Dishonest pretence has been a damaging problem in television since its beginnings, partly caused by governmental censorship, partly by lack of budget, but mostly by cowardly programmers and the easy path. Black is black. It is never white. You can put something black in front of me and insist that it's white until the end of time, but I am never going to believe you. You can persuade, lie, threaten, do whatever you darn well pleasey, but I will never believe you; not now, not tomorrow, not in two years time when you repeat the programme
never. Dawn, write that down. It might be worth you having a think about it.
I remember an early example. In the 1960s there was a huge surfeit of steam trains. Nowadays we hang on to every precious example that comes our way, but back then they were scrap and going for a song. The BBC decided to stage a live, prime-time spectacular. They rigged a train line on a high ridge with dynamite, set up a few cameras and sent one of the old beasts with a full train of carriages hurtling down the track. The idea was this. As the engine passed over the rigged section, they would blow up the track, the beast would crash stupendously over the ridge and there would be a huge and breathtaking disaster as it hurtled towards its death. What actually happened (groan; you could have guessed it from the start) was that the engine jumped the rails a bit and the train juddered to dusty halt rather quickly. It was a decidedly unspectacular spectacular. But what sticks in my mind was the commentary. Instead of saying "Sorry folks, that wasn't too brilliant, was it? Now over to the News", the fellow pretended that the original vision had actually happened and we got a solemn exposition on cataclysms and scale, and niddle naddle noo. "Magnificent old gal", was one phrase I remember.
40 years later, and still black is white it seems. Journalist Dawn Porter presented a programme called "Dawn Gets Naked". Her point was that modern women become misled about their bodily worth because they are constantly surrounded by impossibly glamorous magazine images of beautiful models. Yet the images are lies. They are electronically improved and distorted, and the standards are actually unattainable. So Dawn starts a campaign called "Get naked with me". She wanted to demonstrate what women really look like, moles, wobbly bits, the lot. Laudable. She gathered together a number of women who were prepared to do just that and they paraded around central London on an open top bus. But what of Dawn, their leader? Did she get naked? Did she heck. I can excuse her the knickers, she was in public and British law states - no public genitals. But the rest? There she was, doing a programme about being unashamedly naked, insisting she was naked, boasting about being naked, celebrating being naked, yet over her nipples she wore two large plastic leaves. "Yeah, I'm naked!", she proclaimed. No you're not Dawn, and you can tell us you are until the end of time, but we can see you aren't. And in case you think I'm being unreasonable, some of her companions, with a bit more courage than Dawn, had bare breasts.
Dawn was actually making an important, valid point, that modern women allow their self esteem to be badly damaged by the manipulating magazine industry. So a reluctant 5 (medium, ordinary), downgraded to 4 because she kept her nipples covered.
I remember an early example. In the 1960s there was a huge surfeit of steam trains. Nowadays we hang on to every precious example that comes our way, but back then they were scrap and going for a song. The BBC decided to stage a live, prime-time spectacular. They rigged a train line on a high ridge with dynamite, set up a few cameras and sent one of the old beasts with a full train of carriages hurtling down the track. The idea was this. As the engine passed over the rigged section, they would blow up the track, the beast would crash stupendously over the ridge and there would be a huge and breathtaking disaster as it hurtled towards its death. What actually happened (groan; you could have guessed it from the start) was that the engine jumped the rails a bit and the train juddered to dusty halt rather quickly. It was a decidedly unspectacular spectacular. But what sticks in my mind was the commentary. Instead of saying "Sorry folks, that wasn't too brilliant, was it? Now over to the News", the fellow pretended that the original vision had actually happened and we got a solemn exposition on cataclysms and scale, and niddle naddle noo. "Magnificent old gal", was one phrase I remember.
40 years later, and still black is white it seems. Journalist Dawn Porter presented a programme called "Dawn Gets Naked". Her point was that modern women become misled about their bodily worth because they are constantly surrounded by impossibly glamorous magazine images of beautiful models. Yet the images are lies. They are electronically improved and distorted, and the standards are actually unattainable. So Dawn starts a campaign called "Get naked with me". She wanted to demonstrate what women really look like, moles, wobbly bits, the lot. Laudable. She gathered together a number of women who were prepared to do just that and they paraded around central London on an open top bus. But what of Dawn, their leader? Did she get naked? Did she heck. I can excuse her the knickers, she was in public and British law states - no public genitals. But the rest? There she was, doing a programme about being unashamedly naked, insisting she was naked, boasting about being naked, celebrating being naked, yet over her nipples she wore two large plastic leaves. "Yeah, I'm naked!", she proclaimed. No you're not Dawn, and you can tell us you are until the end of time, but we can see you aren't. And in case you think I'm being unreasonable, some of her companions, with a bit more courage than Dawn, had bare breasts.
Dawn was actually making an important, valid point, that modern women allow their self esteem to be badly damaged by the manipulating magazine industry. So a reluctant 5 (medium, ordinary), downgraded to 4 because she kept her nipples covered.