MacCruiskeen wrote:Andrew O'Hagan wrote The Missing (1996) and Our Fathers (2001). His latest essay in the London Review of Books is a strong piece of social history, and well worth reading in full.
Non-Brits especially may find O'Hagan's article illuminating. It places the Savile affair in a vividly-evoked social context, and it gives a convincing analysis of what Entertainment has meant in Britain since Savile's early days as an obscure Mancunian dancehall manager in the 1950s and his sudden rise to fame on national TV.
I much appreciated this reading. Thank you. That being said, I've never heard nor seen anything of these people before now, so I'm not in a position to judge O'Hagan's thesis that the public's demand for weirdness and fucked-up celebrities contributed to a culture at the BBC where rape and sexual abuse could flourish. On the face of it it's dubious to me. I suspect identical situations existed in elite circles 50 years earlier, even without the faux sex-liberation underway during the 1960s. However, the piece is very well written and informative and makes clear enough how things worked on the inside of this "ring" and within the institution to enable or look away from the behaviors of Savile et al.
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We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.
To Justice my maker from on high did incline: I am by virtue of its might divine, The highest Wisdom and the first Love.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
"The public made Jimmy Savile. It loved him. It knighted him. The Prince of Wales accorded him special rights and the authorities at Broadmoor gave him his own set of keys. A whole entertainment structure was built to house him and make him feel secure.That’s no one’s fault: entertainment, like literature, thrives on weirdos, and Savile entered a culture made not only to tolerate his oddness but to find it refreshing. We can’t say so. We can’t know how to admit it because we don’t know who we are."
And we come to the proverbial turd in the punchbowl.
It's all the public's fault.
Why?
Because they respond to a stimulus deliberately placed in front of them by the monied class in the interests of profits?
Are we to believe that entertainers who aren't pederasts can't be found? Are we to believe that aren't ten other Jimmy Savile types who AREN'T child molesters that would have happily taken his place? Does this mean that every screwball in the entertainment industry is a sick fuck?
Somehow I doubt it.
Additionally, the public will digest anything force-fed down its throats. If the powers that be wanted everyone to listen to Bach and Miles Davis, there would be no auto-tune garbage wafting through the speakers in every elevator and gym. And all the hipsters would be dissecting the latest orchestra's rendition over wheat-grass juice.
^^Yeah, it's definitely a bit of Sheeple Syndrome in that piece, but I also think you're being pretty unfair to him with that particular excerpt/analysis juxtaposition. O'Hagan is clearly not saying that Savile's track record of prolific & protected sexual abuse is the public's fault -- he's talking about the "whole entertainment structure."
Also, having worked in media a lot -- for some reason, Vermont sends a lot of people to Hollywood, I don't get it either -- I definitely think you're overstating the power of media. It's a mutual relationship, and the public is absolutely culpable. There's actually a fair amount of evidence for this in the cracks & margins of O'Hagan's piece, if you'll notice it -- many of the powers that be emphatically did not want Savile to be force-fed, but he was "Box Office, baby."
This conversation definitely veers into the turf of our ongoing Hollywood Scripting thread, though.
It's all the public's fault.
Why?
Because they respond to a stimulus deliberately placed in front of them by the monied class in the interests of profits?
This is the same attraction / repulsion dynamic that frames way too much conspiracy discourse. The masses are so problematic, innit? IS THERE ANY CURE FOR STUPID? Is there any clear causality in a social network? More after these messages!
Although the science of perception management is far more exact than you're willing to think, you're in luck: their success is their own greatest problem. This is the biggest challenge that Pentagon Information Operations Officers face: somehow getting a coherent message out of the global brand known as America. 18 year old Mormons from Indiana are in the streets of Islamic nations being asked about gay marriage and military support for Israel. Also, being shot at. Naturally, ten years after being attacked by a group of mostly Saudi Arabian terrorists we find ourselves spending billions on the military occupation of Agfhanistan and Iraq.
