Consequential Characterisation or The British Comedy Effect
No, this isn't about Monty Python, not about Benny Hill, not Passport to Pimlico, not about The Office, no, I admit it the title is misleading. This isn't about British Comedy, this is about something that crops up most typically in British Comedy.
I could have called it the "Trainspotting Effect", but that would have you misled into believing that this is about glamourising drugs, which it isn't. It is about something seemingly not completely different - it is about how the director and the writer of the movie version try to be edgy enough to show the dark and unpleasant side of being junkie.
However, they make being a junkie a choice between that and "Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future."
It is the choice between being Renton (and his circle of friends) and being Renton's parents. And while being a junkie obviously means dead babies, horrible cold turkeys and diving into the dirtiest toilet in Scotland, it also seems to mean partying, shooting rabid dogs for fun, not having to work, being high (in a way that is described as 'Take the best orgasm you ever had, multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere near it'), shagging hot, under-age school girls and if you overdose, then you do it to Lou Reed's Perfect Day. Renton's 'rents get... Bingo. No, Danny Boyle doesn't glamourise being a junkie, he glamourises the choice and makes it actually difficult to not choose "Not life."
I also could have called the effect the "Absolutely Fabulous Effect". See there are these two coked-up, middle-aged, promiscuous, not very intelligent bints and guess what? They have fun. They are successful, they are rich, they are funny. And it doesn't mean anything that Absolutely Fabulous makes fun of that kind of life style, because in the same moment it does that, it also endorses it by having the dour and sour Saffy on the show, being all normal and having no fun. So wanna be Edina or do you wanna be Saffy? And would that be even a question for most people, if it wasn't for Edina's wardrobe?
But it isn't about coked-up boys and girls, period. I could have also called this the "Bridget Jones Effect." Bridget Jones started out as a parody and ended being a role model. The parody insecure, yearning-for-a-stud, dieting, self-help-obsessed, drinking and smoking too much and feeling bad about it parody of a "modern woman" has become a role model. Someone to copy in the vain hope that if you are just 'Bridget Jones' enough you get a hot, rich, looking-like-Colin Firth lawyer for a boyfriend.
If I was mean, I could have called it the "Hermione Granger Effect" and pointed out how the image of Book One!Hermione - a cliche of a caricature - is a role model. (Or maybe just some kind of justification for one's own know-it-better, antisocial attitude and geekiness.) Unfortunately Rowling saw it fit to develop this character a bit in the past five books, even if not every reader has understood that yet. But I am not that mean.
Basically the effect is about pop-culture, about authorial intent vs. reading, about the dichotomy between the preaching and what the consumer takes away from the source. Basically the authors all criticise a behaviour, a lifestyle, a choice, an attitude. But they do it in a way that has you rooting, identifying, liking, enjoying the people, attitudes and the lifestyles they criticise. And consequently having some of the consumers over-indentifying, admiring and emulating the very things they made fun of, they criticised.
How come?
Well, neither Danny Boyle nor Helen Fielding are particular interested in copying Shakespeare's characterisation-moral message paradigm, the whole "the bad guys die or are banished while good characters go on their merry ways" thing; the idea of the "tragic flaw" has been abandoned. So while Saunders portrays her Edina as incapable of survival, period, (a tragic flaw if there was ever one), Edina survives quite well. Flaws, while being characterised as such by the authors, do not translate into the plot as such; do not have any consequences for the characters and thus lose their importance and are actually not longer recognised by the readership as such.
Now if this concerned the moral judgement of the author (the whole good-evil deal), then this is acceptable in the usual pessimistic "evil wins anyway" way, but if it comes down to the morally neutral area of characterisation, then characterisation that doesn't translate into the plot is actually bad characterisation. Of course, Absolutely Fabulous is a comedy show and not War and Peace, so inconsequential characterisation doesn't really matter when it comes to the show itself (I suspect consequential characterisation would turn the show into a tragedy.), but it does matter when it bleeds into the general consciousness. Bridget, Renton, Sick Boy, Edina and Patsy are fun to watch, but they make rather questionable role models. Considering the fact that they are not supposed to be role models in the first place, obviously something of the authorial intent was lost. I blame the authors, to be honest. I mean, whose role model is Hamlet?