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The BBC arts coverage goes back to the future The BBC arts coverage goes back to the future
(12 days later)
What is Civilisation? Within the last week, the question must have been asked more often than at any time in human history, or certainly by people still unborn 45 years ago, when the great arts programme went out. What is Civilisation? Why are people still going on about it? And why in God's name is the BBC's Lord Hall of Birkenhead so keen to bring it back ?What is Civilisation? Within the last week, the question must have been asked more often than at any time in human history, or certainly by people still unborn 45 years ago, when the great arts programme went out. What is Civilisation? Why are people still going on about it? And why in God's name is the BBC's Lord Hall of Birkenhead so keen to bring it back ?
As so often, YouTube, undreamt of in 1969 when Kenneth Clark's last and strikingly pessimistic programme was broadcast, provides some clues to the world view that Hall finds so compelling. Confessing himself, after his protracted tour of Europe's glories, a "stick in the mud", Clark adds in his book of the series: "One must concede that the future of civilisation does not look very bright." One must concede? The line is characteristic of a "personal view" that, the formidably pained Clark does not trouble to conceal, should rightly be shared by everyone who had watched his 13 beautifully illustrated lectures. "The trouble is," he laments – imagine Prince Charles with a brain – "that there is still no centre."As so often, YouTube, undreamt of in 1969 when Kenneth Clark's last and strikingly pessimistic programme was broadcast, provides some clues to the world view that Hall finds so compelling. Confessing himself, after his protracted tour of Europe's glories, a "stick in the mud", Clark adds in his book of the series: "One must concede that the future of civilisation does not look very bright." One must concede? The line is characteristic of a "personal view" that, the formidably pained Clark does not trouble to conceal, should rightly be shared by everyone who had watched his 13 beautifully illustrated lectures. "The trouble is," he laments – imagine Prince Charles with a brain – "that there is still no centre."
This follows a languid recitation from Yeats ("Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/ The blood-dimmed tide is loosed" etc) delivered in an accent that would have sounded deliriously posh even in 1969, the year that western civilisation also gave us Monty Python, The Clangers and Up Pompeii!. This final, baleful scene of Civilisation was filmed in Clark's private treasure house, Saltwood Castle, around the same time that the Paris événements were generating precisely the opposite mood in millions of young people. In fact, some have wondered if their challenges to authority were, along with modern art, what made Lord Clark feel so glum. "One may be optimistic, but one can't be exactly joyful at the prospect before us," our guide concludes, before following the long withdrawing roar out of the room. It is this series that Lord Hall, the director general of the BBC, now proposes – as part of his newly advertised commitment to put the arts "at the very heart of what we do" – to reinvent. The search is duly on for a presenter who can succeed where so many previous contenders for Lord Clark's mantle have not and combine an idiosyncratically authoritative approach, designed to teach and inspire the masses, with all the required humility about other cultures that never troubled the confident original.This follows a languid recitation from Yeats ("Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/ The blood-dimmed tide is loosed" etc) delivered in an accent that would have sounded deliriously posh even in 1969, the year that western civilisation also gave us Monty Python, The Clangers and Up Pompeii!. This final, baleful scene of Civilisation was filmed in Clark's private treasure house, Saltwood Castle, around the same time that the Paris événements were generating precisely the opposite mood in millions of young people. In fact, some have wondered if their challenges to authority were, along with modern art, what made Lord Clark feel so glum. "One may be optimistic, but one can't be exactly joyful at the prospect before us," our guide concludes, before following the long withdrawing roar out of the room. It is this series that Lord Hall, the director general of the BBC, now proposes – as part of his newly advertised commitment to put the arts "at the very heart of what we do" – to reinvent. The search is duly on for a presenter who can succeed where so many previous contenders for Lord Clark's mantle have not and combine an idiosyncratically authoritative approach, designed to teach and inspire the masses, with all the required humility about other cultures that never troubled the confident original.
