I sincerely hope you have never seen the television programme My Super Sweet 16. It's on MTV and although it's an American show - how could it not be? - it now exists in a xeroxed British version, called My Super Sweet 16 UK . If you haven't stumbled upon it, please don't seek it out unless you have a strong stomach. (If you do find it, please ensure you are not wearing shoes, as you may feel the urge to kick the television set in.)
Here's how it goes: a spoiled brat approaching their 16th birthday is corralled by the programme-makers into throwing a party to beat all previous parties. Now, who actually pays for all this is unclear. Certainly, the parents seem well off. The "narrative" of the show, which is typically murky for a "reality" format, involves the parents being ordered around by said brat, as preparations escalate, a dance routine is rehearsed and the centre of their universe becomes ever more demanding and appalling. If the programme is to be believed, 15-year-olds in America are all rich beyond their wildest dreams and interested only in designer labels, price tags and being "popular", a quality that can be bought with the aforementioned designer labels. Now, fair enough, most of us are pretty shallow at 15, caught between childish urges and creeping hormonal discomfort, but then most of us don't have access to blank cheques from daddy and an overinflated sense of our own importance. The Super Sweet 16 bash - heavily formulaic, if you watch more than one episode and you mustn't - always involves a "theme", a "performer" (ie. someone famous appearing to mime to a record and thus make the birthday boy/girl more popular with their squealing contemporaries), that dance routine, and a tantrum, when something fails to go right. Clearly, if you are going to organise a massive party, you don't leave stuff to the last minute, but they always do, in order for the programme to introduce some jeopardy where there really is none. Omigod, the snow machine isn't big enough! The Bollywood dance routine won't fit on the stage! They can't book Kayne West! (They all seem to want to book Kanye West.)
It's trash telly, but it's also deeply frightening that there are kids out there this materialistic and hollow, and parents out there so unable to provide love they substitute it with money, in the process creating a monster. I'm afraid I've seen a number of these things now, mostly the UK ones, and if someone told me that the whole thing was set up and that the parents and kids were played by actors, I wouldn't be surprised. Charlie Brooker, whose Screenwipe shamefully brought the show to my attention, called it "an Al-Qaeda recruitment film," and I can't top that for accuracy. You stagger away from watching it with the cast-iron certainty that we are all going to hell.
Of course, it can be watched for morbid fun. Midway through, the party-thrower is helicoptered or chauffeured to a photogenic location, there to hand out the invites to a scrum of schoolfriends (and I use the word "friends" in the social networking sense). It is here that "reality" comes unmoored from reality. If there really are kids like this out there in the country I live in, I want them removed from the gene pool. This may sound harsh, but if these 15 year olds grow up thinking that wealth is everything, what are their eventual offspring going to grow up thinking? (A dimwit from Essex who conspired with her "friends" not to invite any "losers" or "ugly people" to her James Bond-themed party, to which a mercenary Akon turned up to mime his song, was given a bracelet that cost as much as a car.)
As ever, I blame the parents. I am reluctant to criticise parenting, not being one myself, but the cowed, unthinking, credit-card-swiping fools on this programme (all "new money") have misunderstood what parenting actually is.
Thoroughly enjoyed seeing Strictly Come Dancing through to the end this year (despite the inordinate amount of filler required to pad out the final to well over two hours - how many times does anyone need to see that montage of the finalists' previous dances and rehearsal-room tears?). It was only when they introduced last year's winner, Mark Ramprakash, who I have confirmed is a cricketer, that I realised I must not have watched it last year. This will be because I was doing my radio show on a Saturday, I expect. I definitely watched bits, if not all of the first three series, because I remember Natasha Kaplinsky and Claire Sweeney and the elegant Zoe Ball and Julian Clary being voted back in despite his lack of ballroom dancing ability, proving that the public vote with their hearts, not their heads.
