One of television’s creation myths is that it was responsible for bringing the
Vietnam war to an end. In truth, bringing the war to an end wasn’t what
television was trying to do. It was trying to sell Chevrolets and Cheerios,
and it didn’t really know it had brought the war to an end when the last
marines were whisked off the embassy roof. The surprising fact that
television had lost the war for America didn’t really emerge until the
military decided the ubiquitous box was culpable. It is in the nature of
defeated armies to search for scapegoats, and it’s easier to blame those
closest to you, the weedy folk back home. For the American military it was
down to hippies, liberals and TV. Television was the fifth column, the
collaborator and traitor. Then a funny thing happened. Losing the war became
the right thing to do, the smart thing, the decent thing. Defeat was the new
victory, and television woke up to find it was not treacherous but heroic,
and it has clung to that version of heroic reportage ever since.
The Vietnam myth has done a disastrous disservice to TV news, not only to what
it thinks of itself, but to what we think of it and, in particular, to what
we get to see. Television didn’t win the war or lose it. The North
Vietnamese won it, and the marines lost it. What is dangerous is the
concomitant assumption that television was right to bring the war to an end,
that it did a good thing, that TV should go round the world stopping wars.
Well, it isn’t the job of the news to declare war or peace. News doesn’t
make the world better, it simply offers the information of what the world is
doing, so that other people have the facts they need to change their world
the best way they can. Ever since Vietnam, armies have collared and nannied
reporters for the good of the war, and journalists have colluded for the
sake of access, because they, too, believe they’re not merely observers but
players. They have a role in the conflict. What we’ve ended up with is the
truly shameful reporting of Iraq and Afghanistan, almost all of which has
been little more than Ministry of Defence press releases, first-person
editorialising and excitable propaganda. It is repetitive, blind, clichéd
and grateful. The sort of reporting Yeats called “all blood, dirt and sucked sugar
stick”.
The worst censorship is not imposed by the military, but by broadcasting
itself, which has grown squeamish about showing the consequences of war. How
often does Jon Snow read off the Autocue, “Some scenes may shock sensitive
viewers”, but they don’t? They are less shocking than most computer games.
It’s not the job of news to edit for the supposed sensibilities of matrons
and school children. We’re being shown wars without blood, where the only
bodies on view belong to the anonymous “them”, the enemy, which is all
wrong, and far more serious than arguing about who’s going to get a bung
from the licence fee or whether the BBC is too good for the competition.
And it made Wounded one of the most important and best documentaries
about the war in Afghanistan, though the conflict was barely mentioned. It
began with a galvanising and heart-clutching piece of verité footage
from the fixed camera of an army photographer running to help an Irish
soldier who’d stepped on a mine, lost both legs and been blinded. The film
followed him and a paratrooper who had been left with a single limb through
their recovery and rehabilitation. The path of the despair, the courage and
the pity were almost too heartbreaking to watch, but also too compelling and
involving to look away from. One of the men wanted to be able to walk to
receive his medal, the other wanted to get home to Belfast for a milky
glimpse of his unborn son.
The film was perfectly tailored, made without flash or imposed drama. It was
unblinking, without being intrusive. It allowed the story to unfold at its
own pace without hurrying it or mawkishly lingering. It was an exemplary
piece of quality TV, an impeccable documentary. It made no judgment about
the war or the rights and wrongs of putting these young men in harm’s way,
but it gave the audience a series of facts that might help us come to an
informed decision about the value of these lives weighed against the value
of the war’s objectives.
Is there anything in the whole wide world as joyously risible as a Frenchman
chewing on an abstract concept? The French don't have a sense of humour,
certainly not about themselves. What they have in place of laughter is
philosophy. Design for Life is the latest attempt to find some corner
of human existence to turn into a reality show. It’s an Apprentice-style
competition about designing things. Design is the most nebulous and insecure
of disciplines, caught between art and craft. It is practised by people who
can’t draw well enough to be artists, or make things well enough to be
craftsmen. They are architects for cruet sets, and they talk a lot.
The Froggie Alan Sugar of the teapot was M Philippe Starck. Starck is
glorious, one of the most pretentious and grandiloquently pompous men ever
to have been blessed with a Peter Sellers accent. He began by pointing out
that Britain was a design black hole and that the last person on earth who
could fluff a pillow with panache was Terence Conran, but that la belle
France was still, as he put it, “a bubbling bucket of creativity”. This, in
a very French way, is precisely the opposite of the truth. (Incidentally,
the French military academy still teaches Waterloo as being a qualified
victory for Napoleon.) French designers have been creating a striking
gobbledegook of ersatz tricks and sleights of hand ever since they stopped
making pretty Citroëns; and British design is probably the most successful
in the world in everything from computers to cars to shoes and armchairs.
As a reality show, Design for Life is a rubber fork, a soluble condom, a lead
bath duck. The wannabe designers are all helplessly dire without being
amusing. The real joy is watching Starck himself, apparently being played by
the ghost of Peter Ustinov. He talks gold-plated baroque bollocks with
casters on. Everything we love to mock in our neighbours is radiantly
exhibited in him. He has concepts like dogs have fleas: each one makes you
scratch your head. A design concept is half an idea on half a bit of paper
with half an hour’s explanation. The only thing he has no concept of is how
ridiculous he is: the Norman Wisdom of design. He makes high-concept things
that pratfall. His success is made up of filling the wedding lists of
footballers from Cheshire. The famous lemon-squeezer not only squeezed a
lemon like a drunk chav peeing standing up, it also drilled three holes in
your tablecloth.
I sense that television is falling out of love with policemen. The Bill is the
only regular cop show, and that’s more soap opera with handcuffs than
whodunit. It’s all about forensics now, and this is probably because viewers
don’t like policemen as much as they used to, though we’re all still quite
fond of crime. There are, though, a few real-life cop shows, generally
revolving around car chases and helicopter cameras. Last week Five started a
police reality show that might well have legs. Legs and breasts and Max
Mosley. It’s Vice Squad. The camera follows round the mucky-mag
boys to see what the capital keeps in its knickers.
When I worked in a pornographic bookshop in the 1970s, the vice squad was
benter than Lagos traffic cops. We called them Ryman because of all their
brown envelopes. They wouldn’t have let a camera or a microphone within a
44DD peekaboo bra of them. But now they’re simply caring, if gruff, social
workers checking on the ages of prostitutes and giving teenage runaways a
lift home. I particularly enjoyed them commending the running of the
Clonezone, a gay sex shop with leather chaps and eye-watering dildos. “It’s
very well run,” said the policeman. “All the staff had name badges.” What
spoilt this show was, ironically, its coyness. Everyone got their faces
smudged out with a big pink blob. This was a show that was liberal on
watersports DVDs and 30-quid blow jobs and vibrating Philippe Starck
lemon-squeezers, but covered up faces in a way that made them look like
censored genitalia.
There’s a new American movie spin-off drama, 10 Things I Hate About
You. Only 10? I can think of dozens and dozens of things I hate about
this. Everyone in it, everyone who made it, and everyone who might watch it
with a scintilla of pleasure.
Wounded (BBC1, Wed)
Design for Life (BBC2, Mon)
Vice Squad (Five, Thu)
10 Things I Hate About You (Fiver, Wed)
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