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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Eastenders is immoral.

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Goodness Gracious Meme

18:02 / 08.04.04

arggghhhhh. now yr just messing with my head.

23:22 / 08.04.04

Well again, yes, clearly when I describe Eastenders as immoral I'm not making it a commensurate crime with mass murder or anal rape. I obviously presented a slightly less nuanced argument than I might have done if I was writing something over several thousand pages. Still, I stand by most of the broad strokes.

You don't seem to find opera pornographic, in the same way. This thread isn't entitled 'Brunnhillde is immoral', is it? Why is that? Personally I think your characterisation of/comparison with opera is pretty facile. But then I didn't make it. So, is Brunhilde pornography? How about X-men?

The comparison was on the basis that you'd argued that an unattractive representation of people's lives couldn't be romanticised. I was taking issue with that point. But the romanticising doesn't make it immoral as such, the fact that it promotes the association of authenticity with misery is, the fact that it is built around voyeuristic enjoyment at the catastrophes of other people is and the fact that middle class people are encouraged to take pleasure in the catastrophes of working class people seems to me to be basically grotesque. There are elements which feel like the bloody Black and White Minstrels.

16:55 / 09.04.04

the fact that middle class people are encouraged to take pleasure in the catastrophes of working class people seems to me to be basically grotesque.

erm...
macbeth exploits rich folks' misery for the masses to watch, is it immoral? or is it different because kings can stand up for themselves, unlike the poor widdle working class? or is it because its older?

.

17:47 / 10.04.04

the fact that it promotes the association of authenticity with misery [...] the fact that it is built around voyeuristic enjoyment at the catastrophes of other people

Thank you! For years I've wanted a succinct way of expressing what I find distasteful in Eastenders. I'm probably just going to repeat a lot of what you've said in less elequent terms now...

macbeth exploits rich folks' misery for the masses to watch, is it immoral?

One difference between Macbeth, or whatever "high art" you want to compare Eastenders to, is that it at least tries to make a profound point about the human condition. Eastenders on the other hand just encourages us to take pleasure in such misery with no higher aim in mind. In fact there are two separate points there:

1) Eastenders portrays life as an unrelenting series of crises, played out by people conforming to ugly stereotypes.
2) Eastenders encourages us to take pleasure in others' (albeit fictional) suffering.

So, building from there to its immorality... It would be a lazy generalisation to suggest that the typical Eastenders viewer is lacking the basic epistemic tools to distinguish a TV soap from reality. But. It is not a leap to suggest that at least a few people may mistake it for an accurate depiction of a certain section of society, a picture of the authentic life, where, as Tom says, authenticity equals misery. Or worse, may take their pleasure in watching it to equal a tacit approval of that condition.

And if there were anyone out there who took what they saw on TV to be an accurate reflection of how life ought to be... By the very nature of TV drama, people on TV only exist when going through some sort of crisis, tragedy, misery or suffering. Perhaps at least a few people out there in the viewing audience come to believe that their own lives are less authentic, less valid, less well lived, unless they too are experiencing perpetual crises and suffering. Especially if that message is being reinforced four or five times every week. Now that's not a good thing, is it?

16:46 / 11.04.04

Some people work harder and more consciously with texts than others.

Correctamundo. I've always considered that whole pomo 'ironic relationshop with the text' as the excuse of limp-psyched, guilt-ridden wankers. If you enjoy watching Eastenders because you enjoy watching people wallowing in misery, why not admit it? Why build fortresses of irony around your essentially 'low-cultural' interests? Hell, why even mess about with quotation marks around words like 'low-cultural'? But these are things to think about another time. I came in here to express my major gripe with Eastenders and its ilk:

people who argue like characters on soaps.

These people, man, these people, are so annoying. to me, they embody the idea that television does affect its audience negatively, because no way do real people, who haven't been exposed to constant television-battering, talk like that. But these people do. Usually when they're drunk. Because that's when they have their arguments about their poxy relationships and what model do they have for their poxy relationship arguments? Kat and Alfie on fucking Eastenders. Grrrruuuuunnnnnhhh. Get some better dialogue, people, or get out of my pub. Simple choices.

