Harry Potter and the semiotician's analysis

From last week's news:

Harry Potter to feature on English A-level syllabus ... AQA has defended its decision to add J. K. Rowling's books to its course, claiming: "Harry Potter is a genuine example of literature of our time. It deserves its place in this unit."
(NUT newswire)

From the existing A-level English syllabus:

Read Data Set 1 below. (a) Comment linguistically on five features of language use which you find of interest. (b) How far do children acquire their language skills by imitating adults? In your answer you should: refer to particular linguistic features and contexts; refer to appropriate linguistic research and theory; present a clear line of argument. (Toby is two years old)
Father: are you going to France
Toby: wa
Father: are you going to France (.) for your holiday
Toby: yeh
Father: where are you going
Toby: Fwance
Father: how (2) you’re going on a hovercraft (.) aren't you
Toby: yeh
Father: say hovercraft
Toby: howcwaft
Father: who are you going to see in France
[continues]
(AQA)

The expert opinion:

The examination system is above all a way of policing the profession, making sure that those who qualify to join it understand how its language or symbols are conventionally employed. *
(Professor Catherine Belsey, University of Wales)

What matters in a mediocracy is not whether a person is able to carry on a productive activity, but whether they can conform to the appearance of doing so. Furthermore, it is crucial that cultural disciplines affirm rather than question the prevailing ideology. The criterion of what constitutes an accepted member of a cultural field is therefore redefined.

Appropriate entry to a mediocratic elite requires a filter that repels those who might previously have been admitted, while appearing still to be technically rigorous. Those who are interested in a subject for the wrong reasons, e.g. a desire to find things out, are threatening to the stability of mediocracy and must therefore be excluded.

The solution is (i) to reduce the genuine intellectual content of study material, while (ii) devising abstruse techniques which can be used as indicators of expertise, but which are so tedious as to alienate anyone with an interest in reality.

* Poststructuralism: A very short introduction, p.3.

Dude, where's my sceptre?

After a series of mildly risible royal romps (Helen Mirren playing Elizabeth I in the style of Julie Walters; Rufus Sewell doing Charles II as a tired aristocrat version of The Stud), I was wondering how much further highbrow TV drama could go in trivialising key figures from history. The answer is, a good deal, judging by the BBC's latest offering, The Tudors — a North American production, but very much in the spirit of contemporary BBC historical dramas. It's great fun if you like soft porn and gangster movies, and especially if you enjoy a bit of demythologising. As serious historical drama it's as repellent (or attractive, depending on your taste) as the BBC's Rome.

It's rather as if the portrayal of bourgeois/aristocratic behaviour is considered too threateningly non-egalitarian for a popular audience, unless it is safely confined to fiction (e.g. Jane Austen, Agatha Christie). It seems to be regarded as important by cultural producers that episodes from political or cultural history should be portrayed as similar in flavour to Coronation Street or The Bill. Perhaps this approach is supposed to be more 'inclusive'. As the producer of another popular BBC drama series commented in an email to me, for purposes of mass media "characters and narratives need to be as accessible as possible". I'm not convinced, however, that the particular approach used by producers actually does make history more "accessible", rather than just turning it into something else altogether.

The Tudors is heavy on the 'psychological', but selectively so. Stroppiness, horniness: yes. Thoughtfulness, aristocratic demeanour: no, except in the dodgier characters. The series started, naturally, with some healthy dollops of violence and sex. Within the first five minutes we get to watch a brutal assassination and a session of bare-breasted frolicking. The camera style is clearly designed to extract maximum viewing pleasure from both.

What are the ideological messages being transmitted here? Well, in a mediocracy we must not be reminded that there used to be a world in which some individuals were not mere ciphers. Historical figures therefore have to be portrayed in a ‘proletarian’ style, in order to show them as people who would be compatible with mediocratic values and acceptable to a mass audience.

Ideally, references to exceptional historical figures would be eliminated altogether, since they encourage the idea that individuals can be significant. On the other hand, it may be simpler to remould rather than abolish existing bourgeois culture. Building a replacement culture from scratch can be tiring. A more convenient strategy is therefore to subtly deprecate such figures, or alternatively to show that they were in greater sympathy with egalitarian values than had been hitherto realised.

Mr. Pot and the kettles

Wikipedia on Jeremy Paxman:

In 1998 Denis Halliday ... resigned from his post in Iraq in protest at the UN sanctions imposed on that country ... in the subsequent interview with Newsnight, Paxman asked Halliday, "Aren't you just an apologist for Saddam Hussein?"

During [an interview with Tony Blair] Paxman famously asked Blair if he and President Bush "prayed together" ...

The BBC received complaints [that when interviewing party political leaders during the 2005 General Election] Paxman was "rude and aggressive" ... particularly after [asking George Galloway] "Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?"

Jeremy Paxman's MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival:

[In] more innocent days ... producers made programmes because they were passionately engaged with the world and wanted to communicate what they’d found out. Too much of the time now they simply pick things from the world which look as if they might make good television ...

... the problem is that all news programmes need to make noise. The need’s got worse, the more crowded the market’s become. We clamour for the viewers’ attention: “Don’t switch over. Watch us! You won’t be disappointed!” ...

