Reality shows are ubiquitous and dignity rarely gets a look-in. But at least celebrities are thrown some dosh
At the time of writing, a petition calling on Channel 4 to stop broadcasting its reality series Benefits Street has collected almost 47,000 signatures; Ofcom has received 877 complaints. The programme features on PMQs, cited as evidence of "lifestyle choice". A heated debate has been staged on Newsnight. If these are accurate measures of public outrage, then Channel 4 has surpassed its personal, storm-of-protest best, to a point that is perhaps best compared, given the lack of direct, outrage-generating competitors, to Michael O'Leary's achievement, when he proposed making his passengers pay to use the Ryanair lavatory.
Whatever the longer-term impact of this programme – say, eight days after the final "have your say" row – the above commotion should bring hope to programme makers who thought that, with Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, Channel 4 had probably reached the limits of permissible stereotyping. Although, of course, outrage figures for Benefits Street have gained from the deepening relationship between reality TV programming and Twitter.
Where the national grid would once peak with kettles being switched on, there are now insult surges each ad break, when Channel 4 flashes #BenefitsStreet, and viewers duly rail against inhabitants of state-dependent squalor, or against the people who carefully choreographed it, according to taste. But no one, other than perhaps a Tory MP, could describe the dismal insecurity on display here as a lifestyle choice.
Generally, shirking natives seem to have made a deeper Twitter impact than the same street's fluctuating population of Romanians, whose struggles and persecution made wrenching viewing in an admirable second episode. But having wound up the outrage machine, the programme makers can hardly complain that in its entirety the series presents a balanced picture of dependency. To judge by a spurious Britain in Bloom theme, we can perhaps anticipate a riot of hanging baskets in the final programme, a symbol of hope the makers appear to have borrowed from the National Theatre's acclaimed musical, London Road, another tale of community spirit
What next, for any production company hoping to generate a bigger, fatter, more benefity noise than Benefits Street, in which petty criminals offer, as if volunteering for prosecution, artless lessons in thievery? Only, as many have suggested, a parallel programme called Bonus Street or Evasion Avenue, in which our most affluent spendthrifts and offenders invite arrest with demonstrations of their own criminal skills: how to fix the Post Office share price, deceive the Inland Revenue, or squander taxpayers' money that you were supposed to spend on necessities, such as public services. You can readily imagine the Channel 4 pitch, supposing, like the people in Benefits Street, these residents ever answered their own phones or front doors.
It's a chance to tell your story. Allow people to see the real thing, behind the stereotypes. You'll have the chance to pull out. Yes, they'll see you have a lovely singing voice, I'll make a note of that – you'll probably be talent-spotted! Honestly, we'll show how the whole community pulls together. Just look on my clipboard, the working title is: "Really lovely people who are even more fabulous deep down." No, of course no one will bully the kids – Channel 4 has very strictly enforced guidelines, I'll check when I'm back in the office.
Money? Totally see where you're coming from but it's against our strict protocols for non-exploitative conduct, we can offer you expenses, £15 for the series, bear in mind that's three times what they paid the Embarrassing Fat Bodies, and you don't even have to take your clothes off! Though nobody's stopping you! So if you'll just sign the release form – here – and here – and here – best get it sorted out before we start filming. Honestly, don't tidy up first!
But the suggestion that participants in Benefits Street are "lambs to the slaughter", who should have been protected from the routine cajolery, is arguably as insulting to the residents as the conversion of their private lives into mass entertainment. Even if they never watched Benefits Street's distant ancestor, The Family, its stars will know how the unwary are used on Come Dine With Me and Jeremy Kyle. Moreover, the existence of programmes such as The Apprentice and Celebrity Wife Swap, Grand Designs and BBC 4's fly-on-the-stately, Sissinghurst, the recent Liberty of London, and the famous botched-PR job, The House, confirm that the willingness to exchange privacy for 15 minutes of fame, or platform, or publicity is not confined to groups bereft of lawyers or agents and individuals whose particular problems may actually define them as naive and chaotic.
