There is a great shortage of speech programs on the radio. In England we have two, provided by the BBC, Radio 4 and Radio 5. This morning on Radio 5 live an American rock group called 'Rage against the Machine' were invited to perform live on the airwaves. I didn't hear them, but there has been a public outcry because the song they shouted out contains in its lyrics certain swear words.
It seems that the BBC were very naive to think that they would refrain from swearing on air. I heard an excerpt of their performance later (without teh swear words), and I have to say that the noise they made bears no resemblance to what I would call music, but nevertheless I object. Not to the lyrics, which I never heard and therefore cannot have been offended by, but to the encroachment of pop music onto speech programs. Is there not enough pop music on the airwaves? Please BBC, give us our sanctuary for speech.
Showing posts with label broadcasting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label broadcasting. Show all posts
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
The Wire
What does a retired university professor do with his time? He certainly spends a lot of time on the Internet reading the newspapers and his favorite blogs. He answers the telephone and fends off people who want to sell him insurance, double glazing, new kitchens and magazine subscriptions. He goes supermarket shopping with his wife. He has a break for coffee mid-morning and a break for tea mid-afternoon. He does at least 6 crosswords a day with his wife. He tries to write something on his blog. He listens to some music - keen on adagios at the moment. He puzzles over Bayesian statistics. He sporadically polishes brass doorhandles and fits new toilet seats. He edits his journal. He reads. Currently, in various degrees of the partially read are Planet Narnia, Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, Keller's The Reason for God, My Grammar and I, The Saga of the Sydney Opera house, CS Lewis's The Discarded Image, David Wilkerson's Man Have I Got problems, FF Bruce's Men and Movements in the Primitive Church, Alec Moyter's Look to the Rock and Assist Me to Proclaim, the Life and Hymns of Charles Wesley.
And he watches television. My purpose in this blog is to review The Wire.
Claimed by some to be the best show on television for a decade or more, most Christians would avoid this show like the plague. The language is revolting and there are lurid sex scenes that would be a temptation for many. So this series comes with a health warning.
That said, I have watched all five seasons with the subtitles turned on, mainly because the African-American patois was unintelligible to me, but also because you need to know what is being said to follow the plot.
On the other hand this work of fiction is extremely moral. It teaches us that the heart of man is desperately wicked. Corruption permeates every element of society. It begins by showing how drugs have wormed their way into the fabric of society, so much that for portions of the community drugs represent the basic way of making a living. The drug culture is steeped in crime with murders and beatings being the commonplace consequence of imagined slight. The cops have the closest contact with the drug world, and guess what the cops are corrupt, indeed all branches of law enforcement: judges, lawyers, prosecutors, prison staff are all corrupt. The ordinary working man in the docks is corrupt; he also drinks too much. The church is corrupt. The schools are corrupt, the politicians are corrupt, the newspapers are corrupt.
There are some people who honestly want to make a difference. We see a couple of policemen who have been sidelined because they were incorruptible. We see a politician who really cares about his community. We see a police lieutenant who wants to police the city correctly, we see a newspaper man who not only understands the rudiments of grammar but also believes in the truth. But what happens is you either play the game or you die (or at very least are demoted). An ex-killer starts a boxing gym to attract young blacks away from drugs. He is kneecapped for his trouble. A teacher wants to befriend his pupils in order to teach them the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. He is bullied into teaching to the test, supplying them with model questions and answers that will closely resemble the test. A honest editor wishes to expose a reporter who is fabricating stories; he is demoted. A senior policeman cuts crime by isolating the drug trade to a deserted area and turning a blind eye to drug supply to addicts. It allows social workers to get into help the addicts. The politicians find out and he is demoted, losing pension. Two honest cops game the system to get funds they have been denied to catch multiple murders. Politicians and senior policemen, themselves up to their elbows in muck discipline the cops and then take personal credit for the success. The DA cuts a crooked deal with a crooked defence lawyer to allow the prosecution of murderers to go ahead.
We are left with a straight policeman who is already compromised by youthful indiscretion and by an adulterous affair resigning from the force rather than join in the morass of decay.
The acting and production values are superb, but how people need a savior!
And he watches television. My purpose in this blog is to review The Wire.
