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| Top Gear, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways | Top Gear, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways |
| (7 months later) | |
| I am about as likely to watch Top Gear as I am to weave my bikini line into an ornamental dreamcatcher. So while I normally greet the news that another woman has been allowed to crawl into television’s mainstream schedule with cheer, yesterday’s announcement that Top Gear has finally added Sabine Schmitz to its presenting line-up left me colder than a vanadium crankshaft on a frozen February morning. Not because I think diversity on television isn’t a good idea – it’s the absolute minimum we should expect from any institution – but because I think Top Gear is fetid slurry. | I am about as likely to watch Top Gear as I am to weave my bikini line into an ornamental dreamcatcher. So while I normally greet the news that another woman has been allowed to crawl into television’s mainstream schedule with cheer, yesterday’s announcement that Top Gear has finally added Sabine Schmitz to its presenting line-up left me colder than a vanadium crankshaft on a frozen February morning. Not because I think diversity on television isn’t a good idea – it’s the absolute minimum we should expect from any institution – but because I think Top Gear is fetid slurry. |
| Top Gear fetishises the totally unnecessary consumption of fossil fuels in the name of sport, entertainment and feeling better about your premature ejaculation disorder; it normalises dangerously fast driving; it contributes to the hunger for more and more cars that we neither need nor can sustain; it treats the sheer act of moving a machine as if it’s a display of heroic bravery and skill; and it paid Jeremy Clarkson’s salary for over 25 years. In this context, disliking Top Gear because it doesn’t include enough women is a bit like hating Trident because those submarines simply don’t have enough room for your jumpers – it rather misses the point. | Top Gear fetishises the totally unnecessary consumption of fossil fuels in the name of sport, entertainment and feeling better about your premature ejaculation disorder; it normalises dangerously fast driving; it contributes to the hunger for more and more cars that we neither need nor can sustain; it treats the sheer act of moving a machine as if it’s a display of heroic bravery and skill; and it paid Jeremy Clarkson’s salary for over 25 years. In this context, disliking Top Gear because it doesn’t include enough women is a bit like hating Trident because those submarines simply don’t have enough room for your jumpers – it rather misses the point. |
| I am not, as is probably fairly clear by now, a huge fan of cars. Mainly because, as we read last week, cars are literally killing us. Their fumes are one of the most significant contributors to air pollution, which causes people to die of heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer. Air pollution is a factor in at least 30,000 deaths each year in the UK as well as soaring rates of asthma and other lung diseases. Two-thirds of petrol cars break the carbon monoxide limit, 10% break the nitrogen oxide limit, while 95% of diesel cars emit more nitrogen oxides than is legally allowed. Which is before we even get into the number of people who die in road accidents. Road-building, to make room for the hundreds of thousands of people who lock themselves up in a heated petrol box in order to grunt their way to work every day, is destroying the British countryside; as Karl Jilg’s famous illustration, commissioned by the Swedish Road Administration, shows, cars eat up public space like Jabba the Hutt, leaving the rest of us clinging to our thin strips of tarmac like flies on a wire; and the need for oil, from which our petrol and diesel is sourced, is fuelling some of the world’s most bitter conflicts, dangerous regimes and corrupt industries. | I am not, as is probably fairly clear by now, a huge fan of cars. Mainly because, as we read last week, cars are literally killing us. Their fumes are one of the most significant contributors to air pollution, which causes people to die of heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer. Air pollution is a factor in at least 30,000 deaths each year in the UK as well as soaring rates of asthma and other lung diseases. Two-thirds of petrol cars break the carbon monoxide limit, 10% break the nitrogen oxide limit, while 95% of diesel cars emit more nitrogen oxides than is legally allowed. Which is before we even get into the number of people who die in road accidents. Road-building, to make room for the hundreds of thousands of people who lock themselves up in a heated petrol box in order to grunt their way to work every day, is destroying the British countryside; as Karl Jilg’s famous illustration, commissioned by the Swedish Road Administration, shows, cars eat up public space like Jabba the Hutt, leaving the rest of us clinging to our thin strips of tarmac like flies on a wire; and the need for oil, from which our petrol and diesel is sourced, is fuelling some of the world’s most bitter conflicts, dangerous regimes and corrupt industries. |
