No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
“The Sickest Television Show Ever:” Paedogeddon and the British Press
Abstract
This paper explores the controversy caused by Paedogeddon, a one-off special of the Channel 4 series Brass Eye broadcast on July 26, 2001. Although the program sought to satirize inconsistencies in the way the British media treats and sensationalizes child sex offenders and their crimes (Clark, 20018.
Clark , C. 2001. Hysteria is a threat to research. The Times Higher Educational Supplement, August 13: 16 View all references), it offended many viewers and caused considerable controversy. More than 900 complaints were made to the Independent Television Commission, almost 250 complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Commission, and 2,000 complaints to Channel 4, “officially” making Paedogeddon the most complained-about television program in British television history at that time. This paper examines the nature of the objections to Paedogeddon as played out on the pages of the British national press and contributes to debates about morally acceptable television. Three themes are identified in the press objections to the mock-documentary: aesthetic arguments; moral and ethical implications; and consequences of ministerial intervention. The nature of these press objections served to prevent an engagement with Paedogeddon's critique of the media. Further, the analysis illustrates how media discourses and scripts can fix and limit debates surrounding controversial television programming.
... As previously mentioned, the debate over the boundaries of satire is rooted in a fundamental social issue: the taboos of a given society (Peifer, 2012;Carr, 1992;Lockyer & Attwood, 2009). Creators of satire are constantly trying to bypass these restrictions in order to challenge the status quo, unmask the powerful, articulate what is left unsaid in the news, and highlight the contradictions in what is said (Borden & Tew, 2007;Painter & Hodges, 2010). ...
... In instances in which this conflict breaks out, viewers might get angry, change the channel, or even advise their family and friends to avoid watching a particular show. Occasionally, even Brothers Comedy Hour (1967)(1968)(1969)(1970) was condemned for criticizing the Vietnam War and for its treatment of African-Americans (Lockyer & Attwood, 2009;Carr, 1992). ...
This article analyzes how negotiation between social actors, the public, and the regulator over satirical texts leads to the construction of social boundaries vis-à-vis freedom of speech and creativity in a given society. It does so by analyzing 906 public complaints filed with the Israeli regulator between 2005 and 2010 and the regulators’ responses to them. According to the analysis, there are four issues that trigger public discontent regarding satirical content: broadcasting content unsuitable for children, mocking weak societal sectors, mocking national symbols, and mocking various sociopolitical sectors. The regulators’ responses to these complaints regarding each issue sheds light not only on the diverse perspectives held by these actors, but also on the role of the regulator in granting satirists maximum freedom of expression, mediating between public demands to limit such freedom and professional broadcasting norms. The article concludes by discussing the ramifications of this negotiation for the future of broadcast satire.
... Such stereotyping is not restricted to newspapers. Rather, factual documentaries, special investigative reports, chat shows and fictional narratives in television dramas and films have all historically presented "the paedophile" as "the Other", with a capital "O" (see Lee, 2005;Lockyer & Attwood, 2009). ...
Crime and justice have long been enduring subjects of Black Mirror (2011–). From the opening episode, the series has never shied away from tackling taboo subjects. However, “Shut Up and Dance” draws viewers into a deeper engagement with the moral issues of criminality by encouraging audiences to empathise with a character who, in the episode’s denouement, is revealed to be a paedophile. Given that, in Western culture, the term paedophilia carries with it immense ideological freight (Kohm & Greenhill, 2011, p. 195), this revelation forces the viewer to revaluate their own affective and intellectual responses to, and judgements of, the central character. By aligning the viewer with Kenny (Alex Lawther), this episode ridicules the very possibility of passing moral judgement, and the viewers’ own sympathy for him may itself serve a larger purpose. In this chapter, I will consider how connecting audiences to such characters at an emotional level may critique deeply held and widely circulated popular ideas about the crime and justice.
... While elements of Morris' work make the politician look ridiculous, it should be foregrounded that the performative interaction is open and unstable. We might, for instance, hate a show like 'Paedogeddon' because it hoodwinks MPs, but we might also learn something from the media reaction -which placed strident critiques of the show opposite a spread of adolescent girls in Bikinis (Lockyer and Attwood, 2009) -and how MP hubris allowed them to critique Morris without having seen the program (Guardian 2001a;2001b). On this view, there is a certain zombie-like quality to the performative politics of satire. ...