Claimed by some to be the best show on television for a decade or more, most Christians would avoid this show like the plague. The language is revolting and there are lurid sex scenes that would be a temptation for many. So this series comes with a health warning.
That said, I have watched all five seasons with the subtitles turned on, mainly because the African-American patois was unintelligible to me, but also because you need to know what is being said to follow the plot.
On the other hand this work of fiction is extremely moral. It teaches us that the heart of man is desperately wicked. Corruption permeates every element of society. It begins by showing how drugs have wormed their way into the fabric of society, so much that for portions of the community drugs represent the basic way of making a living. The drug culture is steeped in crime with murders and beatings being the commonplace consequence of imagined slight. The cops have the closest contact with the drug world, and guess what the cops are corrupt, indeed all branches of law enforcement: judges, lawyers, prosecutors, prison staff are all corrupt. The ordinary working man in the docks is corrupt; he also drinks too much. The church is corrupt. The schools are corrupt, the politicians are corrupt, the newspapers are corrupt.
There are some people who honestly want to make a difference. We see a couple of policemen who have been sidelined because they were incorruptible. We see a politician who really cares about his community. We see a police lieutenant who wants to police the city correctly, we see a newspaper man who not only understands the rudiments of grammar but also believes in the truth. But what happens is you either play the game or you die (or at very least are demoted). An ex-killer starts a boxing gym to attract young blacks away from drugs. He is kneecapped for his trouble. A teacher wants to befriend his pupils in order to teach them the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. He is bullied into teaching to the test, supplying them with model questions and answers that will closely resemble the test. A honest editor wishes to expose a reporter who is fabricating stories; he is demoted. A senior policeman cuts crime by isolating the drug trade to a deserted area and turning a blind eye to drug supply to addicts. It allows social workers to get into help the addicts. The politicians find out and he is demoted, losing pension. Two honest cops game the system to get funds they have been denied to catch multiple murders. Politicians and senior policemen, themselves up to their elbows in muck discipline the cops and then take personal credit for the success. The DA cuts a crooked deal with a crooked defence lawyer to allow the prosecution of murderers to go ahead.
We are left with a straight policeman who is already compromised by youthful indiscretion and by an adulterous affair resigning from the force rather than join in the morass of decay.
The acting and production values are superb, but how people need a savior!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The BBC
What do you think of the BBC? There is a whole website devoted to picking holes in its daily output and certainly some of the barbs are true. The BBC news and current affairs output is consistently pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel; pro-Europe, anti-American; pro-left, anti-right; pro-global warming, anti-warming sceptics; pro-Muslim, anti-Christian; pro-Republican, anti-Loyalist; pro-multiculturalism, anti-British; pro-gay/Lesbian/transsexual, anti-conservative life style; pro-EU, anti-UKIP. Recent documents released under the 30-year rule have demonstrated that the BBC played a significant part in the undermining of the Shah of Iran and in hastening the Khomeni revolution. Even when the British electorate so keenly wants to get rid of Gordon Brown and the whole of Nu-Labor, the BBC persists on trying to make the ruling party look good while trying to besmirch the Conservative Party.
However, I have noticed that even Alan Sullivan over at Fresh Bilge, whose conservatism doesn't differ much from my own, often turns to the BBC for news items that are simply not carried by the American media.
There are some things that the BBC does exceedingly well. I might mention period drama such as the recent 'Cranford', 'Bleak House' and 'Little Dorrit'. The output of the Wild-life center at Bristol is also impressive. The photography of documentaries like 'Blue Planet' and 'Alien Empire' presented by David Attenborough is worth getting Blu-ray for. (The effect is spoiled by the specious pro-evolution commentaries). The output of the main television channels is junk, of course, but that is true for most television anyway. Radio programs are better and downloadable as podcasts. I recommend looking at their selection.
This morning my son sent me a link to a series of articles on statistics by Michael Blastland that are worth a second look. They are a remedy for all the hype you read in the newspapers and watch on the news. Take this remarkable fact. Headline figures for GDP are usually wrong. The true state of the economy is not established for three years, when the tax returns are analyzed. In the UK the first figure is almost always too pessimistic whereas in the USA it is mostly over-optimistic. A recession is defined by two three month periods when there is negative growth (or shrinkage) in the economy. Who knows, when the final figures come in we may not even be in a recession.
