2007 - Dawn of the Dumb

by Charlie Brooker

  So come on, Reid. Stop pissing about with twittering cameras on sticks. The technology for an army of wirelessly controlled mobile CCTV spybots already exists—and it’s interactive. There’s nothing stopping you. Show some balls for once in your poxy life. Give us the Daleks.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In which 9/11 is not a conspiracy, Fearne Cotton and Pac-Man are pitied, and Mussolini makes everyone laugh.

  A terrible crime

  [17 February 2007]

  Mark Twain once said that a lie can travel halfway round the world before the truth can put its socks on. Now, thanks to the internet, a lie can travel round the world, head home, take a dump, watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD, make supper and die of old age before the truth has opened an eyelid. It’s not Twain’s fault. In his day the internet was made of string.

  Chinese whispers spread online faster than any computer virus. I know this better than most because I was at the centre of one a few years ago, when I ended a Screen Burn column by recycling a very old tasteless joke (a variant of a graffiti I first saw during the Thatcher years), and within minutes half the internet seemed convinced the Guardian was officially calling for assassination.

  My inbox overflowed with blood-curdling death threats, and it was all very unfunny indeed—a bit like recounting a rude joke at a dinner party, only to be told you hadn’t recounted a joke at all, but molested the host’s children, and suddenly everyone was punching you and you weren’t going to get any pudding. I’ve had better weekends.

  Incidentally, in case the entire internet is reading, it seems prudent at this point to unequivocally state that I’ve never wanted to see anyone murdered, injured, or even lightly bruised. Not even Mac owners, and frankly they’re pushing it.

  As anyone who read the original column will know, I’m not a huge fan of Bush. He’s a dangerous idiot who’s dragged America’s name into the mud, and crapped all over it, grinning as he does so. As for Americans themselves, I can honestly say I’ve never met one I didn’t like. Maybe I’m shallow, maybe it’s the accents. But really-every single one of them: lovely.

  So, having established that (a) I don’t like Bush but (b) I love Americans, it’s time for a third revelation—namely, (c) I don’t believe 9/11 was an inside job orchestrated by the Bush administration. Which is a pity, because I love a good conspiracy theory, and that’s a humdinger.

  Thing is, people like me will eventually be in the minority if the Chinese whisperers have their way. I’d like to think tomorrow’s excellent documentary 9/11: The Conspiracy Files (BBC2) will redress the balance—but I doubt it, since the story it tells (i.e. the real one) isn’t half as exciting as the other story doing the rounds (i.e. the bullshit cuckooland version).

  In cool, measured tones it steadily dismantles the Loose Change conspiracy theory until there’s nothing left to see besides a slightly snotty young director and a few unhinged talking heads. No rational person could watch this and come away thinking otherwise.

  But whoops: people aren’t rational. They believe what they want to believe, and when evidence mounts to the contrary, dig their heels in and refuse to change their minds, like dogs that won’t be dragged through a doorway. Sometimes the sheer pressure of all that stubbornness causes them to lose their senses completely and become creationists, at which point they’re beyond help.

  But there’s still hope for the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Their hearts are still in the right place, even if their brains have fluttered off to spaceland. One day they’ll return, like butterflies, and all will be well.

  Here’s what really happened on 9/11. A terrible crime was committed by a group of determined terrorists. Appalling mistakes were made both before and after the terrible crime. The terrible crime was capitalised upon. The world was shit before the terrible crime, and got steadily shittier afterwards. That’s it! So please, please, stop pissing your pants about controlled demolitions and the like—you’re wrong. You’re wrong! And it’s OK to be wrong. You can still distrust or even hate the government. But on this one? You’re wrong. And continuing to bang on about it isn’t heroic, it’s embarrassing. The rest of the world isn’t asleep. You’re just dreaming out loud.

  Right-wing funnies

  [24 February 2007]

  Political humour is rarely a boxful of chuckles. It largely consists of clever-clever point-scoring, weary cynicism and lolly-stick gags about the size of Prescott’s arse. There’s surprisingly little anger, considering the piss-poor state of the world—and when rage or passion does appear, it’s often elbowed all the jokes out of the way. Mostly though, political satire seems to be stuck in a strange, woozy rut: half-heartedly sniping at the powers that be with an underpowered peashooter, breaking off every 10 minutes for a fag break and a shrug.

