A slave experiences a kind of freedom the so-called free man does not: the freedom from responsibility. It’s an idea that clearly informs those that govern and those who acquiesce to their methods. Film making, said director Bela Tarr, is not a democratic system, it is a feudal system, simply because someone has to decide where to put the camera. The positioning of the camera is everything. The majority of people are happy to be free from such a responsibility.
Television is now the dominant medium of exchange between those who govern and those who are governed, the means by which the image in the camera is conveyed. It is a tireless, ubiquitous device operating all day every day without interruption, its singular purpose, to qualify responsibility and the freedoms it entails. It is a process of dissembling and distraction.
The citizens of the UK are forced to pay for this privilege. The BBC imposes a government- approved yearly tax of £145 ($180) on every home that owns a television and failure to comply is a crime. The revenue from this tax – which finances subsequent programming – amounted to £3.7428 billion in 2015–16 alone. The money also funds government-approved surveillance to monitor and identify delinquent viewers. The population is thereby compelled by law to subsidize the informational system that controls it.
The UK was listed among the “Enemies of the Internet” in 2014 by Reporters without Borders, a category of countries with the highest levels of Internet censorship and surveillance, that mark themselves not just for their capacity to censor news and information online, but also their almost systematic repression of internet users. Other major economies listed in this category include China, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
He who controls the past controls the future said George Orwell and manipulating the perception of the past is a significant part of the process of television. English ‘Telly’ has a huge inventory to work with. Every day is a continual updating of fictional and factual history combined with relentless past iterations of ‘itself.’ Celebrities and shows from the decades of its existence evoke a comfortable nostalgia without surprises confirming a fine tradition that works. It is a lulling sensation, the feeling of being relieved of the possibilities ahead by focusing on the good old days behind.
It is the ‘image in the rear-view mirror’, an Alfred Hitchcock–like device in which the camera moves forward while zooming back at the same time. The effect is a feeling of simultaneously going backwards and forwards, of moving, but not moving at all. Like a hypnotist’s watch, it lulls the viewer into distraction from the present by constantly presenting the comforts of the past.
Monarchy is a staple ingredient of Telly and its merits are promoted with as much energy as its faults are obscured. Monarchy is the repository of tradition, encapsulating all the trappings of cultural wealth: pageantry, art, architecture, and world influence are constantly celebrated, while its violent shortcomings are transformed into glorious spectacle, promoting the joys of servitude not the reality. Mass murder and carnage are presented as “glorious battles”, and “campaigns” – exhilarating notions involving concepts of ‘loyalty’, ‘bravery’, ‘heroism’, and ‘victory’. “The King’s men” is a remarkable phrase that just slips right on by.
The discovery and reinterring of the bones of king Richard III received relentless daily coverage. His earthly remains were dug up under a car park no less, a wonderfully ironic punch line sufficient to interest even the most unroyal viewer. The methods of mobsters came to mind.
In the course of moving the monarch to a more dignified resting place, much was done to revise just such an impression. Dick 3 had not fared well in the hands of historians and fictional embellishers. The ruthless hunchback, wife killer and murderer of young princes had indeed come down as a form of privileged gangster, and attempts were made to recast him in a better light: a kindlier, nobler king, fearless in defense of his realm to the point of dying in battle. The bones were in spin. In the words of the woman who had reconstructed his likeness from the remains, he was already – “ … a warm, young, earnest and rather serious” fellow.
No mention was made of the hundreds of impoverished individuals who died in the Battle of Bosworth fighting on his behalf. Those he had force-marched to miserable violent deaths in order to increase his personal wealth. For them there would be no memorial, no recompense whatsoever. They had no bones to speak of, not even names. Oddly enough, this didn’t seem to matter, even to their descendants. Five hundred years on, 20,000 equally ordinary, disposable, people shuffled respectfully past the remains of the very thing that had ordered their ancestors to die on its behalf.
Monarchy appears to appeal to women more than men, possibly because women have not been consistently murdered and mutilated in its bloody wars of aggrandizement. As the countless movies, books, and television shows confirm, millions of little girls fantasize about being princesses, but very few little boys want to be a prince. Princes are invariably effete, ineffectual individuals with a nasty habit of conscripting ordinary ‘lesser’ males to do their arbitrary bidding. They no longer have such prerogatives, but they are so innately unremarkable that few men give them a second thought. Monarchy on the other hand is a fabulous repository of stuff. Given that the appropriation and flaunting of stuff, is fundamental to female sexual psychology, it is essential to Telly’s role in the system of control.
This is not just the correcting or rescuing of royal dignity, but the bolstering and furthering of the feudal mindset it entails. The subjects that shuffle dutifully past the bones in the box are only a fraction of the army of loyals that eagerly awaits the arrival of the next iteration. Royalty no longer enjoys the God-given right to fuck the workers’ wives on their wedding night or march the husbands off to certain death – it can’t on a whim use their child’s severed arm to unblock the toilet as it were, but its accumulated wealth and kudos still influence England’s affairs. The current queen may be deprived of such prerogatives, but she still has the ill-gotten gains. Those too are transformed into a benefit for all.