Television media would be a far more potent tool for brainwashing if there were only one channel. Instead, it's an omnidirectional pinball machine of conflicting but equally effective brainwashing. The human brain is a learning machine, and this world-changing asset remains our greatest weakness. Face to face, in social situations, in large crowds, persuasion is ridiculously easy -- crude, even. It's a simple enough game, but the problem is everyone is playing. From local preachers to rock stars to think tanks to bloggers to whatever the hell passes for "Celebrities" here in the dark ages -- everyone is making their Pitch. Simultaneously. After awhile, it gets deafening.
jlaw172364 wrote:Additionally, the public will digest anything force-fed down its throats. If the powers that be wanted everyone to listen to Bach and Miles Davis, there would be no auto-tune garbage wafting through the speakers in every elevator and gym. And all the hipsters would be dissecting the latest orchestra's rendition over wheat-grass juice.
Cutthroat Island.
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” -- Rand Paul
I wonder if Fred West and his wife Rosemary have any connection.
When describing the brutal death of Alison Chambers, who was murdered and buried at Cromwell Street in 1979, Wansell reports that 'This time the Wests may have pushed the boundaries of their humiliation still further: Frederick West may have filmed her death. West was well aware of the commercial potential of snuff movies. Only a few years after Alison Chambers' death, West even bragged to a young woman that he was "interested in them". There must be at least the possibility that one of his victims provided him with the chance to exploit what he would have seen as an opportunity to profit from this form of pornography'.
As the 1980s progressed, Fred West at one stage had 'seven video recorders, all of which he had stolen, and was duplicating pornographic videos for sale. At the outset, he simply offered them to his friends and workmates, but he then gradually extended his range, possibly to the extent of supplying them to local video stores for sale under the counter. West certainly suggested to a woman friend that he had made a profit from selling some that he had made himself, telling her that he had been paid 150 pounds a time for recordings which involved the humiliation and beating of women, adding that he "didn't understand how some of the women survived the beatings"'.
In England there was the infamous West family, where Fred, the man of the house, would torture, kill and bury young girls under their patio, with the help of his loving wife. He filmed some of it, but never sold the tapes. A woman who worked in a local video shop once said in a BBC interview that Fred West had approached her and asked if they had any snuff movies. She had replied that yes, in fact they had the 1976 movie titled “Snuff”. Fred was not satisfied with this and told her that he meant the real thing. He had it back home. Real snuff movies where people got killed. Would she perhaps like to buy some?
As he made an attempt to gain commercially from this, it might be the only official record of snuff movies ever existing. But yet again, no one has ever admitted to seeing these films, and the police will show no records of finding them when the house was finally raided. They did however find several corpses buried all around their yard.
I don't recommend reading the entire blog posts cited. They are either silly or sickening. I just pulled out the references to the Wests. There was speculation that he had been involved in some satanic ritual killings of children in a barn in Gloucester...
Ugh, wish I had not started down this path...must get this out of my head now.
jlaw172364 wrote:Additionally, the public will digest anything force-fed down its throats. If the powers that be wanted everyone to listen to Bach and Miles Davis, there would be no auto-tune garbage wafting through the speakers in every elevator and gym. And all the hipsters would be dissecting the latest orchestra's rendition over wheat-grass juice.
Cutthroat Island.
In this case, at least, the truth is somewhere in between. Although I hate that expression.
c2w?, I'd never even heard of this example. In my happier, German days, I tended to miss these things. (So that's why her hotness Geena Davis disappeared.) However, reaching for what is now considered the single greatest B.O. flop of all time, out of something like 40 blockbusters and 100 A-films released annually, doesn't make an argument contrary to jlaw. As I just looked up (yeah, yeah, wikipedia), the production company went bankrupt before the release and the studio was being sold at the same time, so this $98 million movie did not have the commensurate promotional budget to back it. Truth is, the marketing of movies at that budget level really has been turned into a science, and almost all of them recoup full expenses including promotion within the first couple of weeks on the global market.
But yeah, there's a dyanamic between top-down delivery and market. Still, the market is trained from such an early age. Let's be honest about that, discomforting as it is (or "elitist," given that most of us consider ourselves above falling for the simple propaganda). Stupid is naturally abundant, and stupid is also cultivated.
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We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.
To Justice my maker from on high did incline: I am by virtue of its might divine, The highest Wisdom and the first Love.
Child porn arrests 'too slow' Sunday Herald, Jan 19, 2003
OPERATION Ore, the police inquiry which plans to arrest a further 7000 men across the UK, in addition to Who guitarist Pete Townshend, for buying child pornography online is set to end in disaster with many suspects walking free.
