By Charlie Brooker, The Guardian, Monday 31 January 2011
Private conversation is impossible in this new era
We’re in danger of creating a world where everyone has to walk around beaming like an inoffensive gameshow host. Since I last scrawled on these pages, plenty has happened. First Andy Coulson resigned, just in time for the phone-hacking affair to degenerate into a full-blown crisis-bukkake. It's like Watergate, but better, because it stars Sienna Miller and Steve Coogan. Excitingly, the bigger the scandal gets, the greater the likelihood that one day we'll get to see them playing themselves in the movie adaptation. Hope they hacked Michael Sheen's phone too, because then we'll finally get to see what he's like when he's being himself. The phone-hacking saga, unsurprisingly, didn't get much coverage in the Murdoch press, but you could read all about it in the Mirror – assuming you scribbled all the details in the margin yourself, that is, because they didn't write about it either. God knows what this curious reluctance to engage with the material signifies. Perhaps they don't know what phone-hacking is. Don't worry, Mirror journalists – I've left a message on David Beckham's voicemail explaining just how it works. Anyway, shortly after Andy Coulson's departure, another Andy was toppled: this time, Andy Gray of Sky Sports. Both he and co-chauvinist Richard Keys had an almighty bucket of public shit poured over them for engaging in fatuous banter about a female linesman. Aside from the flabbergasting hypocrisy of Sky Sports dismissing a man for sexism when its own Saturday morning Soccer AM lad-fest regularly includes a sub-Nuts item in which a young "Soccerette" writhes onscreen for the delight of a baying mob perpetually on the brink of a wank, the most sinister aspect of the story is that Gray's and Keys' original comments were made off-air. Cavemen they may be, but they were advanced enough to know what was suitable for broadcast and what wasn't. Ultimately, they were tarred and feathered for holding a private conversation. And that's ominous.
We've entered an era in which private conversation is impossible. Ever since Gordon Brown was caught calling Gillian Duffy a bigot, the tape's been left running. Paranoia is at an all-time high. MPs can no longer talk to their own constituents without suspecting they may be undercover reporters. Celebrities can't listen to their voicemails without wondering if they have been transcribed and passed to the newsdesk. Football commentators can no longer yap like oafs in their downtime. Everyone has become a reality show contestant nervously awaiting their own Shilpa Shetty moment. No one said anything illegal on tape. They weren't debating how to massage civilian casualty figures or conspiring to nuke Swindon. They were chatting among themselves, talking shit like we all do. You could bring down absolutely any public figure in the land simply by following them around with a concealed microphone long enough. Everyone says stupid and objectionable things in private. I say nothing BUT stupid and objectionable things in private. That's the point of private conversation. It's why we get annoyed when someone puts us on speakerphone without warning us first. Keys suggested his comments about Karren Brady were ironic. Sounds unlikely, but I can't definitively cry foul because I couldn't see his face when he made them. Dismissing a complaint about sexism with the phrase "do me a favour, love" certainly has the structure of a joke, albeit a crap one. But whether he meant it or not, my point is this: without the accompanying facial expressions, we are missing 50% of the context. And context is vital. In the context of a live club appearance, a standup will say things that would be a sackable offence if repeated in the workplace, or lead to death threats if hysterically recounted on the front page of a national paper accompanied by a portrait snap.
Every writers' room of every comedy show on TV consists of nothing but the unsayable being said out loud, for hours. In 1999, an assistant on the sitcom Friends took out a harassment case, claiming she had been subjected to "vulgar and coarse language" by the show's writing staff. Exhibit A was a hair-curling document recounting choice banter from the writing room, which seemed to consist entirely of wank gags, cruelty, and a moment when one of the writers "said that [Courtney] Cox's pussy was full of dried-up twigs and if her husband put his dick in her she'd break in two". In 2006 the case was thrown out by California's supreme court, which ruled that this kind of freewheeling babble, albeit offensive and embarrassing when circulated in court documents, was an entirely essential element of the "creative workplace" required to make the show – a show that, in case you needed reminding, was hardly Tramadol Nights in terms of nihilistic edginess. We are in danger of creating a world where that "writers' room mentality" is no longer allowed to exist – not even backstage. Only the bland finished product will do, and everyone has to walk around beaming like an inoffensive gameshow host. Pundits, presenters, prime ministers: hey, nice to see you, to see you nice.
Bollocks to a world in which all conversation is shorn of its private context. Bollocks to a world in which everyone's on permanent speakerphone, terrified of verbalising a thought crime. We'll get nothing done. If you can't make Friends or host football shows without talking shit between takes, how the hell can you run a country? Phone-hacking. Hidden mics. Heavily publicised show trials for citizens holding private conversations. This is beyond snooping in the public interest. This is the world of the Stasi. And rather than protecting us, reporters are sitting there in headphones, making notes.
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