Reception
The series won many awards and was sold to over sixty countries. The book which accompanied the series became a best seller in both the United Kingdom and the United States. The American sponsor Xerox paid $450,000 for a single film compilation of the series.
Clark earned a peerage on the strength of the series; taking the title Baron Clark of Saltwood; he was sometimes referred to facetiously as "Lord Clark of Civilisation".
Further proof of the programme's popularity was given in anecdotal evidence of Civilisation parties. Since ownership of a colour television set was rare on the series' first broadcast, those who did own one found themselves popular hosts.
Some have criticised the series for using the universal title "Civilisation" when it actually dealt more narrowly with Christian civilisation in parts of Western Europe. In this context, the series was considered by some to be Eurocentric, with African works of art acknowledged but seen as the products of superstition, rather than rational thought, and not evidence of civilisation. In the first episode of the series, "The Skin of Our Teeth," Clark acknowledged the vitality of Viking art and the dynamism of Viking society, but found that these were not enough to constitute what he meant by 'civilisation'. In the same episode, Clark made it clear that the series would be concerned with Western civilisation. Furthermore the series' subtitle, "A Personal View by Kenneth Clark", reinforced the subjectivity of the thoughts he expressed.
The series had difficulty at first in finding a home on American television, but success was assured after the National Gallery of Art in Washington put it on at lunchtime in the gallery theatre. This seated 300 people, but on the first day 24,000 turned up. In 1970, the newly-established Public Broadcasting Service aired the 13-part TV series in the US to high ratings.
The series' groundbreaking format, in which Clark travelled around the world to illustrate his thesis, became a template for later programmes such as Alistair Cooke's America (1972), Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (1973), Life on Earth (1979) and sequels by David Attenborough, and Robert Hughes' series on modern art The Shock of the New (1980). John Berger's BBC series, Ways of Seeing (1972), was partly a response to Clark's views from a radical/Marxist viewpoint.
Clark attended an early public screening of one of the programmes and was received with huge applause and cheers. He was so overwhelmed by this recognition that he hid himself away in the lavatory and wept for fifteen minutes; he had long been respected in academic circles but was utterly taken aback by the response of the public at large.
Read more about this topic: Civilisation (TV series)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
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“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)