Nathan Barley - Episode One

[Purple Tentacle]

Do you think about where your food comes from?
Do you think about what you wear comes from?
Do you think about who you work for and why?
Do you think about the amount of water you use every day?
Do you think about the amount of energy you use every day?.

Take a survey on a bunch of people, and a large proportion will say "yes" to all those questions.

I make that assumption because I'm fairly centrist and selfish and greedy, and I answered yes!!


The whole "collective guilt" thing bothers me because it can get very "butterfly causing storms" with its line of reasoning.

There's a very big difference between moving into a recently vacated house with "Rosenberg" above the door in Nazi Germany, and using too much water in the kettle which inflates the profits of energy companies who exploit poor countries out of oil who fund corrupt governments who don't have money to feed the poor, which kills children.

There's being responsible, and there's wallowing in self-pity and writing awful poety.  (Not a swipe at you Gamma Ray, I enjoyed your post).

[Munday's Chylde]

What the hell is going on?

[Johnny Yesno]

What the hell is going on?

Sorry Sir. It wasn't my fault, Sir. PT put itching powder down my pants, Sir, and I just took them off to shake it out, Sir. I've got an apple for you, Sir.

[Dr David V]

So, that Nathan Barley, eh?

[Beagle 2]

I've got an apple for you, Sir.

While you're going around BRIBING AUTHORITY FIGURES with food there are CHILDREN STARVING in Africa. YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.

[Dusty Gozongas]

Well, I am a psychiatrist and I can assure you that what I did there was absolutely terrific.

For that alone I can't help but love you all of a sudden.

It's strange how things work out, isn't it darling?  :-X

[benthalo]

Surely there aren't forty-six things to say about Nathan Barley, let alone forty-six pages?

[Dusty Gozongas]

Surely there aren't forty-six things to say about Nathan Barley, let alone forty-six pages?

You're not the first person to say that.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I just don't buy this idea that television is a kind of generic 'thing' which harms us. Frickasay, precisely how does me watching Peep Show or Jonathan Miller's Brief History of Atheism fuck about with my brain in the way you describe? Surely television at its best - good televsion - doesn't dull the senses but inspires you to think about stuff and look at the world differently?

[Johnny Yesno]

I just don't but this idea that television is a kind of generic 'thing' which harms us. Frickasay, precisely how does me watching Peep Show or Jonathan Miller's Brief History of Atheism fuck about with my brain in the way you describe? Surely television at its best - good televsion - doesn't dull the senses but inspires you to think about stuff and look at the world differently?

That would have been a lovely way to end the thread. Sadly, I've just bollocksed that idea.

[thatmuch]

The reason you all don't like it is because you would have to concede that you are all idiots ( myself included unfortunately for even posting this or wasting my time on having an 'opinion' on something and deeming myself arrogant enough to post it on a forum).

We are idiots because we have no value as human beings anymore and we don't care about anything but desperately seeking out the next  techno-jerk-off.

I think people have other (good) reasons for being critical of Nathan Barley, but I do agree with your ideas here. I feel like an idiot in this society - it seems inescapable. Morris' work has always been partly about that - implicating the consumer of his product. You may not find anyone else on this forum who agrees with this.
The amount of abuse you've received on this forum is ridiculous.

[mayer]

re. Huxley..

And the whole tone of the book was one of ambivalence to the brave new world in question anyway.

Yup. But more importantly, 1984 is about three million times better as a dystopian novel. I liked BNW, but it's awfully flabby near the end, whereas 1984 remains as tight as hell all the way through, and has a much better ending.

Also, 1984 has, (for me) far more interesting ideas about the power and use of language throughout, and whilst they do share similar Rousseuian ideas about the "noble savage" I think Orwell approaches them with far more class.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Morris' work has always been partly about that - implicating the consumer of his product.

What do you mean? That, in the case of OTH/TDT/BE, we are as much to blame for the newsbollocks we consume as the people creating it? I always saw it more as a scream of 'You don't have to take this crap, you know'.

[frickasay]

Well as I said "If you stop watching it, if you stop buying it,  they'll stop making it"

I've seen a general acceleration in moronism over the last 5 years and quite obviously so has Chris Morris. He may say its not satire but Nazi death experiments in colour poster is satire. It's social commentary. If he announced it's all about US he'd be ostracised by the money men becuase the consumers would reject it. He walks a fine line.