This article develops a critical engagement with the politics of British satire. After first engaging the mainstream critique of satire—that it promotes cynicism and apathy by portraying politicians in stereotypically corrupt terms—we develop a performative approach to comedy as an everyday vernacular of political life. Beyond a focus on ‘impact’, we suggest that satire can be read as an everyday form of political reflection that performs within a social context. This argument yields an image of Morris, Iannucci and Brooker as important critics of contemporary British politics, a point which we explore through their interventions on media form, political tragedy and political agency.
... Hence, it is no surprise that humour scholars have found that the details of sexuality, including anality, are a rich resource for making humour (dundes, 1978; fine, 1976; Johnson, stirratt & Bancroft, 2002; Legman, 1968; Lloyd, 2007; Lockyer & Atwood, 2009; o'neill, Greenberg & fisher, 1992). A good specific example is Medhurst's discussion of the offensiveness of the British comedian roy 'Chubby' Brown, whose jokes have a high sexual content as well as relying on the old staple of 'dispatches from the front line of marital warfare' (Medhurst , 2007: 189). ...
Comedians develop and hone a persona that reflects their particular type of humour, thus greatly aiding in the economy that so typifies comedy performances. This paper considers the case of the well-known New Zealand comedian Ewen Gilmour, whose persona is a 'Westie' – someone from the working class area of West Auckland. This persona has equivalents in most countries, its central characteristics being hard-drinking, ready-swearing, stereotypical working class behaviour, which is also strongly gender typical. The paper fo-cuses on one of Gilmour's short standup comedy performances filmed in front of a live audience and then screened on public television. The performance features a potential disjuncture: the Westie comedian narrates activities he engages in with a 'mate' that could be interpreted as 'homoerotic'. Nevertheless , the performance ends with the Westie persona under no apparent threat of misinterpretation – he is definitely not gay. This result stems in part from dynamic cooperation between the comedian and audience, which similar to many social activities, is more tacit than explicit. Yet this reading of the performance is achieved, and to understand how, we can closely look at the details of the comedic material, the comedian's embodied display and lexical choice. Through this close analysis we see that the performance displays 'communica-tive artistry', even if the basic joke materials are relatively well worn.
The study comprises of a close textual reading of the 2005 British Channel Four television satire Nathan Barley, written by Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker. In this chapter, the tensions between the authentic crime of child sexual abuse (CSA) and the inauthentic space of early 2000s East London counterculture will be analysed. This is developed into an interrogation of Nathan Barley’s presentation of child sex abusers and survivors as ambiguous roles to opt in and out of in order to garner cultural capital. This is contextualised within the moral panic surrounding CSA, alongside wider anxieties surrounding the ethics of both mass and counterculture media in depicting traumatic themes during early twenty-first-century Britain
This article proposes the concept of cultural challengers, viewers whose dissatisfaction with popular culture prompts them to initiate a dialogue with media organizations. The article explores the textual dimensions that may cause such discontent and identifies three tracks for conducting the dialogue: civic, economic, and regulatory. The regulatory track is explored through three methodologies: a quantitative content analysis of 817 complaints filed to the Israeli regulatory authority (SATR) between 2005 and 2010, and of the SATR's responses to them; participatory observation within the SATR; and an online survey of 58 viewers who had filed a complaint with the SATR. The article highlights the differing stances of the regulator and the cultural challengers and analyzes the social and cultural implications of the dialogue.
This article discusses Chris Morris's fake news TV series Brass Eye (1997, 2001). It concentrates on the ways in which Brass Eye exposed and undermined not only the textual conventions of TV news and current affairs but also the ways in which the program deployed those textual conventions to highlight and sabotage the cultural authority of public figures who appeared on it. The article first introduces Morris and Brass Eye, before identifying some of the key textual strategies of broadcast news that are satirized in the program, including its mode of address, its music, and its visuals and graphics. It then examines how the program's use of those strategies enables it to exercise the authority of broadcast news to expose the accessed voices of public figures within the show.