"One must admit that the Norsemen produced a culture," Clark says at one point. "But was it civilisation?" Basically, if Clark didn't like it, you could be pretty sure it wasn't. Current rhapsodies over the British Museum's Vikings exhibition are not the only indication of the difficulties facing his successor, obliged to lavish on ships and horrid old swords just as much affection as on the Sistine Chapel. One must concede, moreover, that diluted versions of even the finest old programmes are unlikely to generate the same excitement as an original idea, even less so in those sections of the audience to whom the name of Lord Clark as he became, will mean about as much as the late Nyree Dawn Porter's. Of course, the 16-24 audience has been pretty much discarded by Hall, along with BBC 3, but fortysomethings were unborn, and regrettably, even some of us who lived through what Clark might have called a "burst of civilisation" – the BBC of 1969 – may remember little beyond the moon landings, an incontinent elephant on Blue Peter and The Clangers (which are also to form a part of the coming renaissance)."One must admit that the Norsemen produced a culture," Clark says at one point. "But was it civilisation?" Basically, if Clark didn't like it, you could be pretty sure it wasn't. Current rhapsodies over the British Museum's Vikings exhibition are not the only indication of the difficulties facing his successor, obliged to lavish on ships and horrid old swords just as much affection as on the Sistine Chapel. One must concede, moreover, that diluted versions of even the finest old programmes are unlikely to generate the same excitement as an original idea, even less so in those sections of the audience to whom the name of Lord Clark as he became, will mean about as much as the late Nyree Dawn Porter's. Of course, the 16-24 audience has been pretty much discarded by Hall, along with BBC 3, but fortysomethings were unborn, and regrettably, even some of us who lived through what Clark might have called a "burst of civilisation" – the BBC of 1969 – may remember little beyond the moon landings, an incontinent elephant on Blue Peter and The Clangers (which are also to form a part of the coming renaissance).
If Hall, on the other hand, remembers the programme as clearly as he says, then his determination to exhume the definitively de haut en bas Civilisation – as anything but a historical curiosity – is as mystifying as all the other parts of his pre-modern artistic project: its plethora of knights and grandees, love affair with institutions and the people who run them, conviction that more Shakespeare is up there with more Yentob as a token of creative leadership.If Hall, on the other hand, remembers the programme as clearly as he says, then his determination to exhume the definitively de haut en bas Civilisation – as anything but a historical curiosity – is as mystifying as all the other parts of his pre-modern artistic project: its plethora of knights and grandees, love affair with institutions and the people who run them, conviction that more Shakespeare is up there with more Yentob as a token of creative leadership.
Who was it meant to impress, other than the heads of collaborating institutions? Probably not many young adults who might have anticipated some compensation for the symbolic eviction that was, digital option or not, closing down BBC3, with no replacement. Nor has it pleased people whose cultural interests lie, for reasons having to do with geography and taste as well as age and money, far from Glyndebourne and the subsidised but stratospherically inaccessible Royal Opera House, where Lord Hall's tremendous success in filling seats with bankers' bums made him, to that man of the people, Lord Patten, the obviously agreeable choice for DG. The cultural result, as announced, is a victory for traditional connoisseurship and establishment patronage that might, if only he had lived to see it, have allayed all Lord Clark's nightmares about the blood-dimmed tide. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world? Not in the Opera House's crush bar it ain't.Who was it meant to impress, other than the heads of collaborating institutions? Probably not many young adults who might have anticipated some compensation for the symbolic eviction that was, digital option or not, closing down BBC3, with no replacement. Nor has it pleased people whose cultural interests lie, for reasons having to do with geography and taste as well as age and money, far from Glyndebourne and the subsidised but stratospherically inaccessible Royal Opera House, where Lord Hall's tremendous success in filling seats with bankers' bums made him, to that man of the people, Lord Patten, the obviously agreeable choice for DG. The cultural result, as announced, is a victory for traditional connoisseurship and establishment patronage that might, if only he had lived to see it, have allayed all Lord Clark's nightmares about the blood-dimmed tide. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world? Not in the Opera House's crush bar it ain't.