  Three cheers then, for 24 co-creator Joel Surnow, who’s recently given birth to The Half Hour News Hour (Fox News), a topical comedy show which manages to be angry, opinionated and genuinely political all at once. In fact, there are only two things wrong with it: (1) it’s dementedly right-wing, and (2) radiation sickness is funnier.

  A lot of people think right-wingers aren’t capable of being amusing at all. Not true. Mussolini looked hilarious swinging from that lamppost. And besides, hardcore lefties aren’t a barrel of laughs either. They’re a crushing, life-depleting bore. People who stand firmly to one side of the political spectrum tend by their very nature to be stiff, crotchety sorts with a persecution complex and an axe to grind. These are not prime credentials for clown school.

  For my money, the best satire floats somewhere in the centre—not in a non-committal sense, but a tactical one: positioned between the two sides, you’re capable of lashing out in either direction. The first one to say something ridiculous gets a slap. It’s the rational option. Genuine satire ultimately consists of the outraged application of cold rationality to whoever deserves it the most.

  The Half Hour News Hour isn’t rational. It’s intended as a riposte to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show (More4), the show that made stars of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

  The Daily Show isn’t perfect. Understandably, for a programme airing four times per week, it’s often hit and miss. When it misses, it’s cringeworthy; but when it hits, it’s laugh out loud funny. It attacks both Republicans and Democrats, but leans more heavily on Republicans because, hey, they’re the ones in power. This makes sense comedically: there are more jokes to be had in lampooning the governing party since their actions carry more weight. And besides, it’s hard to generate giggles by attacking the underdog. If Hilary Clinton were in charge, she’d be pilloried nightly. But she isn’t. Bush is.

  Rational viewers understand this. Eye-swivelling nutrags don’t. They believe The Daily Show is a far-left propaganda tool. Hence the advent of The Half Hour News Hour, which Fox claims offers ‘balance’ by adopting an enraged conservative stance. The end result, if the first episode is anything to go by, is a bizarre, unnatural beast: a topical comedy show that ignores the present government completely and concentrates its fury on environmentalists, civil rights campaigners, Barack Obama and Cindy Sheehan. The set piece was a shockingly dismal skit starring right-wing talk-radio hog Rush Limbaugh and joyless crypto-fascist commentator Ann Coulter, who wandered on screen looking so haunted and drawn I briefly mistook her for a ghost and kicked my television from its stand in a blind panic. Spewing all that negative hate speech must’ve hollowed out her spirit, poor thing; her eyes are now a portal to a world of infinite nihilistic oblivion—gaze into them too long and you can feel the air growing cold around you.

  To be fair, there were one or two decent gags, but they felt like aberrations thrown up by the law of averages. There is one thing to be said in the show’s favour: at least it has an agenda, which is unusual in modern comedy. But an agenda is all it has. It’s government-approved satire—as oxymoronic, pointless and wretched as church-sanctioned porn. But probably easier to masturbate to, assuming you get off on abject desperation.r />
  Carpet of the stars

  [3 March 2007]

  Celebrity worship has reached such a demented peak, it won’t be long before they’re legally allowed to mount the pavement and run us over for chuckles. In fact, it’ll be considered an honour. We’ll voluntarily hurl ourselves beneath the wheels, jizzing for joy as the tyres churn our bodies to ribbons, screaming that it’s the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to us. We’ll watch celebrities do anything. We’d watch Brad Pitt sit on his front lawn throwing acorns into a can. Christ, we’d watch Eamonn Holmes buying a cabbage. If there’s someone famous involved, we’re there.

  Last Sunday, I watched Oscars Red Carpet Live (Sky Movies 9 HD). Ninety pin-sharp minutes of people walking along a carpet. That’s all it was. Plod plod plod. Carpet carpet carpet. Every few minutes my brain protested. It screamed at my fingers to grab the remote…but then a voice would assure me that what I was seeing was desperately exciting and a privilege and the remote stayed put and the plodding carried on.

  It wasn’t my own voice, incidentally, but the voice of Fearne Cotton, who was presenting the show. I think she’s nine years old, and there’s something slightly odd about her. She’s got a cute-but-sad expression, like a pleading mouse in a vivisectionist’s cage, or that mass-produced painting of a crying boy.

