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An unwanted writing course
Nov. 1st, 2009 08:46 amHere's a disheartening article.
Now of course print journalists are in the business of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi about the Beeb, but the “Safeguarding Trust factual drama interactive module” can hardly have been invented by the paper, and the idea of providing an established writer with the kindly advice: “Don’t oversimplify the ‘goodies’ and the ‘baddies’ ... the truth is rarely as cut and dried as this” and “tone of voice and facial expression can significantly alter what an audience infers about a character” is insulting in the extreme - if they really think he might not know that, then they shouldn't be employing him.
Since the BBC depends on public money, it does have to think twice before gratuitously offending licence-paying members of the public. But surely that is what editors are for, and there are also established remedies in place for aggrieved individuals. Ideally, an editor on Mock the Week, which doesn't go out live, would have cut Frankie Boyle's uncharacteristically silly and unfunny remarks about Rebecca Adlington; the man can be cripplingly funny but like most great comics he works on the edge and sometimes crosses it. Or Adlington could have complained, though in fact maintaining an attitude of dignity and ignoring the whole thing seems to have worked quite well.
But giving offence can be a perfectly legitimate thing for a broadcaster to do and some of the examples given here are ludicrous. Most worrying is the concentration on "factual drama", ie that based on real life, and the apparent inability of programme-makers to understand the use fiction habitually makes of real life:
Hugh Bonneville, the actor who starred alongside Julie Walters in BBC2’s Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story, said it was time to return to common sense. “I now detect a creeping self-censorship in the television scripts I am given to read,” he said. “I remember in the light of the Queengate affair the producer of the Mary Whitehouse programme saying the compliance unit wanted him to go through the script pointing out which bits actually happened and which were dramatic invention.
“Whatever next? Do you put up a warning at the beginning of the programme telling the audience that Julie Walters is not Mary Whitehouse?”
One does wonder what warnings will encumber the screen if the BBC ever re-dramatise Richard III. Indeed, why weren't we warned when watching The Tudors that Henry, by the time he was cavorting with Katherine Howard, looked nothing like Jonathan Rhys Meyers, more's the pity?
Now of course print journalists are in the business of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi about the Beeb, but the “Safeguarding Trust factual drama interactive module” can hardly have been invented by the paper, and the idea of providing an established writer with the kindly advice: “Don’t oversimplify the ‘goodies’ and the ‘baddies’ ... the truth is rarely as cut and dried as this” and “tone of voice and facial expression can significantly alter what an audience infers about a character” is insulting in the extreme - if they really think he might not know that, then they shouldn't be employing him.
Since the BBC depends on public money, it does have to think twice before gratuitously offending licence-paying members of the public. But surely that is what editors are for, and there are also established remedies in place for aggrieved individuals. Ideally, an editor on Mock the Week, which doesn't go out live, would have cut Frankie Boyle's uncharacteristically silly and unfunny remarks about Rebecca Adlington; the man can be cripplingly funny but like most great comics he works on the edge and sometimes crosses it. Or Adlington could have complained, though in fact maintaining an attitude of dignity and ignoring the whole thing seems to have worked quite well.
But giving offence can be a perfectly legitimate thing for a broadcaster to do and some of the examples given here are ludicrous. Most worrying is the concentration on "factual drama", ie that based on real life, and the apparent inability of programme-makers to understand the use fiction habitually makes of real life:
Hugh Bonneville, the actor who starred alongside Julie Walters in BBC2’s Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story, said it was time to return to common sense. “I now detect a creeping self-censorship in the television scripts I am given to read,” he said. “I remember in the light of the Queengate affair the producer of the Mary Whitehouse programme saying the compliance unit wanted him to go through the script pointing out which bits actually happened and which were dramatic invention.
“Whatever next? Do you put up a warning at the beginning of the programme telling the audience that Julie Walters is not Mary Whitehouse?”
One does wonder what warnings will encumber the screen if the BBC ever re-dramatise Richard III. Indeed, why weren't we warned when watching The Tudors that Henry, by the time he was cavorting with Katherine Howard, looked nothing like Jonathan Rhys Meyers, more's the pity?
