Why Is There No

From the beginning of life we have been unable to do without the oldest and most necessary kind of interaction: questions and answers, dialogues and interrogations, exclusive interviews, and polls. Especially without interviews. Since Adam and Eve we have heard things like, What’s your name? What do you think about yourself, your life, and international situation? Thanks for your question. Thanks for answering my question. Vis-И-vis, in private or in the course of a flashy talk show, we are always interested in questions and answers; what they are about and how they are formulated. In this realm of interviews we have had a king for the past several decades: Larry King of CNN. Years pass and he is still our host. Live. No one seems to be getting tired of him. Quite the contrary. He is loved and respected. Even the home screen, ever so ruthless to whomever gets overexposed, spares him. He seem immortal. All he does is pose endless questions. He is unique. Well, almost, and an avidly copied example (the late Vlad Listiev in Moscow held him in esteem and wanted to look like him, suspenders included).

Why such lasting popularity, such an unrivaled reign on the television screen?

There are reasons, of course. In the words of our domestic classic, all his questions are correctly put (and to think that all our talk show hosts, revolutionaries, reformers, leaders, and parties have always suffered because of questions put the wrong way!).

Also, one is eager to communicate with Larry King and answer his simple yet so very sophisticated questions. We see him at the studio with Hollywood veteran Kirk Douglas. Yes, he played Spartacus, but he comes from Odesa, does he not? Nice question. So what does he think of his Jewish parentage and creed? (We still vividly remember the shock we all experienced watching Nikita Mikhalkov pull his stunt and wishing to sing a prayer while on the air, live.) As for Mr. Douglas, he paused to think and then told the audiences frankly that both his origin and faith are important, but that he does not go to synagogue. A good answer, quite sincere. And then we see Spartacus’s son Michael join them in the studio. He was away skiing somewhere and his is not historical style, rather something like the Basic Instinct. Naturally, the fathers and sons subject was broached and at the end of the program. Kirk Douglas, aided by Larry King, sent his love to a woman living in the mountains (no name was mention, for she would know anyway). Easy-going and sociable, this is another trait in King. He is trusted, people talking to him seem eager to get it off their chest. He knows how to get across and start a person talking, thousands of individuals, so very different yet invariably responsive in his hands.

Visually, everything is quite simple yet so very impressive and captivating. Larry King with a very ordinary face, wearing glasses, except that his eyes are keenly watchful, especially in a close-up. The entire atmosphere of the interview is saturated with friendly attentiveness. Watching him and the interlocutor, one feels that Larry is genuinely interested and that this interest is reciprocated. That is what shapes every interview’s most important element, interaction, with the invariable remarkable result of the whole thing being really interesting, with interesting ideas and real sincerity.

Why, then, do we not have a Larry King in Ukraine? Where can we get one, all things considered? I have just pointed out that he is genuinely interested in every person he interviews. Some of our televised hosts and hostesses treat their interlocutors with an outward respect that one strains to perceive watching them. They can be cheeky or mealy-mouthed, humble, dryly formal, insolent, or look and sound so bored that it becomes a bit contemptuous, but never really interesting.

Some of our hosts/hostesses and journalists are still undecided on who is boss, the one asking or the one answering the questions. Or they do their utmost to impress the audience: look how smart I am, how well I can formulate my questions! Suppose we trace the question and answer the situation in Ukraine? There is a definite trend of developing a synthesis of two types of questions, strict Soviet and sassy Western.

Typical Soviet-like questions (in keeping with the New Channel’s tradition, reminding one of NKVD questioning, something like “All right, bastard, go on tell us how you betrayed your Fatherland?”):

“Would you please tell us how you and IMF are robbing Ukraine clean?”

A life-asserting question:

“Is it true that everything is not all that bad in Ukraine, that there are even very good things here?”

A diplomatic question:

“Would you please tell us about Khoma?”

“ I’d rather tell you about Yarema.”

Provocative questions:

“What did you do before December 1?”

“Can you tell us whether the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection?”

Pert Western-style questions (in the Playboy tradition):

“Our readers would like to know how many times you have sex a week (month, year) and what are your preferences?”

“Word is that you put your mother-in-law through a meat grinder and left you illegitimate kid in one of the city dumps. Any comment?”

“Ha-ha! I’m being really stupid. What about you?”

“Could you be straight with us? Are you a gay or Red?”

“We have information saying you’re a little bit pregnant. Is that so?”

“When are you going to cut another disk, release an album, a single, mingle, clip, slip, or something else that will make you a world star?”

“How did you like it in Bermuda?”

Neutral, even intellectual questions:

“Could you use a drainpipe to play a nocturne? Just give us a straight answer to a straight question!”

How is to answer such questions? In Ukraine, the question and answer genre has acquired staggering scope. Interviews come out haphazardly and often quite aggressively. Suppose I keep the tradition and ask myself, What is there to prevent the appearance of a Ukrainian Larry King? Primarily our collective lifestyle and its specifics.

We have long lost the ability to listen to others and try to understand them. This has happened without our noticing it. Also, we do not know the correct answers to the most important questions. Something must be changed in the very structure of the genre. For example, to discard the abnormal practice of posing questions in one language and getting answers in another. Or learn to get more pleasure from exposing evil rather than washing dirty linen in public.

I do believe that the day will come when we have our Larry King — or rather Larion Koroliuk — with his own talent and stunts, and, of course, with a fantastic salary (by our standards), something like a million hryvnias worth of take-home pay, as a well-deserved reward for honest and masterful work both at the office and with people.

I sincerely wish all our hosts/hostesses and journalists to have interesting people to interview, because we all know how important this is in making a good interview.