There is a great deal of hype surrounding the current economic circumstances. Reading Micahel Blandford will probably set your mind at rest over all sorts of stuff you see in the newspapers. Statistics matter, but don't trust anyone other than a statistician making an argument from them. All politicians are liars, they can't help themselves. Journalists prefer a story to the truth. Salesmen want a sale. Businessmen want a profit.
The other thing the BBC does is "The Archers". Giving up "The Archers" is like giving up smoking. You can go for years without them, then just a single puff and you're hooked again.
However, I have noticed that even Alan Sullivan over at Fresh Bilge, whose conservatism doesn't differ much from my own, often turns to the BBC for news items that are simply not carried by the American media.
There are some things that the BBC does exceedingly well. I might mention period drama such as the recent 'Cranford', 'Bleak House' and 'Little Dorrit'. The output of the Wild-life center at Bristol is also impressive. The photography of documentaries like 'Blue Planet' and 'Alien Empire' presented by David Attenborough is worth getting Blu-ray for. (The effect is spoiled by the specious pro-evolution commentaries). The output of the main television channels is junk, of course, but that is true for most television anyway. Radio programs are better and downloadable as podcasts. I recommend looking at their selection.
This morning my son sent me a link to a series of articles on statistics by Michael Blastland that are worth a second look. They are a remedy for all the hype you read in the newspapers and watch on the news. Take this remarkable fact. Headline figures for GDP are usually wrong. The true state of the economy is not established for three years, when the tax returns are analyzed. In the UK the first figure is almost always too pessimistic whereas in the USA it is mostly over-optimistic. A recession is defined by two three month periods when there is negative growth (or shrinkage) in the economy. Who knows, when the final figures come in we may not even be in a recession.
There is a great deal of hype surrounding the current economic circumstances. Reading Micahel Blandford will probably set your mind at rest over all sorts of stuff you see in the newspapers. Statistics matter, but don't trust anyone other than a statistician making an argument from them. All politicians are liars, they can't help themselves. Journalists prefer a story to the truth. Salesmen want a sale. Businessmen want a profit.
The other thing the BBC does is "The Archers". Giving up "The Archers" is like giving up smoking. You can go for years without them, then just a single puff and you're hooked again.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Ross and Brand
Russell Brand, 33, and Jonathon Ross, 47, are two well known radio presenters who were paid huge amounts of money by the BBC to present music and chat shows on radio and television. One night the Brand show, with Ross as a guest, broadcast a telephone call made to the answering machine of Andrew Sachs, 78, an actor best known for his performance as Manuel in Fawlty Towers. The content of the call was a boast by Brand that he had slept with Sachs’s young granddaughter, a singer in a girl-band. The boast was couched in obscene terms and contravenes a British law about sending obscene messages over the telephone. The broadcast received only two complaints, but an alert reporter on the Daily Mail picked up on it and published a piece criticizing the broadcast.
The newspaper article unleashed a frenzied attack on the BBC and the two disc-jockeys. There have now been over 35,000 complaints against the BBC. As a result Brand has resigned and so has the chief executive of the Radio 2, the channel which hosted the broadcast. Ross, the highest paid performer on the BBC has been suspended without pay for 12 weeks while his future employment is considered.
Further information has emerged. It turns out that the broadcast item had been pre-recorded, and must therefore have been approved by an editor and also that the Brand boast was not an idle one; he and the girl had been in a ‘relationship’ for a while last year. It was, nevertheless and ungentlemanly thing to do as well as being illegal. In the meantime another broadcasting offence has been uncovered. ‘Mock the Week’ made lewdly offensive remarks about the Queen and the ‘Disgusted’ of Tunbridge Wells tendency has redirected its attack there.
What has been astonishing is how an after-midnight broadcast, listen to by very few, has caused such a national furore. It is symptomatic of a general unease among middle class, middle-aged Britain.