Personally to me Its like some kind of cosmic wankergate was opened on the night of the new millennium and ever since then hordes of shabby second rate no-marks have been popping up making endless amounts of  shockingly dumb so called reality TV programs which have so little to do with reality that the term should be reported to the trade descriptions.

TV has nosedived into a horrible pit of pig wanking, celebrity tit bouncing, dogging watching location reports or general scriptless, thougtless, vapid empty headed shite.
These people are celebrating our moronism, and we are entertained by it. They are holding up a mirror - that's all.

People now have mobile phones with video clips of REAL PEOPLE getting their heads cut off by iraq's.

WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF WORLD ARE WE CREATING HERE?

Gamma puts very succinctly what I put rather brutely. You all have cars, TV's, holiday on jet's pumping billions of tons of gasoline into the upper atmosphere, you eat luxury food and live empty decadent lifestyles. Whilst your enjoying yourselves the great empire is killing people dead for your oil. Just so you know YOUR ALLOWING IT - and you approve. They have absolved you of the guilt by keeping you emotionally as  children.

I'm glad you feel the same thatmuch. I just don't think life was meant to be like this - it seems so fucked up of late - and your right we are the bozos who are just sat bleating idly watching it all unravel.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I agree, generally speaking, with what you say, Frick. But you seemed to imply earlier that *all* television was guilty of this...which is clearly isn't. I don't watch pig-wanking reality shows - I watch Look Around You.

[El Unicornio, mang]

You all have cars, TV's, holiday on jet's pumping billions of tons of gasoline into the upper atmosphere, you eat luxury food and live empty decadent lifestyles. Whilst your enjoying yourselves the great empire is killing people dead for your oil. Just so you know YOUR ALLOWING IT - and you approve. They have absolved you of the guilt by keeping you emotionally as  children.
.

shouldn't that be "we" rather than "you", unless you happen to live in a tiny mud hut and eat nothing but homegrown vegetables

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I agree that there's been an upsurge in *celebrating* stupidity in the last ten years or so - that's definitely true. 'But that's stupid!'; 'I know - isn't it terrific?' - that sort of thing. I just don't buy the idea that we're all fucked, that nobody dares say 'hang on a minute' any more.

[Ambient Sheep]

shouldn't that be "we" rather than "you", unless you happen to live in a tiny mud hut and eat nothing but homegrown vegetables

He did say earlier that he was as equally guilty as us.

[marl]

mmmm.. as i await episode two, i thought i  would pay a visit to 'trashbat.co.uk' and have a look at the magazine covers and 'ephemera' from the show.
i was very dissappointed that the 'signed' Paul Weller picture was not there.
i would love to know what it said. Does anyone know?

[Autopsy Turvey]

'Nazi Death Experiments in Colour' sounds like it's satirizing sleazy Gestapo horror exploitation films from the early 1980s, not some great revelation about pseudo-ironic, desensitised post-millennial idiocy.

I don't know anyone who has video files of people being beheaded, but I'm not surprised that people do. We're still the same species that flocked to watch public executions and threw eggs at poachers when they were chained up in our town squares. And given the chance, the time and tabloid support, those crowds would still turn out today.

In the middle of the 1980s, Ben Elton was pointing out that in the old days we'd go down to Colney Hatch and have a laugh at the lunatics - now, we put 'em on the telly. Human nature, then as now.

If anything we're clever enough to know that being stupid is probably more fun than being clever. The people who make Jackass probably get more out of their working day than Bertrand Russell did, say. He couldn't have put a lit firecracker up his arse while rolling down a hill on a shopping trolley, any more than Johnny Knoxville could identify the restrictions needed to be placed upon the comprehension axiom of naive set theory. "We must all do what is best suited to us," said Tony Hancock once, laughing.

[frickasay]

say all you like - talk your way out of the label if it makes you feel better about yourself. however, it doesn't change the fact :

WE ARE THE MORONS.

Mark my words : While we morons party - we are being prepared for slaughter.

I'm not a conspiracy nut as such but if I was a president, with a trillion dollar budget, endless amounts of scientists and secret military contracters at my disposal and all I saw around me was MORONS who couldn't be REACHED on any level then I'd be planning ALTERNATIVE THREE!

[Morrisfan82]

Hey, they've made next week's break bumpers in your honour.