This last aspect - the "human factor"" - is, one assumes, why the men always do so well (I think it was an all-male final last year): the granny vote! Well, this year's winner, Alesha Dixon, formerly of Mis-Teeq, was a deserving one. She was easily the best dancer of the run, and - so I learned over the weekend - not professionally trained, which I had assumed, her being a pop singer and all. Good on her. Matt Di Angelo should have been disqualified for looking like a scruffy bastard with that facial hair anyway.
The reason I mention the show, which I like for reasons unprofound, is that the final reached new levels of vacuity. Every contestant or friend/relative of contestant interviewed used the phrase "journey" to describe what had been some ballroom dance training. I've noticed this a lot in 2007. One can no longer have an experience; one must go on a "journey". Thus, Alesha Dixon did not perform an increasing number of different dances on telly over 12 weeks; she went on an incredible "journey." Equally, Matt Di Angelo, formely of EastEnders (although I've no idea who he played), did not perform an increasing number of different dances on telly over 12 weeks, only to be beaten on the night, he went on an amazing "journey". (Presumably, his "journey" wasn't as good as Alesha's, since it ended in defeat on national television, but it was a "journey" nonetheless - a bit like going on holiday, which is also a "journey" and finding out your hotel doesn't look like it did on the website.)
I think we can guess where this new obsession with "journeys" come from. The United States of America, perhaps? The world of therapy, perhaps? (I have absolutely nothing against therapy, by the way, and am in fact fascinated by human psychology, but when phrases like "journey" and "closure" seep into everyday language, I fear for the future efficacy of therapy itself. You're going to get patients turning up and talking about their "journey" as if they know what they're talking about.) It's been weird since the death of Princess Diana and the first flush of success in the country of Jerry Springer, to see a nation mutate from monosyllabic emotionally constipated introverts to one of externalising, emotionally incontinent extroverts, where a problem aired is a problem halved, and if a confession of infidelity or sexual malpractice isn't made on television, it hasn't been made at all. Who knew we British would get so good at talking about how we feel? In many ways, this is healthy. But we are in danger of going too far, and bestowing unimportant, mundane, easily-explained experiences with psychological and emotional significance that they don't merit.
Not everything we do is a "journey". I've just wrapped some Christmas presents. It wasn't a "journey". It was a task. I went to Waitrose yesterday: now that was a journey. But not a "journey". The year is coming to a close. It's been an experience with ups and downs in it, a few changes, a few new things, a few old things - but it's not necessary to analyse it as a whole and discover what kind of "journey" it's been.
Well, I'm glad I got that off my chest. I needed closure on it.
Let's just run through some of the best things of 2007, lest this potentially oppressive and wrongheaded time of year get us down. I've done singles and albums, but these are a few of the cultural and social equivalents of the life-affirming pied wagtail:
Books Rumsfeld: An American Disaster by Andrew Cockburn The Road by Cormac McCarthy - quite the most depressing novel I think I've ever read in my life, but compelling like no other Fiasco by Thomas E Ricks Al Qaeda by Jason Burke (came out in 2006 in hardback, but let's not quibble) - I had this in my bag when I was stopped and searched last week under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The police officer didn't see it. Bit Of A Blur by Alex James On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan - short but sweet The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein - actually I'm still in the process of reading this (it's my bedside read, which is often the slowest of my on-the-go books, as I tend to go to bed to go to sleep), but it's proving a powerful join-the-dots exercise Shepperton Babylon by Matthew Sweet The Damned Utd by David Peace - another oldie, but I'm catching up with this exciting British-born, Tokyo-based writer, and enjoying GB84 at the moment Imperial Life In The Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran - also halfway through, but considering how much other reading I've done on the Iraq war this year, it adds a refreshing perspective by focusing on one aspect of the fiasco Believe In The Sign by Mark Hodkinson - he sent me a copy of it, as he's a self-publisher, which is in itself admirable, and I get sent a lot of books on a nostalgia/memoir theme which aren't always worth reading, but this one, about supporting Rochdale in the 70s, is Tescopoly by Andrew Simms The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright Jamie At Home by Jamie Oliver - a cook book I've actually used
Films (because they come out on DVD so quickly now, some of these are already available on DVD, but if I start including DVDs we'll end up with last year's list of best films, and there will be no demarcation between one year and the next - and then where will we be?!) The Lives Of Others - a tie for Film Of 2007 with ... Control Tell No One Hot Fuzz The Bourne Ultimatum Letters From Iwo Jima Zodiac Sicko Michael Clayton 3:10 To Yuma Knocked Up This Is England Half Nelson
