October 2008 Archives

All those who have been reading 'In a Critical Condtion' on this blog will be encouraged to know that the crisis in criticism theme has been picked up by BBC Radio 3.

This morning I gave the Free Thought talk on the subject - streamed here from tomorrow - and tonight I will be defending it on Night Waves against the Guardian's editor of online reviews.

Professional criticism is a pre-requisite of democracy. Free online reviews are weightless.

Discuss.

My big hero of the financial crash is Marcel Reich-Ranicki who, given an achievement award on German's second TV channel, ZDF, thrust it back at the presenter and denounced the whole of public television as 'rubbish'.

Reich-Ranicki, 88, is Germany's foremost literary critic and, as a result of his hour-long weekly discussion programme on the screen, a national figure. No respecter of reputations, he has fallen out with every leading author from Gunter Grass down when their books fell below his exalted standards. Now he has publicly bitten the hand that fed him - and the result is an attack of rabies panic among German media bosses.

In an effort to mitigate the shock of rejection, the awards show host Thomas Gottschalk offered to stage a televised debate between Reich-Ranicki and the heads of public television - an offer accepted with alacrity by the executives and, after appropriate reflection, by the critic himself. That is going to be one fun show.

The focus of Reich-Ranicki's attack was on the dumbing down of public broadcasting, the reliance on reality shows, talent contests and talentless celebrities. Gottschalk admitted in a subsequent interview that if television were made to the critic's rules, he would be unemployed.

Beyond the confines of a German spat, however, this has lessons for all of us who ply a trade in the creative arts. All my writing life, I have accepted persuasion from publishers and career makers to go on TV whenever asked, and on the BBC without a second thought. Now, I hardly ever accept without strict guarantees.

Television has become a dishonest medium, distorting facts to fit the visual image and contorting ideas into cliche. Information programmes, so called, are voyeuristic garbage and even sport has been subsumed by the cult of celebrity.

The time has come for all creative people to join the Reich-Ranicki rally and denounce public television for the rubbish it is - until the dustcarts come along and the act is cleaned up.

Let's all say No to TV.

Sign below to join the rally.  

The guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs this morning was David McVicar. He was introduced by Kirsty Young with a text that read something like 'at 42, he has long been regarded as the leading British opera director of his generation ... he is so busy around the world that his diary is filled up to 2013.'

I can't give you the exact words of the introduction since the programme is one of the very few that is not available on the BBc i-player, for reasons of 'rights ownership.'

However, I refuse to believe that a journalist of Kirsty Young's experience would recycle blether like this from a semi-literate press release and put it at the top of her show. Presumably some assistant producer or intern was assigned to the script.

The vacancy of that opening statement just takes the breath away. If McVicar was not a leader in his generation, what the hell was was he doing on a fame show like Desert Island Discs? For heaven's sake, tell the listeners something they don't know. And if his diary was not full until 2013 in a milieu where engagements are made 4-7 years in advance, he would be effectively unemployed and unworthy of appearing on the island. A glaring oxymoron and another waste of breath.

Does no-one at Radio 4 read the scripts before they go out on air? This sounds like amateur radio, and it's supposed to be a BBC flagship programme.