Put That Book Down and Join the Group
This is a hilarious bit of reading. (Which I would have missed, despite entrenched habit of perusing the Guardian, but for Norm Geras’ always-interesting site, where you can vote for your own favourite novels, to the tune of three.) Lashings of sarcasm and mockery in Catherine Bennett’s look at Jane Root, BBC2, and the Big Read.
To ignore books is easy. So is burning them. You just need a match. But to make independent reading sound dull and great books look stupid, to transform literature into a vehicle for celebrities, polls, lists, voting opportunities and confected rivalries, to get books confidently debated by experts who have never read them, to set up a competition between Winnie the Pooh and War and Peace: that takes a kind of genius.
Oh go on – tell us what you really think!
The whole, quite fabulously patronising presumption of Root’s “campaign to get the country reading” is that reading is such a painfully lonely and arduous business that we need generous dollops of celebrity, hype and audience participation to force the medicine down. Or as Root describes her mission: “It’s an attempt to turn reading, which can be a very private experience, into something which can be enjoyed together.” The ramblings of people who actually enjoy this private experience might be as off-putting to the general viewer as the confessions of some sordid onanist. Better a jolly book group, you gather, than a pathetic, solitary exercise in self-flagellation.
Solitary reading is it! You wanna go blind?
Now stop that, that’s quite enough. Sorry, sorry. There is a serious point lurking behind the mockery, of course. It is infuriating that people insist on erasing the boundary between popularization and dumbing down. It is perfectly possible to popularize science, philosophy, history, literature, without making them idiotic; people do it all the time. Look at the success of Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’ for instance, and James Burke’s ‘Connections’. Both fun, entertaining, accessible, often funny, without being downright stupid. The stupidification is not necessary, so it would be nice if people like BBC and PBS producers would stop doing it.
I’m not much into novels, and I don’t live in the right regions to vote…but I think I understand Bennett’s rant and your glosses, if that is the right term. A key word is “solitary”. I think some people are just kind of scared of those of us who do anything by ourselves, from reading to…well, self-pleasuring. A person entertaining himself or herself is a person you can’t sell something to right now, can’t control, can’t use for your own purposes. That really upsets some folks, and I suspect (but can’t prove) that these are people who don’t have much of an inner life of their own.
I think that is why I have sometimes caught flack for reading instead of playing games with the others, or reading stuff that the others don’t understand–or not being able to understand what they DO read. It looks like some people think no one will want to get into reading unless it becomes a herd activity, and they want to guide the herd. Hence, dumbing down–lowest common denominator. Not all are herdable, though, and the ones that aren’t feel patronized. That’s just my guess [or paraphrase.]
And the other way it bodes ill for us solitary types is, when we DO need to mentally cross-pollinate, it is often hard to find someone to do it with–someone literally on the same page. I don’t know how much can be done about that, but a rethinking of possible prejudices against lone-wolf types seems indicated.
Then again, maybe I am just paranoid.
“It is infuriating that people insist on erasing the boundary between popularization and dumbing down. It is perfectly possible to popularize science, philosophy, history, literature, without making them idiotic”
Indeed. Except you are using “popularise” to indicate a broad accessibility rather than a broad take up. You see, one of the problems is that there have been worthy programmes about Larkin, the Brontes, Austen etc. But, as I understand it, they are watched by people who already read a great deal. These shows don’t seem to reach a large proportion of the population that do not read for pleasure. (Though, to be fair, costume dramas seem to do quite well.)
I haven’t seen the mentioned show and I don’t doubt that it is horrendous. And I’ll concede that BBC arts is in decline. The difference between you and me, Ophelia, is that if it actually does get more people reading, I would say that it was a net benefit. If there were a way to achieve that result without dumbing down, I would applaud that all the more.
But I think it a little disingenuous not to acknowledge that the reason for this kind of show is quite directly to do with the failure of arts programming to achieve broad appeal.
KM – Nah, I don’t think you’re paranoid, I think you’re absolutely right (though I can’t prove it either). There’s an excellent book by Anthony Storr on this subject, called ‘Solitude: a Return to the Self’. I recommend it.
Well, Armando, as so often, I think you’re being a little disingenuous in calling me disingenuous. After all, one could cause arts programming to achieve even broader appeal by, say, making it identical with a football match. So what? What’s the point?
Whats the point? That people who aren’t accustomed to reading for pleasure start doing so. TBH, I think that was pretty clear in my last comment and is why your football comment doesn’t work.
This kind of programmme may not work, I grant you that. But what if it does? Then surely it would be a good thing? If it doesn’t work in getting more people to read – and perhaps your strength of feeling is due to some evidence that I am unaware of – then I’ll join you in your condemnation of it.
The fact that this *is* displacing more highbrow arts on TV is negative, and I’m certainly not arguing for a tyranny of the majority.
Well, to be sure, since I haven’t actually seen the programme, and wrote the Comment on Bennett’s article rather than on the thing itself, perhaps you have a point about the vehemence. It does *sound* like the kind of programming that doesn’t work, and can do some harm in the process of not working (by encouraging people to sneer some more at non-sexed-up books and readers and reading, for instance). But if it does work, I agree, that will be a good thing.
Let me provide a little parochial cultural context. In the UK BBC1 has always been a popularist channel and BBC2 had the arts, science and thinking content. Recently BBC4 was launched as “the boldest new investment in cultural programming for a generation” . This has coincided with the appointment of Ms Root who seems hell bent on taking BBC2 into BBC1 territory. Access to BBC4 is much more difficult than for BBC1 or 2 as it is digital.
There is surely a place for ‘simple’ programmes that introduce the untutored to new worlds (cf Colin McGinn’s upbringing). Recently BBC1 has shown a series on the human mind (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/tv/humanmind/) in which one has winced at Winston’s banality, but if it gets people interested, so well and good.
Currently BBC2 is showing a series called “Millionaires” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/tv/millionaire/). It is meant to be an investigation into the mindset that makes a millionaire, but turns out to be a prurient look at the lifestyles of rich people with a very thin gloss of analysis from a few psychologists. It belongs on BBC1 as entertainment. The Big Read (http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/) may introduce some people to reading novels but it is neither truly popularist nor truly cultural. If someone’s interest in culture is aroused, they read the novel but where do they go next for TV programmes? BBC4 is difficult to access (and their schedule even more difficult to find). BBC2 used to have some good cultural programming, but now, thanks to Ms Root, it is being dumbed down.
Ms Root’s appointment is symptomatic of a recent decline in cultural programming in the UK.