Shows about the stately homes and palaces strewn all over England are basic fare for Telly. Fictional dramas about the joys of attending to the needs of the self-serving, bejeweled layabouts that own them are immensely popular. “My Lord” and “My Lady” imply a sense of shared ownership in such properties and lives; a harking back, however unreal, that is to be cherished and held onto at all cost. The vindication of this dynamic is that it has endured. It is the greatest example of this system in the world: a system of fealty, of deference to status quo. There is comfort in this, the comfort that comes from being told what to do, what to think, and where to look, the freedom of being relieved of responsibility.
The British are more than familiar with cameras, they are among the most spied upon cultures on the planet. The monitoring and remote enforcement of crime amounts to one surveillance camera for every eleven citizens. New laws further infringing on personal privacy were passed in 2016. There was little or no resistance to this, the population again seemingly abrogating responsibility in favor of comfort.
The image of crime presented and dramatized by Telly bears little resemblance to the reality suggested by the need for such surveillance. It confirms the efficacy of such draconian methods by suggesting it does not exist. Surveillance may record transgression, but there is no guarantee media will reveal it. The sexual exploitation of as many as 1,400 young girls in Rotherham went unheeded for over a decade for fear of transgressing politically correct interracial mores. Cameras are for enforcing criminal and political correctness but if political correctness means the need to draw attention away from crime because it involves certain cultural groups, the number of cameras becomes irrelevant.
Telly Crime Drama reflects this dynamic. Murder Mystery shows abound, but the fear of presenting races other than the ‘Native English’ as the perpetrators, results in the bizarre image of a nation in which Anglo Saxons appear to be murdering one another at an alarming rate. The tradition of Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes and other absurdly insightful sleuths continues unabated, with upper, middle and working class Anglos, cranking out ‘bodies’ 24/7. This not only obscures reality but suggests that Anglo Saxons are somehow pathologically predisposed more than any other race to killing one another – a nonsense completely contradicted by actual crime statistics. The idea that a ‘witty’ even ‘funny’, ongoing fictional series would be devoted to ‘New English’ ‘Honor Killings’ would be outrageous, yet ‘Old English’ whimsically murdering one another is accepted without question.
Modern Cops-in-Action shows are also popular. The stirring setup montage of Police Interceptors shows automatic weapons being pumped, squad cars careening across highways with helicopters overhead, armed police teams breaking down front doors and perpetrators being wrestled to the ground; an implication that crime is rampant but ‘ We’re on the case.’ The actual shows, however, feature encounters with Saturday night rowdies, pub brawls and one or two car chases. In keeping with the drama demographic, the cops and the criminals are invariably ‘native English’.
The old black and white/blue and white cop cars are gone now, replaced with rainbow-colored, luminous vehicles that are obviously easier to spot, but eerily evocative of kids’ toys. The UK is apparently the only country in the world that feels it necessary to paint them this way. Arriving at the crime scene, with the confidence of celebrities and a camera crew at their backs, no-nonsense P.C.s shame and bully teenagers into realizing their shortcomings by broadcasting them to millions. Admonishing them with such stern advice as “behave yourself” and “no need for bad language”. This hardly represents the kind of serious crime police actually contend with and the risks they take, but is certainly indicative of the political correctness they must negotiate.
The legitimacy of this false representation is confirmed in the GSE school curricula. “Television and film crime/cop drama is very popular with a wide audience,” kids are told, “Crime Dramas seek to anchor the representations of all types of police officers, criminals and victims as ‘believable’ characters, with ‘realistic’ plot lines, set in urban locations.”
News crime is also reported with the same careful attention to political correctness with a disproportionate – and therefore correct – number of women doing the reporting.
Adamant female News Anchors deliver bulletins with the authority and solemnity of grade school teachers. When the situation calls for outrage or condemnation it is expressed it with the same kind of stern, teacherly disapprobation. Reporters and commentators ‘on the scene’ are also invariably women, with breaking news and tragedy taking on the quality of gossip over a garden fence.
This is ironic given the devolution of mainstream News. ‘Feminists’ define Gossip as, “unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details which are not necessarily confirmed as true.” Much of mainstream television on both sides of the Atlantic has become entirely partisan, functioning simply as a political opposition propaganda device. Both employ the same methods of selective emphasis, misrepresentation of facts and unsubstantiated demagogic rhetoric. As in America, Telly continues to promote a globalist, collectivist, feudal agenda regardless of majority popular votes to the contrary. It is clearly prepared to use whatever methods are necessary to maintain its hold on the camera.
The affirmative overcompensation for female representation extends to most areas of Telly including science, technology, education, history, the arts, male sports, and many subjects for which women have no intrinsic experiential understanding – any more than males have experiential understanding of uniquely female concerns. Women also dominate as network voiceovers.
This is the ultimate regression to past: an informational system that talks to its audience like children. With its dull (unelected) Queen, matronly (unelected)Prime minister Theresa May and relentless drone of schoolmarms, Telly assures the citizenry of the ultimate Nanny State, that MUMMY – not Big Brother – is watching over you – twenty-four seven.
“Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see…”
Turn it off.
MALCOLM MC NEILL
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MALCOLM MC NEILL emigrated to the United States in his twenties but regularly returns to England, sometimes for months at a time. He wrote “Telly” in 2016 in reaction to the blatant misrepresentations of the United States government being broadcast by the BBC and the appallingly hypocritical television characterization of ‘crime’ in the UK.
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