I’m sure that all ten do contribute which shows just what sort of a task it will be to dig ourselves out of the hole we have created. Just to make matters worse most people will have a few factors the BBC missed, starting with their so-called popular dramas. Switching on for the Ten O’Clock News we usually catch the tail-end of scenes of gratuitous depravity. One of the worst was repeated in the same slot: a black boy had been murdered by a gang; the camera zoomed in on his corpse – the face had been destroyed. Last week, the image of a woman, bound and gagged in a car which was tipped into a crusher. When the jaws had closed, the camera zoomed onto her eye still blinking in the middle of this impacted steel cube. This goes on every night and the BBC programme are probably not the worst. What possible justification could there be for inventing such voyeuristic squalor and terror? And, to rerun the ancient argument, if it doesn’t coarsen and brutalize people why run it at all? What sort of effect do they think it has on people? Are you supposed to watch thinking: that’s fun? Really good entertainment? Let’s have another beer?
The BBC website has usefully listed 10 factors contributing to the riots, with comments by criminologists: Welfare dependence; Social exclusion; Lack of fathers; Spending cuts; Weak policing; Racism; Gangsta rap and culture; Consumerism; Opportunism; Technology and social networking. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14483149
I’m sure that all ten do contribute which shows just what sort of a task it will be to dig ourselves out of the hole we have created. Just to make matters worse most people will have a few factors the BBC missed, starting with their so-called popular dramas. Switching on for the Ten O’Clock News we usually catch the tail-end of scenes of gratuitous depravity. One of the worst was repeated in the same slot: a black boy had been murdered by a gang; the camera zoomed in on his corpse – the face had been destroyed. Last week, the image of a woman, bound and gagged in a car which was tipped into a crusher. When the jaws had closed, the camera zoomed onto her eye still blinking in the middle of this impacted steel cube. This goes on every night and the BBC programme are probably not the worst. What possible justification could there be for inventing such voyeuristic squalor and terror? And, to rerun the ancient argument, if it doesn’t coarsen and brutalize people why run it at all? What sort of effect do they think it has on people? Are you supposed to watch thinking: that’s fun? Really good entertainment? Let’s have another beer? |
AuthorI'm a writer whose interests include the biological revolution happening now, the relationship between art and science, jazz, and the state of the planet Archives
March 2016
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