Do3 - Wuthering Heights

[french frank]

Somewhat on topic: the percentage of output devoted to the arts (excluding drama) - along with religion the two lowest of the named categories, 1.5% each.

[tony yyy]

Perhaps it won't be quite as bad as the publicity suggests, although I would have thought the novel is quite disturbing enough and doesn't need updating or the addition of "strong expletives".

[Lateralthinking1]

So the middle class executives do the sixties for the sixth decade on the trot. How tiresome, loathsome and depressing. Dragging everything into the gutter. The explicit purpose being that they will never have to get down with the rest of us by living on an average salary. How frightfully ghastly it would be for them to be on that baser level. Enough to make em all blimey o'reilly or whatnot. As for this "initiative", it ain't Bronte and for that reason it isn't Radio 3. The swearing is not, in itself, an insult to the licence payer. It is the Holywood makeover in the Hall of Reith which makes it so utterly gross. Whether it is guys or gals who took this decision, man are they ugly and not merely skin deep. I am surprised that they can leave home in the morning without taking a visit to the plastic surgeon. The one who industrialises the boobs and then uplifts the boobs in the brain. Not that these are errors but more an impulse on their part to "screw you" everything. It is their "Charlie Big Potatoes" that requires the surgery.

Away from their netherworld, I say thank goodness for the very few voices of reason. Middle aged, working class, and with an understanding of the arts. Those who have some vigour and a refusal to conform. Both these things in that very common sense of being a willing dying breed. Slow mind. Not too fast on the destination. Just able to face the final shock that comes to all which, of course, the modern palaver junkies block with sensational metaphor. The realists are not the matron aunt who has an instinct for revulsion like others have a need to use the toilet. Nor are they the Tory MP who talks church on a Sunday and who has more "wives" on the side than a fundamentalist Mormon. No. They are people who were born into something like the real world. The ones who will now positively enjoy a very slow withering while others grasp around in semi-armageddon to be the boldest corporate whore. Ha! On the lower pulse, the latter will know that they are not quite as full of vim as they purport to be in this world where every average worker and, erm, soul mate needs to act as if they are in Equity. How unhelpful of the older buggers to age just as they were when young, the awkward squad, never quite agreeing with how things are, how they must be, how they will be.

While there are elements in the has-beens of old fashioned conservatism and, god forbid, socialism, many of them probably are old fashioned liberals in the main. They were folk who saw that the boundaries were too rigid but didn't stomp with jackboots onto others' emotional territory. Instead, they asked the questions that hadn't been asked and hoped that in any answers there would be more rather than less balance. The system would be broadened rather than narrowed down and people would be raised with and for innovation rather than fighting not to be dropped from the illusory heights. It may well be that only those who have had enough real squalor in their lives are able to smack their shovels over muck masquerading as culture. "They do live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface, change, and frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life here almost possible."

Coincidentally, here's the excellent Julie Burchill echoing some of the points I made last night:

Does every single thing we watch have to be 'gritty'?

Goodness knows I cuss as much as the next person, but am I alone in resenting the way that coarseness is now almost force-fed to us by institutions that should know better? (Unlike me, who left school at 16 only to be immediately immersed in the swirling, sweary cesspool of journalism.)

Fresh off the back of Marie Stopes advising that pregnancy can be avoided by taking "one up the bum", it now transpires that RADIO 3 is to air a version of Wuthering Heights – on a Sunday evening! – which will contain more effing and blinding than breakfast at Buck Pal when the latest red-top revelations re Airmiles Andy drop from the corgi's jaws.

Really, no one could call me a prude – I'm not so much Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells as Blasé of Brighton. But it is my very worldliness, I feel, that makes me resent how "grittiness" is now forced on us, like the artistic version of being moaned at about eating one's five-a-day. What classic are the po-faced gritters going to darken up next? The Very Bulimic Caterpillar? The Cat In The Hat On Crack? Speedballs with Rosie?

In the way that trains have a quiet carriage, is it too much to expect a few institutions NOT to feel the need to get down with da kidz?

[french frank]

I feel faintly annoyed about it, but only because I think it's no more than latter-day 'cool'/BBC smartypants. I can't see that it adds anything. But two days to go... When we've counted it three times we'll know we can relax

Edit: Sorry, not 'latter-day 'cool'/BBC smartypants': it's 'left-field', according to the director

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes, frenchfrank, I feel faintly annoyed about it too.

