Whatever happened to the teenage dream?

When I was growing up, assuming that I did manage to climb to the top of that particular mountain, it was presumed that what children wanted on television in the way of drama was escapist fodder. Thus my memories are full of daring-do on the high seas, in shows such as Freewheelers, or moderately scary outer-space malarkey on Saturday teatimes during the late Sixties, in the company of Patrick Troughton and chums! Doctor Who was aimed at intelligent 12-year-olds, although I was a little younger when Pat was the Doc, but designed for all the family to enjoy. The lovelies that accompanied our hero were always suitably attired… yes, they wore miniskirts and, thus, showed a bit of leg but it never really went beyond that. If you wanted to see Wendy Padbury having sex, you wouldn’t see her engaged in the deed on either of the aforementioned series. You’d have to stay up late and catch her in Blood On Satan’s Claw for that kind of thing! Even when you got a bit older, sex was never really a staple for teenage consumption. The closest television was ever going to get to linking the two would be Marc Bolan and T.Rex encouraging us to Get It On, on Top Of The Pops in 1971. The girls dancing amongst the studio audience weren’t dressed to ever suggest that that prospect was an actual possibility.

So, here we are, 40 years on, and your offspring are more likely to want to watch Hollyoaks or Skins than an episode of Doctor Who or The Sarah Jane Adventures. It’s not hip to enjoy a rollicking good yarn with the faint hint of a moral message in these enlightened times. We’ve got to concern ourselves with the issues of the day and wallow in all things problematical. Is Johnny finally coming out of the closet or has he just been in the bathroom an awfully long time?! Is Jenny on the pill and having underage sex? Probably, considering how much mascara she has on, not to mention the boob spillage from her low-cut tops! It isn’t just 16-year-old girls that want to watch Skins. If they have a younger sister, the sibling won’t want to be left out. They’ll want to see it too, even though I presume it’s the older lasses who are the target audience. The lads will be tuning in to see how much flesh is on display, rather than to learn about safe sex. Childhood no longer exists anymore. It’s been gradually eroded away by commercial interests, despite self-appointed moral guardians doing their level best to stop anyone, of any age, from being remotely titillated by anything they see on the box. Alf Garnet once complained he couldn’t find the pornography Mary Whitehouse was fussing over… and he’d looked on every channel!

Cottage industry

The following post contains strong language, good grammar, perfect punctuation, and a superfluous sub-clause, I have to say! But when the BBC precede a programme with the announcement - or warning - that it includes strong language, the corporation invariably means swearing, what most people call bad language. Strong is used as a euphemism. Broadcasters do not wish to imply, before it has even begun, that the drama on which viewers are about to invest their time may be poorly written! Strong language, taken literally, is more likely to be found in the work of Dickens, Hardy and Shakespeare than it is in the latest BBC or Channel 4 offering set on a housing estate. Yet I consider Dennis Potter to be television’s all-time greatest writer, and he used ‘vulgar’ vocabulary, likely to upset the late Mrs Whitehouse and all like-minded folk, on a fairly frequent basis. Lipstick On Your Collar opens with a character proclaiming, out of sheer boredom with his mundane job at the war office, “Bum-holes! Bum-holes, say I, in the plural!!”. This, no doubt, seemed shocking at the time of its first transmission, although it certainly grabbed your attention, but, now, not many would bat an eyelid. The passage of time has eroded resistance to left-field literary ideas. In the third instalment of Fry’s Planet Word, entitled Uses And Abuses, originally shown on BBC2 on 9th October, Stephen Fry explored the benefits of so-called bad language, finding out from Brian Blessed how swearing can help relieve pain, and discussed, with Armando Iannucci and Omid Djalili, its power in comedy. I, myself, have found that ‘letting rip’ at key moments is certainly a great reliever of stress! And, if you want to read that the wrong way, be my guest!!

There is, perhaps, only one taboo swearword left in broadcasting and that is the word cunt. Fuck has become acceptable despite many still hating it. I can remember the first broadcast, on ITV, of Alien in which Ripley exclaims, “We’ll trap it in the airlock and blow it the fuck into space!”. “The fuck” was edited out as offensive and ultimately unnecessary whereas, these days, the film is shown complete. The original Terminator has Linda Hamilton sweatily cry out, “You’re terminated, motherfucker!”. This doesn’t seem to me to be out of place. The android has come back through time to kill the mother before she gives birth to the future saviour of mankind and is, as it’s about to be crushed into oblivion, as Linda describes and not in the least gratuitous. But, considering the amount of fuss when Jeremy Hunt’s surname was mispronounced recently, on two separate occasions, how will the powers that be treat the Andy Serkis comedy-horror The Cottage when the time arrives for its initial terrestrial transmission? It concerns the attempts of two estranged brothers, after a successful abduction, to ransom a gangster’s daughter, Tracey, played with an enormous amount of enthusiasm by Jennifer Ellison. The problem with the movie, for any potential broadcaster, is that the girl in question has the ultimate potty mouth. She is gagged for a reason! Once the gag is removed everyone under the sun is a fucking cunt. She’s bright but aggressive with it, breaking the nose of one of the brothers with a head-butt for staring at her breasts. Can’t say as I blame him! But Jen seems to relish the opportunity to give it all she’s got, in her best Liverpudlian accent, and some critics have claimed she steals the show. Maybe the movie would’ve been better titled The Curse Of The Cottage!

Whiter than White!

I feel I should apologise unreservedly for the gratuitous use of the word “knickers” in my previous post! I had no idea it could cause anyone the least offence. While I’m at it, I would also like to express deep regret for mentioning the unmentionable - “bra and panties” if you missed it, or couldn’t be bothered reading the text accompanying the supposedly salacious shot of t.A.T.u.’s lovely Lena! Following the premiere of Julie Walters vehicle “Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story” last Wednesday evening, I bring the matter to your attention, now, upon the realisation that, were she still alive, Mary Whitehouse would not have found my article “appropriate”. But, then, she seems to have had no sense of humour whatsoever…

There is the possibility that the BBC are partially responsible for this country’s continuing decline in moral standards, whatever they may be, but to make a complaint, even back in 1967, over the airing of The Beatles’ witty classic “I Am The Walrus” defies belief! Mary was worried about the then-forthcoming transmission of the group’s “Magical Mystery Tour” TV movie, scheduled for broadcast on Boxing Day of said year, when many families would be watching, no doubt assuming that any mention of ladies’ lingerie would be a corrupting influence on impressionable minds. I find it hard to imagine the tireless campaigner listening to any pop record with such intensity, ready to jot down the slightest deviancy! The offending lyric, which caused Mrs Whitehouse much concern, reads…

Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog’s eye.
Crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess,
Boy, you been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen,
I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob.

The inspiration for Lennon’s lyric actually comes from a playground nursery rhyme…

Yellow matter custard, green slop pie,
All mixed together with a dead dog’s eye,
Slap it on a butty, ten foot thick,
Then wash it all down with a cup of cold sick.

You could argue that the latter is more offensive than the former, certainly more disgusting, yet these words were heard out of the mouths of babes and sucklings long before the advent of the Nanny State. But the word that bothered Mary was “knickers”. The undergarment is simply an item of clothing, a piece of cloth, so I can only assume it was the association, that said piece of material actually comes into contact with a woman’s vagina, which bothered her. This says more about her state of mind than anything else! Surely, next post, I should apologise for using the word “vagina” but at least I didn’t use the vulva term “pussy” or, worse still, “cunt”!!