The horror on my television

If you are of a sensitive disposition don’t read on.

Last night I had a very late TV dinner. Flicking through the channels I came across the following scene:

A gagged naked woman is hanging from chains around her ankles. She is absolutely terrified, spluttering her screams through the ball tied in her mouth. She is hanging over a tiled bath. The two men who have obviously tied her there are about to leave the darkened chamber in which this is taking place. As they do so, one of them plants a kiss on her mouth.

A few moments after they exit, another woman enters the chamber. She is wearing only a robe, which she removes. She lies naked in the bath, takes a scythe and begins to run it over the bound woman body. By now the latter is drenched in sweat and spluttering in terror. The second woman uses the scythe to cut away the gag, and the first woman’s screams now fill the room.

I slightly missed the next bit, but when I clicked back, the bound woman had clearly been repeatedly stabbed and was unconscious. The woman in the bath was washing herself in her blood. Then she reached up with the scythe and slashed the victims throat which sprayed blood in all directions.

Later, there was a similar scene of terror as a man threatened another bound and gagged woman with an angle grinder. I didn’t watch how that turned out.

But why, you may ask, did I watch at all? And why am I telling you this?

The answer is because, thank God, I was horrified. But I would be lying if I didn’t add that I was also strangely drawn to watch — and horrified that I could feel that impulse. That is my first reason — the horror.

The second is that this was on mainstream television. It wasn’t even particularly late (about 11pm as I recall). And the third reason is that his film was called Hostel II. That’s right, there was a Hostel I. (Look them up, if you want, I am not prepared to give a link here.)

In other words, there is a market for this stuff out there.

Of course, horror films are as old as the cinema itself. In the 1970s I used to enjoy watching the late-night Hammer films. And yes, they had screaming ladies as well. But Hostel II is in a totally different league. The acting, it has to be said, was superb. Here was total, snot running, eye staring terror, right before your very eyes. It was entirely believable.

And there is the problem. Watching a bosomy maiden succumb to Dracula’s kiss is one thing. Watching a human being in apparent paroxysms of fear and agony is another. This is the entertainment of the Roman arena, not Bram Stoker.

At this point, two questions are going round my head, which is why I am writing this. The first is, whatever happened to our society, that could move from Mary Whitehouse and the Festival of Light in the 1960s and ‘70s to this. For the problem with the likes of Hostel II is not that it is trash, but that it is actually convincing and compelling.

And that brings me to my second question which is what impact such material has on those who watch it for entertainment. The ‘Saw’ series, which has I believe a similar motif, has run to seven versions.

But get this: Thorpe Park has a Saw theme ride. So whilst children may not be allowed to watch the film, but they are familiarized with the concept of ‘torture as entertainment’.

As many of us know, the problem with some experiences in life is that once in our heads, we can’t get them out. I well remember a Malaysian female student of my acquaintance who had become a Christian saying it was very easy to learn English swear words, but very hard to stop saying them.

What, then, if you filled your head last night with images of beautiful tortured women (and they are invariably beautiful women — as one producer of such films said, given the choice people would rather watch a beautiful woman being killed than an ugly one)? And what if you did this for entertainment? What if you are still entertaining yourself with the same thoughts throughout the day today?

Back in the 1960s, I was one of those who thought Mary Whitehouse and her supporters a bit naive and limited. Why should we not be allowed to watch what we wanted as grown-ups? What was wrong with a bit of artistic nudity, for example? But of course the changing of our standards did not release a flood of ‘art’.

I am still minded to write to whichever TV channel it was last night that carried that film. But I suspect it will be a lonely little letter. Surely no one cares anymore? Maybe they’ll frame it.

Tom Davies, the wonderfully eccentric author of the equally eccentric Merlin the Magician and the Pacific Coast Highway (one of the few Christian books that have made me laugh out loud) wrote a sombre follow-up called The Man of Lawlessness, which he identified as the media, pouring a stream of violence and filth into the minds and lives of ordinary people, and especially the young.

Judging by what I glimpsed on television last night, he may have been right. For there is only one place such thoughts could have come from, and one place where they belong, and that is in the lowest pit of Hell.

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U-571, female detectives, it’s all the same

When the film U-571, depicting the American capture during World War 2 of a submarine carrying an Enigma cypher machine, hit the cinema screens, I was one of those who greeted it with derision.

Those who know a bit about the War will be aware that the first Enigma machines were actually captured by the Poles before hostilities broke out between Germany and Britain. Then, in 1941, another machine was captured from a U-boat, but by the British destroyer HMS Bulldog.

One argument for this rewriting of history went that the film would not otherwise have been economically viable in the US. According to an article on Wikipedia, the screenwriter David Ayer pretty much confessed to this later:

It was a distortion ... a mercenary decision ... to create this parallel history in order to drive the movie for an American audience.

Well, stupid him, I thought, and stupid Americans for not being able to stomach anything other than a world re-coloured to suit their own view of what ought to have been ‘reality’.

But then it turns out American producers and scriptwriters aren’t the only ones whose fictional world has to shelter their audiences from reality, for apparently BBC One controller Danny Cohen has said he plans to limit the number of male detectives in the channel’s dramas.

“Detectives and crime is the real staple of quite a lot of BBC,” he said, but added, “I felt that we risked having too many male detectives.” Hence, in particular, the series ‘Zen’, starring Rufus Sewell, apparently had to go.

Now the question that has to be asked is, “Too many for what?”

