Quantum Leap 3 The Postmodern Challenge of Television as History

R obert Hanke

She said: What is History? And he said: History is an angel Being blown bac kwards into th e furore He said:History is a pileofdebris And the angel wants to go backand fix things To repair the things tha i havebeen broken Bur there is a storm blowing from paradise And the storm keepsblowingthe angel Backwards into the future And the storm, this storm is called Progress Laurie Anderson."The Dream Before"

1heorizing thai onecould orne travel withinhisown lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Qianturn Leap Accelerator, andvanished .•. H e awoke to find himself trappedin the past, facing mirror images that wen: not hisown and driven byan unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on thisjourney is AI,an observer from his own time, who appears in the fonn of a hologram that onlySamcanseeand hear. And so Dr. Beckenfinds himsclfleaping from life to life,striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home. voice-over from the opening tide sequence of Quantum Ltap

Laurie Anderson's "The Dream Before," which recalls one of Walter Benjamin's theses on the philosophy ofhistory, shall serve as a point ofde­ parture for this essay, just as the "Q uantum Accelerator" serves as Dr. Sam Beckett's point of departure in the television series Quantum uap.l This 60 I Robert Hanke Quantum Leap I 61

essay examines some possibilities for thinking about televisi~n as history. It intertexts, can elevate the past into the participatory position ofbeing a layer considers what television studies could do to address television as remem­ in the holograph of present history," bered history and how the notion of popular memory works as a supplemen­ T his intellectual development can, in turn , be treated as part ofa longer­ tary to the main arguments advanced by histories oftelevision. term history that would reveal how forms of historiography are articulated The agenda of this essay is three-fold . First, it describes the contours of with media and (posn modernity.Following literary critic Richard Terdiman, the study of media history, Mi chel Foucault's remarks on popular memory, Geo rge Lipsitz argues that the study of history took on a new meaning at and the emergence ofcollective memory studies. Second, it suggests the u~e­ the end of the nineteenth century in response to modernity." Historians fulness of William Palmer's New Hi storicist holographic model offilm his­ took it upon themselves to reconnect the present to the past at the very tory and criticism and applies it to Quantum Leap.' Moreover,it argues that moment that new media-the telegraph and the daily newspaper-began to this model needs to be revised in light of memory studies and the n se of dissolve previous barriers ofspace and time . In the last decades ofthe twen­ cultural history as the "study of the construction of the subject." Finally, it tieth century, we began to live within an accelerated modernity, represented briefly presents some theses on the philosophy oftelevision as history. by a new phase of time/space compression that began in the 1970s, and a shift from the mode of production to the "mode of information."" Rather Before the advent of critical historiography in the 1970s, traditional ap­ than merely recapitulating the modernist crisis of memory, the New His­ proach es to media history were satisfied to look backward, like the angel in toricism can be read as a response to the postmodern crisis of history. As "T he Dream Before,"only to be blown into the future by visions ofprogress. H ayden White wrote in 1966, "We require a history that will educate us to Communication historians then began to take notice that traditional ap­ discontinuity more than ever before; for discontinuity, disruption, and chaos proaches produced a great (white, middle-class) man, top -down, press and is our 10t."12 If it is true that we have entered a "second media age" and a artifact-centered version of U.S. media history.' Since then, a growing body "post- television" culture, then it is important to reconsider how "time, his­ of critical historiography has continued to challenge the traditional view and tory, and memory" are transformed in our shift to a "culture ofreal virtuality" revise the practice ofmedia history.' and to "capitalist postmodernity as a chaotic system."" In his critical history ofthe discipline, Hanno Hardt writes that commu­ As has also been pointed out, history is not only for historians, nor are nicati on studies must "recover its sense of history" and "recognize the rela­ historians the only producers of historical discourse and knowledge. His­ tionship between history and theory." Recovering our sense ofhistory will torical events,"which are inevitably susceptible to interpretation as texts, are entail more than assembling all of the necessary facts and getting the story of expropriated, interpreted, and 'reworked' by mass culture mechani sms (books, U.S. media right. For one thing, it will require us to recognize how standard the print media, television, films) to the point that new levels of the text historical accounts function as cultural myths about the past.James Schwoch, become holographically overlaid atop the original text."14 In this sense, tele­ Mimi White, and Susan Reilly, for example, argue that television's view of vision has the capacity to produce culturally salient knowledge ofthe past as its own "Golden Age" structures academic accounts of the "origins" of net­ a category of experience, even as television's production of history is "sub­ ) work television, valorizing "live"television production and severing television's sumed in an overwhelming 'present text' oftelevision flow."" While television's development from economic, institutional, cultural, and technological fac­ representation of history may overlap with the knowledge and writing of tors.' For another, television has undergone massive technological and insti­ historians (as in the public television series E mpire oftheAir: The M en Who tutional changes since the 1980s, becoming part ofthe transnational media M ade Radio, or on The History Channel), live "media events," from Presi­ industry and a global mediascape. Consequently,"it has become impossible dent Kennedy's funeral to the fall of the Berlin Wall, "are in competition to treat [television] as a unitary phenom enon with a single line ofhistory." with the writing of history in defining the contents of collective memory."" Such acknowledgments, of course, resonate with the New Historicism, In addition, ordinary, everyday television often blurs history and fiction, an intellectual challenge to antiquarianism that began in the 1960s and came conflates historicity and contemporaneity, and is inseparable from popular to more widespread interdisciplinary recognition in the late 1970s and early memory, the active process of remembering and forgetting. Contemporary 1980s. As Palmer aptly puts it, this "type of ,metahistory,' always aware of television culture is therefore a site ofstruggle over the meanings of histori­ itself as text and of the interrelation between its texts, subtexts, contexts, cal experiences, in the shape of popular memory. Television, as a vehicle of 62 I Robert Hanke Quantum L tap I 63

