the week's listening was Rudolph Arnheim's piece "In Praise of Blindness." Arnheim disputes the idea that radio should help the mind form visual images. Instead, he argues, the entire appeal of radio is that despite a common listening experience, each listener creates an entirely independent experience in their mind's eye. This is a unique feature of radio that writing possesses to a lesser extent and which contemporary forms such as TV and film entirely lack. Television compels all its consumers to share both the same audio and visual experience, thereby demanding less imaginative engagement with the art form.

Another fascinating aspect raised by this week's listening was the extent to which radio producers use sound techniques — mixing, editing, feedback — to modify their message. In Sherre DeLys and Rick Moody's "Jumping Cholla," surprise is used to intentionally disorient the listener in an effort to deliver a message of randomness and to establish meaning as the work shifts from information to sound exploration to a kind of short story. This technique is similar to Molly Menschel's use of different versions of her story — for instance, varying the size and color of the whale — to comment on the nature of witness in storytelling. What is striking is that these methods make the listener feel as though there is no narrator and that they are actually experiencing the whale sighting in all its visual and physical reality.

Lastly, this week's listening highlights that radio has unique characteristics which separate it from other forms of news reporting and interviewing. In NPR's "Mandela: An Audio History," a standard radio interview demonstrates how radio allows the producer to incorporate historical recordings, enabling historical figures to speak for themselves, while cutting between current commentary as it chronicles the anti-apartheid struggle using the actual voices of Nelson Mandela and those who fought alongside and against him. Particularly striking are the tapes from the 1964 trial at which Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment, the secret recording of Mandela from inside prison, and general interviews with figures ranging from prisoners to presidents. Radio is a particularly appropriate form for this story, as the intimacy of the medium allows the listener to feel as though historical figures are speaking directly to them — an effect quite different from a television interview.

In summary, radio possesses unique attributes as a technological medium that compel producers to adapt in distinctive ways in order to get the most out of their work. Great performances — whether artistic or informational — play upon the immediacy of radio and the demand it makes of listeners to forge mental images of the events described. This allows each listener to connect intimately with the subject matter and facilitates storytelling in ways that the written word and television are unable to achieve.