'Super Size Superpower'; The BBC
Our World: Super Size Super Power - a BBC documentary shown at 5.20 in the morning, on their 24-hour news channel.
If a Martian were to watch the programme without sound, I think it[1] would conclude that black people are fat; white people are thin. I'm sure that's not the intended message, but it does seem to give that impression.
One of the most unintentionally funny moments is when the (thin, white) British presenter and the (thin, white) American scientist walks into a Mississippi fast food outlet and the presenter says something like, "So this is soul food?". The scientist responds in the affirmative, and comments that all of the vegetables are deep-fried in lard.
Then there's the scene where the too-obese-to-work black woman with the blonde hair sits outside her porch and describes the great variety of foods she cooks for herself; all the while swaying back and forth, her stomach creasing along different fold-lines as she moves from position to position.
And then there's the scene where the presenter is weighed and has his height measured by a nurse, and seems unable to suppress a smug smile throughout, knowing full well that he's not fat. "My BMI is 22; whereas this woman's BMI is 60" (Cue too-obese-to-work black woman with blonde hair, mentioned previously)
Then, near the end, there's a Mississippi keep-fit initiative where a nurse leads a hall full of school children: the nurse is fat; most of the children are not[2].
There's something oddly quaint about BBC documentaries like these: it's as if the BBC still can't shake its early role as a provider of 'public information' programmes, designed to 'educate' the British Citizenry, by producing programmes that try to present complex and important issues in a way that the 'average viewer' can understand. In doing so, as in the above documentary, the BBC sometimes seems to underestimate the viewer's intelligence; and overestimate their interest in the issues. (Implicitly, with respect to the latter, they seem to concede the point, by putting on 'worthy' shows like these on at times when only severe insomniacs would be awake.)
Over the decades this assumed role of 'educator' has perhaps become increasingly about trying to make the average UK citizen more conscious and interested in 'world issues': a current series being broadcast is A Year In Tibet, where TV cameras follow the daily lives of farmers and spiritualists/quacks in [guess where!]: it's all very sedate and picturesque, but I can't help but feel the series was commissioned based upon the assumption that the average Brit should be interested in ways of life that, in fact, they aren't.
In terms of raw economics, for all its assumed (and to an extent true) left-wing ideological biases, the BBC is a regressive organisation: everyone who watches TV has to pay the same amount for the service, but the people who tend to make use of the service tend to be richer, older, and better educated than average (who traditionally tended to watch ITV: the UK's only commercial television station; and now tend to be more likely to have cable and satellite TV). The BBC, in a sense, takes from the poor and gives to the rich.
At the extreme end of this distribution are people - like me - who don't have a television, but regularly listen to radio 4, and watch the occasional programme on the BBC's iPlayer service. (Neither of which requires having a TV license, as that only covers television broadcasts.) In a sense, I'm getting 'infinite value' from the BBC.
erm...
... I don't really have a point to make. The BBC, and its 'worthy' programming, is just something I'm, for the reasons mentioned above, very ambivalent about.
Now: to get on with some work[3]!
[1] I've already created a hypothetical Martian: don't ask me to hypothesize its genitals too!
[2] The fact everyone in the hall seemed to be black seemed to suggest racial apartheid can be achieved quite easily without laws that mention skin colour directly, and so make the country a pariah state...
[3] Work, for me, at the moment, is writing a chapter on Incapacity Benefit reforms as part of my thesis. Technically, as far as the national accounts are concerned, this isn't work, but a form of 'economic inactivity' , as I'm in full-time education. Whatever the Office for National Statistics and the International Labour Organisation thinks about what I do, it usually feels a lot like work...
If a Martian were to watch the programme without sound, I think it[1] would conclude that black people are fat; white people are thin. I'm sure that's not the intended message, but it does seem to give that impression.
One of the most unintentionally funny moments is when the (thin, white) British presenter and the (thin, white) American scientist walks into a Mississippi fast food outlet and the presenter says something like, "So this is soul food?". The scientist responds in the affirmative, and comments that all of the vegetables are deep-fried in lard.
Then there's the scene where the too-obese-to-work black woman with the blonde hair sits outside her porch and describes the great variety of foods she cooks for herself; all the while swaying back and forth, her stomach creasing along different fold-lines as she moves from position to position.
And then there's the scene where the presenter is weighed and has his height measured by a nurse, and seems unable to suppress a smug smile throughout, knowing full well that he's not fat. "My BMI is 22; whereas this woman's BMI is 60" (Cue too-obese-to-work black woman with blonde hair, mentioned previously)
Then, near the end, there's a Mississippi keep-fit initiative where a nurse leads a hall full of school children: the nurse is fat; most of the children are not[2].
There's something oddly quaint about BBC documentaries like these: it's as if the BBC still can't shake its early role as a provider of 'public information' programmes, designed to 'educate' the British Citizenry, by producing programmes that try to present complex and important issues in a way that the 'average viewer' can understand. In doing so, as in the above documentary, the BBC sometimes seems to underestimate the viewer's intelligence; and overestimate their interest in the issues. (Implicitly, with respect to the latter, they seem to concede the point, by putting on 'worthy' shows like these on at times when only severe insomniacs would be awake.)
Over the decades this assumed role of 'educator' has perhaps become increasingly about trying to make the average UK citizen more conscious and interested in 'world issues': a current series being broadcast is A Year In Tibet, where TV cameras follow the daily lives of farmers and spiritualists/quacks in [guess where!]: it's all very sedate and picturesque, but I can't help but feel the series was commissioned based upon the assumption that the average Brit should be interested in ways of life that, in fact, they aren't.
In terms of raw economics, for all its assumed (and to an extent true) left-wing ideological biases, the BBC is a regressive organisation: everyone who watches TV has to pay the same amount for the service, but the people who tend to make use of the service tend to be richer, older, and better educated than average (who traditionally tended to watch ITV: the UK's only commercial television station; and now tend to be more likely to have cable and satellite TV). The BBC, in a sense, takes from the poor and gives to the rich.
At the extreme end of this distribution are people - like me - who don't have a television, but regularly listen to radio 4, and watch the occasional programme on the BBC's iPlayer service. (Neither of which requires having a TV license, as that only covers television broadcasts.) In a sense, I'm getting 'infinite value' from the BBC.
erm...
... I don't really have a point to make. The BBC, and its 'worthy' programming, is just something I'm, for the reasons mentioned above, very ambivalent about.
Now: to get on with some work[3]!
[1] I've already created a hypothetical Martian: don't ask me to hypothesize its genitals too!
[2] The fact everyone in the hall seemed to be black seemed to suggest racial apartheid can be achieved quite easily without laws that mention skin colour directly, and so make the country a pariah state...
[3] Work, for me, at the moment, is writing a chapter on Incapacity Benefit reforms as part of my thesis. Technically, as far as the national accounts are concerned, this isn't work, but a form of 'economic inactivity' , as I'm in full-time education. Whatever the Office for National Statistics and the International Labour Organisation thinks about what I do, it usually feels a lot like work...