Sunday 2 November 2008

Ban The Brand Brands

We did not receive what was due to us over Jerry Springer: The Opera. So we are damn well making sure that we receive it over Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand.

This has been the week, not only in which the British culture wars began in earnest, but in which the good guys won them. Does anyone seriously imagine that Ross will be back on the BBC in the New Year? Or that any commercial broadcaster will ever antagonise advertisers by employing either him or Brand?

Indeed, any product, and the company behind it, ever again advertised during a Ross or Brand programme should be listed, without further comment, in the Daily Mail and elsewhere, not least including on the Internet. Consumers could then do as they thought best. After all, there are plenty of other jobs in the world. They just happen not to pay six million pounds per year.

And what to target next? I propose the rearrangement of the whole world to suit the tastes of those who must watch absolutely any football match simply because it is a football match, now a grotesque carnival of obscenely overpaid, uneducated, drink and drug-fuelled preening, swearing, cheating and violence. The entire schedule was messed up for the sake of the European Championships, in which no team from these islands was competing. Let us make sure that such a thing never happens again...

12 comments:

  1. Yeah, good luck with all of that. You can moan all you like, but the culture wars have been won. Just not by your side.

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  2. We'll see about that when Ross comes back in the New Year. Or doesn't.

    We'll see about that when any commercial broadcaster ever employs Brand again. Or doesn't.

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  3. Yes, we will see (as a matter of fact Brand is still employed by Channel 4, and his new series started last week after all of this furore, but that's bye the bye)

    Don't get me wrong, I hold no particular candle for what the two of them did - I don't want to defend them and think they were right to apologise and be punished. But I must have blinked and missed the point at which you and the Daily Mail were appointed moral arbiters for the nation. And the sheer hyposrisy of the newspapers on this issue, and the fact that you feel you were "due" something over the entirely correct decision to screen Jerry Springer, really irritates me.

    I suepect we won't ever agree on this. But I'm fine with that, largely because I'm very confident that your wider worldview is entirely a minority one, and that you will be sadly disaappointed in your efforts to "win" any wider culture war of the type you set out in your post.

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  4. "his new series started last week"

    Let's see how long it lasts. Channel Four, after all, is publicly owned...

    "But I must have blinked and missed the point at which you and the Daily Mail were appointed moral arbiters for the nation"

    No, the nation is the moral arbiter for the nation.

    "the fact that you feel you were "due" something over the entirely correct decision to screen Jerry Springer"

    How many complaints do there have to be before a public service broasdcater has to take notice? Well, cleraly rather fewer these days, what with Ross and Brand.

    " I'm very confident that your wider worldview is entirely a minority one, and that you will be sadly disaappointed in your efforts to "win" any wider culture war of the type you set out in your post."

    We seem to be doing rather well so far.

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  5. "We seem to be doing rather well so far"

    I'm not sure you are, otherwise you wouldn't be continually complaining about all the current things that society is doing that you so vehemently disapprove of.

    As I say, I hold no particular candle for what Ross and Brand did. I only feel moved to defend them on the grounds that I dislike the people attacking them - and using them as sticks with which to beat the BBC and society for a whole range of things for which they hold particular gripes - even more. It may be that Ross and Brand never appear again (though I dobut that). But the thought of an entirely unaccountable mob stirred up by the Daily Mail and various bloggers making pronouncements on what is "right" and "not right" seems entirely unpleasant.

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  6. Far better an entirely unaccountable oligarchy, I'm sure...

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  7. We did not receive what was due to us over Jerry Springer: The Opera.

    What exactly was "due to you" over Jerry Springer: The Opera? The BBC was entirely correct to dismiss the complaints before the broadcast, on the grounds that the overwhelming majority of people had neither watched the production nor had any plans to do so - they were merely following the herd.

    Also, under virtually any other circumstances you and your mate Neil Clark would be praising the BBC to the skies for its decision to broadcast a production developed by the subsidised theatre, thus making it available to all the taxpayers who'd funded it. And a production that had garnered some of the best reviews of any new stage production in years, what's more.

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  8. Yes, we will see (as a matter of fact Brand is still employed by Channel 4, and his new series started last week after all of this furore, but that's bye the bye)

    I watched it, and it was very funny indeed - and I'm very grateful for the Daily Mail for highlighting it, as I might have missed it otherwise.

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  9. I agree with you Mr Lindsay on the Brand/Ross debacle and that justice wasn't done re. Springer, but football - any football match - should have right of way over the normal trashy TV schedule.

    Not that I am affected as I haven't renewed my licence after JStO.

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  10. So make the normal schedule lss trashy, Stewart.

    Mistoffeelees:

    "the overwhelming majority of people had neither watched the production nor had any plans to do so"

    The same could have been said over Brand and Ross. Things are not as they were.

    "a production developed by the subsidised theatre"

    Money that could have been rather better spent, whether within the arts or beyond.

    "garnered some of the best reviews of any new stage production in years"

    By whom? You are talking about a very incestuous, and extremely unrepresentative, little world there.

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  11. Money that could have been rather better spent, whether within the arts or beyond.

    On what? Another piece of boring agitprop masquerading as cutting-edge left-wing theatre? The great thing about Jerry Springer was that it was both intelligent and accessible, critically acclaimed and genuinely popular - in other words, exactly what our National Theatre should be doing.

    By whom? You are talking about a very incestuous, and extremely unrepresentative, little world there.

    I think you'll find that people who were genuinely interested in the production (as opposed to those who watched it just because they wanted to be offended by it, a curious form of masochism that I've never really understood) tended to react very favourably indeed towards it. Personally, I thought it didn't quite hit every one of its satirical targets, but much of it was laugh-out-loud funny and even the score was surprisingly rich and varied.

    Incidentally, thanks for confirming that the BPA stands for pre-emptive censorship and the 21st century equivalent of book-burning. It's good to know that you're so upfront about your plans - most other political parties are annoyingly coy when it comes to these issues.

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