Last week its former Chief Executive claimed it had become a quagmire of titillation and transgression. Is the once innovative and serious channel taking it too far? From cybersex to ‘cockumentaries’ Robert Jackman charts the decline of Channel 4
Television X
Television X
Tossers are aplenty on Channel 4. First up there’s slack-jawed prankster Justin Lee Collins whose inane laughing has become a staple of their Friday night schedule. Then there’s silly suburban contortionist David Blaine, whose death defying stunts attract thousands of viewers in the vain hope that this latest one may be the one where it all goes wrong. Even their latest game show host refuses to appear in front of a camera without cosmic etchings on his hand. But this winter, as Channel 4 televises the UK’s first masturbate-a-thon, the question will be more resonant than ever – just why are there so many wankers on Channel 4?
The Masturbate-a-thon in question occurred this summer, when it invited thousands of participants to spill their sperm for sponsorship money. The event raised thousands of pounds for safe sex and HIV charities, whilst helping break down the stigma surrounding masturbation, and Channel 4 claims their televising of a documentary of the event will further spread the safe sex message. How altruistic of them you may think. Indeed they must feel very passionate about safe sex – they’ve commissioned a whole wank week winter. There’s even some educational stuff: Masturbation for Girls promises to take females from clumsy fumbling to nimble finger flurries which would impress Rachmaninoff. But if Sir Jeremy Isaacs is to be believed, the channel has less honourable different motives.
Sir Isaacs, the founding chief executive of the fourth channel, condemns the channel for its obsession with sex. He claims that their desperate pursuit of the teenage and twenty-something audience has meant that the channel has dissolved into a carnal smutfest. The commissioners aren’t concerned whether it’s safe sex or not; they know it’s a safe bet that it’ll bring in the viewers. Rather than challenging taboos, the channel is desperate to find new ones and exploit them and there’s no shortage of ammunition for his argument.
Take recent exploitation extraordinaire The Holy Hottie in which the cameras follow ex-stripper-cum-Christian Heather Veitch. Having found the Holy Spirit after a degrading few years in the bowels of America’s sex industry, Heather has started a ministry aiming to take the Bible message to girls like her. But the x-rated evangelical has another goal; to spice up Christian marriages. Now Heather spends her days preaching Christ to the lap dancers, and lap dancing to the Christians. ‘Of course God wants us to have fun in our marriages’ she giggles as she jiggles on the lap of a girlfriend.
Religion crops up again in God’s Nudists, a show which documents a crew of nudists who believe that covering up is sinful – we should love what the Lord gave us. It’s a shame about the same can’t be said about the women who feature in Designer Vaginas, as filthy Four quiz them over why they’d decided to have surgery to enhance their genitals. Of course it’s normally been breasts which get caught in the cosmetic surgery cyclone – and this phenomenon gets its turn in My Breasts Are Too Big.
The latter may not have raised many eyebrows – breasts are everywhere in our media. But it wasn’t always like this; instead the female body crept in on the back of a tide of lewd advertising, with breasts being used to push everything from cars to alcopops. The penis however, not enjoying the same marketing allure, was largely absent from television. This summer Channel 4 changed all that. And while breasts had slowly waded onto our screens, the penis thrust itself in front of the cameras like a screaming warhead in ‘cockumentary’ The World’s Biggest Penis. Forget Freudian ambiguities – it was pretty hard not to be conscious of this monster.
Not disturbed yet? There’s a lot worse in Four’s appalling archives, like Obscene Machines. The programme charts the marriage of sex and technology, ending up in the darker realms where fantasies are more Cyberman than cybersex. One subject describes his ideal woman as an ‘attractive female…with a silvery metallic bikini and a key in her back’. He tells us that ‘technosexual’ is the ‘politically correct’ way to describe him.
