Brasseye
Tue, 2001-07-31 12:54
#1
Brasseye
How typical of the media to get into such a frenzy over Brasseye. What they failed to see was that the programme cleverly held a mirror up to the way the media deals with issues like this, and they did not like what they saw. It has confused and embarrassed them and they are baying for Chris Morris' blood. Pretending that they care whether such "stars" as Phil Collins and Phillippa Forester were duped into appearing in the show is just a smoke screen. These people were duped, that much is true but they should have checked their facts before appearing on a show to read from idiot boards about things that they obviously had no clue about! The things they were asked to say were very obviously a hoax and more fool them if they could not see through to the truth! I have no sympathy for them at all. Over in the newspapers, we find those self righteous grotty little people at the Daily Star printing on the same page as they villified Mr. Morris, a comment and close up photograph of Charlotte Church (aged only 15) and how she is growing large breasts. Not long now, eh lads??? The media make me sick with their holier than thou attitudes. They like to show us all our bad points and make us gaze at our nasty twisted reflections, but when it's turned around to face them, they just can't take it. They are hypocritical scumbags and I will have no more to do with them. Game over.
Martin T
I agree that there was way too much fuss made in the media....the programme wasn't that funny, it wouldn't have been watched by many people if the media had grabbed hold of it.
What Morris was doing, some of it was cutting edge tv, some not......duping celebrities...please.....didn't Noel Edmonds make a living out of that for years.....and celebrities prove time and time again that there not the brightest of god's creatures.
What the programme did do was to provoke debate which is not a bad thing.....and was the whole point of the programme anyway....i
stormy petrel
I see the men in white coats finally came for martin.
pity he was in mid sentence though I would have liked to have seen the end of his meandering words.
the media likes to get worked up in their own hypocritical ways and we should not get worked up over them.
what we should worry about is the governments usual knee jerk (off) responses to the media frenzy and the future impact on our lives.
Martin T
Stormy....thankfully the men in white coats were given your address...so don't open the door to strangers... It think I said my piece....sorry if a series of dots and letter i confuse you....a slip on the key board was all. nothing wrong with a mass...debate......i
Martin T
Stormy....thankfully the men in white coats were given your address...so don't open the door to strangers... I think I said my piece....sorry if a series of dots and letter i confuse you....a slip on the key board was all. nothing wrong with a mass...debate......i
Martin T
Apologies for another slip.....this mass...debate has me all fingers and thumbs !!
Gypsum Fantastic
Are you sure you are not using a palmtop? Good for you, slip sliding away.
stormy
I hear echoes in my head.
I hope the men in white coats save me from all this ......................................................... i
Martin
.....laughing madly at last posting....i think they might come for me as well....i
soft lad
was that a Brass I?
jill
I don't think Brass Eye was making fun out of the serious issue of paedophilia, rather it was taking the rise out of sensationalizing format of news magazine programmes. And it does this over and over again no matter what the content of the show is about; Morris repeats the same satirising formula until that formula gets tired and not fresh any more.
The Brass Eye special was sometimes clever - good satire often makes serious points, but mostly it was OTT and silly. Ali G does it better!
Gypsum Fantastic
OK, he does tend to use the same tactics often... But the news media these days seems to sensationalise events so blatently that I wonder whether everytime a bomb goes off somewhere, BBC and ITN newsteams reach for their zippers... The Paedo-tour guide in the show was obviously a comment on those tours around east london promoted by "Mad" Frankie Fraser... He took tourists on bus tours of his crime scenes. Lovely man, by the way. We were safe on the streets in the old days, leave your doors unlocked and they only killed their own. Ali G, having started out on a Chris Morris-esque satirical news show himself, was really only any good when he was relatively unknown. Once Richard "I'm cool, I can say ARSE" Madeley started impersonating him, the character should have been killed off forever. Too easily recognisable now, safe for mummies and daddies, with the official sanction of everyone's favourite past it popster, Madonna. Chris Morris seems to be the only one out there with the balls to lay his whole career on the line to make this sort of tough and uncompromising television... If you don't like what you see, you can always be sure that Dad's army will be on BBC 2 again soon.
David Wavvin
I thought the show was bloody marvellous! I want more of the same sort of thing RIGHT NOW!
andrew pack
The same tactics are used often, but rent-a-quote celebs keep falling for them. His show undermines every time a news programme wheels out a talking head to give an opinion.
Personally,I have spent seven years working with abused children, so I've probably met over four hundred paedophiles. The media distortion of them all as monsters doesn't help. Don't get me wrong, what they do is utterly monstrous but if you believe, as Gary Linneker obviously did that a paedophile would attack even a photograph of a child uncontrollably, then it makes it much harder to believe that the nice man who has befriended you as a single mother could be a 'kiddy fiddler', which means that you tend not to give him the boot even when faced with evidence.
The programme went too far in places, but sometimes tv should. I don't want my tv turned into a homogenised blandness of inoffensive programmes - the people who write in to complain on Points of View or Right to Reply cause me far more offence than anything I have ever seen. Personally, I felt the coach trip sketch was too near the knuckle, but even that was making a point - the programme itself outraged about someone turning paedophilia into comedy.
And there is a line in life, and the Daily Mail is on the wrong side of it.
mississippi
It seems to me that people who do monstrous things can quite fairly be described as monsters! So where is the distortion Andrew? And who is drawing the line, and where? I would suggest it is a different line in a different place for everyone.
I admit I didn't see the programme in question, I try to avoid unpleasant TV shows as they are not entertainment to me and I don't feel the need to be shown proof, graphic or otherwise, of things I already know.
By the way is it OK for me to be a TV show?
andrew pack
My point really Mississippi is that people can do monstrous things without it necessarily being apparent from their demeanour. If the media consistently portray paedophiles as being people who will leap on children first chance they get, then the 95% who are subtle and wait and build a relationship don't get perceived as a risk by adults who ought to be in a position to protect their kids.
And I think your stance is entirely right. You looked at the subject matter and decided you didn't want to watch the show. Absolutely the right thing to do. It interested me how many more complaints Channel 4 had after the second showing, when everyone watching already knew how controversial it was - some people like to be exposed to something that will outrage them.
Emily
I know the guy who thought up the JLB-8 part of the programme which was splashed all over the papers and he was really pleased with the contraversy caused by Brass Eye. I was a bit skeptical, saying that really it was *slightly* offensive, but then he said 'at least now people are very aware of paedophilia without any children actually getting abused.' How true, I thought. Usually someone has to get hurt before an issue becomes news-worthy. I thought the 'Naming and Shaming' thing was atrocious. Since when have the media had the right to take matters into their own hands? On the other side of the argument, my mum is a child protection social worker. She feels that the reaction of the media to paedophilia is counter-productive. If the media sensationalise it, the sexual abuse of children will become more underground and devious. I thought Brass Eye was funny and I think it would be pretty awful if someone dictated what we could and couldn't watch.