Detective Chief Inspector Bob McLachlan, former head of Scotland Yard's paedophile unit, told the Sunday Herald that the lack of urgency in making arrests will lead to suspects destroying evidence of downloading child pornography before they are arrested. The Sunday Herald has also had confirmed by a very senior source in British intelligence that at least one high-profile former Labour Cabinet minister is among Operation Ore suspects. The Sunday Herald has been given the politician's name but, for legal reasons, can not identify the person. There are still unconfirmed rumours that another senior Labour politician is among the suspects. The intelligence officer said that a "rolling" Cabinet committee had been set up to work out how to deal with the potentially ruinous fall-out for both Tony Blair and the government if arrests occur.
Some of the above makes me think that retrospectively blaming 'the people' for being fooled, being consumers of the rubbish elements of the entertainment industry and media, is to avoid confronting the mechanism of cover up and why it works.
Frank Bruno On ‘This Is Your Life’ – nightmare retrospective 16 OCT Perhaps the worst thing about the spectacle of Sir Jimmy Savile’s horrendous, virtual resurrection is that we’ve only seen the start of it. Those endless, harrowing accounts from grown adults recalling the damage inflicted by the cigar-chomping, alleged psychopath are just the start of a likely cascade, unless the authorities are closing ranks more effectively than they let on.
Admittedly, at the time of writing, only panto-nonce Gary Glitter and trembling wreck, Freddie Starr (who you may remember from the 1970s if, like me, you’re old) have been arrested, in addition to a couple of dead-celeb names being thrown into the mix. If it stays that way and the investigation’s limited to flaked out or expired telly stars, I’m not sure the internet’s going to be too happy about it. From the bewildered chatterboxes at DigitalSpy via the furious mothers at Mumsnet, all the way to the presumed crazies over at David Icke’s site, there’ll be merry hell if the net remains uncast over some seriously big swimmers. Time will tell. In the meantime, if we can take it, we can spend our hours poring over footage from the era, watching haunted Top of the Pops reels and vaguely recalling other scandals that seem somehow linked to this sudden avalanche of nauseating horror. All whilst our minds try to cope with history curdling before our eyes, leaving a revolting stink.
It’s muddy water at the best of times, the aforementioned David Icke forum, but considering Icke outed Savile in the 90s, it seems the place to go if you’re looking for a bigger take on what the hell might be going on. There are a lot of passionate people on there, to put it mildly. Many won’t go there for fear of being infected with herpetaphobia what with Icke’s more far out claims. It’s also driven by wild speculation which can frequently throw up some absurd correlations. Personally, in theory, I think it’s fair enough to check out associations and google historical events to see how everything ties in. You have to speculate before working out where to dig, after all.
All the same, stumbling about there, especially on the Savile topic, is rather like being concussed in another dimension. Which is possibly precisely what it is. Handling that and brushing aside the frequent compulsion to take issue with unsavoury and occasionally downright infuriating tangents, there is a wealth of information on there that you’ll probably wished you’d never bumped into. And this is where Frank Bruno comes in.
In you come, Frank.
Full credit to the posters on the thread for unearthing a particularly unnerving 1993 episode of This Is Your Life on Youtube. Full credit also for making the observations I’ve expanded upon below. I watched the whole thing after reading about a number of eyebrow-affecting moments during its runtime, and felt compelled to write it all out of my system. It’s so ghoulish, a form of mini-therapy is required after the event.
The programme saw boxer Frank Bruno honoured with the big red book during Michael Aspel’s time as host.
We all remember, possibly with fondness, the ITV show which gave familiar faces a very public trip down memory lane. This was the era of light entertainment, before reality television came swinging like a battering ram directly into our faces on a nightly basis. There was no Who Do You Think You Are back then, oh no. Genealogy probably hadn’t even been invented yet.
With its new subtext, in light of all the current allegations, the arrests and the suspected depths this investigation may sink to, This Is Your Life becomes a portal into a completely different reality. If you start to analyse a couple of moments, you immediately want to stop. It becomes so grotesque it makes you wince, whether any internal speculations you entertain are justified or not. So that you don’t have to go through that process, here are some details, prised from within the Icke-zone and reinterpreted in plain English.