  Recently, in an interview with GQ magazine, she claimed to be ‘good in bed’, adding that she wears ‘sexy lingerie’ and had her fanny waxed—revelations which doubtless set their entire readership wanking like an angry orchestra, but only made me picture that boy from the painting—shaved, knickered, crying in a bedroom. This kind of horror has no place in anyone’s head. Don’t say it again, Fearne. Please.

  Anyway, back on the red carpet, the crying boy was interviewing the stars as they passed by like celebrity livestock. When Michael Sheen appeared, she asked him if playing Tony Blair in The Queen had been ‘fun’, then called him ‘Martin’ to his face.

  She asked Al Gore ‘What message have you got for the Brits about keeping the environment safe?’, and seemed surprised when he didn’t trot out a three-word answer. She told the women they looked gorgeous, amazing and, in one case, ‘top-notch’.

  She was the ideal presenter. They needed someone to cover a bunch of people walking down a fucking carpet. Who do you expect? Noam Chomsky? At least Fearne got something out of it—she kept telling us how crazy and brilliant it all was. She had a night she’ll remember for the rest of her life. Who are we to gripe?

  Between interviews, the camera cut to shots of other stars as they arrived: grinning, posing for photos, and in Will Smith’s case, proudly displaying his wife and child as though they were papier-mache sculptures he’d made in remedial art class.

  Whenever even this got too boring to sustain, we were treated to pre-recorded VTs in which a selection of who-the-hell talking heads blathered about Hollywood and glamour and fashion and God knows what else—teaspoons perhaps—and then it cut back to Fearne and she was talking to Penelope Cruz, one of the most beautiful women in the world, but instead of looking at her, I was staring at all the publicists jostling in the background, because thanks to the wonder of HD broadcasting I could make them out clearly, and each one looked like a furious gum-chewing monster who’d slit your throat if you coughed inappropriately in their client’s presence, and suddenly I felt infinitely sorry for Fearne, and violently protective.

  And then poor Fearne said goodbye and it was time for the ceremony itself, which turned out to be an unbearably odious five-hour tantric masturbation session in which the carpet people told the world how magical they were.

  Still, it’s probably worth enjoying this glittering bullshit while it lasts. In ten years’ time, when we’re battling 2o-foot radioactive scorpions for the last six molecules of water, we’ll look back on it all and emit a wistful sigh.

  Same clothes. Same cars. Same sky

  [17 March 2007]

  I used to pity Pac-Man. Not because he was relentlessly pursued by ghosts (what had he done—fucked their sisters?) but because he was a prisoner in that maze. There were exits either side, but they didn’t lead anywhere. They spat him back into the haunted labyrinth. No wonder he ate so many of those suspicious looking pills. Getting off his face was his only escape.

  You don’t have to turn yellow and consist of pixels to experience a similar sense of deja vu. Just trot round contemporary Britain. Chain store after chain store. Ten billion supermarket doppel-gangers. Identikit architecture. Same clothes. Same cars. Same sky.

  Same sameness. It’s like walking the wrong way on a travelator: hours of plodding, and you’ve gone nowhere.

  It’s the same on TV. Not so long ago, not only were our towns and cities markedly different, the ITV regions were too. A small thrill, to switch on the box in your B&B and see unfamiliar announcers, exotic logos. Different programmes too. It was like being abroad.

  As a youngster, I scanned the ‘regional variations’ in the listings and felt faintly jealous if I spotted something interesting which I couldn’t see on Central TV (my local). Gus Honeybun. Who or what was Gus Honeybun? He was always in the Westward listings, taunting me from afar.

  I’ve just Googled him: he was a puppet rabbit. At last I know.

  Anyway, since 2002 it’s generic ITV, all over (apart from the holdouts—STV in Scotland, UTV in Northern Ireland). Local identity hardly gets a look-in.

  But hmmm. Glancing at the cascade of unnecessary nationwide channels available through my Sky box—UKTV Canoe History +2, anybody?—1 can’t help thinking local broadcasting is due to make a comeback.

  In fact, it already is. There, nestling in the EPG: local stations for Manchester, Milton Keynes and, most exciting of all, SolentTV (Sky Channel 219)—an entire network devoted to the Isle of Wight.

