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Chargement... Ban This Filth!: Letters From the Mary Whitehouse Archivepar Ben Thompson
   Aucun Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.   jon1lambert | Dec 14, 2013 |  Mrs Whitehouse might sound completely bonkers, yes, but she was crazy like a fox - her technique for presenting humourless and narrow-minded requests for censorship in politely practical letters to BBC bosses and MPs read like a masterstroke of manipulation. Not many of her target recipients accepted her views, of course, but that didn't put her off. Mad Mary even packed in her job - she was formerly a teacher, which makes perfect sense - to dedicate her life to harassing TV execs and other distributors of tasteless material. I started reading the book in state of shock - primarily at Mrs Whitehouse's unshakeable belief that the nation should be protected from her own viewing prejudices, but also from the knowledge that TV in the 1960s could actually be shocking! There were only two stations, and I though they both shut down at midnight. But after a few chapters, I developed a grudging respect for Mary - she had the right idea, and the intelligence to plan a campaign and set her protests into practice, however ineffectual, but she was fighting the wrong battles. Instead of focusing on the sexual exploitation of women, or the banning of A Clockwork Orange, she counts the number of times 'bloody' is spoken in an episode of Starsky and Hutch, or complains about the risqué dancers on the Benny Hill show. I detest the sort of nanny state she was seeking, where people must be protected from their own weaknesses - that's what the 'OFF' button on the TV set is for - but if Mary were alive today, she would be rolling in her grave! Some of the best excerpts are from NVALA letters - reviews of films like The Exorcist ('I will not dwell upon the details of this transformation except to say that from then on her teeth were discoloured'); Walkabout ('Just imagine the thoughts in these children's minds, wondering if ever their father would [shoot at them]?'); and Casanova ('We switched off, having been too stunned before'). Like the viewers today who watch an entire programme that offends them, just so that they can write in to Points of View. Scary. I couldn't decide whether to be glad that we have so much freedom of choice on television today, or sad that standards - both of programming and morals - have declined so much since Mary's heyday. TV today, for all the hundreds of channels available, is dismal, and sadly well beyond the control of a bunch of middle-class, middle-aged ladies. I did enjoy Ben Thompson's retrospective championing of Mary's best intentions, though! (  ) AdonisGuilfoyle | Oct 8, 2013 |
 As Thompson notes, although Whitehouse was a true blue Tory, her view of the sex industry shared common ground with Marxist economic critiques. Hers was always the kind of small-mindedness that sensed a bigger picture. If she were alive today she would no doubt see the Jimmy Savile saga, and the panic it has unleashed at the BBC, as a vindication of her warnings. In his connecting prose, Thompson, a successful music journalist and ghoster of celebrity memoirs, adopts a relentlessly jaunty tone. He enlarges metaphors until they collapse. Thus, Mrs Whitehouse described the BBC’s response to criticism in the Sixties as “approaching contemptuous indifference”. Thompson inflates this to: “The BBC didn’t so much approach contemptuous indifference as set down its picnic basket there and dine on a sumptuous feast of smoked salmon and chilled sauvignon blanc.” It is only surprising that he didn’t work in “with all the trimmings” and “washed down with lashings of”. Such froth sometimes distracts from the extraordinary historical interest of the letters. Like participants in Mass Observation, NVALA members detailed a bizarre spectrum of broadcast filth that would otherwise have perished with the videotapes. From a liberal perspective, it's not the singularity of her opinions that unsettle, but rather the issues she got right: Gordon Ramsay's expletive-ridden shows, the sexualisation of children on television. The prescience of her words if applied to the internet is unnerving: "Let us remember that freedom dies when moral anarchy takes over, and that it lives when citizens accept limitations upon themselves for the greater good of the community as a whole". Ben Thompson's witty and engaging commentary is admirably even-handed: "we complained about her when she was alive, we sort of miss her now she's gone." Prix et récompenses
The filth and the fury from the Mary Whitehouse archive! The birth of British pop culture and the swinging sixties told through outraged letters and angry campaigns. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)303.376092Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Social Processes Coordination and control ; Power Social norms CensorshipClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (4.06)
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