This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/20/terrorists-win-telly-dads-isis-chris-morris-four-lions
The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
Previous version
1
Next version
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| Don’t let the terrorists win telly – we need to make Dad’s Isis | Don’t let the terrorists win telly – we need to make Dad’s Isis |
| (34 minutes later) | |
| I don’t want to come over all Monkey Tennis, if I may deploy what has become the cultural shorthand for doomed telly brainstorming after that Alan Partridge scene in which the presenter pitches increasingly desperate show formats to a BBC executive. But listen. Idea for a programme. Dad’s Isis – a comedy about the ageing British jihadists too old to travel overseas to the training camps. Set in Portsmouth and Cheltenham, where GCHQ’s phone surveillance programme is now officially called Don’t Tell Him, Pike. No? OK, John But Not Forgotten: a fish-out-of-water drama set in an alternative afterlife to the one “Jihadi John” was expecting. Gene Wilder plays God. Still no? All right: Real Housewives of Raqqa? | |
| Related: Channel 4 develops Peter Kosminsky drama on Islamic State | Related: Channel 4 develops Peter Kosminsky drama on Islamic State |
| “The terrorists have won” is a phrase used almost exclusively sarcastically or in 300ft airport security lines. But for all its adventures in self-parody, nothing better has come along to replace it as a warning against losing some of the very freedoms that matter. In the wake of the Paris attacks there is still no better way of implying a sort of self-censorship, a silent surrender, a not going about one’s business. At times like this – and there will be more such times, of that most people are in agreement – anyone who cares about culture cares how culture responds. | “The terrorists have won” is a phrase used almost exclusively sarcastically or in 300ft airport security lines. But for all its adventures in self-parody, nothing better has come along to replace it as a warning against losing some of the very freedoms that matter. In the wake of the Paris attacks there is still no better way of implying a sort of self-censorship, a silent surrender, a not going about one’s business. At times like this – and there will be more such times, of that most people are in agreement – anyone who cares about culture cares how culture responds. |
| And, in the case of television, hopes it will respond at all. The further we get into what many on left and right call The Defining Struggle of Our Times, the more glaring the lack of any remotely risky comic or dramatic engagement with it in the mass medium of TV begins to look. Given that other supposed axiom – that we are living in a true golden age of television – you’d think the medium might have stepped up a little more. But where are the edgy comedies, the unpredictable dramas – where, really, are even the permitted jokes about such things? | And, in the case of television, hopes it will respond at all. The further we get into what many on left and right call The Defining Struggle of Our Times, the more glaring the lack of any remotely risky comic or dramatic engagement with it in the mass medium of TV begins to look. Given that other supposed axiom – that we are living in a true golden age of television – you’d think the medium might have stepped up a little more. But where are the edgy comedies, the unpredictable dramas – where, really, are even the permitted jokes about such things? |
| It would be a terrible shame if the terrorists ended up winning in television. Yet you have to think they already hold key territory. Certainly, there are exceptions. The brilliant John Oliver opened his HBO show last weekend with a brief and hilarious rant at Isis that morphed into a moving tribute to Paris. But when Oliver said his piece, he deliberately foregrounded it as “a moment of premium cable profanity”. | It would be a terrible shame if the terrorists ended up winning in television. Yet you have to think they already hold key territory. Certainly, there are exceptions. The brilliant John Oliver opened his HBO show last weekend with a brief and hilarious rant at Isis that morphed into a moving tribute to Paris. But when Oliver said his piece, he deliberately foregrounded it as “a moment of premium cable profanity”. |
| The stock-in-trade of the networks is rather more in the mould of 24. Like a Hollywood hardwired to greenlight American Snipers and Zero Dark Thirties, and to make Benghazi into A Michael Bay Film, the US networks practise a monotonous conservatism that is market-driven. | The stock-in-trade of the networks is rather more in the mould of 24. Like a Hollywood hardwired to greenlight American Snipers and Zero Dark Thirties, and to make Benghazi into A Michael Bay Film, the US networks practise a monotonous conservatism that is market-driven. |