It has to be remembered that 1947 was the year when Britain’s birth rate was at its greatest. Those born in that year are now 61. They comprise a large slice of the population and, moreover, many are relatively well-off, many are retired and those who are not often hold down jobs of great influence. This is not a constituency to be trifled with. Although, many of these ‘baby-boomers’ were young at the time of the loosening of moral standards in the sixties and seventies and may be thought complicit in the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll revolution, by and large this generation heartily disapproves of Ross, Brand and their ilk.
There are several reasons for this. Many were always opposed to what went on in the sixties and seventies. There was a vanguard of revolutionaries clustered in the capital and infiltrating the media. The Beatles may have come from Liverpool, but they soon made their way to London. The ‘Swinging Sixties’ were centred on Carnaby Street not Coronation Street. I was at a provincial university at this time and never encountered a single spliff. My friends were not sexually promiscuous and nice girls still waited until they were married. We may have approved of David Frost and ‘That Was The Week, That Was’, but their targets were the rich and powerful, not defenceless old men.
The lifestyle ‘enjoyed’ by those in the vanguard was hardly conducive to longevity. Many of those who persisted with it are by now the victims of drug overdose, liver failure, AIDS, cocaine-induced heart attacks, or lung cancer. The hard-core of revolutionaries has been diluted by the conservative majority.
Then, again, there is the natural tendency for people to become more conservative as they get older. You plead harder for the have-nots when you are poor than when you become one of the ‘haves’. This is not the whole story. With age comes experience and the more perceptive have seen what the social changes have brought us in the past forty years. It is hard to applaud the fact that we now need many more prisons, that homicides have risen from about 160 to nearer 1000, that divorces have reached an all-time high, that parents are afraid to allow their children to walk to school for fear of abduction, and that gangs of young people walk around our cities at weekends armed with knives and too drunk to know what they are doing. Who would have thought that a campaign against young women dying from back-street abortions to escape the shame of illegitimacy would have led to newly formed embryos being regarded as disposable and babies only a few weeks away from an independent existence being killed because they were inconvenient? Who would have thought that a campaign to free women trapped in a loveless and abusive marriage would have led to an automatic assumption that sex was available on a first date and such sexual promiscuity that small-print diseases like syphilis have become a such plague that venereology has changed from a Cinderella specialty to one that attracts big brains and high salaries?
Although heard by only a few, this broadcast has awakened a sleeping giant. Middle class, middle-aged people across the country have found a voice and are surprised to find that many people share their view. Of course, there is a backlash. Thousands of young people have signed up on Facebook to the opinion that Brand and Ross are funny and should be defended. A generation war is in the offing.
At the heart of the matter is the BBC. To my generation the BBC was at the center of the Establishment. It was the voice of Authority. Affectionately known as Auntie, you could rely on it for honesty, impartiality, truth, and how to make a space-suit from two washing-up liquid containers and a few sheets of sticky-backed plastic. It may have seemed staid and a little behind fashion, but all the better for it. Others could push back boundaries; we could enjoy the Black and White Minstrels on the BBC.
The BBC has changed. Many regard it as the HQ of the Politically Correct. "Although only 7% of the British have dark-colored skin," they say, "BBC presenters on television represent the London norm which is nearer 40%. However, they all speak with an Oxford accent, except on radio where regional accents are mandatory in order to demonstrate ethnic diversity. Irish and Scottish accents are prominent."
They complain that the BBC favors homosexuality over heterosexuality, Islam over Christianity or Judaism, the European Union over America, Global Warming enthusiasts over sceptics, Palestine over Israel and Nu-Labor over the Conservatives.
There are whole websites given over to attacking the BBC. One constant complaint is that the TV license fee amounts to a tax that funds all this unpleasantness It is impossible to own a television without funding the BBC’s output. I’m not sure that I go along with this. Among license fee payers are people who enjoy Ross and Brand, people who enjoy ‘Eastenders’ or ‘The Antiques Roadshow’ or endless cookery and house redecorating or gardening or mindless breakfast shows. Others only watch football or dramatized Charles Dickens or News shows or Detective Dramas. We all have to pay for what we don’t like in order to watch what we do. If you don’t like TV you don’t have to watch anything or own a set. I think it is not that, that offends; it is the sense that offensive programming is going out ‘in my name’ that upsets people, just as the invasion of Iraq offended them. More than a million people marched in protest against the Iraq war. It was a minority, to be sure, and the minority must accept the will of the majority, but they can still feel offended that there support is assumed.