popular memory, thus becomes an important site within which to examine focus on the relationship between media and history, as in his discussion of the form ation ofcontemporary historical consciousness and/or subjectivity. the 1980s "nostalgia film," he contends th at the "history of aesthetic styles What kind of historiographical practice can we develop to relate to and displaces 'real' hisrory'v' address television as history and popular memory? We might begin with T he noti on of popular memory enables us to approach media as history M ichel Foucault, whose attempt to construct a practice of "effective history" in a way that is perhaps less dismissiveof television's images of history. While that would deconstruct "traditional history" has sparked some of the greatest historical materialist, or culturalist, perspectives enable us to grasp how controversies in contemporary historiography" The relevance and impor­ relevieual discourse may function to collapse history onto a perpetual present tance ofFoucault's philosophy ofhistory for media studies has already been or misrepresent or abuse history, the se positions presuppose an epistemo­ explored with particular attention to Foucault's archaeology ofdiscourse and logical realism that usually leads to the conclusion th at popular culrure can his genealogy ofpower.18 Hi s discussion ofthe panopticon, for example, has only fail to represent "real" history." T his is the sort of "historiographical been deployed by comm unication scholars as a metaphor for understanding operation" th at Michel de Certeau has opened up to criticism from a the function of the technological assemblage of computers, databases, and poststructuralis r perspective." In turn, the th eory and politics of th e "de­ telecommunications networks." scent into discourse" have been examined and criticized from the perspective Also suggestive, however, are Foucault 's remarks about popular memory. ofhistorical materialism." In an interview on the subject of"Film and Popular M emory," he discusses T he point is not to enter into that debate here, but only to acknowledge how popular print media as well as cinema and television have eroded the that the debates that emerged in the 1980s between social historians and the historical knowledge that the working classes once had of themselves. In the "new" cultural history signified a crisis in the field ofhistory. The Chinese audio visual media, he says, "people are shown not what they were, but what character for "crisis" represents bot h danger and opportunity. On the one they must remember having been.'?" Furthermore, "memory is a very impor­ hand, there are dangers in abandoning the distinction between the making tant factor in srruggle.?" Since contemporary popular media shape popular of historical truth claims and regarding all such claims as an effect of dis­ memory, and thus knowledge of past struggles, popular film and television course. O n the other hand, the crisis presents an opportu nity to examine are implicated in the dynamics ofhistory making. Foucault teaches us that it how open television is to the memory ofthe struggles of diverse subjects of is not only important to be critical ofhow the total story of history is told history, how television's historical pastiche "involves (relhistoricization of (how the past informs the present), but also how the present reads the past the presentas well as (relpresentations of the past.?" It may be inadequate to (how the media construct "history" as a category of popular memory). analyze the dialectic ofhistory's appearance/disappearance on television be­ Foucaultian history, as a practice ofcountermemory, would complement cause, to quote Richard Dienst, "The issue turns on how a new technology rath er than displace histories ofcommunica tion technologies, institutions, ofrepresentation dissolves or betrays earlier figural devices in the process of discourses, and practices by placing more of an emphasis on the historicity of inventing new ones. Although television seems simply to destroy history­ history (and the form of time), the formation of subjectivity, and power/ through what might be called inaccuracies, indistinctions, and forgettings­ knowledge relations. M oreover, this formulation can also help us to avoid it also constructs its own kind of historical material, precisely by projecting ) the impasse of skeptical postmodern views of the "end of history." It may new lines oflinkage and new speeds of reference.?" also offer an alternative to a neo-Marxist, historical-materialist framework, If the television apparatus constructs its own kind ofhistory, then schol­ such as Fredric Jameson's. In his effort to map postmodern cultural forms, arly work on memory can also help us conceptu alize how th e order of his­ informational media like television news are described as the "very agents tory (forces and events) is transmitted into popular memory. In this regard , and mechanisms for our historical amnesia.t" This is a critique oftelevision Barbie Ze lizer has provided a comprehensive and very useful review that that reproduces much ofthe Fran kfurt School's critique ofthe culture indus­ traces, from a humanistic, neofunctionalist perspective, a scholarly shift from try; at the same time, Jameson's analysis of posrmodemism and television "individual" to "collective" memory." She contends that memory studies, displays a high-modernist aesthetic sensibility in its privileging of avant­ even though sometimes perceived as a threat to the authority oftraditional garde, experimental video over commercial broadcast or cable television­ historians, may be "complementary, identical, oppositional, or antithetical at the source of many people's "pop images" of history. When Jameson does different times. " 30 For Zelizer, "collective memory suggests a deepening of 64 I Robert Ilanke Quantum Leap I 65 th e histori cal consciousness that becomes wedged between th e official mark­ which are premised on th e notion "that in order for the future to exist and ings ofthe past and ourselves in the present.'?' She goes on to identity eigh t co ntinue, the past must be unde rstood and even revised.t" This also aptly premises o f memory studies: 1) memory is a process, 2) memory is unpre­ describes the premise of the science fiction , fantasy series Quan tu m Leap dictable, 3) remembering is dissociated from linear time, 4) memory is an ­ (N BC , M arch 26 , 1989- M ay 5, 1993 )Y cho red in space, 5) memory is partial, 6) memory is useable, along social, political, and cultural trajectories, 7) me mory is particular and uni versal, and A few questions are appropriate at thi s poi nt: What is Quantum Leap's way 8) memoryis material. While her review enco mpasses more than the memory of personifying and representing li...-ed history, and how does this series im ­ work of media, it seems to me th at many ofth ese premises would apply to plicate the viewer as a subject of postmode rn historical co nscio usness?What television, especially as it has taken o n mo re of an archival function with sort of popular memory work does [his series do? cable channels like Nickelodeon and The History C hannel and through con­ Quantum Leap was conceived o f as an anthology series that would allow vergence with the World Wide \Veb. its creator and executive producer, Donald Bellisario, to explore his interest Ze lizer also notes that represe ntations of the past have become incre as­ in recent history.J8 The series' back StOI)'centers on two leading characters­ ingly prominent in fictional television, appearing as a theme in Homefront, Nobel prize-winning qu antum physicist Sam Becken and Admiral AI Thirlysomtthing. and Tbe WonderYtars. O ther programs, such as I'll FlyAway, Calavicci-and an out-of-control time-travel experiment called Project also come to mind. but to go further with these exemplars requires greater Quantum Leap. A s th e opening vo ice-over sugges rs, Becken"leaps" into the attention to televi sions rexrualityPalmer's New Historicist holographic model lives of people from the past. where he is observed and advi sed by C alavicci. o f film history and criticism is a useful starting point, for it en ables us to One side effect o f his time trave ls is tha t he has di fficulty remembering who conceptu alize televisions subrexrs, intertexrs, and contex ts as well as the shift­ he is. H owever, he sha res a technological link to the present through Z iggy, ing relati ons of history to texts and texts to history. By app ropriating his the bi-ge ndered computer with an "ego" [hat runs Project Quanmm Leap. model,we can ask not onlv"how and in what shape media help-r-and hinder­ Through a "hand link" with this computer, Becken and Calavi cci can see the activity of remembe ring" but how television's present holograph of his­ each othe r as "neurological holograms," and C alavicci can retrieve informa ­ tory interprets [he past and fosters particular understandings o f the present." tion or project images. Becken's time travel appears to have no desti nation , T his approach would also attempt a "self-reflexive analysis of these different other th an to create the possibility for his rerum to th e present. H owever, texts as a means of arriving at a metarext or merahisrory,'?' Particular relevi­ thi s eventualiry is linked to helping others avoid dire conseq uences (such as sion shows, like some contempo rary H ollywood films, have exhibited a th eir own death s) by altering th e course or circumstances of their lives. From "me raconsciousness of both past history and past films.")· M oreover. televi­ his firsr leap in the series' pilot episod e (1995 to September 13,1956) on, the sion as a whole, with its increased flow of syndicated reruns, revivals, and time scale of Beckett's (heroic) action is his own lifetime (from 1953 to 1 999 ) . l ~ rem akes, has represen ted irs own history in the "massive combina tion of texts For most ofthe series. he travels between the mid-1950s and the mid - 1980s; th at includes old and new, past and presen t, as equiv alent choices.?" To take in the final episode, "M irror Image," he leaps to August 8, 1953, his birthday, just one exam ple, consider Nirvana's mu sic video for "In Bloom," M TV's walks into a bar. and sees his own reflection in a mirror, realizing that it's the number one video in January 1993. The Seattle -based grunge rock ba nd 's actual d ay of his birth. performance is framed and choreographed as a musical act on TbeEdSullivan W hile this certainly sugges ts the time scale of autobiography, th e rela­ Show, positioning the band within a remembered history ofblack-and-white tions between each episode's text (or plot) and history are multilayered. In television and rock 'n' roll. A holographic mo del would ena ble us to address the first place, o nce Beckett has leaped, th e story remains within the time this video's arti culation of history and memory and its construction of his­ fram e ofthe calendar date displayed at the beginning of each episode. Such torical sense. dates, ofcourse, measure rime as linear; yet, from one episode to the next, Ofcourse , within contemporary television or film, some texts will di splay time is treated as nonch ron ological. Di fferences in set and costume design, this self-reflexive con sciousne ss ofhistory more tha n others. Palmer, for ex­ mu sic, culrural artifacts and forms of expression, and social atti tudes are im­ ample , mentions 1980s "futuristic.. films like Tbe Terminator (1984), Star bued wit h histo ricity and evoke discontinuities between the past and the Trek (1986), Back 10 the Future (1985), and Feggy Sue Got M arritd (1986), present. 66 I Robert Hanke Quantum L eap I 67

