What are flies attracted to?
In a bid to bring to our screens even more odious real people than the invented soap-bubbleheads of EastEnders. BBC1 has collaborated with Australian TV to make what is called a fly-on-the-wall documentary series about the lives of a Sydney family. The folks of Sylvania Waters (9.30 pm, Thursdays) are a nightmarish image of capitalist family life.
In Sylvania Waters the chief topic of conversation (this being a euphemism for the screamed abuse and hostile grunts which constitute most of their attempts at communication) is money. Noeline, the mother, has loads of it. And she likes telling us how much she has and how much she likes having it. Her partner in this world of styleless and avaricious possession is Laurie, a quite detestable factory-owner who has his own boat and a racing car and personal sewer in this mouth from which come relentless insults against Noeline’s “useless, lazy and work-shy" kids—not to mention the rest of the working class who exhibit the same faults, according to this small-time capitalist bigot.
One of Noeline’s sons lives with a girl in a condition of poverty which is caused, according to Noeline and Laurie, by insufficient attention to the god of money. On her younger son's birthday, plans for the party omit all humane talk of jollity and parental love and celebration and instead consist of endless negotiations about the cost of hiring a bouncer (for a boys sixteenth birthday party?) and parts of Noeline's property which the forty-plus guests must be banned from. (In the end the party was cancelled after yet another angry exchange between Laurie and the lad he regards as being good for nothing.)
Life in Sylvania Waters is so devoid of mutuality and so permeated by monetary priorities and division that this family seems to be the ideal microcosm of what this system does to human relationships. Certainly, the theme of alienation jumps out of the sociology textbooks and hits us between the eyes as we observe these people who do not talk to each other, understand each other or want to be with each other. There was a deeply poignant moment in the programme on 1 July when Noeline's son (or is it Laurie’s son—who knows or cares?) walks into his living room, sits on a settee and then, observing that the TV is switched off, turns to his wife and says “Why’s this switched off? Is there something wrong? It’s like a bloody morgue in here”. What has life come to when you have to ask not why the TV is on but why its off, when no TV babble means that something must be wrong and home has become a mortuary. Perhaps we ought to refer to the room with the idiot box in the corner as the dying room rather than the living room. It is the room where alienated people let others live for them.
Sylvania Waters is a useful reminder that the rich might have money, but they sure don’t have any monopoly on brains. The standard of language between these affluent non-entities is charmless, to say the least. Their idea of luxury is reminiscent of that brilliant description of the capitalists at home written by Noonan in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. (Remember the Brigand’s Cave: “This was Mr. Grinder’s first visit at the house, and he expressed his admiration of the manner in which the ceiling and the walls were decorated, remarking that he had always liked this 'ere Japanese style. Mr. Bosher. with his mouth full of biscuit, mumbled that it was sweetly pretty— charming—beautifully done—must have cost a lot of money.") Indeed, Sylvania Waters must be the first ever fly-on-the-wall documentary in which even the flies exhibit higher tastes than the humans.
The news between the ads
In 1990 the ITV companies entered into a sordid franchise war in order to carve up the commercial network amongst the highest bidders. Out of the auction has emerged some pretty cheap and lousy TV. notably Carlton TV which now covers London. Carlton’s nightly London Tonight (like its radio counterpart, LBC now owned by Thatcherite tycoon Lady Shirley Porter, ex-Westminster council leader and dealer in very cheap graveyards) epitomizes the worst in tabloid TV. But then, like the Sun. this mindless drivel attracts investment—in the form of advertisements. So, serious news analysis is abandoned for the sake of market forces.
Last month’s announcement by the ITV network that they want to move News At Ten from its long-standing peak-time position, because it fails to pull in a high enough audience to please the advertisers, is further evidence of the market on the rampage. It is all very well for political figures such as the unlamented ex-Minister of National Heritage, David Mellor, and the Prime Minister, Major, making speeches of condemnation against the ITV assault upon tradition. What do they expect? When they encourage TV companies to throw themselves fully into the market while seeking to retain certain standards of higher journalistic responsibility it is like inviting burglars into your home and insisting that they leave everything as they found it. Perhaps the advertisers would cheer up if ITN employed Noleen and Laurie to read the news, with deep analytical observations from them both on each item, followed by The Saint and Greavsie discussing international affairs—-such as the World Cup and the Test Match.
Steve Coleman
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