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest in this thread. I'm sure there's a big grab bag of prejudices in there that show I'm a snobbish middle class wanker, but so what? I see no need to justify myself. Especially not where the feelthy steenkin proles are concerned...:P

How's that for irony, post-modernism fans? You see, I don't really hate the proles. I'm just saying that ironically. I have a very complex relationship with the idea of 'the proles' as a rhetorical trope. One might almost say a playful one...

But this isn't a pomo-bashing thread. One interesting and slightly more germaine thing to add, though: I was watching that Big Impression thing on the telly with my gf the other night, and they had a sketch where the Eastenders characters are actually happy and Dot has to fuck things up to return things to status quo. So there is at least some awareness of the nature of the show among some portions of the viewership...

Having some interesting ideas about treating Benders as a fictionverse here...More later...

Regrettable Juvenilia

21:27 / 11.04.04

Ooooh, a "fictionverse"! velvetvandal, you might be interested in the ideas I suggested here. Be warned, though: they are something like a mindbomb.

On another note, two points:

1) I have never met a single person who watches/enjoys Eastenders and believes it is "authentic" or intended to be so.

2) I have never met a single person who watches/enjoys Eastenders and is not aware of the extend to which its characters are almost continuously miserable/unfortunate.

20:49 / 13.04.04

in personality Alfie arguably resembles King Mob, with his quick, irreverent wit

Flyboy, your Invisibles-inspired interpretation of Eastenders is so good it actually gives me cause to demean myself to the level of using emoticons and webslang:-) lol

I was thinking about this idea of Eastenders as immoral a bit more again today, and I don't think it's really on the money. The most powerful moral objection I've read so far is the idea that the show is immoral because it shows characters who are unable to change, and always get sucked back into their old lives. Here's my problem with this, in two words: Carlito's Way. It's an excellent film but if we accept the premise that the immutability of characters' fates in Eastenders is immoral then, logically, Carlito's Way must also be immoral because Carlito, as played by Al Pacino, is unsuccessful in his attempt to turn his life around and be a legitimate businessman. And I don't accept that. Yes, it is depressing, but that's not the same as immoral...Is this making sense?

Not to mention the fact that it makes Fawlty Towers deeply immoral as well. The horror of it! Manuel, forever the slave of his cruel master, Basil! Basil and Sybil locked for all eternity in their loveless marriage! Polly, forever dreaming of escaping through art but never managing! The Major, trapped in the ghastly nightmare realm of pure senility! Oh, the humanity! The immorality! Ban this evil filth now!

No, 'immorality' is not fit grounds on which to object to Eastenders. One would be on firmer ground if one objected to it, as I do, on the grounds that it is a right load of warmed-over old shite, but not on the grounds that it's 'immoral'. That's rather silly, I think.

15:49 / 14.04.04

it shows characters who are unable to change

Apart from those who do change, presumably. They're mainly second-tier characters though, the ones who don't snag the tabloid column inches, so I can see why somebody who hadn't watched an awful lot of the show might come away with that impression.

Is it immoral? I'd say yes, but certainly not for the reasons Tom's given. What *is* extremely iffy is the use of certain subjects - rape, abuse, illness - for what are often claimed to be educational purposes, but in truth is often nothing more than an attempt to gain viewing figures through sensationalism or rid themselves of a character/shift onto another storyline. The best example being the most recent rape, which seems to have been written in purely so that they could let one actor have a holiday and stir shit up. As a storyline, it was as educational and 'moral' as Coronation Street's Deidre/cancer arc a few years back.

23:14 / 14.04.04

The funniest thing about Eastenders is how they wheel out the most unpleasant events for festive periods: "It's Christmas! Trevor's raped little Mo!" for example.

And how these bits get the biggest audiences.

Jack The Bodiless

11:55 / 15.04.04

And also one of the wrongest, nastiest things about it. But there you go.

02:22 / 18.04.04

There was an article in yesterdays Independent, reseach by has found that kids who watch soaps like Eastenders pick up terrible traits. Apparently a group who watched the show's glamorous characters lie, cheat, steal and be rewarded for it, assume it is reasonable behaviour and emulate it in the playground.
Kids who don't watch such TV programmes are nearly as aggressive.
I suppose just what teachers, parents and everybody with any grasp on reality, however flimsy, have been saying for years.

12:16 / 18.04.04

You can never underestimate the capacity for Eastenders to create rapists.

15:38 / 18.04.04

So you disagree?

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