In each episode's narrative, the past functions as more than a backdrop for From a posrstructuralist standpoint on gender difference and identity, th e the character's interactions and the dram atic situatio ns. Some episodes, for eight gender-crossing episodes are of particular interest." In her analysis, example, contain what the story guidelines issued to prospective writers call J.P. Williams suggests th at gender-crossing episodes "assert th at gender is a the "kiss with h i s [Qry. " ~ T hese are moments when historical events or per­ malleable, socially constructed category, and that knowledge of one's own sons appear as part of the fictional plot or as minor details. The majority of sexual identity is inherent and stable."« In this reading, the series plays with the ninety-five episodes, however, do not featuresuch representations of the signs ofgender at the same time it reaffirms masculinity and heterosexuality. "real" past. Most of the episodes take present dilemmas and vicissitudes of In "M iss Deep South ," Becken leaps into a beauty pageant contestant and male friendship, romantic relationships, marriage, family, and career and dis­ has to learn how to walk, talk, and dance like a Southern belle. In "A Song place them into a fictional past. At the same time, story guidelines advise for the Soul," Becken leaps in as a member of the Lovertes, a teenage female writers to juxtapose contemporary information or an itudes with earlier times singing group, in order to prevent another member from being economically and places. In this war, the past is used to rehistoricize the present. exploited. In her reading ofepisodes dated from 1955, 1961, and 1980, Wil­ This being said, there are clusters of episodes where social, political, and Iiams argues that the series posits progress for women, but thi s position is cultural history appears as a subtexr. To begin with, the series narrates a contradicted by a masculine discourse that continues to define masculinity social history of race relations and racism in six episodes." "The Color of in relation to physical aggression and violence, and knowledge of being a Truth"(August 8, 1955) takes the Civil Rights movement as its backdrop. man rooted, and thus naturalized, in the male body. "So H elp M e God" (july 29, 1957), "Justice" (May 11, 1955), and "Un ­ Two other episodes, which W illiams does not discuss, represent the re­ chained" (November 2, 1956) address the issue of race and criminal justice, construction of hegemonic (bererolmasculin ity. In "D r. Ruth ," Becken leaps while "Black and W hite on Fire" (August 11, 1965) takes the \ Van s riots into the celebrity sex therapist D r. Ruth Westheimer and tries to help a (using stock footage) as a backdrop to explore the issue of interracial love. In couple having problems in their relationship, as well as a woman who is theseepisodes, Becken leaps into the bodiesof various subjects: a poor South­ being sexually harassed in the workplace. Becken 'sdifficulties with Dr. Ruth's ern black man, a white lawyer defending a black woman, a black medical frank talk about sex is contrasted with the future, where he accepts some student, a white chain gang member, and a member of the Ku Klux Klan advice from the real Dr. Ruth. H ere we see how the episode,originally broad­ (who has to prevent the lynching of a local black activist). H owever, recalling cast in 1993, reads both the recent past and the near future, how "manmade" the "old racism" and popular struggles for Civil Rights, this narrative ofra­ language and masculinist ideology is being challenged, and how hegemonic cial inequality and injustice is contained within a 1950s-1960s time frame. masculinity, caught in between the past and the future, anempts to mode rn­ While this may allow viewers to remember the justification for white liberal izeitselfin response to liberal feminist gender pol itics.In"Running for H onor" opposition to segregation and open discrimination, the elision of this issue (June 11, 1964), Beckett leaps into Cadet Lieutenant Commander Tommy from the stories told within the time frame ofthe 1970s-1980s also implies York, a track star at a naval academy who is defending his ex-roommate's that racism is a thing of the past. homosexuality. While this is not a gender-crossing episode, we can observe Both the antiwar movement and the wome n's movement make brief ap­ how an issue that surfaced in early 1990s news media reports is displaced pearances in the series' rememb rance of social history. In "Animal Frat"(Oc­ Onto a fictionalized and distant past. In itially, Calavicci embodies the mili­ tober 19, 1967), Beckett has to prevent a fellow college student from dying tary anti-gay standpoint that homosexuals are unfit for military service be­ in a bomb blast set up to protest the Vietnam War. In "Liberation" (October cause they can be blackmailed or do not possess leadership qualities. For his 16, 1968), Beckett leaps in as a middle-aged housewife turned "bra-burn­ part, Beckett never questions his roommate's sexual preference, and he tries ing"Iiberarionisr who has to keep her daughter from dying in a protest march to prevent anti-gay violence. In this case, the issue of gays in the U.S. mili­ th at turns violent . In both cases, protests synecdochically represent social tary appears to have a longer history th an it is presented as having in most movements, and they are associated with violence rather than nonviolence. news stories. In retrospect, this episode was the most controversial one aired, Such elliptical political memories can be understood as a "selective forget­ and even though it was threatened with advertiser defections, it expressed a ting and reinscription" of the counrercultural past th at articulates with the more progressive impulse than President Clinton's"Don't ask,don't tell"policy. conservative hegemony ofthe ReaganlBushiGingrich era." By the end of the episode, Calavicci's homophobia gives way to tolerance, 68 I Robert Hanke Quantum L tap I 69