Amongst male detectives, reference was made to Sherlock, Luther, Wallander and Inspector George Gently. Personally I’m only familiar with the first and the third, but I must admit the one thing that never crossed my mind whilst watching either was, “Shame he’s a bloke.”

Nor, oddly enough, did I find myself thinking, “Given all the female crime-fighters one sees in daily life, isn’t this a bit unrealistic?”

So whence the drive to change what appears on our TV screens? Whatever it turns out to be, I’ll guarantee that tucked away in it somewhere you’ll find an ‘ought’ — “There ‘ought’ to be more fictional detectives on television who are women because ...”

Fill in the gap and you’ll learn a lot about modern society and culture.

Fiction is, of course, just that. It is not real-life, and it has always involved the projection of the hopes and aspirations of the author. Yet we must never underestimate the power of fiction to move us as if it were reality. Indeed, there have been works of fiction which have had a seminal influence on society — think Uncle Tom’s Cabin or The Grapes of Wrath.

This is why, personally, I think the Puritan suspicion of the theatre had something going for it. Our easy acceptance of the deluge of popular fiction on our televisions, particularly the ‘soaps’, may be a reflection, as much as anything else, of our blindness to its effects, rather than our robustness regarding its impact.

Indeed, there is no doubt whatsoever (and there is probably a book out there to prove) that the popular media have been used quite deliberately to reshape popular culture. What the ‘fictionalizers’ deem acceptable is thus at least as important as what their audiences find palatable.

I was inclined to pity an American audience that could only cope with ‘historic’ events which featured themselves. But it is not just Americans who demand a parallel universe for their contemplation. Our own producers and writers also insist creating worlds in their own image.

Back in the ‘70s (I’m tempted to say, when Greenbelt was evangelical) there was talk of raising up a generation of Christian artists and writers to influence society. At the time there was also a big debate about whether art should be ‘for art’s sake’ or to convey a ‘message’. I was then, and still am, a fan of the former. Nevertheless, it is clear that there are powerful figures in our modern media who have no compunction at all about operating on the basis of the latter.

Perhaps it is time we woke up to the fact.

John Richardson

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Why "Rev" isn't funny

I’ve been trying to work out why I don’t find Rev, the new BBC sitcom about an inner-city parish priest in the Church of England, at all funny.

There’s a serious reason for this, which is that I’ve been hoping it isn’t just because it’s about the Church of England and the hero is a ‘Liberal’, whilst at least some of the villains so far have been ‘Evangelicals’. In other words, I hope it’s not because it’s poking fun at me and my kind.

However, I watched episode 3 last night, without an ‘Evangelical’ in sight, and still found it flat and dull. The one thing I could point out that was just plain irritating was the abundance of stereotypes — the sensible, faithful, and not-at-all-fanatical Muslim woman who wanted to use the church for her Qur’an class (and was quite happy to speak to a strange man on her own in the church), the ‘nice’ church-going family whose father turned up later in a lap-dancing club, the vicar’s wife who is not-at-all-like-a-vicar’s-wife, the slightly creepy archdeacon (actually, that one ...), dumb lay-reader, and so.

But I still felt that couldn’t quite be the problem. After all, Dad’s Army or Father Ted are equally full of stereotypes — but there they are funny.

Then sometime between getting into bed and going to sleep, I realized what it was.

Comedy (indeed, any work of literature) is a production of the mind of the writer. What you see on stage or screen is really their fantasy-creation, and therefore it is an insight into their own thoughts.

Father Ted is the product of people who grew up in an Ireland another comedy writer described as “such a mad country that satire [was] the only way you [could] challenge the madness”, and it reflects the minds of those who found that madness a source of hilarity.

Rev is equally clearly the product of a certain kind of mind. Actually, I suspect it is a mind not at all unlike those of the ‘nice middle-class’ couple in an early episode who are basically attending church to get their child into the church school. And that, I’ve decided, is the problem.

Rev gives us (I am guessing) the perspective of a liberal, white, youngish, urban middle-class mind on the world of Anglican religion. The trouble is, the way that mind sees that particular world is utterly predictable, and therefore not funny.

This review, from someone who does like Rev, says it all:

The other reason I love Rev ... is that ... it cherishes [the Church of England’s] beating liberal heart. [...]

As Canon Lucy Winkett, formerly at St Paul’s Cathedral, once told me, it’s not about expecting people to believe (and I don’t); it’s about being a place where people can bring, should they choose to, the stuff of their lives. It’s about flexibility, inclusiveness and charity, in the best sense of that word.

It was Robert Burns who wrote, “O wad some Power the giftie gie us. To see oursels as ithers see us!” Rev is the world of religion seen by the unbelieving white middle-class, telling it like the writer thinks it ought to be. They have a view on this world, but they can’t get ‘inside’ it. Put yourself in their place, however, and you could write the jokes yourself.

Rev is not funny because it written by people who find the subject matter not a source of hilarity but of earnestness. Ironically, as I have said before, Rev is, in the end, a sermon of its own, but it is preaching to the converted. It is BBC England reassuring itself about the strange world of the ‘God-botherers’. There may be a few fanatics — especially on the Christian ‘Right’, but the good guys are firmly in the middle of the road, and they are normal, having sexual feelings and smoking a crafty fag outside the ‘office’ just like you and me.

And if God isn’t too fussed about them, he can’t be too fussed about us, either. Can he?

John Richardson
16 July 2010

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