No brain no heart no Dorothy Whilst most of us would decry those Victorians who put Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, on public display, today’s TV controllers seem to think that the current vogue for tele-freaks can be justified by some feeble protestation of ‘public interest.’ What is the public interest justification for ‘Embarrassing Bodies?’ Is it supposedly that by showing some poor chap with testicles the size of cantaloupes, the rest of us who may be similarly affected will cast off our shackles and oversized underpants, seize the nearest wheelbarrow and trundle our inflamed testes into Outpatients? To paraphrase Rabbie Burns, I ha’e ma doots. The majority of people with embarrassing conditions are able to seek treatment without having to parade their affliction in public. I suppose there may be one young woman paralysed with shame that her nipples look like Charles De Gaulle who might feel tempted to find help after seeing Nancy from Watford whose hairy back means she can’t go swimming. But for the rest, it’s pure titillation, and of a fairly grotesque kind. The other point, which somewhat begs the question, is that finding something embarrassing suggests that we would hide it away rather than showing it on national television. If you thought your body was embarrassing before transmission, see how the woman at the checkout shies away from your cantaloupes after the show has aired. Then there are the I-am-the-size-of-Austria-and-can’t-stop-eating types of show, which are another example of prurient voyeurism. Do we really need to see some guy whose flesh overflows the sides of his tennis court-sized bed to understand that there are people who are morbidly obese? I wonder whether it’s a coincidence that there are so many fat people around when every second show is a food show. Anorexia is the starter, bulimia the main course (served twice) and obesity is the just desert. Not to underestimate the effects of these conditions or their impact upon the lives of those who suffer from them, but to parade this stuff as informative public service broadcasting when in fact it is an excuse for cheap reality television, is doing a disservice to the victims. Does watching ‘Two Heads, One Brain’ really enhance the quality of our lives, or elicit any greater understanding of anything other than a sharp intake of breath and a hefty swig of the Glen Livet? The Paralympics showed how people with disability of every kind could and should be perceived of deserving the same respect and dignity as anyone else, but dwelling on these examples of body morphology for their ratings-grabbing potential is distasteful, to say the least. This is Joe Merrick for the 21st Century, pimped and primped for primetime.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:29:45 +0000
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