Long before the arrival of YouTube and Twitter, Michael Waldman, director of The House, was confessing: "You are persuading people, often against their better judgment, that there is more to be gained than lost from appearing. What you see is the consequence of my refusing to allow the door to be closed in my face three times a day." But the fourth time it might be opened by Nadine Dorries MP, or her colleague, Penny Mordaunt, in a swimsuit, all ready for her close-up .
As demonstrated by the former's conviction that she did her political reputation no damage when she ate camel toe for the amusement of Ant & Dec, and the entire career of Celebrity Big Brother's Liz Jones, insatiable exhibitionism exists at all levels, to an extent that reality programme makers could argue they are not so much exploiting as gratifying it, and draining it entertainingly – even instructively – away. But if Dorries's career never recovers from IACGMOOH, at least Doctor Faustus paid her good money for it.
Equally, the minor celebrities now being encouraged by Channel 5 to get drunk and have sex in Celebrity Big Brother (total complaints, 371) will make a profit and maybe even some progress in careers where experience in televised inter-celebrity copulation is an advantage. That a mutually advantageous transaction put them there may partly explain why no one has described this particular set of puppets as lambs to the slaughter or launched a protective petition out of concern for any unfortunate children, who are quite as likely to be bullied as those living in Benefits Street.
Given that any consideration of human dignity could so easily devastate the genre, maybe it is not alleged entrapment by a manipulative reality show that should be at issue here, so much as the fact this wholly unemployed cast was made by its Channel 4 gangmasters to work for nothing, like the Romanian labourers. Everyone – from politicians and programme makers to 5 million viewers and countless columnists – seems to have extracted something of value from Benefits Street, apart from the people who live there. An extra in a TV drama can earn £85 per day. Admittedly, in television terms, anything more than fags and beer would have spoiled the whole degradation conceit. But is there any reason to deny the stars of Benefit Street one half of the Love Production profits? They look as if they need it. Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 days ago.
At the time of writing, a petition calling on Channel 4 to stop broadcasting its reality series Benefits Street has collected almost 47,000 signatures; Ofcom has received 877 complaints. The programme features on PMQs, cited as evidence of "lifestyle choice". A heated debate has been staged on Newsnight. If these are accurate measures of public outrage, then Channel 4 has surpassed its personal, storm-of-protest best, to a point that is perhaps best compared, given the lack of direct, outrage-generating competitors, to Michael O'Leary's achievement, when he proposed making his passengers pay to use the Ryanair lavatory.
Whatever the longer-term impact of this programme – say, eight days after the final "have your say" row – the above commotion should bring hope to programme makers who thought that, with Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, Channel 4 had probably reached the limits of permissible stereotyping. Although, of course, outrage figures for Benefits Street have gained from the deepening relationship between reality TV programming and Twitter.
Where the national grid would once peak with kettles being switched on, there are now insult surges each ad break, when Channel 4 flashes #BenefitsStreet, and viewers duly rail against inhabitants of state-dependent squalor, or against the people who carefully choreographed it, according to taste. But no one, other than perhaps a Tory MP, could describe the dismal insecurity on display here as a lifestyle choice.
Generally, shirking natives seem to have made a deeper Twitter impact than the same street's fluctuating population of Romanians, whose struggles and persecution made wrenching viewing in an admirable second episode. But having wound up the outrage machine, the programme makers can hardly complain that in its entirety the series presents a balanced picture of dependency. To judge by a spurious Britain in Bloom theme, we can perhaps anticipate a riot of hanging baskets in the final programme, a symbol of hope the makers appear to have borrowed from the National Theatre's acclaimed musical, London Road, another tale of community spirit
What next, for any production company hoping to generate a bigger, fatter, more benefity noise than Benefits Street, in which petty criminals offer, as if volunteering for prosecution, artless lessons in thievery? Only, as many have suggested, a parallel programme called Bonus Street or Evasion Avenue, in which our most affluent spendthrifts and offenders invite arrest with demonstrations of their own criminal skills: how to fix the Post Office share price, deceive the Inland Revenue, or squander taxpayers' money that you were supposed to spend on necessities, such as public services. You can readily imagine the Channel 4 pitch, supposing, like the people in Benefits Street, these residents ever answered their own phones or front doors.
