ChristopherWhite.info

Matthew’s best internet prank yet?

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How prophetic.

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Ever wanted a custom-made drawing of a non-willy object done in Microsoft Paint in under one minute?

Visit Dr Matt’s new project.

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The uni Christmas panto last night was incredible, a series of miniature satires sending up everything - Big Brother, “emo” culture, celebrities, the student who bought a bag of sand thinking it was a laptop computer - set to a twisted version of Jack and the Beanstalk.

I’m astonished that something so professional could be produced by so few people and in so little time - particularly considering the dross that passes for comedy on TV. Even the gaps when they had to rearrange thing on stage were well-filled with pre-recorded material (on TV screens) to carry on the story.

I hope the writers have the ambition (and the “illness should attend it”) to pursue writing.

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I love watching Have I Got News For You for all sorts of reasons, but the obscure specialist publication has always especially tickled. Tonight’s was Miniature Donkey Talk.

It shows just how many weird and wonderful magazines there are to work on - all of them potential future places of employment (well, not Miniature Donkey Talk, it’s based in the US).

Here we run into a problem. Magazines by nature communicate with a very well-defined audience: they’re all specialised, to various degrees. This may mean mobility problems in moving between very different titles.

George Monbiot writes - and in some ways I agree with him, which is rare - that:

The advisers say that a career path like this is essential if you don’t want to fall into the “trap” of specialisation: that is to say, if you want to be flexible enough to respond to the changing demands of the employment market. But the truth is that by following the path they suggest, you are becoming a specialist: a specialist in the moronic recycling of what the rich and powerful deem to be news. And after a few years of that, you are good for very little else.

and advises choosing liberty over security in employment as well as in politics.

Given that I’ve come to this course - started my training - already having a specialisation, the Astrophysics degree, that might not be so easy.

Obviously science journalism isn’t my only option, and having a more analytical mindset than probably the majority of journalists can’t hurt in any role (and allowed me to spot that the figures didn’t add up in an exercise we did on writing a Trade and Industry story a few weeks ago), but it is the natural choice.

But what if the title I was working on went bellly-up? And there weren’t any jobs going on existing science magazines? There’d be two options: try to freelance, which I can’t imagine is ever easy[1], or move to another type of publication. But would Miniature Donkey Talk (to take a bizarre example) employ somebody who’d spent a long time working with highly technical copy?

Actually, morbid forecasts of redundancy aside, I don’t think I’d want to work on one type of publication or write on one subject area for a whole career. Variety is, after all, the spice of life. More to think about.

[1] Though this brings to mind a Wal Sakaluk quote: “Difficulty is not an obstacle, it is merely an attribute”.

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Though I did watch a bit of last night’s X-Factor, I can’t remember if the god-awful MacDonald brother are still in it. If they are, then it can’t possibly be on talent. There’s more chance of somebody buying Oranjeboom because they actually like it, and the best thing about Oranjeboom is you don’t have to piss it yourself.
Read Charlie Brooker’s Screenburn columns in the Guide with saturday’s Guardian for a criticism of the awful brothers much better than anything I could write here. Brooker puts their continued particpation down to Scots nationalism.

I would, for once, have to disagree. I think they’re beneficiaries of their name.

Ok, it’s spelled differently - but it sounds identical to a certain fast food chain whose advertising can be best described as “prolific”.

It is too hard a stretch to imagine that viewers hear “M(a)cDonald” and vote for them nearly automatically because they’ve conditioned for approval of the name - especially among the demographic that votes for X-Factor contestants[1]?

Maybe it’s time to anonymise the contestants.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

1 I nearly wrote “proles” or “plebs”, but I’m not sure how acceptable it is to do so even ironically.

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Channel 4 clearly considers itself pretty edgy. It’s the home of Russel Brand, a man sacked from MTV after wearing an Osama bin Laden costume to work; it had the balls to broadcast the Brass Eye 2001 special, which the BBC admitted they’d never do; they broadcast Derren Brown playing Russian Roulette live.

So why, in an episode of Friends broadcast at 8.35pm are they completely cutting out Joey’s answer to Ross’s question “didn’t you read Lord of the Rings in high school?”, such a benignity as “No, I had sex in high school.”?

Are we really so afraid of upsetting people that E4 can’t allow Joey to say “sex” at half eight in the evening?

As part of the diploma course, we have guest lectures on online journalism. Last week’s was from tory blogger Iain Dale. When discussing it later, Dan said that for him the biggest plus point was the Dale was quite forthright with his opinions: he was quite willing to say things that people aren’t going to instantly agree with.

This shouldn’t be a bonus in the lecture, or in experiences generally; for people to say what they think without fear of reproach should be the norm. But those who hold the media reins are so terrified of causing offence that Joey can’t tell us he had sex in high school, Monica can’t tell her husband she’d bought him pornography and Ross and Monica’s mother can’t say “humped” before the watershed[1].

Despite my previous comments, by which I still stand, perhaps it’s small wonder that Muslims felt/feel victimised by cartoons of Mohammed, the veil debate and the Pope’s remarks when we live in world so shy of not only causing offence but also simple debate.

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The alert levels for the likelihood of a terrorist threat are now to be made public.

A cynical ploy to keep everyone thinking about terrorism and help push through the latest batch of illiberal laws, no doubt.

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British sitcoms tend to come in short series (6 episodes, on the BBC) and, in terms of a pre-planned overarching storyline, light on plot.

American sitcoms tend to run for much longer (20+ weeks) and get almost soap-like in the intricacies of plot and interaction between characters.

Why?

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Yeah, yeah; Jerry Springer: The Opera is ‘offensive’. Boo hoo.

I can (just about) see why the Christians are so upset - the ones that went to the trouble of printing out the lyrics from the internet, that is; none of the ones we spoke to had actually seen it, of course. A nappy-wearing Jesus claiming that he is “a bit gay” (after all, the homos will burn; David told us); the suggestion that Mary was raped by an angel/God; and Jerry’s Final Thought that there is no absolute right or wrong are bound to upset religious types.

(For what it’s worth, I don’t agree with the latter either; it’s only a matter of time before I open an article with “I was a relativist once. I’m not proud”.)

The vast amounts of swearing’s just plain funny - in that setting. The fact that theatres are normally people by fairly conservative folks who avoid deploying bad language is all part of the satire - a satire that includes the personal tyranny of familial relationships, as oppressive as anything any government has to offer; the tendency to avoid taking personal responsibility, instead blaming either God or ‘low culture’ TV programmes like The Jerry Spinger Show.

But the religious can’t see past that. Oh, no; it’s offensive. It’s blasphemous. It’s also bloody funny, which is more than can be said for the Bible.

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