{"id":9092,"date":"2023-04-30T23:19:57","date_gmt":"2023-04-30T22:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=9092"},"modified":"2023-04-30T23:58:29","modified_gmt":"2023-04-30T22:58:29","slug":"media-not-again-gurt-spectations-ont-beeb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=9092","title":{"rendered":"MEDiA: Not Again!? Gurt Spectations, on\u2019t Beeb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Jeezuz wept\/slept\u2026 again, already!?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is the sixth time the BBC will have serialised Great Expectations<\/em> for TV. Six times!?* Talk about flogging a dead horse. Having read the book and seen several film and TV adaptations, I have absolutely no desire<\/em> whatsoever to watch another re-tread. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reminds me of a post I did about the over-veneration of the familiar idols, be it the Mona Lisa or The Beatles. It shows a lamentable poverty of imagination and ambition, and it narrows the range of culture that\u2019s being made broadly available. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, it\u2019s highly symptomatic of the malaise that grips our mainstream culture nowadays. With the Tory party staging a gradual takeover of the BBC, prior to doing away with it altogether (or reducing it, as they\u2019ve been doing with the NHS for decades, to a \u2018brand\u2019 to be chopped up and sold off), it\u2019s the result of having bean-counters inserted at every level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Great Expectations<\/em> is, like most of Dickens work, a pretty darn good yarn. But is it so good we should remake it every decade? Every time the BBC (or anyone else for that matter) spends millions re-making it, that\u2019s millions not going on something different. Perhaps something more obscure and\/or interesting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as I\u2019m concerned it\u2019s a natural outcome of bottom-line capitalist economics. Something\u2019s already popular? Great, let\u2019s keep milking it and flogging it. If our art, literature and music, etc, form a culture that could<\/em> be a richly diverse orchard, this modern consumer capitalist way has the effect of replacing all of that potential diversity with a bland mono-culture cash-crop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This latest re-boot is by Steven Knight, whose most recent successes are Peaky Blinders<\/em> and Taboo<\/em>. Neither of which interest me remotely. In fact Peaky Blinders<\/em> (which got Knight a CBE) annoys me, as I like \u2018newsboy\u2019 flat-caps \u2018cause of Tom Waits, not Cillian Murphy and co.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teresa watched some of Taboo<\/em>. I tried. But couldn\u2019t hack it. So much modern media culture – Peaky Blinders<\/em> and Taboo<\/em> both fall foul of this – partake of a shallow yawn-inducing pseudo-Goth graphic-novel style vision of masculinity and criminal culture, in a way that signposts the UK following the US into a MAGA\/hillbilly hell of deluded machismo, tattoos and poor sartorial choices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if this were to be the best ever<\/em> reinterpretation of Gurt Spectorations<\/em>, I wouldn\u2019t be up for it. It\u2019s already been done to death. And a cursory glance, as Teresa watched it, reveals any such hope to be massively unlikely (the visual design and colour palette show it to be very much a product of our times, and as far from original as one could imagine).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defenders of it might say, well, it\u2019s not aimed at you. Fine. Understood. But I\u2019m entitled to my view. And I still massively resent that the BBC, an institution I cherish, should be, like all \u2018commons\u2019, under attack by the philistines of Toryland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The BBC ought<\/em> to be boldly expanding the reach of our media culture, educating, enlightening and inspiring. Not just spewing out the same old same old, just because the bean counters, whose minds are as straitjacketed as their suits, think it might sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* In 1959, 1967, 1981, 1999, 2011, and yet again now. That\u2019s nearly every decade! Only the \u201870s and the \u201800s escaped! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the sixth time the BBC will have serialised Great Expectations for TV. Six times!?* Talk about flogging a dead horse. Having read the book and seen several film and TV adaptations, I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to watch another re-tread. This reminds me of a post I did about the over-veneration of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “MEDiA: Not Again!? Gurt Spectations, on\u2019t Beeb”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-2mE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9092"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9092"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9096,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9092\/revisions\/9096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}