Kyleology

A judge once famously described the Jeremy Kyle Show as 'a human form of bear-baiting'. While critics of the show often cite this as a definitive and apposite description of its horror, it falls into a trap of the show's making. In order for Kyle's piece of shit to be broadcastable, its participants have to be made to seem subhuman, animalistic - at best childlike, requiring Kyle's care. In fact, if we're going 19th century in our comparisons, the Jeremy Kyle Show is a reincarnation of Bedlam, where damaged people are exposed for the entertainment of others. It is a form of pornography - a pornography of aggression and misery (not exactly the most fun kind).

What is interesting about the show is not the horror displayed, but the strategies used to legitimate the display of horror. Prime among these is a thin tissue of theraputic credibility. The entire show is framed as an attempt to reconcile warring parties. This is of course utterly unbelievable - even accounting for editing, the participants have at most 45 minutes of Kyle's shock therapy. Given that many of the participants have come to the show in an attempt to rid their lives of conflict, his abrasive style can be assumed to be of very little use.

The show implicitly accepts this, and so Kyle often speaks of the 'Aftercare' team headed by the gentle Northern 'Good Cop' Graham. Aftercare is an apology for Kyle's aggression, the flowers after the wife-beating. Interestingly, we're near as fuck never told how the participants fared during, or following Aftercare. Instead of any meaningful engagement with the guests and their experiences, Kyle spends around 5 minutes of his alloted hour making Graham's healing powers sound as profound and (we can assume) realistic as those of Jesus Christ.

The second and more politically interesting justifying strategy applied to make Kyle's Marvellous World of Madfolk acceptable is one of class. Kyle is a militant member of the middle-class. Kyle makes his class war obvious - the frequency with which he abstractly calls on the state to intervene against his guests ('This, Mr. Brown, is what's wrong with this country') is truly frightening. The entire texture of the show pits his ill-fitting business suits and recieved pronounciation against the ill-fitting (in a different direction) brightly-coloured sportswear and regional accents of his guests. Kyle's show used to largely consist of him screaming "GET A JOB!!!" at poor and/or drug addicted and/or mental ill guests - although this has wisely desisted since The Crunch hit and unemployment rocketed.

Ultimately, class provides the key to comprehending the Jeremy Kyle Show. The late Aneurin Bevan once wrote that 'around the meagre tables, in the small rooms of the poor, bitter hells of wounded vanity and personal acrimony arise'. Stuck in an ex-industrial town (so many of the guests are from Yorkshire, urban Scotland or South Wales that it's frightening) with no job and little prospect of gaining one, short of escape, turning to drink, drugs or a drastically destructive relationship is all too attractive. In fact, aside from these broadcastable vices, the poorer or more (whisper it) working class you are, the younger you will die, after having led a less healthy more miserable life. The Jeremy Kyle Show's 'Bad Cop, Good Cop' routine mirrors that of New Labour, faced with the ongoing misery of the areas destroyed by Thatcherism - an ASBO, then a chromed city centre. The cause of this approach is a fundamental, and wilful ignorance of the roots and horrors of poverty. If Kyle and Brown don't understand, it's our job to make them understand that getting beaten up and getting flowers is demeaning, disgusting and should fucking stop.

On Burma

The international community (which as Chomsky has pointed out, simply means the US and UK, and subordinated NATO allies) has erupted over the extension of Aung San Suu Kyi's decades-old house arrest. By odd coincidence I've been reading an old John Pilger book named 'Hidden Agendas'. It's nice to bask in the World's Poshest Australian's glow, and magnificently portentous writing. It has also been nice to read about the islands of grotesque despotism that persist, despite the 'international community'. His account of Burma follows the pattern of his account of Cambodia, with well-meaning clichés about the beauty of the landscape, the humility and goodness of the people and so on. At one point, he refers to the deference of someone presumably terrified at the prospect of offending a foreigner during Burma's 'turn to tourism' as proof of an innate generosity. This isn't necessary - noone should have to live under a regime of slave and/or convict labour, in conditions of extreme deprivation, even if they're rude and live in a sequence of slimy caves.

The portrait given of Aung Syn Suu Kyi is more nuanced - having acquired a rare interview, he does the unimaginable and asks difficult questions. Solidarity with Third World oppositional movements often takes on a crude element of hero-worship - Mandela, the Dalai Lama - and it often feels like humbug to criticise this well-meaning projection. Pilger, having laid praise on thick, adds enough nuance to counter the cliché. In particular, he questions her on her proposal for a unity government with her jailers. John Pilger remains one of the world's great journalists, simply for the fact that he's conducted robust, critical interviews with two of the subjects (and my, what subjection!) in Gordon Brown's piss-poor, unsold book 'Courage'. In his greatest film, 'Apartheid Did Not Die', he has an actual argument with Nelson Mandela. It is impossible to imagine Andrew Marr doing the same.

However, what's been interesting about Burma is the issue's proof of how our politicians fall over themselves to criticise regimes in which they have very little interest. There's the simple propaganda argument, often heard around the time of the Iraq War, that Saddam's crimes were equivalent to the crimes of a myriad of other dictators, and thus he didn't deserve toppling. As solid as this argument is, it did lead to people who were opposed to the war saying things like "Well, why don't they sort out Mugabe?!". A narrow focus on human rights violations can lead to strange and contradictory statements - the 'comedian and activist' Mark Thomas wrote an article on Burma which praises, with massive qualification, America and the Conservative Party's stances on Burma. If you find yourself singing the praises of the armers of Indonesia and the bombers of Baghdad, you're missing the point.

The point is that horrors such as those committed by the Burmese junta are perfectly acceptable to major companies, smaller businesses and the 'international community'. Authoritarian capitalism is the norm for most of the world's population, from China to Honduras, and the horrors that the Burmese people suffer are entirely congruent with past and present horrors. The boycott and disinvestment campaign has been very effective, preventing whole American cities and states, and the EU to theoretical non-involvement with the Burmese government. Despite this, the regime persists. Aung Syn Suu Kyi, despite her Courage, will strive for national unity and the injustice that is 'peace and reconciliation'. The only action that will topple it is the action of the Burmese people themselves, battered and enslaved, and the only justice the Burmese people is that which they take in the heat of struggle, to the probable horror of the 'international community'. They have risen, despite their 'peaceloving' 'deference', and will rise again.