Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons From Modern Life

by David Mitchell

  British Rail used to be the acme of this sort of thing. As a nation we spent decades sharing a laugh at the inadequacies of British Rail with its lateness, dirtiness, rudeness and terrible sandwiches. The failings in our rail network were a shared collective reflection on our failings as a community. British Rail was crap because everything was crap, because we were also, individually and collectively, a bit crap – laughable and decrepit and doomed, like all humans have always been. But somehow redeemed by our capacity to self-mock.

  The dissolution and sale of British Rail, transforming it into a disjointed network charging exorbitant prices for an unimproved and still taxpayer-subsidised service, darkened the joke a bit much for popular tastes. We stopped chuckling. It was like the tipsy uncle had assaulted a receptionist.

  So let’s cling to horsegate for as long as we can. You never know where the next bit of funny news is coming from. Although, I must say, François Hollande is doing his bit by being motorcycle-couriered to an actress’s bed in the full view of the global media. I might well be celebrating that one in a year’s time – because if there’s one thing British audiences enjoy laughing at even more than their own failings, the rapacity of corporations or xenophobia in the Daily Mail, it’s the French.

  *

  If I told you that extreme rightwing activists were using a googly-eyed character with a weird flapping mouth to try and build their support base, you’d probably tell me to stop being rude about Nigel Farage. Or applaud me for being rude about Nigel Farage. But for once I’m not slagging off Ukip’s straight-talking bitter drinker. I’m referring to someone who, as far as we know, has never touched beer or cigarettes, which is probably a good thing as he seems to have rather an addictive personality. It’s the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street, surely the world’s most lovable personification of an eating disorder, whose image has been adopted by a group of German neo-Nazis in an attempt to recruit children.

  “But how is this allowed?” you’re probably asking. It isn’t. Steffen Lange, who walked into a school playground in Brandenburg dressed as the Cookie Monster and started handing out neo-Nazi leaflets, has been arrested by the German police. I don’t know whether the producers of Sesame Street are planning legal action but I imagine they’d have a case. Maybe they don’t think there’s much point since, as TV programmes go, Sesame Street is about as likely to be mistaken for being pro-Nazi as Dad’s Army.

  Then again, this wasn’t an isolated incident: Cookie Monster-themed rightwing pamphlets were subsequently discovered at Lange’s home, and the police have confirmed that the blue fluffy problem-eater’s image is increasingly being abused by the region’s far right to try and drum up support. A police spokesman speculated that it was an attempt to make neo-Nazism seem “a bit fun and a bit rebellious”.

  This is a fascinating strategy – and an insight into the mindset of the modern fascist. The Cookie Monster is anarchic, dynamic and madly driven by a very specific, but also totally random, aim: he wants cookies. He wants to charge around crazily smashing cookies into his mouth. He will never get enough cookies. It’s unclear whether he understands this. Maybe he imagines some future stage of sated calm which he might achieve if, miraculously, he were to obtain all the cookies he desires. Or maybe he is wiser than that and knows it’s all about the journey, his endless quest for biscuits.

  These extremists’ message is clear: that’s what it’s like to be a neo-Nazi. It’s not mean, harsh and judgmental – not primarily, that’s just a side-effect. It’s wild, active and devil-may-care. And violent – but it’s not about whom the violence is directed at, that’s not important. It’s about the sensual joy of the violence itself. It’s fun, dynamic, outdoorsy and liberated. Those who get hurt are collateral damage – hence the usefulness of a rationale by which hurting them is either good or irrelevant. As long as you see Jews and Gypsies as only so many cookies to be ground up in a cloth mouth, rather than as actual people, then it’s all good clean fun.

  You can’t say this doesn’t tap into a side of humanity that has always existed. Since the dawn of time, there have been plenty of us who just love running around and smashing things and people to bits. Think of the Vikings. They sailed around, pillaging, burning and looting, for centuries. They did it out of economic necessity; they did it out of greed; they did it out of hatred for other races and religions. But many of them must also have done it for fun. Some of those great warriors – skilled seamen and fearless soldiers – must have loved that life, loved running up to a coastal village and unleashing carnage.

