Graham (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tao_) wrote,@ 2007-07-17 20:39:00 |
|
First sighting of 'Funography'
Thought you might be interested. This is my introduction to Charlie Brooker's 'Screenburn' book.
"Imagine watching television for a living.
You wake up, you’re at work. Your boss (you) has no problems with his sole employee (also you) sitting in a cornflake-spattered T-shirt and undies while trying to focus on ‘Trisha’. You don’t feel guilty watching ’Trisha’ because it is your job to watch ‘Trisha‘. If you weren’t watching ‘Trisha’, you wouldn’t be doing your job! A dream ticket! The perfect crime!
But there’s something shifting and swirling in the pit of your stomach. You were up late last night, watching a page 3 girl eating a maggot (it was your job to watch that too). That was followed by a program in which people described catching rare genital diseases while on holiday. And then there was that show in which an elderly woman demonstrated her blowjob technique on a brightly-coloured dildo while a studio audience went into spasms of delight and her son (her son!) shook his head, laughed and pretended to enjoy himself?
Your breakfast, you now realise, hasn’t gone anywhere.
An explanation. During the time that Charlie Brooker was writing these pieces for the Guardian, British television underwent a reverse evolution. Early pioneers on shows like ‘Eurotrash’ and ‘The Word’ showed that there was an audience for pure, one hundred percent, evil, ugly, drunken cak, and others took that ball and ran with it, and so here we are. Television has a curved spine, a jutting lower jaw and its knuckles are red and raw from being dragged along the ground. It’s as if someone, somewhere said “Why isn’t British television more like Italian television?” and was promoted rather than slapped across the face.
Good, attention-grabbing television is achieved in one of two ways. The first is quite complicated and involves a certain amount of expertise behind and in front of the camera. A memorable production might involve a strong cast, a timely subject and a director who knows how to tell a story. Or it could require years spent waiting with a movement-sensitive camera for a crab to crawl onto a beach at exactly the right time and impregnate a turtle.
The second way is simpler and currently very much in vogue. Basically, you get a few ‘Big Brother’ contestants, dress them up in school uniforms, give them enough booze to make a table stagger, and hope that security steps in before someone gets raped or killed.
Disasterporn, funography…call it what you will, to be a TV critic at this point is to be subjected to the sort of imagery that previously only film censors of the seventies and eighties had to endure. You need the sort of reckless disregard for your own sanity shared by war photographers and people who have to work with Elton John. You need a very special sort of person, someone who has the ability to stare into the abyss and, when it stares back, make it look away in shame. If this was a trailer for a big US film, this is the moment when the President looks just to the right of the camera and says “Get me Brooker.”
Imagine Charlie’s surprise when television started mirroring his entirely made-up ‘TV Go Home‘ satirical website. Imagine how that felt--conceiving imaginary TV shows so appalling that it bends your brain like a Gellerspoon and then turning on TV to find that program is on after the news. That’s why only he has the undercarriage to do this job; anything television throws at Charlie, Charlie throws right back. How he has maintained his sense of humour is beyond me, but somehow he has managed it. It is now at such a keen pitch, in fact, that the mere idea of Charlie reviewing certain shows is enough to make me laugh. Anyone who calls Tiff Needall “Tiff ‘Quick Turn Over’ Needall needs no lessons from the Chuckle Brothers on how to provoke a laugh. Anyone who points out that Ross Kemp could stare out a man with two glass eyes doesn’t need an introduction from the likes of me (as I write, my wife is reading through Charlie’s columns nearby. She’s laughing like a drain…a fleeting happiness soon to be violently cut short by my asking her to review this foreword).
Charlie is the funniest TV writer around, and the only person who truly understands British telly as it is in these final years before the world ends. This is not something to be envied. Spare a thought for him now, because as you read this, he is probably watching a program in which a party of celebrities need to eat each other’s eyes in order to win a dildo.
He watches these things so we don’t have to. God bless him for that."
Written in 2004. Luckily, things have improved a lot since then. I mean, at least 'Something For The Weekend' isn't on any more.