It will be interesting to see whether the Ross-Brand affair is just a storm in a teacup, or whether the protesters, now having wind in their sails, will affect a change in broadcasting policy.
The newspaper article unleashed a frenzied attack on the BBC and the two disc-jockeys. There have now been over 35,000 complaints against the BBC. As a result Brand has resigned and so has the chief executive of the Radio 2, the channel which hosted the broadcast. Ross, the highest paid performer on the BBC has been suspended without pay for 12 weeks while his future employment is considered.
Further information has emerged. It turns out that the broadcast item had been pre-recorded, and must therefore have been approved by an editor and also that the Brand boast was not an idle one; he and the girl had been in a ‘relationship’ for a while last year. It was, nevertheless and ungentlemanly thing to do as well as being illegal. In the meantime another broadcasting offence has been uncovered. ‘Mock the Week’ made lewdly offensive remarks about the Queen and the ‘Disgusted’ of Tunbridge Wells tendency has redirected its attack there.
What has been astonishing is how an after-midnight broadcast, listen to by very few, has caused such a national furore. It is symptomatic of a general unease among middle class, middle-aged Britain.
It has to be remembered that 1947 was the year when Britain’s birth rate was at its greatest. Those born in that year are now 61. They comprise a large slice of the population and, moreover, many are relatively well-off, many are retired and those who are not often hold down jobs of great influence. This is not a constituency to be trifled with. Although, many of these ‘baby-boomers’ were young at the time of the loosening of moral standards in the sixties and seventies and may be thought complicit in the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll revolution, by and large this generation heartily disapproves of Ross, Brand and their ilk.
There are several reasons for this. Many were always opposed to what went on in the sixties and seventies. There was a vanguard of revolutionaries clustered in the capital and infiltrating the media. The Beatles may have come from Liverpool, but they soon made their way to London. The ‘Swinging Sixties’ were centred on Carnaby Street not Coronation Street. I was at a provincial university at this time and never encountered a single spliff. My friends were not sexually promiscuous and nice girls still waited until they were married. We may have approved of David Frost and ‘That Was The Week, That Was’, but their targets were the rich and powerful, not defenceless old men.
The lifestyle ‘enjoyed’ by those in the vanguard was hardly conducive to longevity. Many of those who persisted with it are by now the victims of drug overdose, liver failure, AIDS, cocaine-induced heart attacks, or lung cancer. The hard-core of revolutionaries has been diluted by the conservative majority.
Then, again, there is the natural tendency for people to become more conservative as they get older. You plead harder for the have-nots when you are poor than when you become one of the ‘haves’. This is not the whole story. With age comes experience and the more perceptive have seen what the social changes have brought us in the past forty years. It is hard to applaud the fact that we now need many more prisons, that homicides have risen from about 160 to nearer 1000, that divorces have reached an all-time high, that parents are afraid to allow their children to walk to school for fear of abduction, and that gangs of young people walk around our cities at weekends armed with knives and too drunk to know what they are doing. Who would have thought that a campaign against young women dying from back-street abortions to escape the shame of illegitimacy would have led to newly formed embryos being regarded as disposable and babies only a few weeks away from an independent existence being killed because they were inconvenient? Who would have thought that a campaign to free women trapped in a loveless and abusive marriage would have led to an automatic assumption that sex was available on a first date and such sexual promiscuity that small-print diseases like syphilis have become a such plague that venereology has changed from a Cinderella specialty to one that attracts big brains and high salaries?
Although heard by only a few, this broadcast has awakened a sleeping giant. Middle class, middle-aged people across the country have found a voice and are surprised to find that many people share their view. Of course, there is a backlash. Thousands of young people have signed up on Facebook to the opinion that Brand and Ross are funny and should be defended. A generation war is in the offing.
At the heart of the matter is the BBC. To my generation the BBC was at the center of the Establishment. It was the voice of Authority. Affectionately known as Auntie, you could rely on it for honesty, impartiality, truth, and how to make a space-suit from two washing-up liquid containers and a few sheets of sticky-backed plastic. It may have seemed staid and a little behind fashion, but all the better for it. Others could push back boundaries; we could enjoy the Black and White Minstrels on the BBC.