  Don’t focus on our specific unpalatable views, Herr Lange and his colleagues are saying, focus on the thrill. There’s something more primal in the appeal of extremist politics than any of its ostensible beliefs or policies – and the sensation is a lot like running around shouting “Cooookiiiiieeeessss!!!!!” For so long considered monsters by the political mainstream, these rightwingers are finally coming clean: “That’s exactly what we are!” they’re admitting. “Cuddly mindless monsters – and it feels amazing!”

  But will they take these intriguing new recruitment tactics further? How else might fascists perk up their image now they’re dispensing with all the tiresome Teutonic discipline and hate-sponsored pseudo-science and returning to their berserker roots?

  Music

  Can you imagine the Cookie Monster listening to Wagner, a nationalistic anthem or a marching band? Of course not – he’s far too fidgety. The modern neo-Nazi wants a tune that’s a lot more energetic and fun: Yakety Sax, Killing in the Name or the theme from Ski Sunday are all perfect upbeat accompaniments to any frenzy of hate.

  Hashtags

  Everyone knows that extremists say horrible things on social media, but a hashtag is a great way to put even the most vile remarks into a more upbeat context. Threats of violence in particular can be leavened if made cartoonish with postscripts such as #biff, #blam, #kersplat or #everydayracism.

  Dress

  The black shirt and the brown shirt, those staples of the fascists’ glory days, have been lost to the jazz musician and the 1978 Coventry City away strip respectively (I used the internet in the preparation of this section). And anyway, they’re far too staid for the wacky fascism of the Cookie Monster Nazis. So what about Hawaiian shirts? They’re fun, they’re crazy, they’re slightly anarchic (within blandly uninventive parameters) and, like pineapple on a pizza, they provide the sort of meaningless nod to multiculturalism that helps less committed racists salve their lacerated consciences.

  Dance

  How better to separate actions from any sense of their meaning than with dance? The global success of Gangnam Style has shown the way. The extreme right needs to move on from the discredited fascist salute and develop some new gesture or move which can be aped by millions on YouTube. Something like a double thumbs-up while running on the spot, David Brent’s dance from The Office or just a spot of rhythmic mooning would be ideal.

  Baking

  The choice of the Cookie Monster suggests that, at a time when The Great British Bake-Off has both made baking trendy and aligned it with a sense of national identity, the far right wants to reclaim the fascist oven from the shadow of Auschwitz. But, unlike their mascot, modern neo-Nazis don’t just like cookies – they’re into cakes, pies and puddings, but not soufflés, which are homosexual. An inspiring recipe book could be the Mein Kampf of the 21st century, providing busy racists with the perfect high-carb treat to set them up for a night’s angry shouting outside a mosque.

  *

  On reading that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? has ended its final run, I was amazed to find myself caring. To my surprise, it made me sad. I didn’t know I gave a damn about that show – I certainly never particularly enjoyed it – but it turns out I’d been quietly assuming that it would continue and, unbeknownst to my conscious brain, deriving comfort from that assumption. Suddenly it was gone and I missed it, like an old pot plant that you only remember is there when it dies.

  Mind you, I’
m glad I didn’t watch it more – on the dozen or so occasions I caught an episode, I mildly regretted the time spent. It wasn’t very entertaining, just moreish – the televisual equivalent of Twiglets. You grimly munched through it because, for some reason, it seemed easier than not.

  You must be familiar with the feeling, unless it’s all Radio 3 and the TLS round your place. You stick around for another couple of questions, and then a bit longer to see what the contestant will win, because it would be very slightly interesting to witness someone’s avarice comprehensively slaked on camera. Real-time evidence of a deadly sin, a pre-watershed money shot. But no one ever won the million when I was tuned in. So when the credits rolled, I only had two or three uncontextualised pieces of trivia to show for the fact that I was now an hour nearer death.

