Warning: there will be random outbursts of violence in this column, which is about the famous TV campaigner Mary Whitehouse, so let’s start with a nice, surprising, fun fact shall we: the queen of middle English outrage was actually Scottish.
I have to say I didn’t know this fact about Mary until last night when I was reading her memoirs and came across the bit about her dad. He was a Glaswegian it turns out and not only that, he was a famous Glaswegian – a Hutcheson, as in founder of the famous school. Mary’s grandfather was also an illustrator who, she tells us, “struggled to bring up his seven children on his salary from The Glasgow Herald”. It’s weird, and nice, to feel a little connection with the past like that.
But that is where my sympatico with Mary ends. You may have seen the documentary about her on BBC2 this week which attempted to suggest that, despite the ridicule and mockery, Mrs Whitehouse may in fact have been right about some things – pornography for example, which she said was damaging for the women who are involved in it. It’s a perfectly fair argument.
However, her views on TV violence are more troubling. Mary essentially believed violence on TV begot violence in real life. “We believe,” she once said, “that the screening of violence, horror, shock, and obscenity into the home, where the viewer sits comfortably, detached, in his easy chair, where he can switch off mentally or physically whenever he wishes, can have nothing but a destructive effect upon our sensitivities and our society.”
It was views like that one which led Mrs Whitehouse to criticise TV programmes and films which are now considered classics. Such as I, Claudius (“violence for violence’s sake”). Or The Sweeney (“vicious punch after vicious punch”). And Doctor Who (“tea-time brutality for tots”).
Let’s take the last example: Doctor Who. As some of you may know, it’s my favourite programme; I’ve been a little bit obsessed with it since I was four and one of the episodes Mrs Whitehouse was referring to features the Doctor (played by Tom Baker) being held underwater by the baddie. As the episode ends, the camera closes in on the Doctor underwater. Freeze frame. Could he be dead? End of episode. I saw that programme when I was six years old.
According to Mrs Whitehouse, it was grossly irresponsible of the BBC (let alone my laissez faire parents) to let me see that kind of thing because children like me would be left with an image of a drowning hero for a whole week. And looking at it objectively, yes, there was a lot of violence in Doctor Who: mutilation, strangulation (by tentacle, human, or robot hand), stabbings, shootings, death by fire, laser, and Dalek gun, disembodied brains in pools of slime, and on and on and on. As Mrs Whitehouse pointed out: really quite violent.
But, like all campaigners who focus on one issue, Mrs Whitehouse failed to put the violence into context – indeed, I would say she failed to realise that violence in Doctor Who, and other shows, can help us to form a moral, anti-violent outlook. It’s certainly true in my case: the violence on telly made me who I am.
What I specifically mean by that is that yes, there was gruesome violence in Doctor Who, and I Claudius and The Sweeney but it was not a celebration of violence. It was a recognition that the world (or, in the case of Doctor Who, the universe) can be a violent place and it’s only by seeing the violence in context that you form and adjust your priorities and morality.
The other problem for Mrs Whitehouse’s argument is that there’s still no convincing systematic evidence that violence on TV does have a destructive effect upon our sensitivities and leads to violence in real life. In fact, sitting comfortably, detached, in our easy chairs, TV can teach us the opposite: that violence is wrong and should be resisted, as non-violently as possible. In the words of the Doctor himself: “there are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things – they must be fought”. I think I agree.
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