[Darrell]

say all you like - talk your way out of the label if it makes you feel better about yourself. however, it doesn't change the fact :

WE ARE THE MORONS.

Mark my words : While we morons party - we are being prepared for slaughter.

I didn't understand you until I saw a preview tape of episode 3 and that scene in which Richard Ayoade and Spencer Brown's characters have a cosy giggle with a couple of mates over a pot of tea and a video.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Frickasay, please give me ONE example of a TV show I'm likely to have watched in the past week and the SPECIFIC ways in which it has dulled my brain. Bear in mind I'm a poncy middle class git who watches a lot of BBC4.

That's the trouble with Bill Hicks and his 'TV has painted over your third eye' joke. He hadn't seen second-series Absolutely.

[weapon]

I know this is hideously late, and may have already been brought up - forgive me, I've not read much on this thread - was there a Beastie Boys reference in Dan Ashcroft's mumblings about wine? I can't remember the quote, I just remember thinking I've heard those words together some place else...!

[The Mumbler]

Quite why television is the artform that always gets it in the neck when it comes to the "decline in the nation's intelligence" debate is beyond me.  The press, including the broadsheets, has never been so asinine.  Despite occasional flashes of brilliance, contemporary cinema veers between the mindless and the pompous.  Most current music scene favourites cannot write a decent tune, or chords that send a shiver down one's spine.  Chris Moyles, Jo Whiley, You and Yours and John Humphrys can be heard on the wireless.  

Meantime, in the last seven days, the thick old goggle box has offered us tons of archive jazz on BBC4, as well as the Jazz Britannia series, some Laurel & Hardy shorts at lunchtime, Look Around You, The World of Nat King Cole, Auschwitz, a terrific 90-minute documentary on Winston Churchill and repeats of Cracker and Yes, Prime Minister.  Not all of which I caught, either.  

When I was growing up, I learnt so much from TV.  And it all depends what you watch.  If all you watch is EastEnders, Trisha and "must-see reality telly", then of course your worldview will be a somewhat odd one.

[Clinton Morgan]

There is a quote from Jean Luc Godard somewhere, "We look up at cinema and down at television."

[TJ]

Well as I said "If you stop watching it, if you stop buying it,  they'll stop making it"

I've seen a general acceleration in moronism over the last 5 years and quite obviously so has Chris Morris. He may say its not satire but Nazi death experiments in colour poster is satire. It's social commentary. If he announced it's all about US he'd be ostracised by the money men becuase the consumers would reject it. He walks a fine line.

Personally to me Its like some kind of cosmic wankergate was opened on the night of the new millennium and ever since then hordes of shabby second rate no-marks have been popping up making endless amounts of  shockingly dumb so called reality TV programs which have so little to do with reality that the term should be reported to the trade descriptions.

TV has nosedived into a horrible pit of pig wanking, celebrity tit bouncing, dogging watching location reports or general scriptless, thougtless, vapid empty headed shite.
These people are celebrating our moronism, and we are entertained by it. They are holding up a mirror - that's all.

People now have mobile phones with video clips of REAL PEOPLE getting their heads cut off by iraq's.

WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF WORLD ARE WE CREATING HERE?

Gamma puts very succinctly what I put rather brutely. You all have cars, TV's, holiday on jet's pumping billions of tons of gasoline into the upper atmosphere, you eat luxury food and live empty decadent lifestyles. Whilst your enjoying yourselves the great empire is killing people dead for your oil. Just so you know YOUR ALLOWING IT - and you approve. They have absolved you of the guilt by keeping you emotionally as  children.

I'm glad you feel the same thatmuch. I just don't think life was meant to be like this - it seems so fucked up of late - and your right we are the bozos who are just sat bleating idly watching it all unravel.

Frickasay - insisting on dragging threads off-topic is frowned on here. What you're posting - and it seems to be the same stuff, again and again and again - has no connection to Nathan Barley. Can you please either start a new thread for it or knock it on the head. Thanks.

[frickasay]

Censor me - Please do. Police your own little corner of the world if you think it will help you. Lock the thread and throw away the key. Go back to your baby talk. I can go as quickly as I came. It was short but sweet. I really don't think there is much more to say. I woke you up for a moment, anyway.

Adios amigos. It was fun while it lasted...

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

No. Tell me why second-series Absolutely is evil.