TV programmes Cranford, BBC1 - thought I'd throw something homegrown in at the top, before we turn into the 51st State of Televisual America The Mighty Boosh, BBC3 - haven't had time to write about the third series yet, but I think it may be their best; certainly their most cohesive and together, and the episode about Howard's birthday was almost Seinfeldian in the way the plot strands met up at the end Ghosts Of Abu Ghraib, C4 Comics Britannia, BBC4 Heroes, Sci-Fi, then BBC2 The Sopranos, E4, C4 - the final Season was elegiac, slow, confident and magnificent; also, not in any way predictable The Wire, FX - in my opinion, Season Four was as good as any that have gone before, right up there with Season Two Californication, Five - I note that this is not everybody's cup of tea and I don't watch it for the scenes of a sexual nature, it's Duchovny who carries it Entourage, ITV2 - can't believe I'm so late with this: loving Season Three, and now into Season One on DVD Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip The Riches, Virgin 1 - truly, an acquired taste, but one I've been more than prepared to acquire - unlike Dexter and 30 Rock and Ugly Betty, which failed to ring the appropriate bells and made Sky+ life a little easier to manage Britz, C4 - not perfect, but as good as way as any to prove that C4's still got it, drama-wise, in its 25th birthday year Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, C4 - can't watch The F Word, but this is Gordon doing something useful Monarchy, BBC1 - documentary series of the year Malcolm & Barbara, ITV1 - one-off documentary of the year; its images may never leave me (what a shame it was entangled in the "fakery" rows - a piece of publicity-chasing that should have been beneath everyone involved) Strictly Come Dancing, BBC1 - the crown prince of talent shows, it shouldn't have worked, but it does, chiefly because it's about ability and learning and self-improvement, and these are not bad things to find in a BBC programme at this difficult time. Unlike Big Brother, which I watched all the way through this year, witnessing some people ballroom dancing for coins and compliments does not make me feel dirty afterwards Saxondale, BBC2 - sitcom improves in second series: not an easy trick to pull off Jamie At Home, C4 [I'm bound to have forgotten a few TV shows, so chuck a few more into the pot]
Live events Carter USM reunion, Brixton Academy - specifically, singing along at the tops of our lungs to The Impossible Dream Marcus Brigstocke & Friends, Canizaro Park, Wimbledon - part of a local festival it brought together an amazing lineup of Brigstocke, Jeff Green, Rich Hall, Adam Hills and compere Shappi Khorsandi: weird layout, constant drizzle, it being the summer, but a fine crowd and a good time had by all Aracde Fire, Brixton Academy - do I only go to gigs at Brixton Academy? It seems so; a quasi-religious occasion Swan Lake, English National Ballet, Royal Albert Hall - My First Ballet, and a minor revelation, not least the fantastic percussion of toes on wood, which I wasn't expecting Porgy & Bess, Savoy Theatre - made doubly thrilling for the unexpected chance to see Clarke Peters (he plays Lester Freamon on The Wire) live Guys & Dolls, Piccadilly Theatre Live Earth, BBC - only joking, it was shit beyond belief; I actually preferred Concert For Diana
Highs Winning the RTS Breakthrough award and the Rose D'Or for the unfashionable sitcom Not Going Out (plus two untelevised British Comedy Awards) Appearing on Richard & Judy for the first - and, it seems, last - time Becoming Mark Kermode's regular understudy on News 24 (next slot: January 4) Attracting goldfinches, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, robins, greenfinches, starlings and the occasional woodpecker to my bird feeders (with the odd wren pecking around on the ground) The lost child benefit CDs and the fact that this howling error may have torpedoed Labour's hopes of bringing in ID cards All those pheromones I released at the gym The Day The Music Died Cancelling MySpace Ignoring Facebook
Alright, just for balance:
Lows Constant headaches from orchestrated lobbying and cowardly abuse on this blog BT meltdown Losing my old laptop in flooding (although I like my new one better) The BBC phone-in "scandals" and the glee with which certain quarters of the media met the news of resultant job losses (including that of my friend Leona) Driving through the West End of London after 1am, following stints on 6 Music, and realising just how many businesses leave their lights on all night - it really is business as usual isn't it? Deciding to stop taking the Guardian on grounds of its conservative views on medicine, then having to go back as the Independent was just boring - ah well! So much for the principled stand! Having the blog described by someone called Stella on the 6 Music message boards as "lots of poorly-written TV reviews" - actually, this made me smile! Anticlimactic publication of That's Me In The Corner, accompanied by almost no reviews and through-the-floor sales (but thanks to those who sought it out in darkened corners of bookshops and actually enjoyed it)
High/Lows Leaving 6 Music in March after five years. I was sad to go, but at the same time it was liberating, not having to project unbiassed BBC views any more, and as for getting my weekends back - sweet!