  Ageing is the key to this. Disposable TV shows of this kind are supposed to take our minds off the fact that we’re perpetually getting older – to make the time pass pleasantly enough without reminding us that it’s finite. But, as its last act, Millionaire has done exactly the opposite. It provided me with a stinging reminder of the elusiveness of time and it made me feel old. That’s what elegiac dramas are meant to do, not quizzes.

  In my head, you see, it was a recent programme – an example of the “terrible crap that’s on TV these days”. That’s where I had it filed: as a contemporary example of media commercialism, of ITV joyously dancing on the grave of The World at War and the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes adaptations. So hearing that it’s been axed after a decade and a half, that it’s been put out of its misery after a long decline, feels like getting news that Google has called in the receivers or Justin Bieber needs a hip replacement. I open my eyes after a short nap to see the jungle-choked ruins of the Shard being fought over by a savage tribe of super-evolved molluscs.

  When Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? started, I was not yet working in television – though that’s not what I was saying at the time. If you’d asked me then, the very last thing I would have said is: “I’m a delusional waster with a second-class degree in a humanity and an inability to take an alarm clock seriously. I’ve been to the Edinburgh Fringe and done a lot of amateur dramatics, but basically I work as an usher for less than what the minimum wage will be when it comes in next year.” That was the inconvenient truth, but instead of telling it I would have claimed to be a comedian and pitched the various hungover scribblings that I pretended to be convinced would soon conjure up a generous living.

  Well, somehow, in the midst of my bullshit, a career germinated; I got lucky and so got paid. But, in 1998, I was still terrified and resentful of the vast and impenetrable media in which I aspired to prosper. And Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? seemed to represent all that – it was the thick and immovable taproot of my problems.

  All the cosiness of the TV I’d grown up with, all that “Well, of course it has far too much sentimental value for us to consider parting with it!” Antiques Roadshow propriety, seemed to have been blasted away by this huge, frightening, mercenary format. The Blankety Blank chequebook and pen, the his-and-hers matching wristwatches, even the star-prize speedboat had been pressure-hosed off our screens with cash. The future of TV was a series of mediocrities hungrily grasping at unimaginable sums of money by the ghoulish light of a monitor – they might as well televise a trading floor. Censorious and broke, I took a dim view.

  So my younger self would probably be pleased at the programme’s passing. But the demise of seemingly invincible entities of which you disapprove is not always reassuring. It can make you feel vulnerable – like nothing is safe. Of course, I can think of reasons for Millionaire’s downfall. Ultimately, its success depended on the suspense generated by ordinary people trying to become very rich. Someone genuinely becoming a millionaire on television is very watchable – for the first time. It’s not bad the second. But, after a bit, a contestant’s path to victory is like another Jaws sequel. We know how the story goes. The tension on which the programme relied was inevitably going to slacken over time.

  The attempt to enliven the format with celebrities raising money for charities was deeply flawed. The crucial drama-generating ingredient of a member of the public trying to transform their circumstances is removed. The celebrity stands to gain nothing personally and, even if they win a million, unless they’re campaigning for a fairly trivial cause, that huge amount will disappear into the bottomless pit of one or other of humanity’s insoluble crises. It’s not like, if they win, cancer will be cured or Africa will be fine or drugs will go away – that would have viewers on the edge of their seats. Win or lose, there’s no thrill – just an opportunity for someone famous to raise awareness of something worthwhile. It’s a good thing but it doesn’t stop you changing channels at the break.

  In essence, I’m sad because I realised, only when I heard the show was finished, that it wasn’t a symbol of the terrifying new world of the media at all. Rather it was one of the last successes of the old. It was the Mallard, not the TGV. Fundamentally just a quiz show with a prize, it predates the tsunami of reality TV – all the personal journeys and public votes, the singing and crying and testicle-eating and diary-room self-justification. It started before the internet and channel proliferation forced broadcasters to fight for their very existence. Its confidence sprang from ignorance of the tribulations ahead.

