Channel 4 is currently upholding its reputation of showing gratuitous sexual, violent, and generally crap telly in the name of objective journalism or, Benn help us, art. A brilliant excuse to show penises, vaginas, tits, sex (both gay and straight), swearing (including “cunt” and “nigger”), all in the name of art!
Personally, I like to make my own mind up about what I want to watch, and so far I haven’t been offended. But, given the warning they thoughtfully provided before every segment, if something did offend me, I wouldn’t hold C4 to blame. In fact, by tomorrow I’d probably have forgotten about it. Like most people.
My only complaint is that C4 are still attempting to wrap their tawdry crap up as anything other than, well, tawdry crap. In fact I can’t help thinking they are using the same techniques as “comedy” video/audio publishers: saying things like “WARNING! This video contains SEX and VIOLENCE that may accidentally TURN YOU ON”, or “DANGER! Watching this video may cause you to become very excited in a scary way and cause stains”.
Last Friday, like most other nights last week, I went up the Union. It just so happened that the upcoming “vagina” night was being rehersed. This VAGINA night is about womens awareness and, clearly, about VAGINAS. So, obviously, they were doing extracts from the VAGINA monologues.
Now, I’ve never seen the VAGINA monologues but so many people went on about how good it was, that I assumed it was probably quite interesting.
However, from what I saw on Friday, I can only assume that it was simply a bunch of female drama students practising their American accents and saying the word “vagina” every 30 seconds. The last stat is based on the fact that every time I, or any of my friends, walked out to the khazi via the hall, we always heard the word vagina spoken in an American accent. We estimated that the “VAGINAS per minute” rate was at least 2 for the whole performance.
“I realised it was my VAGINA!”
“Heh, my VAGINA!”
“my VAGINA! has flaps”
etc ad nausiam.
I would never go to see a load of blokes on stage talk about their COCKS or BELLENDs. Purely because it would be boring shit. Penises are not that interesting, and neither are vaginas. They don’t harbour some metaphysical answer or power-source! They are simply sexual organs. Now, you combine the two and things get interesting…but really…on their own, they are pretty dull.
I sincerely hope that the whole VAGINA monologue thing isn’t based on blinkered stupidity. Deep down I really want to go and see it so that I can see how intelligent and clever it is. If it turns out that it is simply a load of dim, boring, public-school-girl actresses who still find the word “vagina” dangerous and shocking, then I pity everyone who paid to see it. 50% of the population have a VAGINA! Get over it.
The other 50% can’t get over how great their genitals are (even without another partner) but even they don’t dare get on stage to go on about it.
As for swearing, me and Michele have been reading Viz since 1987 so you can’t offend us.
Good night 🙂