So, wish us luck tonight at the first ever untelevised British Comedy Awards! Just my luck to finally get a nomination in the year that ITV drops the show due to the "voting irregularities" that are still under investigation after this summer's wave of premium rate phoneline scandals. Anyway, for your information, these are the nominations:
[NB: I was going to put an asterisk after the nominee I want to win, but I started doing this and it was a flawed project, as of course I want Not Going Out to win, and in some of the categories I am not fussed one way or the other, and I've only seen half an episode of Gavin & Stacey, so can't really judge its merits. Instead I've gone out on a limb and put the asterisk next to the one I think will win ...]
BEST TELEVISION COMEDY ACTOR 2007 DAVID MITCHELL Peep Show (Objective Productions for Channel 4) JACK DEE * Lead Balloon (Open Mike for BBC Four) KEVIN BISHOP Star Stories (Objective Productions for Channel 4) LEE MACK Not Going Out (Avalon for BBC One)
BEST TELEVISION COMEDY ACTRESS 2007 CATHERINE TATE The Catherine Tate Show (Tiger Aspect for BBC Two) LIZ SMITH The Royal Family: The Queen of Sheba (Granada Productions for BBC One) RUTH JONES * Gavin & Stacey/Saxondale (Baby Cow for BBC Three/Baby Cow for BBC Two)
BEST COMEDY ENTERTAINMENT PERSONALITY 2007 ALAN CARR & JUSTIN LEE COLLINS The Friday Night Project (Princess Productions for Channel 4) SIMON AMSTELL * Never Mind the Buzzcocks (Talkback Thames for BBC Two) STEPHEN FRY QI (Talkback Thames for BBC Two)
BEST MALE COMEDY NEWCOMER 2007 JAMES CORDEN * Gavin & Stacey (Baby Cow for BBC Three) MATHEW HORNE Gavin & Stacey (Baby Cow for BBC Three) MATT BERRY The IT Crowd (Talkback Thames for Channel 4)
BEST FEMALE COMEDY NEWCOMER 2007 JOANNA PAGE * Gavin & Stacey (Baby Cow for BBC Three) RUTH JONES Gavin & Stacey (Baby Cow for BBC Three) SHARON HORGAN Rob Brydon’s Annually Retentive/Pulling (Jones the Film for BBC Three/Silver River for BBC Three)
BEST NEW BRITISH TELEVISION COMEDY (Scripted) 2007 GAVIN & STACEY Baby Cow for BBC Three LEAD BALLOON * Open Mike for BBC Four NOT GOING OUT Avalon for BBC One
BEST TELEVISION COMEDY 2007 GAVIN & STACEY * Baby Cow for BBC Three PEEP SHOW Objective Productions for Channel 4 STAR STORIES Objective Productions for Channel 4
BEST NEW COMEDY ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAMME 2007 AL MURRAY HAPPY HOUR * Avalon for ITV1 FONEJACKER Hat Trick for E4 THE GRAHAM NORTON SHOW So Television for BBC Two
BEST COMEDY ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAMME 2007 HARRY HILL'S TV BURP Avalon Television for ITV1 NEVER MIND THE BUZZCOCKS * Talkback Thames for BBC Two THE FRIDAY NIGHT PROJECT Princess Productions for Channel 4
BEST LIVE STAND UP 2007 ALAN CARR DARA O'BRIAIN * SIMON AMSTELL
BEST INTERNATIONAL COMEDY SHOW 2007 CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM * HBO Entertainment for More 4 THE OFFICE: AN AMERICAN WORKPLACE NBC Universal for ITV2 THE SIMPSONS Twentieth Century Fox for Sky One / Channel 4
BEST COMEDY FILM 2007 BORAT 20th Century Fox HOT FUZZ * Universal THE SIMPSONS MOVIE 20th Century Fox