  3

  Don’t Expect Too Much of Robots

  Lots of people seem to hate corporations, and I think that’s unfair. Sometimes I sound like I hate them too, but I really don’t. It’s too emotional a response. In a complex economy, plcs are naturally occurring and they shouldn’t be hated any more than bacteria, mould, weeds, rain or sunshine – or, more aptly since they were made by us rather than by whatever made everything else (God or general events, or perhaps a god called General Events), than robots. Like rain or robots, they can do good and harm. They’re useful but they’re to be feared. They can be great and they can be terrible. But they don’t feel emotions, so we shouldn’t feel emotions about them.

  This section is full of our puny human dealings with them: the adverts with which they attempt to communicate with us, and our weird irrational responses; the things we unfairly expect of them; and the things we stupidly let them get away with.

  *

  I was puzzled by an advertising hoarding recently. It was for Courage beer and used their old slogan, “Take Courage”. I’m tediously antiquarian enough to have been interested and slightly pleased by that: a phrase I’ve grown used to seeing in broken lettering on the side of failing, flat-roofed pubs given a new lease of life, the inherent punning opportunity in the beer’s name proving useful once again to 21st-century advertisers.

  This pun is only acceptable because the beer’s name comes from the original brewer’s surname. If the name Courage had been a marketing invention, the motto would be no cleverer than if it had been called Indefinable Allure (“Enjoy your Indefinable Allure”), 2BHappy (“Drink 2BHappy”) or just Man Juice (“Swallow some Man Juice” – this one may be a bit niche). But the brewery’s founder was called John Courage and so the fact that the same catchphrase can be taken to mean both “drink this beer” and “be brave” is serendipitous rather than corny.

  Then I looked at the advert more closely. In case you didn’t see it, it’s a photograph of a curvy woman – not slim, but not obese – trying on a figure-hugging dress, while a man on a sofa, a can of Courage by his foot, regards her with a look of extreme apprehension. On the right is a picture of a pint of Courage, from which emerges a speech bubble containing the words: “Take Courage my friend.”

  I didn’t get it. I stared at it for several minutes and couldn’t understand what was going on. I’m afraid I eventually concluded that it meant that the man would need a drink to generate the nerve, or possibly ardour, to jump the woman. By which I mean, make a pass at her, try it on with her or make love to her, nothing more assaulty. Associations between alcohol and sexual assault are rarely made by advertisers – it
’s not viewed as a selling point.

  I realise now that it was depicting a “Does my bum look big in this?” scenario. I considered that possibility at the time but rejected it for two reasons. First, the woman didn’t look sufficiently bad in the dress to make the joke obvious. She looked a bit tarty, but she had a nice face – she was in no way “a sight”. I imagine the advertisers toyed with making her the kind of image of nightmarish womanhood Bella Emberg used to play, but decided that would be sexist and they ought to go subtle – too subtle, I’m ashamed to admit, for me.

  And second, I don’t know why he needs courage in this situation. Saying “Yes, you look fat” is not an example of bravery but of tactlessness. Surely it isn’t just fear that stops men telling women when they’ve made sartorial mistakes? They hold their tongues because there are some things it doesn’t help people to know.

  But when the Advertising Standards Authority banned the advert, I was surprised; it doesn’t usually censure advertisers for muffing a joke. Then I heard the real reason. It was because the poster was deemed to be suggesting that the beer would give the man confidence. Apparently, adverts aren’t allowed to imply that alcohol gives confidence (pro-drinking adverts, that is – the anti-drinking “booze gives you the illusion you’re a superhero” campaign made it its central theme).

  This is an advertising environment in which ambulance-chasing lawyers are allowed to imply that the main upshot of their services is useful relocation of bus shelters; in which make-up peddlers positively state that their products reverse the mythical “seven signs of ageing”; in which forms of words like “increases by up to a hundred per cent” (a phrase that has considerable overlap of meaning with “has no effect at all”) abound. In this world of, to put a positive spin on it, half-truths, it’s not permitted even to imply the self-evident, undeniable fact that beer gives you confidence.