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RADIO 4
CURRENT AFFAIRS

ANALYSIS
PULP NATION
TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED
DOCUMENTARY
Presenter: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Producer: Jim Frank
Editor: Nicola Meyrick
BBC
White City
201 Wood Lane
London
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020 8752 6252

Broadcast Date:
Repeat Date:
Tape Number:
Duration:

4.12.03
2030-2100
7.12.03
2130-2200

Taking part in order of appearance:

James Brown
Founder of Loaded Magazine
David Lee
Editor of Jackdaw
Richard Caseby
Managing Editor of the Sunday Times
Estelle Morris
Minister for the Arts
Former Secretary of State for Education
Jane Root
Controller BBC2
Tim Gardam
Former Director of Channel 4
Beverley Skeggs
Professor of Sociology, Manchester University

Victoria Barnsley
Chief Executive Publisher, HarperCollins

FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
We seem to be gripped by trivia. Style outspins
substance. Celebrity trash crowds out news. Serious thoughts flit past short
attention
spans. The arts are as ephemeral as the media, the media as squalid as Tracy
Emin's bed.
Our education makes us dumb. Our media make us dumber.
It's a picture of Britain which some endorse and others deny, but which everyone
will
recognise. Is it true?
BROWN:
What I absolutely refute is that
we live in a dumb
country. Thats just the opinion of people who are out of touch with whats
being done
creatively in Britain.
SEGUE
LEE:
You could say it was
dumbing down because no
standards are expected of anybody in terms of behaviour or of what they produce.
Providing they can defend it, providing they can promote it - then its okay.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
James Brown, best-known as the founder of Loaded
magazine, followed by David Lee, editor of the irreverent arts journal, Jackdaw.
There's
more than just disagreement here: there's a paradox we have to explain. On
paper,
Britain's better-educated now than ever: more people spend more time and more
public
and private money in educational institutions. The market for books and arts
has rarely
been more buoyant. New technology, new funding, new audiences multiply the
opportunities for creativity, scholarship, and genius. According to the ads, you
can even
create your own TV channel. So is fool Britannia myth or reality? If it's
real, who's to
blame for the reality? If it's mythical, who's to blame for the myth? In any
case, people
like pulp. What's wrong with game shows, reality-telly, celebrity-scandals and
the
Sunday Sport? Intellectuals like empty pretension: what's wrong with delighting
in a pile
of bricks or a soiled bed?

LEE:
want, then thats fine.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:

If thats what people

David Lee.

LEE:
Theres no distinction
between that and the curiosity
required to go into a tent on a fairground to see the hairiest woman in the
world. Oh
god, thats what the hairiest woman in the world looks like! You know Ive
always
believed that art was something more than that. I think the rot starts with
education. We
spend nothing on art education in British schools, as little as 60p per pupil
per year. If
you are seen to be debasing and degrading and devaluing art at that age and
especially
in secondary schools as well then youve got very little hope once people are
out in the
real world of encouraging them to backtrack and start doing things which perhaps
demand a little more thought and contemplation.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
Richard Caseby, managing editor of the Sunday
Times, agrees about where the rot starts.
CASEBY:
I believe it starts in schools
where competitiveness
and excellence are often forsaken in favour of a warm and woolly feeling of
inclusiveness. There seems to be no greater sin in the modern educational
establishment
than to point out the difference between the mediocre and the excellent. And we
find it
today that the educational system has been so debased by this culture that, as
we read,
universities are now considering selecting undergraduates by a lottery system.
I mean
where does that leave us? So if people emerge from an educational system with
little
sense of comparative merit, then its hardly surprising that often the lowest
common
denominator can prevail. Dumbing down starts early well before any part of
the media
starts seeking an audience for its wares.

FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
But Richard Caseby's an interested party. The
arts
and information industries have the power to redeem the failures of formal
education and
the means to follow up its successes. The media shouldnt have to plug the gaps
bad
education leaves between our ears. They can't do the work of schools. But they
mustn't
undo it either. Soaps can be opiates. Pulp fiction can pulp minds. Reality-shows
reveal
realities about our fellowcitizens lives but too many of them can rot our sense
of reality.