It is increasingly recognised that child abuse is often linked to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and clinical studies have shown both forms of domestic violence to be associated with relative poverty. As violent deaths of children are considered as the “tip-of-the-iceberg” of neglect, reducing such deaths have become a surrogate indicator of the effectiveness of child protection service; hence an examination of how well 14 European Union Countries (EUC) have done in reducing Child-Abuse-Related-Death (CARD) over past 30 years.
In this article we analyse letters of complaint about instances of comic discourse where the humour is regarded as overstepping the mark and causing offence. We are particularly interested in how this sense of offence is registered and how complainants articulate the offence for which they seek some form of redress. In pursuing this interest, we seek to bring together two distinctive modes of analysis: linguistic discourse analysis and symbolic cultural analysis. This is methodologically appropriate to the discourse involved because of the ways in which epistolary complaints use forms of linguistic framing for offsetting potential objections to what they want to say, and because of the highly figurative language which is employed in voicing the substantive complaint and the censure of the humour that is entailed in this. Our focus overall is on the underlying ambivalence involved in negotiations between ethical and comic discourse.
Ethnographic interviews have become a commonly used qualitat ive methodology for collecting data (Aronson, 1992). Once the information is gathered, res earchers are faced with the decision on how to analyze the data. There are many ways to anal yze informants' talk about their experiences (Mahrer, 1988; Spradley, 1979; Taylor & Bogdan, 1984), a nd thematic analysis is one such way. Although thematic analysis has been described (Benner, 1985; Leininger, 1985; Taylor & Board, 1984), there is insufficient literature that outlines the pragmatic process of thematic analysis. This article attempts to outline the procedure for perform ing a thematic analysis.
This paper reviews the social constructions of the paedophile as these are embodied in clinical and journalistic discourses. It considers how these discourses have influenced community perceptions of risk and professional responses to the concerns they portray. It then locates these professional constructions within a context of hegemonic masculinity and unsafe families. It concludes that community safety is not adequately addressed by professional assessments of risk that focus primarily on the problems posed by known paedophiles. It is important to consider the problem of sexual violence in a much wider context that problematises the context in which sexual abuse occurs.
Between 1821 and 1824 Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) attempted to capture on canvas the faces of various '��monomanias'��, including a portrait of a '�"man with the '��monomania'�� of child kidnapping"(1822-3) which was recently exhibited in London as part of the Spectacular Bodies exhibition (Hayward Gallery, 2000). The exhibition traced, inter alia, the development of the aestheticisation of insanity through technologies of knowledge production. To the modern eye there is nothing especially significant or noteworthy about this monomaniac'��s appearance beyond looking rather miserable and forlorn, but the series of portraits, instigated by Dr Etienne-Jean Georget of the asylum at Ivry, were explicitly attempting to present certain typical features. In this instance, â��the haunted, sideways glance, asymmetrical sag of the mouth and hollow cheeksâ�� were indicative of his type, the child abductor (Kemp and Wallace, 2000:126). As the exhibition illustrated, photography soon took the place of painting, and the nineteenth century saw the development of this practice of depicting madness, with Jean-Martin Charcot famously building his career on the production of such representations, establishing his photographic unit at the hospital of the Salpatriere in Paris, and writing and lecturing on the "��visual iconography of the insane"��. In Britain Francis Galton studied photographic portraits of criminals from the Home Office and, arguing that â��natural classesâ�� of individuals appeared, produced his composite photographs that purported to illustrate the typical face of each grouping - one of which were sexual offenders. In Italy, Cesaire Lombroso combined a reading of evolutionary theory with his studies of the human skull and his use of photographic portraits to present his notorious argument that criminals were atavistic, throwbacks from an earlier period, whose status as such was betrayed by their physiognomy. Presented here in London 2000 for their historical curiosity, his photographic tables showing the faces of Italian and German criminals were initially presented in 1889 under the title '��the Anthropology of the Criminal'�� with the criminalâ�'s name printed underneath each of the sixty eight portraits. (Excerpt, opening paragraph).
