MR. SOUL!
HOW TELEVISION WAS SUPPOSED TO BE
By Armen Pandola
While television was invented before WWII, it blossomed in the U.S. only after the war. At first, the idea of having a means to reach all of the millions of citizens in the U.S., at the same time, was inspiring. People imagined the new medium educating, informing and bringing culture to the masses. No longer would the great cities be the only place where great art, music, theater and temples of learning could be sustained. Now, the entire country could visit the Metropolitan Museum or take in a concert at Carnegie Hall or a lecture in modern physics. Television could be subsidized by the people, for the people and consist of programs made by the people.
Of course, it didn’t quite work out like that. Instead of being a public trust, television went the way of radio. It was dominated by a few powerful ‘networks’ like CBS and NBC. Those networks were commercial enterprises that created programming for the main purpose of selling stuff to people who tuned in. As a result, TV shows, like radio programs, tried to reach as many people as possible, targeting the lowest common denominator in the audience and the broadest possible appeal.
The entire system of mass communication in America became dominated by a few, very rich, very while people and companies. There were a few non-whites allowed on TV, but they had to play the part they were given - variations on Amos ‘n Andy or Beulah the maid.
Into this blizzard of white programming, SOUL!, the first TV show made for people of color by people of color, premiered in 1969 on the National Educational Television (NET), a television network that was owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It was succeeded by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
SOUL! was created by Ellis Haizlip, a theater producer who was at the forefront of the Black Arts Movement. The hour-long program had a ‘Tonight Show’ format featuring performances by then-unknown artists like Patti Labelle and Ashford and Simpson along with established stars like Stevie Wonder and Harry Belefonte. But SOUL was more than a black Tonight Show - it featured poetry and dance and lengthy interviews with black leaders such as Muhammad Ali, Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, James Baldwin and Kathleen Cleaver.
Now, SOUL! is captured in a documentary, MR. SOUL! produced, written and directed by documentary filmmaker Melissa Haizlip - and with Ms. Haizlip in the driver’s seat, the film concentrates on the career of Ellis Haizlip. There are numerous tributes by black leaders, past and present which can best be summarized by Valerie Simpson’s simple statement, “What he saw in us, we hadn’t seen in ourselves.”
And that is what made Haizlip such a great host - he saw things that few others saw in the black poetry, dance and music of his time. He created an outlet for artists and for thinkers to showcase their wares on a medium that rarely showed wares more complicated than Mr. Clean.
It lasted for five seasons and was eventually cancelled even though it was estimated that 65% of black households tuned in every week. The documentary suggests that the newly installed Nixon administration pressured the new PBS network into dumping the only show on TV dedicated to The Black Experience. There have been few, if any, others since.
Mr. Soul! will premiere on HBO MAX on August 1, 2021.