Of course, these things are never an exact science, so the fact that Peep Show won last year doesn't necessarily mean it, or David Mitchell, won't win again this year, although it does seem a bit old now. Gavin & Stacey is such a shoo-in for Best TV Comedy, surely that leaves the field open a bit in Best New TV Comedy.
(I have been once before, way back in, I think, 1997, when myself and Stuart's Movie Club was on, and the same production company produced Lily Savage, so we were on Paul O'Grady's table. The main thing I remember, apart from Buster Merryfield tripping up as he walked past our table, is that at the after-show, the Chuckle Brothers said a confident and warm hello to Stuart and I, even though we'd never met them before. Maybe comedians are nicer than you thought.)
So, in the week of its 25th birthday, Channel 4 galvanises its reputation for serious drama and social conscience, with Britz, a cracking and thought-provoking two-part thriller-cum-morality tale that actually worked in two parts and benefitted from being shown across two nights. Written and directed by Peter Kosminsky (The Government Inspector, Warriors, The Project), it was the story of a British Muslim brother and sister who take diverging paths in reaction to the War On Terror: one joins MI5, the other becomes a suicide bomber. [Spoiler alert! It's impossible to write about it otherwise.] That it is Nasima (Manjinder Virk) who straps the homemade bomb to her body, concealed beneath a false pregnant belly, is the shock. She starts out as a secular political activist and medical student, seen composing a letter in her bedroom to President Bush complaining about the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay: an idealist, basically. She goes against her family's strict wishes by going out with a black non-Muslim at college. This proves a flashpoint, when she is sent back to Pakistan in shame after telling her father - the other motivating factor is the suicide of her best friend, arrested on a jumped-up non-charge under the Terrorism Act, abused and put under a Control Order, the draconian nature of which is apparently all true (you surrender your passport, you're restricted from seeing listed persons, electronically tagged, your case is heard at a closed hearing where your legal representative is chosen by and works for the state, the Home Secretary has the power to renew indefinitely etc.). This required a leap of faith - aptly enough - on behalf of the viewer, as handing out leaflets at a student demo, which Nas is seen doing, does not necessarily lead to a training camp in Pakistan and the decision to offer up your life to jihad. You had to suspend your disbelief a bit for the story of Sohail (Riz Ahmed), too - he's a law student, again pretty much disinterested in religion, who joins the secret service, where his position as the token Muslim - asked to spy on his friends back in Bradford - gives him pause for doubt. His story is told first, so when it intersects with Nasima's, you've no idea how she got to that point. Her story, told second, fills in the gaps.