On a humbler level, it's flattering to know, being over 50, middle class and a regular customer at some of his more accessible institutions, that my interests are cherished by the BBC, which is already a generous supplier of In Our Time, of Private Passions, of John Hurt reading Dante. Yet it is precisely that experience in London auditoriums, where audience composition often mirrors the racial mix prevailing when Prince Albert was in his cultural pomp, that underlines the BBC's duty to innovate or, if not, to quit pretending that scheduling a brilliantly cast play from the Globe or broadcasting those great talks it highlighted on the programme from Hay is evidence of its own soaring artistic ambition. (It's just been incredibly slow in getting round to it.)On a humbler level, it's flattering to know, being over 50, middle class and a regular customer at some of his more accessible institutions, that my interests are cherished by the BBC, which is already a generous supplier of In Our Time, of Private Passions, of John Hurt reading Dante. Yet it is precisely that experience in London auditoriums, where audience composition often mirrors the racial mix prevailing when Prince Albert was in his cultural pomp, that underlines the BBC's duty to innovate or, if not, to quit pretending that scheduling a brilliantly cast play from the Globe or broadcasting those great talks it highlighted on the programme from Hay is evidence of its own soaring artistic ambition. (It's just been incredibly slow in getting round to it.)
And it need hardly be added that the majority of the BBC's middle-class, culture-consuming audience probably only needs placating with some decent books programmes, preferably not presented by a knight, lord or other contemporary of Noggin the Nog (and the end of the backwards-music quizzes on Radio 3) to remain docile and committed licence payers, non-prison option regardless.And it need hardly be added that the majority of the BBC's middle-class, culture-consuming audience probably only needs placating with some decent books programmes, preferably not presented by a knight, lord or other contemporary of Noggin the Nog (and the end of the backwards-music quizzes on Radio 3) to remain docile and committed licence payers, non-prison option regardless.
If Lord Hall's all-dynamic, super-cultivated BBC renaissance with added knighthoods has reminded many theatre-enthusiasts of nothing so much as the Old Vic's recent older-person production of As You Like It ("cruel and unusual punishment"), it seems unlikely to have convinced 16- to 24-year-olds that, however the whole BBC 3 thing might look, the corporation desperately wants them to stick around. In fact, supposing the alienation of this allegedly feckless demographic is intentional, you have to admire the elegant stratagem of boasting about a fun "Knight at the Barbican" and crazy "Museums at Night" as opposed to, say, using one of those mosquito devices that only cause agony in people under 26. If Lord Hall's all-dynamic, super-cultivated BBC renaissance with added knighthoods has reminded many theatre-enthusiasts of nothing so much as the Old Vic's recent older-person production of Much Ado About Nothing ("cruel and unusual punishment"), it seems unlikely to have convinced 16- to 24-year-olds that, however the whole BBC 3 thing might look, the corporation desperately wants them to stick around. In fact, supposing the alienation of this allegedly feckless demographic is intentional, you have to admire the elegant stratagem of boasting about a fun "Knight at the Barbican" and crazy "Museums at Night" as opposed to, say, using one of those mosquito devices that only cause agony in people under 26.
If, on the other hand, the current management of the BBC genuinely hoped to woo future licence payers with these and other treats from the age of The Clangers there must an argument for going to subscription straight away because, the way it's going, the blood-dimmed tide is most definitely loosed.If, on the other hand, the current management of the BBC genuinely hoped to woo future licence payers with these and other treats from the age of The Clangers there must an argument for going to subscription straight away because, the way it's going, the blood-dimmed tide is most definitely loosed.
• This article was amended on 9 April 2014. It originally referred incorrectly to an Old Vic production of Shakespeare's As you Like it. The play was Much Ado About Nothing.