Everything That's Wrong With...

There comes a time when every right thinking columnist must write his/her 'everyone else is basically an idiot' column. This was perhaps most brilliantly illustrated in the seminal satire of modern idiocy 'Nathan Barley' when put-upon, jaded hack Dan Ashcroft (portrayed with stunning ennui by Julian Barratt and, one suspects, heavily based upon writer Charlie Brooker) pens his legendary 'Rise of the Idiots' polemic, only to be beatified by the very idiots he sought to shame. Well, I have a strong inkling that this week is the time for my 'Rise of the Idiots' (see, it's a bit like Brooker's 'Dawn of the Dumb', you see where I'm going with this?).

There are two main triggers for this vitriolic brainsplurge that I will be inflicting upon you all today: The first is the maiden series of Channel 4's living sexual health nightmare The Joy of Teen Sex and the second is this article by John Harris, appearing in yesterday's G2 (think of it as further reading... you don't have to read it all... even just the title will do)

"So, what on earth could be wrong with a show titled 'The Joy of Teen Sex'?", you may well ask. Now, I'm no prude, I've cracked many a hearty innuendo and penned thoughts (admittedly for comic effect) that would make the Marquis de Sade... well... I don't know... have a sly wank(?)... but one that he felt really guilty about afterwards...; I have no issue with graphic nudity or a heavily trussed-up 'sex coach' removing a frankly terrifying looking piece of carnal paraphernalia from a chest of equally daunting vibrating trinkets; but what I do have a problem with is a ludicrously trite television show. Teenage sex is doubtless an issue worthy of exploration and is certainly worthy of a far less flawed format than 'Joy', which somehow manages to treat fairly harrowing issues with a childish contempt and light-hearted frolicking with a kind of po-faced nagging. Some moments leave you expecting Graham Chapman to march onto screen and halt proceedings for them becoming 'too silly' whereas others have perfectly innocent, balanced young women having rancid A2-printed genitals thrust in their faces until they cry.

Now, what does this have to do with 'the rise of the idiots', I hear you cry, well aside from the people frequenting the 'Sex Advice Shop' and the voxpops which wouldn't look out of place in 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie', a regular feature is the thoughts of 'teen journalist' Billie JD Porter. [deep intake of breath and sigh] There's nothing particularly wrong with Miss Porther per se... but I can't help but feel that she's a 'journalist' in the way that I'm a Hollywood actor... Yes, she says fairly sensible things when being pressganged into watching someone get a Prince Albert or a 'vajazzling', but then so would any sane person faced with watching a man have a needle thrust down his urethra and, yes, she seems fairly game, posing for a slightly dodgy middle-aged 'glamour model photographer' and venturing onto Chatroulette (which, incidentally, if the latter makes you a journalist, makes me eligible for last year's Pullitzer...) but I want to see her pen 2,000 words on Tahrir Square and hand it into me by the end of the week, you know? I've trawled the internet for evidence of 'journalism' but her blog (http://www.billiejd.blogspot.com/) doesn't offer any clues (I won't link properly in case she sues for defamation... after all she seems like a modern woman... one who would sue for defamation...).

Take this week's episode. Porter appeared, flanked by two impossible hipsters, all with vacant expressions on their faces, staring into the abyss of depravity that is Chatroulette (for when you stare too long into the Chatroulette, it too stares back unto you...) and gurgling various childish platitudes into the webcam (not to mention later making 50 dirty internet pounds by not adhering to age-old ((albeit very flawed)) internet rule of 'tits or GTFO'). And it is exactly these people that I'm beginning to struggle with. You know the sort, the kind of people who say they're 'dressing ironically' and button their shirts all the way up, who think/know they're better than you because they have the right connections to make into television/fashion/journalism, whose voices resemble a mixer-sodden whinge with a rising inflection. In Ashcroft's 'Rise of the Idiots' he points out how the idiots are "oblivious to the paradox of their own uniform individuality" and that is just it- you're not being ironic anymore when everyone is doing it. Just admit that you actually like bowties and Neil Diamond and that you do actually need those NHS spectacles and that you're not really a 'journalist'. It's fine, you know, you don't have to be a 'journalist', it's ok just being on television because you're a hipster and your parents know some people... mostly... yeah, it's nearly almost fine as long as you accept that that's the case. I know what you're thinking: 'Oh, Sam, you can't cut everyone down to an archetype, some of them are probably fine... what are the underlying causes, why can't you explain all that? EH?', well I'm getting there, ok?!