It's a chance to tell your story. Allow people to see the real thing, behind the stereotypes. You'll have the chance to pull out. Yes, they'll see you have a lovely singing voice, I'll make a note of that – you'll probably be talent-spotted! Honestly, we'll show how the whole community pulls together. Just look on my clipboard, the working title is: "Really lovely people who are even more fabulous deep down." No, of course no one will bully the kids – Channel 4 has very strictly enforced guidelines, I'll check when I'm back in the office.
Money? Totally see where you're coming from but it's against our strict protocols for non-exploitative conduct, we can offer you expenses, £15 for the series, bear in mind that's three times what they paid the Embarrassing Fat Bodies, and you don't even have to take your clothes off! Though nobody's stopping you! So if you'll just sign the release form – here – and here – and here – best get it sorted out before we start filming. Honestly, don't tidy up first!
But the suggestion that participants in Benefits Street are "lambs to the slaughter", who should have been protected from the routine cajolery, is arguably as insulting to the residents as the conversion of their private lives into mass entertainment. Even if they never watched Benefits Street's distant ancestor, The Family, its stars will know how the unwary are used on Come Dine With Me and Jeremy Kyle. Moreover, the existence of programmes such as The Apprentice and Celebrity Wife Swap, Grand Designs and BBC 4's fly-on-the-stately, Sissinghurst, the recent Liberty of London, and the famous botched-PR job, The House, confirm that the willingness to exchange privacy for 15 minutes of fame, or platform, or publicity is not confined to groups bereft of lawyers or agents and individuals whose particular problems may actually define them as naive and chaotic.
Long before the arrival of YouTube and Twitter, Michael Waldman, director of The House, was confessing: "You are persuading people, often against their better judgment, that there is more to be gained than lost from appearing. What you see is the consequence of my refusing to allow the door to be closed in my face three times a day." But the fourth time it might be opened by Nadine Dorries MP, or her colleague, Penny Mordaunt, in a swimsuit, all ready for her close-up .
As demonstrated by the former's conviction that she did her political reputation no damage when she ate camel toe for the amusement of Ant & Dec, and the entire career of Celebrity Big Brother's Liz Jones, insatiable exhibitionism exists at all levels, to an extent that reality programme makers could argue they are not so much exploiting as gratifying it, and draining it entertainingly – even instructively – away. But if Dorries's career never recovers from IACGMOOH, at least Doctor Faustus paid her good money for it.
Equally, the minor celebrities now being encouraged by Channel 5 to get drunk and have sex in Celebrity Big Brother (total complaints, 371) will make a profit and maybe even some progress in careers where experience in televised inter-celebrity copulation is an advantage. That a mutually advantageous transaction put them there may partly explain why no one has described this particular set of puppets as lambs to the slaughter or launched a protective petition out of concern for any unfortunate children, who are quite as likely to be bullied as those living in Benefits Street.
Given that any consideration of human dignity could so easily devastate the genre, maybe it is not alleged entrapment by a manipulative reality show that should be at issue here, so much as the fact this wholly unemployed cast was made by its Channel 4 gangmasters to work for nothing, like the Romanian labourers. Everyone – from politicians and programme makers to 5 million viewers and countless columnists – seems to have extracted something of value from Benefits Street, apart from the people who live there. An extra in a TV drama can earn £85 per day. Admittedly, in television terms, anything more than fags and beer would have spoiled the whole degradation conceit. But is there any reason to deny the stars of Benefit Street one half of the Love Production profits? They look as if they need it. Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 days ago.