[Gordon]

Well said RT1!!! The loonies have taken over the asylum and those of us who pay the bill are funding their playpen. Art needs talent and that is the bit that's missing.

I will await to see what actually turns out on Sunday and then perhaps see if all the fuss has any foundation. I expect some respect for the source for a start but I'm not holding my breath though.

[Lateralthinking1]

Thanks Gordon. Essentially what this production represents is a test of tolerance and open-mindedness. It is the age old thing about every generation believing that they are doing it all first. There is always somewhat ironically a narrow-mindedness in their expectations about the range of possible responses. Some, they think, will ignore it, some will get hot under the collar, some will be all in favour and some will wheel out all the usual po-faced arguments. And that's it. You - we - are permitted ignorance, fury, wild enthusiasm, or boring greyness. Nothing else can possibly apply and all can be easily dealt with, managed, controlled, manipulated.

Sorry but I can easily see those boxes and I'm not going to live my life based on those dynamics. I've got a job to do and it is about keeping the house in order. The Radio 3 house. The broadcasting tradition. This is our room and that one over in the direction of Uncle Chris is yours. He's brought a record along by Tinie Tempah. I'm sure you will love it. You can see them all scratching their heads for a moment. The arguments seem logical but the symbolism is lurid. What to do? Overall, they say, it makes you feel a bit awkward, is a bit embarrassing, is even slightly deranged. He must be a nutter. Dismiss it. He's crackers.

The thing is though is that it is revealing. It highlights the raison d'etre behind their little project and all of those feelings of unease in them are simply being projected onto we the humble critics. It is their own feelings that they are feeling. For it is the production that is awkward, embarrassing and deranged and it is their "baby". As for the trap they have set for others, they have just fallen into it themselves. Oh what a beautiful thing to behold but it couldn't ever possibly happen without language that is almost as lurid and outdoes them on madness while remaining justifiable. Who is being tested on tolerance and open-mindedness now?

[french frank]

Here's what they're saying about it up in Yorkshire. (My second comment went up immediately. The first was a reply to some 'professor of cultural history' who commented 'But then Radio 3 has an audience that’s too small to measure anyway.' I put a link to this discussion which is presumably why it hasn't yet appeared.)

Mind you, Lat, we're the ones who have fallen into the trap: we're talking about it, and still talking about it. That seems to be the cultural ambition of BBC management these days. It doesn't matter what R3 does as long as it gets itself talked about. That's what annoys me not some 15-year-old going on 55 who thinks it's 'left-field' to introduce four-letter expletives into a classic novel.

[Lateralthinking1]

That Mr Holloway who wants to "elbow out" stuff. Just checked. He's getting on a bit isn't he? Nearly a year older than John Lydon. Yes, you are absolutely right, of course. I have said my piece and won't be adding to it. Regrettably, I can't say the same about Japan. That puts all of this into perspective.

[tony yyy]

Left field? I can't think of anything more tediously outdated than trying to shock audiences with a bit of swearing. I suggest someone tries updating the works of Mr Holloway by removing or adding expletives to see if there's anything of substance left.

[string]

So did anyone try this? I was going to leave it on in the background until I read about the 'racist language'. Expletives and f***ing I can live with; racism - again... didn't we do that last week... . Anyway if anyone has listened could they posssibly tell me what the racism was - and then I'll decide if I should LA just so I know what the fuss was about.

[french frank]

Haven't listened yet - but shall LA at some point. Racism?

[string]

From R3 blurb "This play contains strong language and some racist terms."

Funny how the press has only picked up on the "strong language" - that's not the bit that bothers me.

[french frank]

From R3 blurb "This play contains strong language and some racist terms."

Funny how the press has only picked up on the "strong language" - that's not the bit that bothers me.

The BBC is extremely sensitive about 'racist terms'. I suppose it's their way of saying, 'Sorry, sorry, sorry - they're all part of the play otherwise we wouldn't be allowing them ...'

[string]

It's a long time since I read Wuthering Heights, okay a very long time but - I don't recall 'racist terms'. And I would have noticed even way back when. If the BBC is that sensitive about it then why put them in where they don't exist! Plus last week's play had 'racist terms' and there was no warning... . I'm not saying there should be warnings - when something is a legitimate part of a play so be it but why go out of the way to have a warning this week when there was nothing last week? It just puts me off listening, when in reality it's probably much tamer than the majority of R3 drama broadcasts.