"remasculinization"ofAmerican culture.v In "The Leap Home, Pt. II: Viet ­ nam" (April 7, 1970), Becken leaps to Vietn am and finds himself to be a member of his brother's SEAL un it the day before his brother's death. In "Nowhere to Run"(A ugust 10, 1968), Beckett leaps in as a twenty-six-year­ old Vietnam vet in a veterans' hospital who attempts to prevent the suicide of another veteran. Finally, in "The Beast Within" (Novembe r 6, 1972), Beckett leaps into a Vietn am veteran who lives with a friend suffering from seizures and hallucinations related to a war injury. These episodes indicate a shift in interest from the war experience to the "coming home" stories that centered on the problems faced by Vietnam veterans as they tried to assimi­ late into civilian life. Fourthly; three episodes feature leaps into historical figures, or persons close to such figures. In "1..« Harvey Oswald," Beckett leaps in as Oswald on March 21, 1963; October 5-6, 1957; June 6, 1959; October 21, 1959; Apri110, 1963; October 21,1963; and the day ofPresident Kennedy's assas­ sination.This two-hour season premier was a rebuttal to Oliver Stone's]FK (1991), which challenged the official assassination story and provoked a na­ tional debate amongjournalists, critics, and historians over the"tru th"ofthis

On QIJ/lntumLtap. Oswald didn't act alone. He had help from time traveler Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) in this episode, which revisited an acutely traumatic moment in Ameri­ can history: theJFK assassina­ tion. Courtesyof NBC.