| But back to the faded, bootcut denim midlife moment that is modern Top Gear. “We really do have a bit of everything for everyone,” said Chris Evans, in his line-up announcement yesterday. Oh, mate, literally everyone. I mean, there’s silver-chinned millionaire and founder of the Jordan Grand Prix, Eddie Jordan; there’s the former flame-haired millionaire and founder of Ginger Productions, Chris Evans; there’s white-toothed millionaire and founder of the Friends character Joey, Matt LeBlanc; there’s the female-faced millionaire and founder of the BMW “ring taxi”, Sabine Schmitz; there’s the stubble-headed journalist and possible millionaire Chris Harris; and there’s a man called Rory Reid, who’s variously described as a “member of the public” and a future millionaire. I mean, come on, lads, that’s a bit of everything for everyone, isn’t it? | But back to the faded, bootcut denim midlife moment that is modern Top Gear. “We really do have a bit of everything for everyone,” said Chris Evans, in his line-up announcement yesterday. Oh, mate, literally everyone. I mean, there’s silver-chinned millionaire and founder of the Jordan Grand Prix, Eddie Jordan; there’s the former flame-haired millionaire and founder of Ginger Productions, Chris Evans; there’s white-toothed millionaire and founder of the Friends character Joey, Matt LeBlanc; there’s the female-faced millionaire and founder of the BMW “ring taxi”, Sabine Schmitz; there’s the stubble-headed journalist and possible millionaire Chris Harris; and there’s a man called Rory Reid, who’s variously described as a “member of the public” and a future millionaire. I mean, come on, lads, that’s a bit of everything for everyone, isn’t it? |
| In some ways, of course, it is something that Schmitz will be presenting Top Gear. At least Schmitz might actually know something about these guff-chugging misery wagons. But oh how I wish women on television were more present when discussing health, politics, international relations, history and culture from the equity of female experience. Not just joining a franchise made famous for making bad jokes about – among other things – sexually transmitted infections, “poor people”, a soft clutch, homosexuality, Germans, “unprotected sex with an Ethiopian transvestite”, domestic violence, murdering sex workers, and women drivers. | In some ways, of course, it is something that Schmitz will be presenting Top Gear. At least Schmitz might actually know something about these guff-chugging misery wagons. But oh how I wish women on television were more present when discussing health, politics, international relations, history and culture from the equity of female experience. Not just joining a franchise made famous for making bad jokes about – among other things – sexually transmitted infections, “poor people”, a soft clutch, homosexuality, Germans, “unprotected sex with an Ethiopian transvestite”, domestic violence, murdering sex workers, and women drivers. |
| Of course, I love the BBC like a parent. But the problem with Top Gear isn’t simply the lack of diversity of its presenting line-up, or its wrinkle-kneed wardrobe. It’s not its heritage brand of lazy bigotry and short-term greed, its predilection for petrol-powered laziness dressed up as machismo, its weaker-than-Liptons long-running in-jokes, its “I Am the Stig” USB memory sticks or its endless, jaw-slackening rota of reruns. It’s all of it. It’s the cars, motor industry and mentality on which it’s built. It’s the whole petrol-guzzling, self-interested, short-term, pleasure-seeking, morally indifferent, climate-changing, nature-breaking package. And it’ll take more than a new line-up to change that. | Of course, I love the BBC like a parent. But the problem with Top Gear isn’t simply the lack of diversity of its presenting line-up, or its wrinkle-kneed wardrobe. It’s not its heritage brand of lazy bigotry and short-term greed, its predilection for petrol-powered laziness dressed up as machismo, its weaker-than-Liptons long-running in-jokes, its “I Am the Stig” USB memory sticks or its endless, jaw-slackening rota of reruns. It’s all of it. It’s the cars, motor industry and mentality on which it’s built. It’s the whole petrol-guzzling, self-interested, short-term, pleasure-seeking, morally indifferent, climate-changing, nature-breaking package. And it’ll take more than a new line-up to change that. |