My Problem With | The Revolution Will Be Televised

This seems to be turning into a BBC3-bashing blog, but it really isn't. I think there is a place for a channel like BBC3 that doesn't have to rely on advertising revenue aimed at young people, I even signed the campaign to keep it. I just think the producers need to stop belittling the audience.

©BAFTA

The Revolution Will Be Televised is an incredible concept, Jolyon Rubinstein and Heydon Prowse come across as genuinely funny in sections and the facts are all there. A show that reveals to the young general public - a demographic constantly barraged with opinion by Sun-reading parents and faced in the newsagents with headlines of 'Immigrants on 25k a year' 'Benefit cheats ruining economy' - that gives information about real inequalities in the tax system; about giant well-known corporate entities that do not contribute; and that reveals political lies and deception, is always going to be a winner in my book. 
The huge, gaping, enormous hole of a problem is in the delivery. 

Political and economic matters are covered in a funny, cartoon-like and satirical way  which is interesting to watch. It makes the facts digestible without being heavy - a complication that being too news-centered can have on the mind. You can walk away from the programme and it won't negatively affect your day, but you'll be a little more informed.

The glaringly obvious problem is the attempt to cover widespread criminal acts with the same sweep of lighthearted humour. The segment that was most notable to me watching S3E4 was on female genital mutilation. The factual evidence was presented in typical cartoon-style, which would have been distasteful to some but understandable considering the format, if the cartoon wasn't a figure in quite distinctive middle-eastern clothing. Female Genital Mutilation is then made clear by the following map to be a predominantly African, cultural problem. Which it is. Why, then, does the pictorial evidence suggest otherwise? 

©BBC

If I didn't know, I too would assume that it was a middle-eastern problem, I would assume it was yet another horrible thing going on in that part of the world, I would assume that it was those nasty muslims at it again. And the curly sword? Who at the BBC okay-d that image? WHO?

see the cartoon in full HERE

But the worst bit was to follow. 
After making clear in the cartoon that Ethiopia and the Sudan had banned FGM and that it was illegal; there was a very odd canvassing exercise held in which a woman dressed as a 'nurse' (in non-standard, short scrubs belted around the waist) questioned men on the street if they would like to have  their own genitals cut off. This wasn't just unfunny, it was uncomfortable and cringy-ly so (not in a Peep Show way). Then there was an attempt to distract officials at the embassies of both Ethiopia and Sudan by said nurse, to ask them benign questions about having their own genitals cut off. 
Is the program really attempting to take a complex, long-standing, cultural tradition and crime deep-seated in centuries of gender politics and reveal it under the skirt of a sexy nurse and some propositions about willies? 

The second issue I will cover briefly. It was also in S3E4 and something that I had actually not heard of before. It was about sexual abuse in the holding buildings where asylum seekers stay when awaiting information about their residency. People who have experienced war, torture, the death of their children and loved ones, rape, gang and rebel occupation of their home. And guess how The Revolution Will be Televised covered this issue?

©BBC

An dutch rave-themed mock orgy wearing neon leggings and headbands under the characters 'Double Fist TV'

There is a sentiment that despite these issues being covered in an unconventional way, the program is getting the information out there, and to that I Call Bullshit.
It's not only vaguely insensitive to trivialise and sexualise these events in some insane 'ooo matron' out-dated and failed attempt at British humour, it's damaging. Young people don't need you to do that. It's offensive to everyone involved, and serves to undermine harrowing humanitarian issues in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers, and re-affirm a distance between 'that happening over there to them people' and what should concern us. 

Typing it out makes it sound even more insane than watching it, so feck knows how stuff like that got through all those grueling stages of post-production. I just hope the delivery is cleaned up before a new series, because the concept really does have solid relevance.

WHAT DO YOU THINK, READER? 
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BAKER 
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