  Solent TV is strikingly confident. Brash, even. It’s just like an ITV region circa 1989. Its flagship show is a daily newscast called Solent Tonight, which looks and feels just like a ‘proper’ news programme, except the headlines consist of minor traffic incidents and council squabbling. To a Londoner, this isn’t boring, just comforting. Our news has a bodycount: it’s all stab this and arson that and guns and bombs and phonecam footage of babies hurled under tube trains. It’s nice to know that somewhere a hay bale blowing across a B-road is still big news. I watch it to relax.

  The hosts are far younger than the national norm, yet work with absolute conviction (apart from one cub reporter, who the other day was conducting vox-pop interviews in a baseball cap). They’ve clearly got a minuscule budget, but they wear it well. The studio’s so small, when they interview a guest they have to sit so close their knees are almost touching. But I’d rather watch that than the absurd virtual aircraft hangar you see on ITV news.

  Aside from the news, there are other homegrown programmes like the brilliantly titled See It, Like It, Cook It, which seems to star a fifteen-year-old chef, and a chat show called Hannam’s Half Hour, in which a kindly bloke called John Hannam converses with leading Isle of Wight figures. Thrillingly, last week the listings promised an interview with ‘local character Derek Sprake’, which I genuinely couldn’t wait to see—but this seemed to change at the last minute. Nevertheless, the edition I did watch was twice as cosy and reassuring as the local news—30 minutes of jovial chat between two likeable men in that familiar cramped studio.

  Between shows, you can enjoy commercials for local shops, and occasional televised ‘notice boards’ promoting jumble sales or talks at Ventnor town hall (‘Entry fee £1: coffee and sandwiches included’). It’s a trip back in time to a more reassuring age—but also, it seems to me, a glimpse of a cosier future. It’s truly heartening. Tune in. See for yourself.

  Lie upon lie upon lie upon lie

  [31 March 2007]

  Did you see that Catherine Tate sketch on Comic Relief ‘the other week? The one where Tony Blair played himself? He gave a fantastic performance. Genuinely- a fantastic performance. He actually made me laugh out loud. Admitted
ly, not as loud as I’ll laugh the day he and Bush are found guilty of war crimes following a six-month show trial at the Hague, but close.

  When he unexpectedly delivered the ‘Am I bowered?’ catch-phrase, his timing was immaculate—for a second, I guffawed so loudly I almost forgot about the teetering stacks of skulls, the foaming geysers of blood, the phosphor burns, the pictures of young children with their arms blown off, and the constant metronomic background tick-tock of lie upon lie upon lie upon lie upon lie.

  Obviously future generations will use Blair’s name as a swearword so offensive it currently has no equivalent in the English language (the closest possible translation at present being ‘idiot turd stuffed in dead horse vagina’—that’s your name, that is, Blair), and obviously he’s doomed to spend eternity shrieking in unimaginable agony as he’s boiled alive in a gigantic cauldron by a cackling, masturbating demon in the fieriest corner of Hell—but boy, he was funny in that sketch. Perhaps the custodians of Hades will cut him some slack for that. Give him a four-minute break from gargling molten lava once a millennium, something like that. Fingers crossed, eh, Tone?

  I’m in a bad mood, in case you hadn’t noticed, but for the best of reasons. I’ve just watched The Mark of Cain, an intensely powerful drama about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of British soldiers, and it’s made me very angry indeed. That’s its job: it’s a protest film. A work of fiction, based heavily on fact, written by Tony Marchant, featuring taut direction and some superb central performances.

  So far, so worthy. Because it’s on Channel 4, and because, on the face of it, it looks like a ‘difficult’ work, I suspect it’ll draw a respectable-but-not-astounding audience, as opposed to the five to six million it might find if it were on ITV or BBC1—a pity, because in addition to being angry and moving and extremely well made, it’s also hugely accessible. Place this slap-bang in the main-stream and it’d go down a storm. And then cause one. It opens feeling almost like a thriller—and an effective one at that—before sliding into gut-wrenching tragedy, including some truly shocking final scenes that should redefine the phrase ‘harrowing TV drama’ for some time to come. And despite the subject matter, it’s perhaps the most genuinely sympathetic examination of the pressures facing our troops I’ve seen in years.