Blurred Boundaries explores decisive moments when the traditional boundaries of fiction/nonfiction, truth and falsehood blur. Nichols argues that a history of social representation in film, television and video requires an understanding of the fate of both contemporary and older work. Traditionally, film history and cultural studies sought to place films in a historical context. Nichols proposes a new goal: to examine how specific works, old and new, promote or suppress a sense of historical consciousness. Examining work from Eisenstein's Strike to the Rodney King videotape, Nichols interrelates issues of formal structure, viewer response and historical consciousness. Simultaneously, Blurred Boundaries radically alters the interpretive frameworks offered by neo-formalism and psychoanalysis: Comprehension itself becomes a social act of transformative understanding rather than an abstract mental process while the use of psychoanalytic terms like desire, lack, or paranoia to make social points metaphorically yields to a vocabulary designed expressly for historical interpretation such as project, intentionality and the social imaginary. An important departure from prevailing trends in many fields, Blurred Boundaries offers new directions for the study of visual culture.
This article explores the leaking of confidential information about secret Home Office plans to house convicted paedophiles within a local community (albeit inside a prison). It argues that a politics of paedophilia has emerged in which inter-agency consensus on the issue of ‘what to do’ with high-profile sex offenders has broken down. Accordingly, the article situates newspaper ‘outing’ of paedophiles in the community in relation to vigilante journalism and leaked information from official agencies. The article then presents research findings from a case study of news events set in train following a whistle-blowing reaction by Prison Officers’ Association officials to Home Office plans. Drawing from a corpus of 10 interviews with journalists and key protagonists in the story, the article discusses both the dynamics of whistle blowing about paedophiles and also what happens after the whistle has blown.
The media's impact on our lives in the past half decade has become a popular thematic centerpiece for feature films and television programs. Using cultural studies as a framework, this article explores the fascination that entertainment producers have with the role the media play in our lives through an analysis of the much heralded film, The Truman Show. Critics and moviegoers have congratulated the producers of films like The Truman Show for taking a critical look at the power of the media. The author contends, however, that they have not earned our plaudits. Films like Truman are created by entertainment companies as a means to exploit, and at the same time dissipate, our desire to engage in genuine media criticism. In the end, the power of the media is affirmed rather than challenged. In the spirit of Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony, these films and television programs co-opt our enchantment (and disenchantment) with the media and sell it back to us.
Opposed and yet in some ways similar to the fan is the antifan: he or she who actively and vocally hates or dislikes a given text, personality, or genre. By studying antifan discussion and postings at the Web site Television Without Pity, this article examines antifan interaction with the television text. Focusing on the ensuing splintering of this text into aesthetic, moral, and rational-realistic dimensions, it is argued that antifan engagement with television forces a reevaluation of existing assumptions of textual ontology and of audience behavior and consumption.
This article explores the influence of partisanship on the framing of a local news agenda. Using a case study approach, it explores how one local newspaper in the East Midlands of England, the Nottingham-based Evening Post, reacted with hostility to leaked Home Office plans housing high-profile paedophiles in its locality (albeit inside the grounds of the local jail). Within weeks, though, the paper's news frame had shifted from hostility toward the Home Office to a more sympathetic news frame reporting how local professionals would manage risks posed by paedophiles in Nottingham. In order to make sense of the local dynamic underpinning this changing news frame, the paper uses interview data to explore interactions between local journalists and key protagonists to understand the predictable and unpredictable factors that shaped the terms of their reporting. The article concludes by discussing the significance of partisan dynamics on the framing of a highly charged local and national paedophile-related issue.
Between 1996–97 an almost unprecedented campaign was mounted in the British press against on one film: David Cronenberg’s Crash. What motivated this campaign? What can it tell us about British film culture? What impact did the campaign have on general audiences? This book, which draws on a year-long investigation supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, offers a series of important and challenging findings and is a major contribution to our understanding of censorship campaigns, how audiences respond to films, and the strategies employed in engaging with such texts.
Innocence betrayed: Paedophilia, the media and society
- J Silverman
- D Wilson
Silverman, J., & Wilson, D. (2002). Innocence betrayed: Paedophilia, the media and society. Cambridge: Polity.
People: “Brass Eye” more popular as a repeat. The Independent
- Anon
Anon. (2002, May 15) People: "Brass Eye" more popular as a repeat. The Independent, p. 6.
Whipping up a storm: The ethics and consequences of joking around
- J Silverman
- D Wilson
Silverman, J., & Wilson, D. (2002). Innocence betrayed: Paedophilia, the media and society. Cambridge: Polity.