The problem is that a sort of expectation inflation sets in. ... [In the case of Big Brother] the audience’s jaded palate needs to be constantly titillated. The danger is that the same thing happens with news: if for no other reason than to save producers and presenters from more of that dead-eyed somnambulism you can already see too often ...

So what does Mr Paxman think is the source of the problem? An ethos of top-down cultural 'democratisation' or similar manifestations of pseudo-egalitarianism? No — money.

[The BBC's programme on the Queen] demonstrates the changing imperatives, the variety of operators, the confused lines of accountability, the fact that money intrudes at every stage. ...

There are too many people in this industry whose answer to the question what is television for? is to say ‘to make money.’ ...

All the recent scandals and so-called scandals have one element in common: money. ...

Of course, the BBC’s got problems of its own, and they also come down to money.

The Ruby Up Its Smoke

I am so sick of PMI — postmodern "irony". If well done, it is captivating and amusing for about ten minutes, after that it starts to have the grating quality of squeaky chalk. The term "irony" is, in any case, one of the worst abuses of the English language of all time. 95% of the time when it is used, what is really meant is "mockery".

BBC drama productions seem to have a particular line in PMI. It's as if all BBC producers are nowadays required to attend some training course called "How to ensure all topics and themes are treated with sufficient nudge-nudge, we-are-so-past-this knowingness". Russell T Davies's Dr Who and Torchwood are absolutely predicated on this. Which is why, in spite of their wonderful production values which ensure a certain appeal, they are ultimately about as satisfying as strawberry flavour gruel.

Now, while PMI works reasonably well in things like Torchwood, there are some things it is absolutely fatal for. Obviously the classics can't really survive it, unless you want to turn them into something else altogether — which of course lots of people do. (Although, funnily enough, Shakespeare's 'comedies' might actually benefit from the treatment. I quite liked the BBC's recent treatment of Midsummer Night, for example.)

It isn't just classics, though, which are murdered by the PMI school of drama. Some contemporary novels, which derive their interest value from (anachronistically) taking things seriously, cannot survive the "ain't it all a lark, guv" approach.

A good illustration of this was the Christmas screening of Philip Pullman's The Ruby in the Smoke. Now Pullman may not be exactly great literature, but he is very good at conveying a certain kind of near-hysterical sense of tension. In the Sally Lockhart novels, this is even more crucial than in the Dark Materials trilogy, where the excitement is sustained largely by interesting fantasy elements.

The plot of Ruby is not terribly original. Without the emotional atmosphere that Pullman creates, what you get left with is so-so Victorian melodrama. And that is precisely what we got with the BBC's production. A rather tedious, pedestrian drama about Dickensian villains and villainesses.

For a start, Billie Piper was a spectacular piece of miscasting, though one can easily imagine how it arose: "We have to have a big audience for a Christmas evening on BBC1. Shall we (a) cast an unknown actress who would be really good for the part, or (b) a famous one who isn't?" Piper tried her best, and gave what I thought was a good performance, against her usual type. But the part calls for someone very sharp and resourceful — a bit like a more grown up version of HDM's Lyra — and this was either too remote from Piper's usual self for her to manage, or the producers thought this crudified version would actually appeal better to a mainstream audience, or both.

In any case, the atmosphere of the book was almost totally lacking. Where Pullman gives us a different take on Victorian London by adding surreal menace, the BBC gave us their usual PMI take. Which wasn't helped by Julie Walters doing her standard Mrs.Overall-CynthiaPayne charwoman act, with a bit of psychopathy added.

Possibly the PMI element was unintentional, but it was there nonetheless, adding a subtle note of mockery. (Er, note to producer, surrealism does not equal "irony".) Perhaps the BBC is so infused with the spirit of PMI by now that it just can't help applying it to anything PMI-sensitive it touches. ("Ooh, look at that poor bit of pre-postmodern culture over there! Let's go and apply a bit of PMI colour to it, I am sure that will cheer up the old dear.")

In complete contrast, ITV repeated just before Christmas (on ITV3) its 1999 production of The Turn of the Screw — the Henry James story about two children who may or may not be possessed. This, in spite of having a contemporised flavour, succeeded against the odds in reproducing at least some of the atmosphere of the original. While it wasn't perhaps as scary, it did capture the surreal quality of the story, with a minimum of gimmicks. Jodhi May was very good in a part that must be exceptionally difficult to pull off. (You need to seem sweet and caring, while giving just the merest hint that you may be a raving schizo.) Certainly I found the whole thing far more convincing than the 1961 movie co-scripted by Truman Capote and starring Deborah Kerr.

Incidentally, if they ever redo the movie with Nicole Kidman (they came close with The Others), I shall never be able to read Henry James again. Kidman's problem isn't PMI, it's something else again, which I think of as "flattening of affect". But that's a whole other post altogether.

Potted review of ITV's After Thomas: all you need to know
Boy is stroppy — mum can't cope — dad at wit's end — diagnosis "autism" — see friendly doctor — buy dog — boy bonds with dog — boy cured — the end. (Isn't Keeley Hawes lovely though?)