We need discerning, critically acute citizens and consumers, capable of rumbling

rhetoric
and seeing through spin. The media have an opportunity to educate. An
opportunity, and,
some say, an obligation.
Does Estelle Morris, minister for the arts, and former Secretary of State for
education,
think the media share her responsibilities?
MORRIS:
Yes I think theyve got an
obligation to educate. But
I also think that some of the programmes that are good at educating are also
good
programmes. And lets not get back to the false question. Its not a case of
do you want a
programme that educates people or do you want a programme that a lot of people
watch.
You know thats not the choice. And I think at their best, the media are some
of the most
powerful educators weve seen. The Big Read at the moment, I think is a
tremendously
successful programme about getting people talking about books.
SEGUE
ROOT:
and excite people about
the idea of reading.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:

The Big Reads job is to try

Jane Root Controller of BBC 2

ROOT:
Its about also trying to get
people to think that
reading is something they can do socially. There is something about suggesting
to people
that they might really enjoy something they hadnt otherwise thought theyd
enjoy,
suggesting to people to look a bit outside their boundaries.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
Well you know the evidence very much supports you
on that the Big Read does seem to have you know introduced a lot of people to
books
that they werent otherwise reading, so it has been a great success in that
respect. But I
guess the reason, the real reason why people hate it, hate it, is because they
dont think it
delivers the other criterion, which is creativity; that its a pretty trite,
formulaic,
conformist format which has been already you know done to death in lots of other
fields.
ROOT:
Some of the individual films
in The Big Read I think
are absolutely astonishing. Simon Schama going out of his way to persuade
people that
War and Peace is the greatest novel ever is just a wonderful experience. The
same with
Ruby Wax talking about Catcher in the Rye. Some of the other films I think
genuinely
have creative excitement in their film-making and in the way that its
encouraging people

to really go out and argue for their books.

Thats quite a new flavour.

FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
So creativity can happen even in a hackneyed
format. The Big Read is a show which purports to identify the nations
favourite book by
celebrity canvassing and viewer voting. Personally I found Ruby Waxs
contribution a bit
self-indulgent and shallow. But those are epithets for our time. An ideological
void, a sofar brief period in which people have had little to be high minded about. Tim
Gardams
done a series of top jobs in broadcasting, most recently as director of
television at
Channel 4.
GARDAM:
I think there is a clear shift of
sensibility between
generations and I think that the generation thats essentially post-Cold War
thinks and
feels and lives their lives in a very different way to the generations, such as
my own,
which is very much defined by the Cold War. I think after the early 1990s we
went into a
world which was not constrained by boundaries, where actions didnt seem to have
consequences, where people could separate out their private from their public
lives, and
indeed could disconnect from public life altogether. And this led to a sort of
great burst
of hedonistic energy in the society, which, for those who had been through the
tensions
and the tough decisions of the past fifty years, was irritating and rather
disconcerting.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:

So televisions becoming post-modern?

GARDAM:
Im very suspicious of the phrase
post-modern. I
think one of the interesting things about this post-Cold War culture is that
because it has
been free of ideological tension and, therefore, free of political passion,
obsessions with
celebrity and fame, which were always there, have come to the fore because
theres been
nothing to counter balance them with. And you therefore get quite an
interesting position
that when broadcasters make programmes about fame and celebrity, theyre
immediately accused of dumbing down; and yet it seems to me that it is the role
of the
broadcaster to be forever curious about whats happening to the society that
surrounds it.
The interesting thing about the obsession with fame and celebrity is precisely
that there is
nothing else in that vacuum besides fame and celebrity, and the problem there
has been
the disengagement from public life, from politics of that audience which is only
interested
in fame.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
celebrity cult.

Jane Root sees a way of making a virtue of the

ROOT:
In terms of the Big Read and
Great Britons, those
kind of things, I think, yes, celebrity is one weapon in their armoury. I
suspect thats
actually to do with the permeability of social classes in the world we now live
in, which is
one of the reasons why people are very interested in it. Theyre also
interested in the
Wife Swap, Faking It kind of things. There is now more potential to move and
change in
society than there ever has been. So its become a theme that I think excites a
lot of
younger people certainly than from when I was at school where there was pretty
much a
sense that your horizons were limited by who you were, where you born and who
your
parents were. That is so much less the case now that its become an interesting
part of
life.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
Beverley Skeggs, Professor of Sociology at
Manchester University, sees the popularity of reality-shows and makeovers rather
differently.
SKEGGS:
The people who are producing
programmes are
stereotyping people, are enabling them to fit into previous stereotypes - so
something like
Wife Swap, for instance, works on people enabling people to display themselves
in ways
that completely confirms pre-existing stereotypes. They show that people
often that
people have no taste, they dont know how to operate, that people are
emotionally
illiterate, they dont care, theyre bad mothers, theyre dirty, theyre
excessively sexual.
They actually reproduce the snobbery. I mean theres so many programmes that
are
dedicated to transformation and we have to ask transformation from what?
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
Doesnt television have the power, and sometimes
actually deliver that power in reality, to change peoples perceptions of the
world and
perhaps their lives?
SKEGGS:
Theres a lot of humiliating
television. Theres a lot
of programmes that I find it very painful to watch and I know some other people
do
because what it sets out to do is humiliate people for their lack of knowledge
about their
own condition or their own taste or whatever. I think the way class is being
refigured in
contemporary society is through morality and through culture. I think were now
in a
period where the media is obsessed with visualising the working class. What we
see is an
incredible visualisation of practically every feature of working class life.

FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
For Jane Root, the reality shows reveal the
power
people have today to transcend their supposed limitations. For Beverley Skeggs,
that's
bunk. They're about ridicule mocking anyone who wants to opt out of
embourgoisement, sniggering at dinnerparties, decor and dirty bathtubs. Dumb
Britain
is a middle-class myth, part of the propaganda of class warfare.
But people watch soaps, follow celebs and make fools of themselves on camera
whatever their class, education or intelligence. The humiliated are usually
volunteer
victims - tele-struck collaborators in their own mockery.
Maybe these modern freak-shows arent so dumb after all. Reality telly is social
satire for
the classless age lampooning Everyman. Soaps actually often more engaging,
more
enquiring, than the old tune and toe vaudeville its replaced.
I suspect that
some of us
may have missed the beauty of the game shows, too. They can be well done
trashy but
triumphantly so: the discards of our age, which maybe future generations will
value, just
as we value the art that archaeology retrieves from the rubbish heaps of
antiquity. Its not
class prejudice that inspires the myth of dumb Britain, but intellectual
snobbery according
to James Brown.
BROWN:
to say that was a
fantastic and complex reflection of our
else
might have gone look at those girls in
you know
somebody has their brain stimulated and
stimulated. Its
just different forms of stimulation and

One person might be inspired

modern society in that play and someone
that club, I want to go to Ibiza.

So

someone else has their crotch

FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
I think its intelligenceism. Youre
practising the
only form of discrimination which is still allowed today, which is the
excoriation of the
stupid.
BROWN:
No, but youre youre
mistaking my description
of people who are inspired by what goes on in their pants as suggesting theyre
not
intelligent. Some of the most highly sexed and sex obsessed people I know are
also the
most intelligent and the most short theyve got the most short focuses.
Instant
technology, instant information, multi-layered information can be passed onto an
individual whether its through their iPod or through their computer game or
through
whatever. There are so many different ways that people can inform themselves
now. I
dont think weve ever lived in a time when more people can get their hands on
more
culture. I mean I sit on buses and listen to the William Tell Overture coming
out of

peoples telephones.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
(Laughing) Let me be clear about this.
think
cellphone rings are a positive feature of our culture?

You

BROWN:
Whats happened traditionally,
if you want to listen
to some Beethoven you have to go and listen to an orchestra or you might have an
album
to listen to it on. Nowadays you can get all your classical hits just sitting
on a bloody
train listening to everyones phone going off. People are interested in it, but
theyre just
not interested in it in the cold, disenfranchised world of the theatre or
wherever orchestras
play. People are just consuming art and culture in different ways.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
Ring tones may be a silly example but James
Browns right about the multiplication of routes of access to traditional
culture, and about
the diversification of the ways in which we experience the life-enhancing
effects of art.
Some people are missing out on old ways of delivering culture, like live theatre
and
representational art, others are missing the virtues of what's new
electronically delivered
art and information for unremitting lifestyles. For Estelle Morris, minister
for the arts,
does culture have to mean what we've conventionally called high culture?
MORRIS:
Yes it does and theres high
culture, medium
culture, low culture. I think culture, arts, creativity is that area of our
lives that in some
ways is difficult to describe, but its absolutely important to the soul and to
the spirit and
to the part of the human spirit which isnt always measurable and for which you
cant
always set targets.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
sound kind of hierarchical.

And those adjectives high, medium and low, they

MORRIS:
They are and I think theyve
stayed with us over
many decades and perhaps now is the time to actually have a look at them. So I
wonder if
the notion of high art actually came from those days when there was an elitism
about it,
which I dont think there is now, and I think whats possibly happened is that I
think we
often in many areas of our life mix up elitism with excellence.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
Thats part of your job, is it, to deliver this
experience of excellence more widely?
MORRIS:
I think its to deliver
choice. I mean Im a
politician; I am not an artist - I dont paint, I dont play a musical
instrument. I read, I go