The memoryof Vietnam activates the plot linesof several episodes of Quantum Ltap, asin thisexample with Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) as a commandoand AI Calavicci (Dean Stockwell) as a Navy officer. Courtesyof NBC. and he reveals that York's ex-roommate goes on to found the Gay Liberation M ovement. T hirdly, there is a cluster of episodes that articulate the Vietnam WaI subtext and that echo j efford's thesis about Vietnam narratives and the 70 I Robert Hanke Quantum Leap I 71

historical event and the role ofpopular film in represe nti ng and interpreting historical events." In Bellisario's version, elements of Oswald's biography (his com munist affiliations, his links to the KGB, etc.) are selected and ar­ ranged into a stru ctu re ofinte rpretive possibilities that refutes Stone's ver­ sion. Ziggy insists, and Calavicci agrees, that Becken is leaping into O swald to un cover the pos sible "conspiracy" th at led to Kennedy's death. W hile Calavicci in terrogates O swald in the "\Vairing Roo m," Beckett leaps into successive dates from O swald's biography. Each time he leaps, he retains some residual knowledge of O swald's "personality" and "soul," but these bio­ graphical glimpses confirm the official story. Sam's final leap is from Oswald in the Texas Schoo lbook Depository to a C IA agent near the President's motor vehicle. W hile nothing stops Oswald from com mitti ng the crime of the centu ry, Beckett does prevenrjacqueline Kennedy from being killed along with her husband. Two episodes, both from the final season, center on the lives of living legends, thereby extending their posthumous careers and diffusing popular culture history. In "Goodbye Norma j ean" (April 4, 1960), Becken leaps in asMarilyn M onroe's driver so she can live long enough to make Th~ Misfits. In "Memphis Melody" (July 3,1954), Beckett leaps in as Elvis Presley, two days before he is discovered by Colonel Parker and records with Sun Records. These two historical figures, by virtue of electronic reproduction, are em ­ blematic of the baby boomers' cultural inheritance, and these episodes offer yet another opportunity to consume film and popular music stars assigns of their rimes. Ofcourse, this begs further questions abou t whose stars are be­ ing remembered and how they articulate with cultural meanings and affec­ tive experiences in the past and the present..-7 This brings us to a fifth cluster ofreflexive episode s, which enables us to analyze the series' merarext and its imp lications for viewer's historical con­ sciousness or subjectivity. The most self-reflexive episode in this cluste r is "Furore Boy" (October 6, 1957), in which Beckett leaps in as an actor in a children's television series about time travel called Captain Galaxy. H ere, as in the other episodes in this cluster,"generic tim e" frames elements like char­ Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) even "leaps"back to the daysof disco acter type s and story patterns." For example, some episodes recite "classics" dancing(with Tobi Redlich), complete with white pants and vest. ofH ollywood film: ..It's a W onderful Leap"(M ay 10, 1958); "Play it Again, Courtesy of NBC. Seymore" (April, 14, 1953); "Rebel without a C lue" (September 1,1958). "Double Identity"(November 8, 1965) cites The Godfather. while "Dreams" In "The Boogieman"(October 31, 1964), Becken leaps in as a horror novel­ (February 28, 1979) cites DressedtoKill. Other episodes draw upon television's ist, while "T he Last G unfighter"(November 28,1957) revisits the Western. generi c traditions: "M oments to Live" (M ay 4, 1985) draws on soap opera; At this level, the television series CrimeStory (September 18, 1986- M ay "Ro berto!" (July 27, 1982) d raws o n tabloid-style talk shows; "Blood M oon" 10, 1988) is something of a precursor to Quantum Leap because it treated (M arch 10,1 975) crosses into the detective genre and the urban crime series. generic traits as "histo rical artifacts in th eir own right.".-9 Like Crime Story, 72 I Robert I Janke Quantum Leap I 73

Quantum Leap measures time not only in terms of calendar dates and his­ debris of the past, but alse by chance events, randomness, and haphazard torical periods but in terms ofwhat Richard Dienst calls "multilayered ge­ conflicts. In th is fable, the sense of history is to be continued. neric time." In this rime scale, history is a pastiche of popular film and television genres and thi s metagenericism functions to renegotiate the con­ n.T he purpose of reffecrive history," Foucault also tells us, is not "to dis­ tract between media images and consciousness under contemporary condi­ cover the roots ofour identity, but to commit itselfto its dissipation."S2 H is­ tions of media use and reception. tory and subjectivity are related in the thesis of the dispersed or destab~zed Following th is line of thinking, Quantum Leap 's meragenericism is not subject. In our fable, the hero leaves his body behind to inhabit the bodies of merely an extension of the 1980s television programming strategy of creat­ others, sometimes even marginalized or devalued others. AsJay Bolter ~d ing generic hybrids, but an indication of how popular narratives adapt, and Richard Grusin note, when popular fictional plots tum on th e empathetic even envision, what Jim Collins calls the vast "array" ofmedia texts and tech­ occupation of another point ofview, "the borders of the selfdissolve, as it nologies. Quantum u ap is "byperconscious" not only about generic prece­ occupies the position and experiences the problems faced byother creatures . ~ l dents but also about the conditions of watching cable television in the 19905. If he does not become the O ther, he is not quite the Same either. A leap 10 In Quantum uap, the anthology format of early broadcast television is used rime makes a fissure appear, and the unified masculine subject falters into to channel cable television's own flow of heterogenous, multiremporal time the future. Yet it is not only a question ofmasculinity, but also of technology into hi(s)tory. Moreover, Becken is a figure for the television viewer him! and the boundaries of the humanist subject. The hero and his observer/guide herself, whose contemporary viewing practices include zapping through tele­ appear only as holographic images for each other, indeed, it is the computer vision channels with remote control units. As Richard Dienst summarizes, that makes their copresence possible. Does our fable not suggest that the "A channel, once abandoned, is completely beyond recovery until turned to subject once located within a dualistic ~t ructure ~f" Sel~O t her" .i~ no~ dis­ again. Even television sets capable of making a composite image from two persed beyond the limits of the body IOtO multiple subject poslOons. The channels at once cannot make the leap from the single visible to the many questions raised by the hero's time travels-Where am I? w ho am I? ~d vi rtual images.. .. [Z]apping reintroduces a moment of circumscribed chance, whvam I here?---suggest that under conditions of time/space compreSSion, making a transverse cut through the grid from one programmed zone to an­ the'body is no longer coextensive with a single subject position. Wit~n con­ other until sense appears.t" Quantum uop's meragenericism offers an imagi­ temporary rechnoculrure, new communication technologies are "altering .the nary resolution to the viewing dilemma of our time and promises the pleasure conditions under which the subject is constituted, indeed even the subject of consuming an array of television's popular genres in a single series. who writes history."S4 And ifhistory is writte n from the "sedentary point .of view," perhaps our fable's flow of multilayered, metageneric history, and Its In memory of Walter Benjamin, four theses on the philosophy of television disrespect of the division between representation and the subject, can.lay the as history are: basis for picking up speed and composing new allegories of nomadic sub- jects caught up in movements 0 fde- and reterronialirzanon:'ss I. "Effective history," Foucault tells us, should introduce "discontinuity into our very being." ! By contending that Quantum Leap projects its own kind of III ."W ith acceleration,"writes Virilio,"there is no more here and there, only history,thi s is not meant to suggest that television fiction produces effective the mental confusion ofnear and far, present and future, real and unreal-a history. But what if our critical reading ofthis series was guided by a sense of mix of history, stories, and the hallucinatory utopia of commurncation.tech­ "effective history"? In such a reading, Quantum Leap is a fable in which the nologies.?" Laid over the historical subtexrfs) of Q~antum Leap.IS the hero encounters the discontin uity ofhis own being, and past/ present/fu ture metatextual concatenation ofhistory and media memon es that functions as are folded into one another.The hero must apprehend possibilities so as to a "techno-palim psest."? What this series does-what television as a tec~ ­ beat the odds- the certainties of "official" history as recorded and written. nology of representation does-is decelerate or accelerate the speed ofhis­ In th is sense, history is a place ofconfrontation, where "official history" and torical reference. O ur fable's representation of techno logy-the ~antum the line ofinevitability it traces between past and present may be disrup ted Accelerator, the Imaging Chamber, and the Waiting Room---can e l t h ~r be not only by the angel of history, who cannot help but look backwards to the read backwards, as a representation of television as we have known It, or 74 I Robert H anke Quantum u ap I 75

