Massah John on Ofcom
A dull press release today from John Beyer at Mediawatch-UK, calling for Ofcom to “do much more” to reflect what he divines as “the public mood” for less violence and swearwords. He takes the opportunity to display his latest statistics (“In 177 films monitored last year (2004) there were 900 incidents involving firearms and 680 violent assaults”), and singles out Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen as an example of “falling standards”.
Some films, such as Ken Loach’s ‘Sweet Sixteen’, premiered on BBC2 last month, include an unremitting stream of ‘f-words’ and ‘c-words’ which are not appropriate for mainstream publicly funded television.
Sweet Sixteen is a warm, humane tragedy set in Greenock, Scotland which tells the moving story of a boy’s desire to live a happy family life with his drug-addicted mother. The truth and humanity to be found in this film must be completely lost on philistine fuck-counters like Beyer and his posse of pious crones, who cannot see past the “inappropriate” vernacular of the dialogue.
Presumably, he’d rather be watching The Black and White Minstrel Show. Beyer informed us in last night’s X-Rated – The TV Shows They Tried to Ban that he had never seen a problem with this “entertaining” music-hall throwback in which white male dancers “blacked up” to sing and dance old-time variety hits with coy Southern Belles.
Good grief.
It would be easier to take them seriously if they took a consistent approach. If they take issue with four-letter words they could at least be prepared to criticise The Black and White Minstrel Show which many people would find offensive now. But it is this white, Middle England idea that if we could only turn back time to the fifties or sixties, things would be perfect.
There are plenty of ways in which the 1950s put us to shame, Will, & you know it. Look at the graphs for divorce, STDs, violent crime. Are these statistics fantasy, or are they something to do with the real world?
No-one can turn the clock back. In many matters, that would be retrogressive anyway. But in these matters of family morals, it would be progressive. Face it: if they produced such wildly better stats than us in these matters, we have a great deal to learn from them. And that would be progress.
Chronological progress aint the same thing as moral progress, ya know. :o)
How do you statistically measure ‘family morals’?
Green’s own site is one place to start – but there are other and better ones. His figures which show both divorce and STDs rising by thousands of percent would not be especially disputed.
If they rose by 5 percent that would be cause for alarm. But thousands? Sometimes I think the world is fulll of ostriches who are determined to argue around anything however clear cut.
Do we need to wait till the rise is millions of percent before they concede the point?
Ah yes. Stephen Green’s site is always a good place to look for information on morality.
Such as at http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Briefing%20papers/Britain%20in%20Sin/7th%20Commandment.htm, where he complains bitterly about laws recognising rape by a marital partner as a crime; at http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Briefing%20papers/Britain%20in%20Sin/9th%20Commandment.htm, where he bemoans the granting of anonymity in rape cases; in fact, a quick trip to Google reveals that Mr Green has a really, really serious hang-up about the laws on rape, especially in relation to what he seems to feel is an undue bias against the defendant. Even the Bible lesson in the January 2004 is about how in Genesis, Sechem probably didn’t rape Dinah after all and it’s probably only because of ambiguity in the Hebrew that we even think he did and in fact they probably loved each other an awful lot and just got a little carried away and anyway that Dinah one was acting like a whore.
And just beside that there’s a piece about the acquittal of two footballers on rape charges: “[W]hat of the girl who made the accusation? She went to a hotel room quite prepared to have sexual intercourse with one footballer, a stranger to her just a few hours earlier. She ended up, willingly or unwillingly, according to whose story one believes, being used by five of them. On the one hand, she may indeed have been raped by the other four. On the other, maybe she did it all willingly for a bit of excitement, but felt so disgusted with herself afterwards that she alleged rape. But it hardly matters. The sort of girl who is prepared to give herself that cheaply to a man she has only just met should not be surprised if he regards her as little more than entertainment, for himself alone or also for his dissolute and repellent friends.”
All this strikes me as, to say the least, a very curious postion for someone setting himself up as a public voice for morality.
Well said Joe. Scratch a Christian and, like as not, you’ll find a misogynist.
I agree – but the points I made on divorce and STD graphs have not been addressed.
In a given rape case, I consider that male and female parties should be considered equally. Males are often worse, because they are out for what they can get. Females often do (despite denials) have both a ‘better self’ and a less admirable self (esp. when drunk) of which the better self is ashamed later. The whole idea that onely one party is to blame in such cases as the footballer ones is to my mind unlikely. If a culture of casual sex is approved, such things are bound to happen. There will be mixed messages. There will be unclear boundaries. Whose fault is that? It is the fault of whoever approves a culture of casual sex in the first place.
[…] shed, but it is (as with the Wrigleys ad) extremely well executed and, frankly, hilarious. Sorry folks, but swearing is just funny. […]
Isnt what a person finds funny a reflection of that person? Do we want our kids still to be laughing at the word ‘poo’ when they are 40?
Come on, kiddies, grow up!! :o)
Dr. Shell, instead of claiming that the figures for rape and STDs are now higher, perhaps what you should be looking at is how many sexual assaults are now reported, as opposed to the 1950’s. On the subject of STD’s, there is a similar anomaly, namely that many that contracted these diseases were afraid to visit their GPs.
Where is your evidence that there were more STDs then? Surely in an age of far greated promiscuity, it is common sense that there will be more STDs?
Poo to you, Mister. LOL
Gasp, faint – Swoooooon!!
Wow Richard you really answered the question there. Mensa awaits.
[…] Once again suggesting that, for Mr Beyer, Big Brother did indeed once have a “day”. Much like the Black and White Minstrel Show. Monitor @ 6:58 pm […]