SPECTATOR
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ALL THE WORLD'S A TV
The public outcry against Deirdre Rachid's sentence for fraud in Coronation Street tells us more about contemporary British mores than the social surveys of the past decade. For the benefit of innocents, a middle-aged woman character in Corona- tion Street — the mother of all 'soaps' — is given a prison sentence for fraud; the pub- lic is outraged and a Labour MP from the north-east has raised the matter with the Home Secretary. Add to this the weight given to football and its millionaire players and the adulation of women boxers, and we see the outlines of our post-Christian society.
Television has become virtual reality. Whereas the newspaper press was descend- ed from the pulpit and preachers, television is descended from the cinema, which in turn descended from the stage. News and current affairs must compete for ratings with drama game shows. Hence they are livened up to match, and become indistin- guishable and thus equally true.
All the world was a stage for Shake- speare, but the theatre was finite and co- existed with society. For the watcher in the high street today, television is no surrogate but reality itself. A century ago, the biblical past and the world to come were as real as day-to-day life, and the churchyard was very much part of it. Monarchy, with the Estab- lished Church perpetuating the Divine Right of Kings (except over the budget), completed the chain. Earlier, the passion play had embodied the people and satisfied their psychological needs. The continued hunger for this magic glow over shop-soiled life was demonstrated by the public's self- initiation into the Diana cult, and television has served as its virtual cathedral.
But in this age of mass democracy critical reality must also be demotic. The equality of the television licence must operate on both sides of the screen. Whereas Shake- speare could play Bottom and Quince for laughs, Deirdre Rachid plays for tears. British 'soaps' are enjoined to show their full quota of ethnic and sexual minorities. On American television, political correct- ness demands a much higher proportion of black judges, professors and police chiefs than outside reality would justify; the blacks' reward is on television as it was once in heaven. By the same token, justice must be seen to be imposed on television. Deirdre is Everywoman. Swords should spring from their scabbards in her defence, as Burke said of Marie Antoinette.
The matter is unlikely to rest there. An opposite reaction may also be expected. Mrs Rachid (aka Barlow) is a female heroine drawing on feminine solidarity. But apart from those who think she deserved what she got, there is also room for male solidar- ity on behalf of her co-defendant, the tie salesman posing as an airline pilot who, according to his story, largely accepted in court, was guilty only of fantasising, and was cheated and led into the quagmire by the scheming temptress. Will his empathis- ers not find a sympathetic MP? It is fun, yet disconcerting. The people who control television have their fingers in other pies and their feet under other tables. Contemporaneously with the bid to free Deirdre Rachid, there are attempts by politicians to wriggle out of alleged involve- ment in the abuse of influence on Rupert Murdoch's behalf, not, it is true, in return for payment, but, no less seriously, for good turns deserving political recompense.
Influence and power go hand in hand; the hand which rocks the television pro- grammes comes too close to ruling the state for our comfort. The implications of popu- lar mythopoeia manifest in the Rachid case may amuse us, but cannot leave us uncon- cerned.
The great and the good have been expressing outrage at various items of mer- chandise which now depict the signature or likeness of the late Princess of Wales. The Diana memorial fund has been attacked for allowing her name to embellish a tub of margarine, while the suggestion that a doll might be created in her image has caused even greater wrath.
The hostile critics who denounce these things as 'tasteless' should, however, stop and consider a number of questions. In the first place, Diana herself was an uneasy proponent of old-fashioned good taste in the sense of an adherence to restraint, understatement and discretion. The Princess, indeed, spent much of her life pushing at the boundaries of these conven- tions. Her public appearances in baseball cap and jeans, her use of the media, even her `touchy-Feely' behaviour towards the sick, were a rebellion against such fustian qualities.
Few public figures, moreover, better embodied the modem spirit of commercial- ism. Her designer labels, her love of pop music and her taste for New Age mores were a testimony to the Princess's fascina- tion with the transient. It could be argued, however, that her attitude was peculiarly English. As Napoleon is supposed to have said, we are a nation of shopkeepers. The Princess liked to shop. Why should those who wish to remember her be denied the same privilege?
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