Jerry Springer, The Saga

Hurray! The BBC did the right thing this week-end and did broadcast Jerry Springer, the Opera despite pressure from Bible Wielders of all sorts (see this). It turns out that the campaign back fired with record audiences watching the show.

If you had been able to see what was happening in my room on Saturday afternoon, you would probably have been quite entertained. I was listening to Any Answers? on Radio4; a call-in show where people react to the opinions of four guest panellists expressed on Any Questions?. The broadcast of the opera took up a major chunk of the show. I was fuming at the level of stupidity of some of the comments while clapping and cheering when someone was defending the BBC's decision. How sad?!

First we heard the most fantastic allegations about there being thousands of swear words (the real estimation saying, I think, about 400), in the show. This is forgetting that the show is only two odd hours long. Using one's brains for half a second shows that this is not technically possible. Such lack of information is not surprising however, and is due to the fact that most people against the show, had not even seen it, hence talking through their hats of something they knew nothing about.

Then you had conservatives saying that the BBC, as a public service, was to safeguard the morals of the country by basically replacing the Lord Chancellor (formerly in charge of censorship); The same conservatives who for ever howl against the so-called Nanny State! The same conservatives whose leader for ever goes on about choice!

There was also several people complaining that because parents are so lax in the way they educate their children and because those children had televisions in their room, they would be able to watch the show even if it was broadcast after the watershed. What they are completely forgetting to mention is that the children can watch the real Jerry Springer show (as well as a few others of the same tasteless sort) on daytime TV. You very seldom hear people complaining about that... The Opera, by its very nature, is steeped into artificiality. No one for a second can believe it to be true or forget that it isn't.

But what I really do not understand is that those people who are supposedly fighting the "Culture of Death" rampant in our modern society can so easily forget their pledges to be pro-life or even the Ten Commandments they should be holding so dear and make death threats because there is something on TV they do not care for? Do you hear any of those dreadful atheists call for the death of any of the BBC's controllers because Songs of Praise is on every week?! I don't think so...



The poem referred to in the article is The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name by James Kirkup. Very easy to find on the net.