to see films, I go to the theatre, so Im a consumer, not a connoisseur. And,

yes, I think
part of my job is to make sure that more people have the choice of going to the
Arts. If at
the end of the day theyve got the choice and they choose not to go to museums
and
galleries or to opera and ballet, thats their choice.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
It's good to know that Estelle Morris doesn't
think
cultural policy can be subjected to targets. But she's free with one of the
other
government buzz-words, choice. It's also a word favoured by James Brown.
BROWN:
I could walk out of here,
tread in a revolting
McDonalds thing, get run over by some kids on mopeds listening to some terrible
music
and daydreaming about whatever they saw on Ibiza Uncovered and then go home and
sit
down and have to watch some terrible American television programme. But,
fortunately,
I have SkyPlus so I can put Scarface on; I have a DVD box of the Sopranos, so I
can put
that on; or I can pick up Alan Clarkes Diaries, the latest volume. You know
these are the
things that I choose to entertain myself with. These are the things that I
consider to be art
and culture. And you know the reason I can do that? Its because Ive got
choice and
weve got greater choice now than we ever have. But I think theres an
intellectual
snobbery and every time I hear the word dumb down its usually in some middle
class
discussion forum and its invariably being spoken by plummy accents. I mean I
distinctly
remember sitting in my car, listening on Radio 4 or BBC Live 5 to a debate seven
years
ago declaring that The Teletubbies was a disgrace, and there were educational
people
being wheeled out. Now Teletubbies is a brilliant programme for children its
full of
noise, its very stimulating. If anything new comes along, it always gets
slagged off
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
Indeed, the Teletubbies were under-appreciated,
as
culture-vultures picked the stuffing out of them. The programme was great for
its
audience.
But James Browns choice of SkyPlus and DVDs is choice you have to pay for.
Listening to him, I don't know whether the market stimulates innovation or
smothers it.
Choice can be the enemy of excellence. Instead of broadening taste and
diversifying
experience, it encourages intellectual channel-hopping or drives the bewildered
back to
familiar comforts. As media multiply, market-niches become ghettoes of likeminded

consumers. Fragmentation dissipates resources, at least in television, as Tim

Gardam
points out.
GARDAM:
We dont know how much innovation
the market
can provide. I think the real threat to British broadcasting isnt a cultural
loss of nerve; it
is actually an economic system which will allow the resources to producers to
make the
programmes that the viewers will come to watch. The real danger to the
diversity and
quality and experiment inherent in British broadcasting comes from the fact that
we will
in a digital world see an increasing pressure to maximise revenues from every
slot in the
schedule.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
The debate about whether the free market drives
down standards is at the heart of the dilemma for cultural policy in this
country: whether
to subsidise public-service television, and esoteric arts. But step out of the
box. The world
beyond television looks different. The effects of the market feel different.
Take
publishing, for instance. Can more and more products serve relatively static
demand,
without sacrifice of quality?
Victoria Barnsley should know. She's the Chief Executive Publisher of
HarperCollins,
with an uncanny record in judging the book market as well as anybody in the
business.
And business, according to her, is what it is.

BARNSLEY:
I suppose publishing is both for
entertainment and
information, putting it in very simple terms. And at HarperCollins we have both
aspects:
we have educational publishing, which is very much information and learning; and
we
have a broad range of general publishing, which I suppose loosely termed is
entertainment.
FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
I suppose Im slightly shocked to hear you make
that
distinction. I mean Ive always thought there was no information without
entertainment.
BARNSLEY:
I would hate to think it was
simply a question of
entertaining. I mean obviously we publish books about science and history in
our general
publishing which obviously have had, as it were, an educational function as
well. But,
ultimately, we are in the entertainment business. We are in the communication
and
entertainment business.

FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
do for the world?
BARNSLEY:
thought I was
entertaining a lot of people.

Have you not got you know something you want to

No, I think Id be very happy if I
Thats probably enough for me.

FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
Do you do it because you see it as a niche that
you
can make money out of, or do you feel any sense of duty or mission?
BARNSLEY:
people in publishing
are theyre not here just to make money.

I think its both.

I think most

FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO:
The trouble is that the market can't educate
people,
because it can't give them what they don't yet know they want. To prove this,
you only
need look at what's happening to the arts. David Lee
LEE:
All statistical surveys of
audiences for art over the
last ten or fifteen years have demonstrated that between half and two thirds of
the
population never go to art galleries. Once you expect museums to justify their
existence
on a kind of value for money business, thats the pathway to disaster, it seems
to me.
Were now in a lamentable situation in regional art galleries where were low on
curators,
were low on connoisseurship and people are expected to be appealing to those
who are
not predisposed to go to museums in order to justify their positions. I think
we have to
accept that museums exist because they are good in themselves and w