Smith, M. (1995). Whipping up a storm: The ethics and consequences of joking around. Journal of Folklore Research,
32(2), 121-136.
TV row bears all the hallmarks of a classic spoof controversy. Marketing
- R Snoddy
Snoddy, R. (2001, August 2). TV row bears all the hallmarks of a classic spoof controversy. Marketing, p. 20.
Walters, B. (2002, July). Where there's muck. Sight and Sound, 12(7), 60.
Ward, P. (2005). Documentary: The margins of reality. London and New York: Wallflower.
Satire - the necessary and sufficient conditions - some preliminary observations
- D Nilsen
Nilsen, D. (1988). Satire -the necessary and sufficient conditions -some preliminary observations. Studies in
Contemporary Satire, 15, 1-10.
The primrose path: Faking UK television documentary, "douglitz" and docusoap. Screening the Past
- B Winston
Winston, B. (1999, November 8). The primrose path: Faking UK television documentary, "douglitz" and docusoap.
Screening the Past. Retrieved August 29, 2007, from http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/
fr1199/bwfr8b.htm
Exploring media discourse
- M Macdonald
Macdonald, M. (2003). Exploring media discourse. London: Arnold.
A pragmatic view of thematic analysis Spring The crash controversy: Censorship campaigns and film reception The vigilant(e) parent and the paedophile: The News of the World campaign 2000 and the contemporary governmentality of child sexual abuse
- J M Aronson
- J Arthurs
- R Harindranath
Aronson, J. (1994). A pragmatic view of thematic analysis. The Qualitative Report, 2(1), Spring. Retrieved November 11, 2007, from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/BackIssues/QR2-1/aronson.html Barker, M., Arthurs, J., & Harindranath, R. (2001). The crash controversy: Censorship campaigns and film reception. London and New York: Wallflower Press. Bell, V. (2002). The vigilant(e) parent and the paedophile: The News of the World campaign 2000 and the contemporary governmentality of child sexual abuse. Feminist Theory, 3(1), 83–102.
Needlessly shocking, or a satirist in the tradition of Hogarth
- T Leonard
- M Born
Leonard, T., & Born, M. (2001, July 31). Needlessly shocking, or a satirist in the tradition of Hogarth? The Daily
Telegraph, p. 4.
Moral panics and the media
- C Critcher
Critcher, C. (2003). Moral panics and the media. Buckingham: Open University Press.
It was C4's most vetted programme so how did it attract a record number of complaints
- L Jury
Jury, L. (2001, July 30). It was C4's most vetted programme so how did it attract a record number of complaints? The
Independent, p. 3.
Where there's muck. Sight and Sound
- B Walters
Walters, B. (2002, July). Where there's muck. Sight and Sound, 12(7), 60.
TV hoist by own spoof: Pedophilia is explosive. The New York Times
- S Lyall
Lyall, S. (2001, August 4). TV hoist by own spoof: Pedophilia is explosive. The New York Times, p. 4.
Macdonald, M. (2003). Exploring media discourse. London: Arnold.
Documentary: The margins of reality
- P Ward
Ward, P. (2005). Documentary: The margins of reality. London and New York: Wallflower.
Finding: "Brass Eye" special
Broadcasting Standard Commission. (2001). Finding: "Brass Eye" special. Retrieved February 21, 2004, from http://
www.bsc.org.uk/pdfs/bulletin/brasseyespecialfinding.htm
Hysteria is a threat to research. The Times Higher Educational Supplement
- C Clark
Clark, C. (2001, August 13). Hysteria is a threat to research. The Times Higher Educational Supplement, p. 16.
Report: Programme complaints and findings. London: Independent Television Commission
Independent Television Commission. (2001, September). Report: Programme complaints and findings. London:
Independent Television Commission.
Coding and analyzing data
- C Seale
Seale, C. (2004). Coding and analyzing data. In C. Seale (Ed.), Researching society and culture (2 nd edition)
(pp. 305-321). London and Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Whipping up a storm: The ethics and consequences of joking around
- M Smith
Brass Eye”. In Fifty television programmes
- B Mills
Dynamics of partisan journalism: Journalist-source relations in the context of a local newspaper's anti-paedophile housing agenda
- S Cross
- S Lockyer
The primrose path: Faking UK television documentary, “douglitz” and docusoap
- B Winston