| One expects that. In the case of British broadcasters, however, the elephant in the room grows larger all the time. The movie Four Lions, Chris Morris’s jihadist satire, is still much the cleverest English-language thing to make it to any sort of screen on the subject. As the Atlantic observed last year, a full four years after its release, “the best film about Islamic terrorists is a comedy”. And why wouldn’t it be? It was brave, risky, dangerous, bonkers at the time it was announced – and it paid off. It also has no remotely notable heirs. | |
| You can’t just not commission writing about this stuff because convention demands it. Well, you can, but you look like idiots. Perhaps there is a lesson here from the annals of newspaper history, if a less obviously high-stakes one. Back in the 1960s under the editorship of Sir William Haley, the Times mostly kept what we now think of as “the 1960s” out of the paper. Beatlemania, the revolution in popular culture and the new order it presaged – all were regarded as deeply infra dig and not matters with which the publication should engage. | You can’t just not commission writing about this stuff because convention demands it. Well, you can, but you look like idiots. Perhaps there is a lesson here from the annals of newspaper history, if a less obviously high-stakes one. Back in the 1960s under the editorship of Sir William Haley, the Times mostly kept what we now think of as “the 1960s” out of the paper. Beatlemania, the revolution in popular culture and the new order it presaged – all were regarded as deeply infra dig and not matters with which the publication should engage. |
| Even the official history of the Times addresses the period somewhat witheringly. “Though the Beatles’ music was discussed by the paper’s music critic,” it notes, “and reference made to the ‘chains of pan-diatonic clusters’ discernible in it, Beatlemania and all that it represented was beneath Haley’s notice.” | Even the official history of the Times addresses the period somewhat witheringly. “Though the Beatles’ music was discussed by the paper’s music critic,” it notes, “and reference made to the ‘chains of pan-diatonic clusters’ discernible in it, Beatlemania and all that it represented was beneath Haley’s notice.” |
| Related: Film review: Four Lions | Related: Film review: Four Lions |
| More fool him. They missed the explosion of the age. But in 1967, Haley’s successor, William Rees-Mogg, took a vast leap with his leader entitled “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”, which criticised the prison sentences handed down to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for drug offences. It was a sensational thing for a Times editor to do back then – and has become one of the most famous newspaper leaders ever. (Yeah, tough field.) Jagger credits it with saving his career. | More fool him. They missed the explosion of the age. But in 1967, Haley’s successor, William Rees-Mogg, took a vast leap with his leader entitled “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”, which criticised the prison sentences handed down to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for drug offences. It was a sensational thing for a Times editor to do back then – and has become one of the most famous newspaper leaders ever. (Yeah, tough field.) Jagger credits it with saving his career. |
| As indicated, the risks were rather lower than they are for those who shape the creative discourse today and appear mainly averse to tackling the reality of extremism. Even Mystic Mogg didn’t predict his life might be in danger, a fear that clearly permeates all aspects of culture at present. Soft targets, and all that. It’s presumably comparatively easy to bump off a telly executive (I’ve never tried, but obviously we’ve all thought about it while watching the Jeremy Kyle show). Many writers confess to self-censorship on Islamism, and the BBC – under perma-siege at the best of times – perhaps fears further battles. | As indicated, the risks were rather lower than they are for those who shape the creative discourse today and appear mainly averse to tackling the reality of extremism. Even Mystic Mogg didn’t predict his life might be in danger, a fear that clearly permeates all aspects of culture at present. Soft targets, and all that. It’s presumably comparatively easy to bump off a telly executive (I’ve never tried, but obviously we’ve all thought about it while watching the Jeremy Kyle show). Many writers confess to self-censorship on Islamism, and the BBC – under perma-siege at the best of times – perhaps fears further battles. |
| Yet engaging with The Defining Struggle of Our Times™ is one that can’t be avoided, or left to news and factual programming. Last year’s news that Channel 4 were developing a Peter Kosminsky drama about British jihadists looked encouraging. But never mind one, there should be many and varied shows in development about it on both sides of the Atlantic, offering all sorts of creative takes. Otherwise the terrorists have won telly. I love Strictly, but it’s like the grandmother says in Strictly Ballroom: a life lived in fear is a life half lived. |
Previous version
1
Next version