MEDIA STUDIES
A few more issues like this of the Independent on Sunday, and Ms Boycott will suffer a real crash
STEPHEN GLOVER
Picking up my Independent on Sunday last week and turning to its handsome review section as I always do, I found eight pages devoted to Crash, the new film which depicts sado-masochists deriving sexual pleasure from car crashes. I couldn't be bothered to read them. Apart from a brief introduction by Martin Amis, the article consisted of an excerpt from the script of much of the film. At the best of times, scripts can be boring things to read, with their long and detailed directions. The thought of wading through blow-by-blow accounts of perverted sex was more than the spirit could bear on a Sunday morning.
But on Monday several people tele- phoned me. Perhaps they thought that as the founding-editor of the Independent on Sunday I might be expected to have a view about my old paper publishing this sort of stuff. One person, a woman of progressive views, told me that she had been sickened by the descriptions of anal sex between a man and a woman. You did not expect to read that sort of thing in your broadsheet Sunday paper, she said. No adult could wander into the cinema and see Crash by mistake, but it was possible to pick up a newspaper in a state of innocence and find oneself drawn into a squalid and depraved world wholly against one's wishes.
I read the excerpt. I fear I cannot make my point without a brief summary. The hero, James, has been in a car crash. He `has sex' with the wife of the man killed in this accident. Also with his own secretary. Also with his wife, Catherine, whom he sodomises. The two of them are excited by images and memories of car crashes, as they are by a man called Vaughan, who lit- erally lives in his car and arranges crash spectaculars. Inevitably, they both make love to this horrible person. James is partic- ularly turned on by sex with a woman who has been gravely injured in a car crash, and he — no, I won't go on. It gets much, much worse. I really did feel sick at the end.
It is amazing that someone as intelligent as Mr Amis should not only defend this, but celebrate it as a work of art. The theme — that the idea of a car crash is sexually arousing — is rammed down our throats a hundred times. J.G. Ballard, who published Crash in 1973, argues that the film, like his novel, in its heart recoils in moral horror from the world it depicts. Judging by this excerpt — I have not seen the film, and certainly do not now wish to — this argu- ment is very difficult to sustain. All the characters are depraved. There is no moral counterpoint. Most people will feel revul- sion, but this revulsion derives from their own moral sensibilities and their own idea of what is aberrational. An already depraved person would find this film deeply arousing.
Let is here leave aside the question of whether Crash should go on general release. I am concerned that a newspaper — and, my God, a newspaper which I helped to found! — should have published such material. It is true that in its introduc- tion to the excerpt the Independent on Sun- day describes Crash as one of 'the most sexually explicit and disturbing films ever made' (no kidding) and warns that 'those who do not wish to be offended are advised not to read on'. At best, this is morally neu- tral: the paper should have the wit to see that this is an abomination, and not lead the reader into a moral wasteland while refusing to say what it thinks itself. At worst, there is an echo of the News of the World. What follows is filthy and depraved, it pains us to print it, but read on, read on!
How could this happen? Four weeks ago Rosie Boycott, translated from the editor- ship of Esquire, a magazine for men, became editor of the Independent on Sun- day. She is the first woman to edit a broad- sheet title. My heart was with her, even though she displaced Peter Wilby, who had run the paper with distinction for 18 months with meagre resources. I wanted, and still want, Ms Boycott to do well. The Sindy is an under-appreciated newspaper which has eschewed vulgar excesses. Columnists such as Alan Watkins and Neal Ascherson grace its pages, and its review section remains better than all its many imitators.
The paper sold 294,000 copies a week in October, some 100,000 fewer than in its heyday. Ms Boycott evidently believes that 'I'm afraid the pearl barley risotto just went out of fashion, sir ' the way to put on sales is to indulge in sen- sation-seeking journalism, which is the curse of modern broadsheets. There are `exclusive' tags everywhere, and a new taste for trivia in the news pages. Headlines seek to grab people's attention by virtue of their sheer size: last Sunday, the front page `splash' headline, 'Women voters think Blair is more smarmy than Major', ran across two decks in 72 point — the size of headline one reserves for the resignation of a prime minister. This undermining of seri- ousness will not please the Independent on Sunday's readers. Some of her own journal- ists were reportedly dismayed by her Crash performance. If she repeats it too often, she will have a disaster on her hands.
our weeks ago I devoted a column to the theory — which I believed to be origi- nal — that in modern Britain and America it is impossible to become political top dog if you are bald. The opposite, I argued, holds true in Fifth Republic France. The events of the past week or so have there- fore given me a certain amount of pleasure. It is now officially admitted that Tony Blair is going bald — quite fast, it would seem and this development is alarming his spin doctors.
As I was beginning to congratulate myself on my prescience, I had the pleasure of bumping into Mr Alan Watkins. He gen- erously said that he had enjoyed my article, but he could not resist mentioned that 'the bald idea' had originally been his. In the mists of time, he apparently unveiled the same theory, although in a somewhat dif- ferent form. This news threw me into a slight gloom, though of course I am happy to cede precedence. When the history of baldness in modern politics comes to be written, Mr Watkins's name must be high- est on the roll of honour.
But if an idea is a good one, does it mat- ter who first had it? It will not be long, I hope, before Mohamed Al Fayed — or bet- ter still, Sir James Goldsmith, who, as I pointed out, is seriously bald — endows the first chair of politico-tricological studies at Oxford. Or perhaps Mr Wafic Said admittedly not follicularly challenged will agree to switch funds from his unpopu- lar business school into a college for bald studies. When some enterprising academic launches a quarterly of political tricology, my joy will be complete.
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