Before we start, probably best to remind ourselves that nobody in the show’s actually been found guilty of any offence at the time of writing. This is purely an exercise in rubbernecking on 90s telly with alarming rumours and allegations lurking in the background. Probably not the healthiest activity in the world, but hey ho.
Frank Bruno had already lived an incredible life by the time he appeared on the show. Starting his boxing career in 1982, he went on to win 40 out of 45 of his fights. In 1995, after this show aired, he won the WBC championship. But then, in 2003, it all began to fall apart. Bruno was taken ill in 2003, apparently suffering a breakdown. Only recently has he emerged back into the limelight, looking a little bit like he’d been through hell.
This Is Your Life was essentially a tribute to each weekly guest, with family, associates and work colleagues turning up to honour them. Unfortunately for Bruno, his episode will forever be tainted by the fact his old associates just happen to include Jimmy Savile and Freddie Starr. They probably won’t be playing it as a tribute when he curls his toes up.
Let’s have a look at those key moments. Drag the timer on Youtube over to the timecodes mentioned, and share in the weirdness. From the off, presenting the scarlet file, Aspel asks Bruno to ‘jump on my back and I’ll give you a ride down there’.
From that point in, we’re officially in la la land.
After the arrest of Gary Glitter last week, Freddie Starr was seized days after and is now out on bail. He’s the first to appear at Bruno’s party (2 minutes 15 seconds), looking like a dishevelled rooster in a tangerine suit. Frank – never the most composed man on earth and known for his gentle-giant presence – turns into a giggling schoolboy in the man’s company. From his entrance, there’s the sense Starr might be about to embarrass Bruno.
A moment later, he does just that.
‘Frank is one of the hardest people to buy a present for’ he says, addressing the audience like they’re the end-of-pier crowd. ‘You never bought me one though!’ Frank replies, chuckling like mad. ‘I did! I did – it was for Christmas. And do you remember, it was a Black & Decker?’
If you’re unfamiliar with the innuendo there (I was too), it turns out ‘Black & Decker’ is a euphemism for a willy. Presumably a black man’s willy. There’s a report out there in internet-land where Bruno defends himself against an accusation of wife-beating using the term himself.
‘My mum’s here. Don’t talk about that. Pass on that one Freddie, cool down’ Frank says, laughing at the in-joke. ‘…But it broke down’ Starr continues, possibly referring to a specific event. Unless he’s still joking. If he is, we don’t really get to a punchline.
‘The Black & Decker?’ Frank asks, trying to recall. ‘Yeah’ ‘It was alright on holiday though!’ Frank says. ‘Yeah!’ ‘It was on turbo, mate!’
Freddie seems to know what Frank’s talking about. It’s quite grim. Unless it’s all perfectly innocent. The news is so Savile-saturated, it’s now impossible to discern between the perfectly innocent and the potentially depraved.
‘Is this a private joke of some kind?’ Aspel asks and, thankfully, the moment has gone. Things pass without incident for a little while, but before the show ends, there are two turns that don’t half make you wonder.
Fellow official ambassador for the Prince’s Trust, Phil Collins appears at 19 minutes to offer a video tribute to Bruno. It’s not surprising he didn’t show up for the occasion – this is a man who allegedly asked his wife for a divorce by fax machine.
During his speech, Collins says: ‘…what a lot of people don’t know is the fantastic work you do for charity and particularly with the Prince’s Trust. So on behalf of me and my fellow trustees and everybody at the Prince’s Trust and also all the kids whose lives you’ve touched – just through being there and showing that you care about them – thank you very much’
It looks like a heartfelt statement, but did you see Phil’s eyes when he said ‘kids whose lives you’ve touched’?
Was it just me?
Yelp.
And just as that leaves a sour taste, who should come onstage but the media’s current favourite horror story, Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile. Another Prince’s Trust Man who, at 19 minutes 50 seconds, decides to drop his trousers on national television. A few years ago we might’ve thought: ‘Ah, that’s just Jimmy!’ But now we run away, heading for the hills, screaming.
