Second opinion
THERE is nothing as boring as perpetual entertainment, and the ennui of those who regard life as a poor imitation of a video is like a slow wasting disease, The late Malcolm Muggeridge — a man I did not altogether admire, in large part because he always enunciated his opinions as if straining at stool was prescient on the evils of television. He said it was the end of civilisation, and he was right.
Last week in the prison I saw a man who had tried to kill himself because of television. The instrument of the devil has been placed in almost every cell of our penal establishment, for it is now regarded as a cruel and unusual punishment to deprive our young men of the moving pictures that have emptied their minds for so many years. And a loss of freedom should not entail a loss of entertainment: that would be too harsh.
In our prison, however, there are two men to each cell. The shrewd among you will already have divined the potential for trouble that a television in a two-man cell might cause. Similar as the debased tastes of most prisoners might be, disputes can nevertheless arise as to what to watch. Since reasoned debate and corn promise are not generally characteristic of this population, the question of what to watch boils down to who is the stronger and more threatening.
The prisoner who was driven to suicide by the television in his cell did not want to watch it at all — he preferred to read — but he was locked up with a man, physically much stronger than he, who wanted to watch it 18 hours a day. The tinkling banality of chat shows combined with the ersatz excitement of sporting events and the bang-bang kapoom! violence of the dramas finally drove him to the rope. It was the only way he could escape.
I knew he was different from what the prison officers call 'your average con' the moment I stepped into his cell in the hospital wing. He was listening to a Shostakovich string quartet. Suffice it to say that this is not the favourite listening of the criminal classes, who generally prefer simpler compositions with lyrics such as F**k your mother, motherf***er!' repeated over and over again to a kind of head-banging rhythm, played at a volume to make the walls vibrate.
He was a cultivated man, interested in and knowledgable about literature, art and music. At last, a kindred spirit! I sympathised with him entirely in his need to escape the evil screen, and for peace and quiet. We reflected bitterly (but of course enjoyably) upon modern man's inability to be alone with his thoughts.
'What are you in prison for?' I asked, en passant.
'Making child porn videos,' he said.
Ah well, I never said cultivation was a sufficient condition of humanity, only a necessary one — perhaps.
I went to the next cell. The inmate had also attempted — rather feebly, as it happens — to shuffle off this mortal coil. 'What are you in for?' I asked.
'Me and me missis had a argument. I had a knife in my hand and I slashed her across the face. I never hit a woman before.' 'So you feel pretty bad about it?' 'Yeah,' he said. 'I'm all cut up.'
Theodore Dalrymple
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