forwards, in anticipation ofa post-television culture ofvirtual reality envi­ dynamics ofthe perpetual (rejcons truction oftelevision as history in motion, ronmenrs, co m puter-mediated communication, and cyberspace -time. W hat and so on. our fable transmits to our living rooms are lines of rem embering and forge t­ ting. Some lines are blocked or erased , and we can call those lines ofhistori ­ N otes cal elision . Some lines are redrawn, revealing what was/was not possib le or emergent in a particular historical moment. Some lines-between private Laurie Anderson."T he Dream Before," S/TangeAngels (Warner Brothers. 925900(4). and pu blic, past and presenr-are blurred. O ther lines foster multilayered I wish to thank Thomas Bye rs for intellectual support and editorial assistance, and connections between texts, subrexrs, and inrertexrs, evoking a reflexive sense Lynn Himmelman for her love and energy for life. ofhistory. A s popular culture, departs from television's time­ Quantum lLap 1. Waller Benjamin."Theses on the Philosoph)" ofH istory," in H annah Arendt, denying. prese nt- minded flow ofm eanings and values so as to co ns truct an ed.•IlIuminat ioflJ (New York: Schocken Books, 1969). 263-64. impulse to interpret the past, addi ng "tex t- ure " to ou r historical sense of the 2. W illiam Palmer, Tbe Films of tbe Eighties: A Social Hhtory (Carbondale and present and our prese nce within it. This "text-ure" does not create a more Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1993). inclus ive account of the (d is)o rderof contrad ictory events and forces. Rather, 3.l\lark Poster,Cultural Hiuoryand Postmodernity:DisciplinaryRtadingJ and Chal­ th e nond ialectica l, conti nge nt dynamics of relevisual popular memory re­ Itrlges(New York: Columbia Univ. Press. 1997). 10. works the past in order to postpone co ntinuity, and with it, the unified his­ -t.john Stevens and Hazel Dicken Garcia, CommuniranonHistory (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications. 1980); Carolyn Marvin, "Experts, Black Boxes. and Ani­ to rical subject that it brings into being." Quantum lLap addresses its audience facts: New Allegories for the Hisrcry ofElecmc Media" in Brenda Dervin. Lawrence as age nts of selective m emory; it presu mes to show seve nty-eight million Grossberg, Barbara O'Keefe, and Ellen \Vartella, eds.•&thinkingCommunica tion, Vol. aging American baby boom ers wh at th ey m ay remember having been. This 2: Paradigm Exemplars (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage. 1989), 188- 98; Hanno Hardt. does not mean, however. that televisual popular memory fun ctions as a closed Critical Com munication Studies: Communication, History and Theory in America (New system ofexpression and repression (forge t Freud) or that television as his­ York: Routledge, 1992). tory is always already subs umed by a di alectic of appearance/disappe arance 5. To name only a few. see Paul Heyer. CommunirationJ and Histary: Theoriesoj (pace J ameson); it is more like a "rhizome rather than a tree," a "m ap, not a Media, KnQWledge. and Ciodaation(New York: Greenwood Press, 1988);james Carey. rracing.?" Communicationas Culture: Essayson MediaandSotury (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989); CarolynMarvin. Wht1l Old Ttthnologies Wtrt New: ThinkingAboutCommunicationsin theLateNinetetrlth Century (New York: Oxford Univ, Press. 1988); lynn Spigel,Mal e I V. In Michael Ondaatje's The Engluh Patient (1996), the E nglis h patient Roomfor TV: Teleoision and the Fa mily Ideal in Postwar Amtrua (C hicago: Univ. of and cartographe r o f the N orth Afri can de sert, who always carries with him Chicago Press, 1992); William Solomon and Robert McChesney,eds., Rutblm Criti­ H erodotus's The H istories, observes: cism: New Perspectives in u.s. CommunicationHistory {Minneapolis: Univ. ofMinne­ sora Press, 1993);janet Staiger, Inttrprtting Films:Studies in tbeHiJtorital Rtctption of I have seen editions of The Histon es with a sculpted portrait on the cover. Amtritan Cinema(Princeton. N.).: Princeton Univ. Press, 1992). Some statue found in a French museum . But I never imagine H erodotus th is 6. Hardt, Critual Com munication Studits: Communitation, HiJtory and Theory in way. I see him more as one of those spare men of the desert who travel from AmerUa (New York: Routledge, 1992), 8. oasis to oasis, trading legends as if it is the exchange of seeds, consuming 7.j ames Schwoch, Mimi White. and Susan Reilly."Television and its Historical everyt hing without suspicion, piecing together a mirage. "This history of Pastiche," in Schwoch et al.•Media Knowltige: &adin~ in Popular Culture. Ptdagr>gy. mine," H erodotus says, "has from the beginning sough t out the supplemen ­ ond Critual Citizensbip (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press. 1992), 1-19. tary to th e main argument." What you find in him are cul-de-sacswithi n th e 8. Anthony Smith, ed., Television:An Inrernanonal History (New York: Oxford sweep ofhistory--how people betray each other for th e sake of nat ions, how Univ. Press. 1995), 2. people fall in love ... 60 9. Palmer. TheFilms ojtbeEigbties. 3. 10. George Lipsitz, TimePa.JJagtS: CoIltttifJtMmloryandAmtrican Popular Culture Only as we begin to recognize television as an audiovisual vehicle fo r popu­ (M inneapolis: Univ, of Minnesota Press. 1990). lar memory and popular memory as th e illimitable supplementary to the 11. On time-space compression, see D avid Harvey, TheConditionojPostmodrrnity: m ain arguments inscribed in histori es o/television can we understand the An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 76 I Robert Jlanke Quantum Ltap I 77