The BBC has changed. Many regard it as the HQ of the Politically Correct. "Although only 7% of the British have dark-colored skin," they say, "BBC presenters on television represent the London norm which is nearer 40%. However, they all speak with an Oxford accent, except on radio where regional accents are mandatory in order to demonstrate ethnic diversity. Irish and Scottish accents are prominent."
They complain that the BBC favors homosexuality over heterosexuality, Islam over Christianity or Judaism, the European Union over America, Global Warming enthusiasts over sceptics, Palestine over Israel and Nu-Labor over the Conservatives.
There are whole websites given over to attacking the BBC. One constant complaint is that the TV license fee amounts to a tax that funds all this unpleasantness It is impossible to own a television without funding the BBC’s output. I’m not sure that I go along with this. Among license fee payers are people who enjoy Ross and Brand, people who enjoy ‘Eastenders’ or ‘The Antiques Roadshow’ or endless cookery and house redecorating or gardening or mindless breakfast shows. Others only watch football or dramatized Charles Dickens or News shows or Detective Dramas. We all have to pay for what we don’t like in order to watch what we do. If you don’t like TV you don’t have to watch anything or own a set. I think it is not that, that offends; it is the sense that offensive programming is going out ‘in my name’ that upsets people, just as the invasion of Iraq offended them. More than a million people marched in protest against the Iraq war. It was a minority, to be sure, and the minority must accept the will of the majority, but they can still feel offended that there support is assumed.
It will be interesting to see whether the Ross-Brand affair is just a storm in a teacup, or whether the protesters, now having wind in their sails, will affect a change in broadcasting policy.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn lost her head in the last episode of the second series of the Tudors. The series made her out to be a conniving, ambitious seductress who was vindictive and quite nasty. As a corrective I have been reading Women of the Reformation by Ellen O Clayton. The book is undated but feels Victorian. It gives a very different picture of Queen Anne. It agrees with the modern take that she was both beautiful and vivacious, but shows her as pious and loyal, and a leading figure in the introduction of reformed theology into England. Both versions find her innocent of the charges of adultery that Henry used to rid himself of her when his roving eye had strayed elsewhere.
What I had not realised was that her uncle was the Duke of Norfolk, still England's leading Roman Catholic. No wonder she invoked such anger from the Catholic party.
What I had not realised was that her uncle was the Duke of Norfolk, still England's leading Roman Catholic. No wonder she invoked such anger from the Catholic party.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Agatha Christie
Last night I watched an episode of Poirot. David Suchet is far and away the best impersonator of Agatha Christie's famous Belgian detective and his performance has improved over the years. Coincidentally last week saw an investigation into Suchet's ancestors. Although Jewish, David is now an evangelical Christian; that never stops him being Jewish, of course. He ancestors came from an area of central Europe that has been Russian and Prussia in its history. The persecution was the same whatever the nation.
Suchet surpasses both Ustinov and Finney. Three new 2-hour episodes are currently being shown on ITV. 'Cat among the pigeons' which was aired last night has a fairly silly plot, but just watching Suchet's performance and soaking in the period brought me a great deal of pleasure.
However, it reminded me of my childhood. Agatha Christie was banned from our house, not on grounds of taste, but because she was ajudged too frightening. Today we regard these films as light entertainment; when I was a child she was for adults only. People were murdered! How things have changed.
In the 1940s and 1950s in Britain murder was very rare and a thing of horror.
Suchet surpasses both Ustinov and Finney. Three new 2-hour episodes are currently being shown on ITV. 'Cat among the pigeons' which was aired last night has a fairly silly plot, but just watching Suchet's performance and soaking in the period brought me a great deal of pleasure.
However, it reminded me of my childhood. Agatha Christie was banned from our house, not on grounds of taste, but because she was ajudged too frightening. Today we regard these films as light entertainment; when I was a child she was for adults only. People were murdered! How things have changed.