What I liked about Britz was that it seemed to sidestep cliches. Although Kosminsky clearly isn't a Muslim, or Pakistani, he based his script on hours of interviews with British Muslims. Certainly, the legal picture painted by the film is an accurate one, and it's not pretty for post-September 11 Asians in Britain or anywhere. The police were depicted mostly as getting on with their job under the Terrorism Act - it's the laws passed down by this government in the last six years that were being questioned. (Certainly, we saw a couple of ignorant, racist cops, but we also saw ignorant, racist Pakistanis, kicking the shit out of Naz's black boyfriend. Bigotry abounded throughout, not least in terms of gender within the family.) Britz pandered to neither those who would paint all Muslims as potential suicide bombers, nor those liberals who romanticise Asian religion without looking too deeply into it. The final shot - after well over four hours of drama - was Nasima's suicide video, in which she spoke to all non-Muslim Brits (or Britz), conferring guilt upon us for voting Tony Blair back in. Which is all very well in theory, but hey, some of us didn't. In fact, a minority of Britons voted him back in, thanks to the first-past-the-post system. It was a powerful ending nonetheless. It wasn't put there to excuse her act of mass-murder - far from it - but this was an intelligent, educated young woman from Bradford who'd reached a point where she wasn't gonna take it any more.
The thriller elements occasionally sat uncomfortably with the unfolding family drama, but I guess you have to keep bums on seats, and this was certainly a far more challenging two-parter than an episode of Spooks, which some of it resembled, except with a lot more paperwork. (I love Spooks, but it's so left-wing, anti-government and anti-American, it's possible to second-guess sometimes. Anyway, it's a pure thriller, and the political issues it touches on are ultimately there to serve the suspense.) Reading the Channel 4 forums after the show, there was a general consensus, from Muslim and non-Muslims, that it was a good drama with useful things to say about two burning issues: how to deal with a multi-racial, multi-faith society and have we turned into a police state? One or two doubters had their say, but in CAPITAL LETTERS, which always undermines your argument, and quite a few questioned the veracity of the MI5 scenes, such as the use of a mobile phone by a visitor inside the lobby of Thames House, which isn't permitted. (Having just seen Elizabeth: The Golden Age at the pictures, I can live with a couple of factual inaccuracies like that!)
* Sorry, I stole this headline from Shazia Mizra, the Muslim stand-up. It struck me as apt in the circumstances, but I don't wish to make light of the subject.
Welcome to my world. Yesterday afternoon, I went up to Broadcasting House to record a column (ie. authored piece that you read out) for the estimable Front Row on Radio 4. It compared the opening night of Channel 4 with the schedule of this week, in a light-hearted way. (They don't usually ask me on for a non-light-hearted view - they have plenty of others for that type of thing.) It was fun to do, as it began with me musing on the fact that TV channels no longer have fanfares, as they all did when I was growing up. I was going to ask producer Laura to drop in clips of the fanfares for Thames, LWT, Anglia and early C4, which are all reassuringly available on YouTube, but we decided it would be more amusing if I sang them, as you might in a pub during a conversation about theme tunes. So I did. With the column recorded, I came home. Then, about an hour and a half later, I had a concerned call from Laura, who was mid-edit: it turns out I had erroneously sung the Thames theme for Anglia. Hey, you try remembering channel idents on the spot, in a BBC studio. They get mixed up. So, I travelled all the way back into Central London just to sing the Anglia TV ident. We found a studio, we set up, I put on my headphones, sang, "Bah bah bah ba-baaah ba-ba-da-ba-baaahh!" and then came home again. What professionalism, you're thinking.
Anyway, it was worth it, I think, to lower the tone of Radio 4 for a few minutes on a Thursday evening. You can, if you wish, listen to the column (it's the last item on the show, as my items always are!) and to Kirsty Lang back-announcing it with a jaunty laugh in her voice, possibly put on, possibly not. I don't care! Look for Thursday night's Front Row here.
(Of course, C4 dropped its fanfare in 1996 and went all esoteric. Nowadays you get an ambient "bed" over which the announcer can rabbit on, and the logo is constructed, mid-air, out of haystacks or bits of council estate.)