1990). On the "mode ofinfcrmatjcn,"sec M ark Poster, Foucault, Marsum andH istory: 26. Bryan Palmer. D esant into D iJ(ou1M: Tht Rnjication ofLanguagt and thi Writing M odt ofProduaion Vtrsus IHMt oflnformation (Cambridge, Ma ss.: Polity Press. 1984) ojSocial H istory (Philadelphia:Temple Univ. Press. 1990). and Tht .Modt ofInformation: Paststruauralism and SOfial Context (C hicago: Uni v. of 27. J ames Schwoch, ~ l i m i \Vhite. and Susan Reilly, "Television and Its H istorical Chi cago Press. 19':10). Pastiche," 13. 12. Hayden White. TropicsofDiscourse. Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore-j ohns 28. Richard Dienst. Still L ift in R ealTime: TheoryAfttr Teeuuion (Durham, N.C.: Hopkins Umv, Press. 1978). Duke Univ. Press. 1994). 70. 13. See Mark Poster. TbeSNOnd A/d ia Agt (Cambridge. M ass.: Polity Press. 1995); 29. Barbie Ze lizer, "Reading the Past Against the Grain; The Shape of M emory Peter d'Agostino and David Taller. eds.• Transmission:Towards a Post-Tdeoision Cul­ Studies," Critical Studies in M illi Communication 12 (June 1995), 214- 39. turt(fhousand Oaks,Calif.: Sage. 1995). On the "culrure ofreal virtuality:see M anuel 30. Zelize r, "Reading the Past Against the G rain,M216. Ca srel ls, Tht RiseofthtNt/work SIXitty [Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. 1996); on commu­ 31. Ibid.• 218. nication theory and "capirajisric postmodernity," see Ian Ang, L iving Room mm: Re­ 32. Ibid.• 232. thi T/ king M edia Audimwfor a Poumodern IVo rld (London: Routledge, 1996), 174. 33. Palmer. The Filmsoj tht E ighti/J, 11. 14. Palmer, The Films ofthe E ighties. 7. 34. Ibid., 12. 1S.James Schwoch , Mimi W hite. and Susan Reilly. "Television and Its Historical 35. Mi mi White,"Television:A Narrarive-e-A H istory." CulturalStudies3 (summer Pastiche," 8. 1987). 282-300. 16. Dan iel Dayan and Elihu Karz••ltd ia Events:Tbe Lioe BrOlJd(QJling ofH istory 36. Palmer. Tht Films ojthl EightitJ, 13. (Ca mbridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. 1992). 213. 37. The series has also been distributed on the Sci-Fi cable channel and the life­ 17. For Foucault. "effective history" is a practice ofcountermemory and is directed time Network. against traditional modem historiography,and its will to knowledge. in three ways: it is 38. Bellisario's career as a television producer began ....i th Baa Baa Blad Shtep. H e directed against Mrealil}'''; it is directed against "identity"; and it is directed against the was a supervising producer on Banlenar Gataaica and went on to create Magnum. RI. "rrc rh.t Thc first involves parodic subversions ofrmonur ncntal" history by recovering as well as Tales of the Gold M onli.ry and A irwo!f. These details, as well as others pre­ "lost" or 'forgotten" events ofhistory; the second involves a "systematic disassociation sented io this section, have been drawn from Louis Chunovic, Thl Quantum L eap Book of idenriry" by revealing the "heterogeneous systems that. masked by the self, inhibit (New York Citadel Press. 1993).Julie Barrett. Quantum Leap:Ato Z(New York Bou­ the formation ofany form ofidenriry"; and the third involves the historical analysis of levard Books. 1995). and my own (rc)\iewing of the series. the "will to knowledge" that would reveal -that all knowledge rests upon injustice .. . 39. Two episodes are exceptions to this. In "Leap Between the States." Beckett leaps and tha t the instinct for knowledge is malicious.":\lichel Foucault, "Nie tzsche, Gene­ into his own great-grandfat her during the Civil \Vat in order to help with the Un der­ alogy. History," in Donald Bouchard and Sheny Simon. trans., Language, Counter- ground Railroad. In "The Leap Back, ~ Beckett switches places in 1945 with Calavicci, •\ ft mory, Practice (Ithaca. XY.: Cornell Univ. Press. 1977). 163. who is a POW in the Second \Vorld \ Var. 18. Poster, Foucault.l'V/arxism and History; Heyer,Communicationsand History, chapter 40. Chunovic, The Quantum Leap Book. 18. 10. 41. One episode, titled "T he Americanization of Machiko M cKenzie" (August 4, 19. Sec O scar Ga ndy. Tht PanopticSoreA Political EconomyrfPmonal Infirmation 1953), dealt with racism against Japanese-Americans foUowingthe Second World War. (Boulder, Colo.: \\!estview Press. 1993); Poster, The SecondM edin Agt, chapter 5. 42. Sec T homas Byers."Hi story Re-membered: FormlGump, Posrfemini sr Ma scu­ 20. Michel Foucault, "Film and Popular Memory." in John Johnston. trans.• Fou­ linity, and the Burialofthe Counterculture."Modtrn Fiction StudilS 42 (summer 1996). cault Ln·t: Intm >ltws, 1966-1984 [New York:Semiorexrfe), 1989),92. 419-44. 21. Foucaul t,"F ilm and Popular ~le mo ry: 92 . 43. The eight episodes in chronological order arc: "8 1/2 M onth s ~ (Nove mber 15. 22. FredricJameson. "Posrmode mism and Consumer Society." in Hal Foster. ed., 1955), ~ ~ t iss Deep Soufh" (june 7. 1958). "W hat Price Gloria?"(October 16. 1961). Tbe A nti-Aesthttic: Essays on Postmodem Culturt {Port Townsend , Wash.: Bay Press. "A Song for the Soul"(April 17, 1963),"Liberation"(October 16. 1968)."Raped"(June 1983).125. 20, 1980). "Another Mother"(September 30, 1981). and "Dr. Ruth" (April 25. 1985). 23. Fredric jameson, Postmodemism, or; the Cultural L ogicofLate CapitaliJm (Durham. 44. J.P. W illiams, MBiology and Destiny: The Dynamics of Gender Cro ssing in x.c., Duke Univ. Press. 1992). 20. Quantum uap, ~ WO mt1l's Studies in Communication 19 (I996). 289. 24. O n the collapse of history into a perpetual present.secJameson."Postmcdem ism 45. Susan Jeffords. Tbe Remasculiniza rion ojAmtrica: Gl ndtr and tht Vittnam War and Consumer Society"; on the misrepresentation and abuse of history, see Robert (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. 1989). Dunton. "Television: An Open Letter to a TV Producer," in Dunton. Tbe Ki JS of 46. See Barbie Zehzer, C(X)tring sbeBod}:Tilt Kt1InulyAu QJSination. thtMedia;and Lamourare: R tj1tttiollJ in Cultural H islory (New York: Norton, 1990), 53-59. tbeShaping ojCollttfivt M lrnory (C hicago: Univ. of Chi cago Press. 1992), and "O liver 25. ~ Ii chel de Ce rteau, "The Historiographical O peration," in T. Conley. tran s.• Stone as Ci nematic Historian.~ Film & History:AnlnttrdiJciplinary]ournal ofFi/", and Tht Writing rfH istory (New York: Columbia Univ. Press. 1988). 56-113. Teleoisian Studils 28 (1998). 78 I Robert H anke