Thought you might be interested. This is my introduction to Charlie Brooker's 'Screenburn' book.
"Imagine watching television for a living.
You wake up, you’re at work. Your boss (you) has no problems with his sole employee (also you) sitting in a cornflake-spattered T-shirt and undies while trying to focus on ‘Trisha’. You don’t feel guilty watching ’Trisha’ because it is your job to watch ‘Trisha‘. If you weren’t watching ‘Trisha’, you wouldn’t be doing your job! A dream ticket! The perfect crime!
But there’s something shifting and swirling in the pit of your stomach. You were up late last night, watching a page 3 girl eating a maggot (it was your job to watch that too). That was followed by a program in which people described catching rare genital diseases while on holiday. And then there was that show in which an elderly woman demonstrated her blowjob technique on a brightly-coloured dildo while a studio audience went into spasms of delight and her son (her son!) shook his head, laughed and pretended to enjoy himself?
Your breakfast, you now realise, hasn’t gone anywhere.
An explanation. During the time that Charlie Brooker was writing these pieces for the Guardian, British television underwent a reverse evolution. Early pioneers on shows like ‘Eurotrash’ and ‘The Word’ showed that there was an audience for pure, one hundred percent, evil, ugly, drunken cak, and others took that ball and ran with it, and so here we are. Television has a curved spine, a jutting lower jaw and its knuckles are red and raw from being dragged along the ground. It’s as if someone, somewhere said “Why isn’t British television more like Italian television?” and was promoted rather than slapped across the face.
Good, attention-grabbing television is achieved in one of two ways. The first is quite complicated and involves a certain amount of expertise behind and in front of the camera. A memorable production might involve a strong cast, a timely subject and a director who knows how to tell a story. Or it could require years spent waiting with a movement-sensitive camera for a crab to crawl onto a beach at exactly the right time and impregnate a turtle.
The second way is simpler and currently very much in vogue. Basically, you get a few ‘Big Brother’ contestants, dress them up in school uniforms, give them enough booze to make a table stagger, and hope that security steps in before someone gets raped or killed.
Disasterporn, funography…call it what you will, to be a TV critic at this point is to be subjected to the sort of imagery that previously only film censors of the seventies and eighties had to endure. You need the sort of reckless disregard for your own sanity shared by war photographers and people who have to work with Elton John. You need a very special sort of person, someone who has the ability to stare into the abyss and, when it stares back, make it look away in shame. If this was a trailer for a big US film, this is the moment when the President looks just to the right of the camera and says “Get me Brooker.”
Imagine Charlie’s surprise when television started mirroring his entirely made-up ‘TV Go Home‘ satirical website. Imagine how that felt--conceiving imaginary TV shows so appalling that it bends your brain like a Gellerspoon and then turning on TV to find that program is on after the news. That’s why only he has the undercarriage to do this job; anything television throws at Charlie, Charlie throws right back. How he has maintained his sense of humour is beyond me, but somehow he has managed it. It is now at such a keen pitch, in fact, that the mere idea of Charlie reviewing certain shows is enough to make me laugh. Anyone who calls Tiff Needall “Tiff ‘Quick Turn Over’ Needall needs no lessons from the Chuckle Brothers on how to provoke a laugh. Anyone who points out that Ross Kemp could stare out a man with two glass eyes doesn’t need an introduction from the likes of me (as I write, my wife is reading through Charlie’s columns nearby. She’s laughing like a drain…a fleeting happiness soon to be violently cut short by my asking her to review this foreword).
Charlie is the funniest TV writer around, and the only person who truly understands British telly as it is in these final years before the world ends. This is not something to be envied. Spare a thought for him now, because as you read this, he is probably watching a program in which a party of celebrities need to eat each other’s eyes in order to win a dildo.
He watches these things so we don’t have to. God bless him for that."
Written in 2004. Luckily, things have improved a lot since then. I mean, at least 'Something For The Weekend' isn't on any more.
