THE STORY – Rare footage reveals NYC’s underground media rebels who broke TV norms and turned screens into platforms for free expression, making stars of ordinary people.
THE CAST – N/A
THE TEAM – David Shadrack Smith (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 107 Minutes
“We were just a bunch of kids with a TV channel.”
It’s a little hard to comprehend an age, not all that long ago, when very few people could showcase artwork or video to a mass audience. Before the proliferation of camera access and social media publishing, there weren’t many options, especially if you weren’t rich. And the chances of showcasing experimental ideas were abysmal. That’s what made public access channels such a vital space across the country, a place to truly exemplify free speech, where almost anything could be shown and explored. Great art is not always like revolutionary art, as the content on these public access channels showcases. David Shadrack Smith’s new documentary “Public Access” takes a dive into the uninhibited world of Manhattan Cable Television’s Channel J, a public access channel, and the paradigm shift in media that it became a part of. While the documentary captures the boundary-pushing material that aired, the film itself unfolds in a rather dull, standard format, a frustrating mix of subject and format.
Manhattan Cable TV launched in 1976 and ran through the beginning of the 90s, offering anyone who desired a chance to put content on the airwaves. As long as you had the small fee for the airtime, you would have access to a studio in which to put on your program. As you can imagine, the content ranged from random footage that people captured and wanted to air, to open discussion of LGBT themes, to explicit sexual content. At the time, it felt like the wild west; people pushed out of the mainstream found a home here. Culture changed rapidly in the 1970s, with a greater desire to break out of accepted norms. It was the perfect time for channels like this to come along, opening up the airwaves to whoever might’ve wanted it.
Right away, the platform was used for some of the first television programs dedicated exclusively to queer themes. “The Emerald City” centered on LGBT news, discussions, music videos, and more, opening up a space that had rarely been so widely available. But of course, the platform was also used for more sexually explicit materials. A program called “Midnight Blue” focused on pornography and interviewing porn stars, often showing porn in full. As you can imagine, this content received plenty of pushback, but state law prohibited restricting it unless something was considered “obscene,” a broad and loosely defined word. Seeing this exploration of First Amendment freedoms hits surprisingly hard, especially as we’re seeing renewed crackdowns on speech in America today. While not everything that aired on Manhattan Cable TV pushed the bounds of acceptable speech, it certainly pushed limits and broke ground.
With the advent of the internet, social media, and cameras in everyone’s pockets, this all seems a bit elementary. Back then, though, it was a true revolution. “Public Access” shows us someone like Bob Gruen, who mostly just captured his real life and brought it to the channel. He would film underground concerts, giving viewers a glimpse of music they might not have heard. Or he filmed his wife giving birth without censoring or pulling the camera back from all the details. It was shocking stuff to be airing for free on television, but it opened up the world in so many ways.
Unfortunately, the documentary itself doesn’t do much of that. The film uses a wide array of clips from the era, which helps viewers grasp what kinds of content aired on the channel at the time. But outside of that, it’s a fairly dull and straightforward approach to the subject. All of the interviews are off-screen, so we only see the names and hear the voices of the subjects, leaving us without a picture of who we’re supposed to be listening to. It keeps us at a distance from the material, merely watching it as we would have during this time. That works well enough to give us a surface-level understanding of the channel, but it never lets us dig deeper or build a connection with anyone involved.
When approaching such a groundbreaking, experimental topic, “Public Access” doesn’t find the same revolutionary spirit. It’s informative, but not entertaining, which may suffice for documentaries that are revealing the news, but feels lackluster when documenting a taboo-breaking subject. That frustration holds “Public Access” back from greatness.