47. On Marilyn M onroe and 19505 sexual attitudes, see Richard Dyer, Htaw nly Bodies:FilmStan andSrxitty (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), chapter I,On Elvis Presley's cultural afterlife, Stt Gilbe n B. Rodman, Elvis aft" Elvis.: Tbe PoJthumoUJ (Arm ofa Living Ltgmd (New York: Routledge, 1996). 48. Dienst, StilJLift in &aITim t, 71. 49. Dienst, StillLift in Real Time, 72.Jim Colli ns makes a similar point when dis­ cussing the "genenciry"of1990s film.To quote: "The individual generic features then, are neither detritu s nor reliquaries, but artiftcIJ ofanother cultural moment that now circulate in different arenas, retaining vestiges of past significance reinscribed in the present," See his "Cenericiry in the Nineties: Eclectic Irony and the New Sincerity" in Jim Collins, Hillary Radner, and Eva Collins, eds., Film Throry W t to tht MwitJ (New York: Routledge, 1993),256. 50. Dien st, StilJLift ill RtalTimt, 28-29. 51. Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History; 154. 52. Ibid., 162. 53.Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation:UlIdmtandillg N t"W Mtdia (Cambridge. ~h ss .: ~IIT Press, 1999),247. 54. Poster. CulturalHiuoryand Pottmodtr-nity. 12. 55. On the "sedentary point of view· of historical writing. see Gillet Delecee and Felix GwltUi.AThowand Plaltaw: CapitaliJm and&hiz.ophrmi4 (M innC