In a short story by the brilliant Shena Mackay, called "CloudCuckoo Land", an eccentric couple run "Helpline Helpline" - ahelpline for those addicted to helplines. Written about two decadesago, it now seems more likely than ever.
It's hard to watch a soap - sorry, serial drama - for a weekthese days without having a comforting voice over the closingcredits inform you: "If you have been affected by any of theseissues, call in confidence on..." at some point. But in recentyears, this has come to seem less like an invitation to thegenuinely desperate and traumatised, in the tradition of theSamaritans and Childline, and more like a circle-jerk of sexed-upsorrow.
The soaps have come in for a lot of criticism recently, with thecot-death/baby-switching antics of EastEnders begging the question:is there anything that isn't grist for the dramatic mill? (LikeFrankie Boyle and comedy, only with the smile turned upside down.)I'll confess here that I am a big serial drama fan, to the pointwhere I actually tried out as a scriptwriter for the big two soapslast year and failed both times. (Great dialogue, rubbish narrative,was the verdict both times - story of my life.) I don't have anytime for the usual bed-wetting snobs who deride soap in favour ofperiod drama, which I've always thought must be so called becauseit's about as entertaining as menstruation.
However, over the Christmas and New Year period, for the firsttime I wondered if the stuffed shirts who wonder why soaps have tobe so depressing had a point. ONE tram-a-crashing, TWO wife-beatersbashing, THREE paedos plotting, FOUR corpses rotting - FIVE DATERAPES! It's as if the four prime-timers were competing with eachother to see who could over-egg the yule log of misery. Child abuse,blackmail, racism, transgenderism, paraplegism, incest - it neverstops. If you didn't need to call a helpline before you watched one,you certainly will afterwards.
Is that what's happening here, perhaps? That in a sort of soapyStockholm syndrome, those who storyline serial dramas have takenonboard the critics' sneer that soaps are just a way for sillypeople to kill time rather than live lives, and thus try to givethem worth and weight by turning them into sort of Public ServiceBroadcasts? The trouble is that when they last half an hour andleave you on the edge of your seat rather than coming to aconclusion in a few minutes, the phrase "putting on the agony" comesto mind. And you may end up adding to the problem you sought tosolve.
Surveys of European teenagers inevitably cite British youth asthe most miserable; considering that we also have the highest ratesof teenage drunkenness, drug-taking and underage consensual sex inEurope, I've never been able to work out how the two stats can gotogether - surely the little beggars are whooping it up no end?Chuck in parents who work the longest hours and the wideavailability of internet porn and, in theory, it's a teen paradise.But then there was that other recent survey which rather shockinglyclaimed that a high proportion of the little fakers actually make aconscious decision to become self-slashers or up-chuckers becausethey see it as a way to make themselves "special", and it can't beany coincidence that the rise of this phenomenon has run alongsidethe feverish interest in such issues displayed by teen-orientatedsoaps like Skins and Hollyoaks. In an astute example of self-fulfilling prophecy, Hollyoaks actually had a character, Anita, whoDID pretend to have one fashionable self-destructive tendency afteranother, and was eventually humiliatingly revealed as beingcompletely normal. But never fear, adolescent honour was soonrestored when she was tied up and threatened with a gun by a racistrunaway. At last she could hold her head up - or rather, down -among the cutting, puking, starving school in-crowd!
Misery loves company - and when you're a certain age, misery canbe your imaginary friend. A country where The Smiths, led by thatmodern Nabob of Sob, Morrissey, became almost as big as The Beatlesknows too well the complex taste-thrill of feeling good by feelingbad to believe that everyone who says they have a problem canactually be helped. Personally, I think that lots of people createproblems in order to get attention, and there's many a time I havehad to restrain myself from bursting into a nearby OvereatersAnonymous Group with a stack of pizzas, and also from putting myhead around the door of a local church's Cocaine Anonymous group andannouncing "Oi, I'm gagging for a line - anybody holding?"
Of course people, young and old, who have been the victims ofcrimes of violence and/or violation should have all the help thatthe state can afford at their disposal. But people who choose dothings to THEMSELVES, and then turn around and moan about it?
You're having a laugh - in a self-pitying sort of way, of course.
Pride and privilege among the red carpet 'free spirits'
WHEN I look at Helena Bonham Carter, especially when she walksthe red carpet at fancy Hollywood affairs, I KNOW I'm meant to getsome sort of patriotic stirring. That dress, which cost a fortunebut looks as though she stole it off a street-sleeper! That hair,which took hours but looks like she was pulled through Kate Bushbackwards! Those mis-matched shoes, which look like she got dressedin the dark even though she's probably been preening in the mirrorsince sun-up!
I know I'm meant to see a free spirit who doesn't give a fig forconvention. But instead I see - as I do when in the past I've seenVanessa Redgrave, Tilda Swinton and Emma Thompson on the samescarlet walkways - pure ENTITLEMENT, attempting to pass itself offas eccentricity. From the ruling-class Daddy's name to the film-director baby-daddy whose films she so often appears in, HBC is anambulatory archive of privilege. How appropriate that she wearsVivienne Westwood, that allegedly life-long rebel who ended up beingdecorated by the Queen!
Back in the day, HBC used to complain that casting directorsdiscriminated against her because she was pretty and posh. In an agewhen it seems as difficult for working-class kids to become actorsas it does astronauts, I must say I loathe the sight of her evenmore now than I did then.
The breast-is-best bullies get their comeuppance
ITS ALWAYS fun when the monstrous regiments of the Nanny Stateare forced to do an about-turn, and it couldn't have happened to abetter battalion than the breast-is-best bullies. So! Sticking yourmammaries in its mush until the brat can open beer cans with itsteeth may be bad for it, after all!
I don't know if it's true that ceaseless breastfeeding for thefirst six months produces children with a greater tendency toallergies, iron-deficiency and obesity, as a paediatrician nowclaims. But I do know that it produces smug, self-righteous motherswho think that they're some sort of goddesses just because they'retoo tight to pay for a packet of proper formula.
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