But, let’s go back. What’s that? What’s Frank been saying? Jimmy tells us…
‘Now listen! Underneath this… drab exterior’
He’s pulling at his trousers. The groin area of his trousers.
‘It ain’t a White & Decker is it?’ asks a giggling Bruno.
Have Starr, Bruno and Savile been on holiday together? A Black & White & Decker holiday? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Savile refers to how Frank calls him chicken-legs. He says he wants to be called turkey-legs. It’s clear Savile expects his gag to be a massive laugh-fest, but it falls so flat it leaves the room drowning in tumbleweed. Even weirder, off on a tangent and at Savile’s funeral, Bruno apparently said of the Fixer: ‘I called him Sir Chicken Legs. Stephen Purdew said I could call him Chicken Legs’.
Stephen Purdew – from Champneys. Sounds like they have some real parties in the Hertfordshire health spa! I wonder if Phil Collins went to any of them. We know Piers Morgan did. The mind – it truly boggles.
Remind me never to go to Champneys.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
‘Frank is one of the hardest people to buy a present for’ he says, addressing the audience like they’re the end-of-pier crowd. ‘You never bought me one though!’ Frank replies, chuckling like mad. ‘I did! I did – it was for Christmas. And do you remember, it was a Black & Decker?’ If you’re unfamiliar with the innuendo there (I was too), it turns out ‘Black & Decker’ is a euphemism for a willy. Presumably a black man’s willy. There’s a report out there in internet-land where Bruno defends himself against an accusation of wife-beating using the term himself.
‘My mum’s here. Don’t talk about that. Pass on that one Freddie, cool down’ Frank says, laughing at the in-joke. ‘…But it broke down’ Starr continues, possibly referring to a specific event. Unless he’s still joking. If he is, we don’t really get to a punchline.
‘The Black & Decker?’ Frank asks, trying to recall. ‘Yeah’ ‘It was alright on holiday though!’ Frank says. ‘Yeah!’ ‘It was on turbo, mate!’ Freddie seems to know what Frank’s talking about. It’s quite grim. Unless it’s all perfectly innocent. The news is so Savile-saturated, it’s now impossible to discern between the perfectly innocent and the potentially depraved.
Now that is just... chilling.
I also found the Phil Collins bit unnerving. Is there any previous RI stuff on Collins?
-I don't like hoodlums. -That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
blankly wrote:Some of the above makes me think that retrospectively blaming 'the people' for being fooled, being consumers of the rubbish elements of the entertainment industry and media, is to avoid confronting the mechanism of cover up and why it works.
It would be -- if we stopped there.
We don't, though, so I see no harm in acknowledging it, even in the troubling context of the O'Hagan argument of "you sodding plebes"
..things that make you go hmmmmm....days after Savile : Ripper links make the MSM Sutcliffe is primed for a "self-inflicted" heart-attack : ( certainly let himself go....wasn't actually a bad looking bloke )
In another probably unrelated but makes you wonder titbit - one of the novellas in Irvine Welsh's Ecstacy, published 1996, contains this character (from Wiki):
Freddy Royle, a necrophiliac TV personality. The hospital trustees turn a blind eye to Freddy's nefarious pastime but have to do some fast talking when the new coroner begins asking questions.
RocketMan wrote:I also found the Phil Collins bit unnerving. Is there any previous RI stuff on Collins?
..probably not in the "what are you listening to now" thread judging by the stuff that gets posted in there....he was however a child-actor / model .... ....( pretty high dodginess-factor on that one -& a model ??....really ?! ) .....before getting into music.
His professional training began at 14 when he entered Barbara Speake Stage School. He began a career as a child actor and model, and won his first major role as the Artful Dodger in the London production of Oliver!. He was an extra in the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night, one of hundreds of screaming teenagers during the TV concert sequence and seen fleetingly in a close-up. He was also in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as one of the children who storms the castle at the end of the film, but it was cut. He also auditioned for the role of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet (1968), a role won by fellow Artful Dodger actor Leonard Whiting. Collins was among the last three finalists for the role of I.Q. on the American children's television show The Bugaloos (he lost out to English actor/musician John McIndoe)
![\<]](./images/smilies/confused0044.gif "confused")
....( pretty high dodginess-factor on that one -& a model ??....really ?! ) .....before getting into music.