Essentially the underlying causes are those raised in John Harris' article. It's suddenly become acceptable to be Tory in pop culture. Well, I'm here to echo Johnny Marr's sentiments. It's not 'ok' to be a Tory creative, because creativity is our only defence against them in the first place. The arts are ours, dammit. Why can't you go back to your braces and stock-broking and leave our arts alone?! I don't need both Gary and Ken Barlow telling me how good Cameron is, I don't want to hear it anymore. They're selling off our forests and now their taking our arts from the inside. I didn't absorb all the social realism I could so Gilbert and George could tell me 'socialism wants everyone to be equal. We wanted to be different...' (a factually inaccurate statement anyway... the two aren't mutually exclusive) or for some Harrow/Eton/Russell Group University tosspot could tell me that they shouldn't have to apologise for their privilege. Yes. Yes, they should. 'Oh, but I was born into millions and millions of pounds' doesn't really cut it excuse-wise with me. You should have to apologise because there are millions with the same aspirations as you who have had to work a thousand or more times harder to get any closer to realising it and even then, bar a handful of notable exceptions, remain more distant from it than you would ever experience. Ok, so you might argue that they, on some level, must want to better themselves in the same way that you do by going to Oxbridge/JP Morgan etc., but there is just an inherent value in actually working to get there. Using your rationale, let's imagine a child in Ethiopia born into poverty. That's fine is it. We shouldn't bother offering help to that child because it's been born that way, is that it? Yes, you should have to apologise, because you are responsible, at least (if you insist on the excuse of birth allowing you to be non-culpable) for the fact that many a decent, hard-working, ordinary employee has lost their job/missed out on promotion/achieved so little of what they wanted in life that they've been driven to suicide, you short-sighted, self-serving oik.

Ahem...

Anyway this is more about arts and less about me being a bit like Geldof...

As several commenters on the article point out 'oh but Thatcher was good for the arts, Sam, wasn't she? Look at all the arts we done under Thatcher, eh? What about music and drama... all that we done under Thatcher, eh?'. Here's the rub- yes, The Smiths happened under Thatcher, yes, Boys From The Blackstuff happened under Thatcher but they were both epics of utter despair but also of steely defiance under a regime attempting to choke originality and creative freedom as well as handily getting rid of all the actual jobs that would otherwise have been available too. To credit Thatcher with Bleasdale's magnum opus or Strangeways Here We Come is like crediting Hitler with 'the marvellous courage shown by the French Resistance'. They existed as anathema to the Tory government, reminding them just how much we hated what they stood for and exactly how we can overcome it.

Speaking of Boys From The Blackstuff, Liverpool City Council is fully aware that it doesn't want another generation of Yosser Hughes'- beaten by police, battered by the despair of the Dole and all but killed by the government- and has pulled out of Cameron's Big Society, already denounced on this very blog last year as basically 'don't like how things are? Then you sort it out and we can blame you when it inevitably goes tits up' politics.

Now, as bad as 'Uncool Britannia' is, I wasn't particularly enamoured with Cool Britannia either (It's responsible for Damien Hirst, after all, who is responisble for making obscene amounts of cash from extortionately priced botched taxidermy or human remains), perhaps it's wrong to make this a political thing as Harris has done, but it just so happens that you're friendly neighbourhood over-privileged pop-culture figure (surprise, surprise) just happens to be a Tory more often than not.

I don't wake up in the morning with the sole aim of inciting class warfare, honestly I don't. This was supposed to be about the arts and about terrible, privileged ironically-dressed hipsters and I've turned it into a massive go essentially about how I've put in actual effort into the things I've wanted to do and got zero reward like so many honest people, who would be part of the appallingly patronisingly-titled 'Alarm Clock Britain' if they didn't lie awake at night despairing over whether cuts are going to lose them their jobs or wondering how they're going to keep the electricity bill paid and sleep through their alarms until they awake in a cold sweat, cursing the fact that they're still alive and still doomed to the daily grind in Cameron's Britain.

Phew...