And if anybody needs to see or hear the old Anglia fanfare, here it is:
Torture is as the forefront of my mind. I'm reading Naomi Klein's compelling and wide-ranging The Shock Doctrine, as I've mentioned, which I wish was lighter so I could take it out with me on the train - although my "train book" at the moment is Fiasco by Thomas E Ricks, the most detailed book I've read about the Iraq war, which contains a whole section on Abu Ghraib. Last night I caught up with HBO's powerful The Ghosts Of Abu Ghraib, an account of the atrocities that went on at Saddam's old prison and put 12 soldiers in prison, or else they were demoted. This was a clear, unsensational, narration-free documentary, which spoke to a number of soldiers charged with abuse, who tried to describe why they did it. I also saw Rendition on Friday, the first Hollywood blockbuster to directly address America's renamed habit of removing terrorist suspects to other countries, there to interrogate them in what is now a government-sponsored manner. (The definition of "torture" was rewritten after September 11 so that only endangerment of life or acts that might lead to organ failure are now deemed torture: all manner of degradation, psychological tricks and abuse were sanctioned under the signature of Donald Rumsield, about whom I recently read the simply relentless but essential book Rumsfeld: An American Disaster by Andrew Cockburn. One such is making a prisoner stand for four hours at a time, to which Rumsfeld made a footnote: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is there a four hour limit on standing?", missing the point in a way that either suggests pure evil or weapons-grade idiocy, neither of which is very comforting.) And, to add to my current torture-a-thon, last night's Spooks saw Harry cross that particular line, in order to save London from half a million plague fatalities.
In Ghosts, we saw clips of Dr Stanley Milgram's film Obedience, which blew my mind, even though I'd read about the experiments he conducted in 1961. In brief (and I've lifted some of this from Wikipedia to save my typing shoulder, but it tallies with what I already know): the role of the "experimentor" in these tests done at Yale was played by a stern, impassive biology teacher dressed in a technician's coat, and the "victim" was played by an accountant trained to act for the role. The participant and the victim (supposedly another volunteer, but in reality a "confederate" of the experimentor) were told by the experimentor that they would be participating in an experiment helping his study of memory and learning in different situations. The "teacher" and the "learner" (apparently chosen by slips of paper, but both slips said "teacher" to guarantee that the real participant would assume this role) were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. (Read on, if you don't know the tests. It's astonishing.)
The "teacher" was given a 45-volt electric shock from an electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment. The "teacher" was then made to give word tests to the "learner" - if the answer was incorrect, the teacher would administer a shock to the learner, with the voltage increasing for each wrong answer. In reality, there were no shocks. The "learner" just acted a response, increasingly severe as the voltage increased. If you see the footage, you'll see that the acting was good, and as the screams increase, it's totally macabre. After a number of increases, the actor would bang on the wall and protest about a heart condition. At this point, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment. But most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal encouragements from the man in the white coat, the experiment was halted.
In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65% (26 out of 40) of participants administered the experiment's final 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment; some said they would refund the money they were being paid. No participant steadfastly refused to administer shocks before the 300-volt level, despite the screams.
There was, understandably, a lot of ethical criticism of the tests. (Probably from people who wouldn't mind if it was monkeys or mice.) Clearly, this was a very stressful position to put even volunteers into - I'm surprised Balls Of Steel haven't revived it (maybe they have, I only watched it once). The implication was not necessarily that 65% of people would willingly torture, but that they would if they were told to do so by a figure of authority. I wonder if, 46 years on, people would be more, or less likely to comply? Certainly the soldiers on Ghosts, male and female, as we know, blamed their behaviour on the stress of being at war, the need to let off steam, peer pressure, boredom and ignorance. Even though it was later established that 90% of Iraqis being held were innocent, these night-shift military police treated the prisoners as if they were guilty and this abuse, much of it involving nudity and a strangely homoerotic manipulation of bodies, was either punishment for something, or a way of preparing them for interrogation. One soldier, Sabrina Harman, said that she stuck her thumbs in the air and smiled for the camera in the incriminating photos of her with a dead body, and with naked prisoners in a big pile, because that's what she does in photos. She got six months.
I am haunted by the world I live in. So let's stop arguing about the merits of a sitcom for a moment. Anybody else see any of these films or progammes? Anybody else reading Klein, or the other books? Is it just me who's obsessed by all this?
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