In the 1940s and 1950s in Britain murder was very rare and a thing of horror.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Saddam/Henry VIII
We have been watching two television series with strikingly similar themes. One is 'The Tudors' and the other 'House of Saddam'. The former takes great liberties with history and has far too many bedroom scenes for my taste; the latter has scenes of gruesome violence that are difficult to watch. What they have in common is a ruthlessness in pursuit of power. Because they are deeply rooted in a sense of family, critics have drawn attention to their resemblance to Mafia movies like 'Godfather' and 'The Sopranos' and this is apt. Another resemblance is the importance of religion to the central character.
Both series have good acting and high production values, but need to be watched carefully because these devices easily take-in the viewer. The writers and directors are not simply telling a story; they are putting over an opinion. Both Henry and Saddam were undeniable monsters, but their personal motives are just being guessed at. Henry, in particular, is a complex character. Athlete, musician, intellectual, theologian; Henry bestrode his world in a way that seems improbable. England was a small country on the periphery of the then world that had just come through a debilitating civil war. It should have been no match for Spain, France or the Holy Roman Empire. Both Wolsey and Sir Thomas More were smart cookies, yet they were no match for Henry. I don't think this Henry shows us hoe accomplished all that he did.
Saddam's faults are all to obvious. Ruthlessness and Hubris will get you so far, but they aren't going to work against shock and awe; you need a bit of guile as well.
Both series have good acting and high production values, but need to be watched carefully because these devices easily take-in the viewer. The writers and directors are not simply telling a story; they are putting over an opinion. Both Henry and Saddam were undeniable monsters, but their personal motives are just being guessed at. Henry, in particular, is a complex character. Athlete, musician, intellectual, theologian; Henry bestrode his world in a way that seems improbable. England was a small country on the periphery of the then world that had just come through a debilitating civil war. It should have been no match for Spain, France or the Holy Roman Empire. Both Wolsey and Sir Thomas More were smart cookies, yet they were no match for Henry. I don't think this Henry shows us hoe accomplished all that he did.
Saddam's faults are all to obvious. Ruthlessness and Hubris will get you so far, but they aren't going to work against shock and awe; you need a bit of guile as well.
Monday, August 25, 2008
BBC caught out again.
From this morning's Independent: "The BBC was forced to apologise yesterday after admitting that its flagship news bulletin had inadvertently misled viewers (my italics) over the withdrawal of the Chinese athlete Liu Xiang from the Olympics."
"The bulletins showed Liu withdrawing from the race - he had an Achilles tendon problem - then appearing to kick a mat in frustration. But the footage of the athlete in the warm-up zone was filmed before he had entered the Bird's Nest stadium."
I italicized the 'inadvertently misled viewers' because this is a repeat of the error that led to Peter Fincham losing his job as BBC1 controller earlier in the year. On that occasion they showed a video clip of the Queen apparently flouncing out of a photographic appointment because of the photographer's apparent impertinence. Careful editing had created a story where there was no story.
It is clear to me that the Liu Xiang was made to seem unsporting and a bad loser by piece of inventive editing deliberately to enhance a story. No wonder the BBC was not keen to publicize the attempts by Hezbollah to enhance their stories with photoshop editing last year. They clearly feel vulnerable on these techniques.
It is a sad day when the BBC's reputation for fearlessly telling the truth has been so besmirched of late by cheap tricks by post-modernist twerps who have no regard for right and wrong.
"The bulletins showed Liu withdrawing from the race - he had an Achilles tendon problem - then appearing to kick a mat in frustration. But the footage of the athlete in the warm-up zone was filmed before he had entered the Bird's Nest stadium."
I italicized the 'inadvertently misled viewers' because this is a repeat of the error that led to Peter Fincham losing his job as BBC1 controller earlier in the year. On that occasion they showed a video clip of the Queen apparently flouncing out of a photographic appointment because of the photographer's apparent impertinence. Careful editing had created a story where there was no story.
It is clear to me that the Liu Xiang was made to seem unsporting and a bad loser by piece of inventive editing deliberately to enhance a story. No wonder the BBC was not keen to publicize the attempts by Hezbollah to enhance their stories with photoshop editing last year. They clearly feel vulnerable on these techniques.
It is a sad day when the BBC's reputation for fearlessly telling the truth has been so besmirched of late by cheap tricks by post-modernist twerps who have no regard for right and wrong.
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