Yes, it may well bring in the ratings, but is this the only way Channel 4 can do that? When it comes to television there’s no shortage of innovative ideas. Think of Big Brother – a show built on a sickeningly simple yet devastating effective formula, and MTV; originally dismissed as ‘radio on the telly’ the channel has snared the attention of teenagers worldwide. The phenomenal growth of websites such as youtube shows a demand for interactive entertainment which could prove a goldmine for television channels – but Channel 4 prefers to opt for the lowest common denominator.
Indeed Channel 4’s orgiastic offerings consciously aim to be pornography. Often it’s only the soundtrack with separates these documentaries from being ‘soft’ pornography. What better example than Lap Dance War, a show which follows the feud between strip club entrepreneurs in 1990s London. While the programme mainly consists of titillating footage of naked women dancing it is strangely dubbed over with footage of academics discussing the effect of Westminster Council laws on lap dancing.
Then there’s Celebrity Sex Tapes where the voice-over offers a sincere apology that they can’t show the more explicit moments of Abi Titmuss’s coke-eyed romp for legal reasons. Oh well, looks like the leering viewers will have to make-do with Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson. And back to Obscene Machines once more, where the programme makers choose creative camerawork rather than disappoint their viewers with clusters of blocky pixels.
Isaacs is right - Channel 4 is a channel which delights in the distasteful; twenty years since its birth, the channel is stuck in a fumbling adolescence offering crass and crude excuses for entertainment. Today they may not struggle to compile a sex-sodden schedule, but one has to wonder what’ll happen once they’ve exhausted all taboos. Until then anyone with more sense than hormones will surely be reaching for the remote rather than the tissues.
Agree? Disagree? Have your say at http://ueaconcretetv.blogspot.com
The Masturbate-a-thon in question occurred this summer, when it invited thousands of participants to spill their sperm for sponsorship money. The event raised thousands of pounds for safe sex and HIV charities, whilst helping break down the stigma surrounding masturbation, and Channel 4 claims their televising of a documentary of the event will further spread the safe sex message. How altruistic of them you may think. Indeed they must feel very passionate about safe sex – they’ve commissioned a whole wank week winter. There’s even some educational stuff: Masturbation for Girls promises to take females from clumsy fumbling to nimble finger flurries which would impress Rachmaninoff. But if Sir Jeremy Isaacs is to be believed, the channel has less honourable different motives.
Sir Isaacs, the founding chief executive of the fourth channel, condemns the channel for its obsession with sex. He claims that their desperate pursuit of the teenage and twenty-something audience has meant that the channel has dissolved into a carnal smutfest. The commissioners aren’t concerned whether it’s safe sex or not; they know it’s a safe bet that it’ll bring in the viewers. Rather than challenging taboos, the channel is desperate to find new ones and exploit them and there’s no shortage of ammunition for his argument.
Take recent exploitation extraordinaire The Holy Hottie in which the cameras follow ex-stripper-cum-Christian Heather Veitch. Having found the Holy Spirit after a degrading few years in the bowels of America’s sex industry, Heather has started a ministry aiming to take the Bible message to girls like her. But the x-rated evangelical has another goal; to spice up Christian marriages. Now Heather spends her days preaching Christ to the lap dancers, and lap dancing to the Christians. ‘Of course God wants us to have fun in our marriages’ she giggles as she jiggles on the lap of a girlfriend.
Religion crops up again in God’s Nudists, a show which documents a crew of nudists who believe that covering up is sinful – we should love what the Lord gave us. It’s a shame about the same can’t be said about the women who feature in Designer Vaginas, as filthy Four quiz them over why they’d decided to have surgery to enhance their genitals. Of course it’s normally been breasts which get caught in the cosmetic surgery cyclone – and this phenomenon gets its turn in My Breasts Are Too Big.
The latter may not have raised many eyebrows – breasts are everywhere in our media. But it wasn’t always like this; instead the female body crept in on the back of a tide of lewd advertising, with breasts being used to push everything from cars to alcopops. The penis however, not enjoying the same marketing allure, was largely absent from television. This summer Channel 4 changed all that. And while breasts had slowly waded onto our screens, the penis thrust itself in front of the cameras like a screaming warhead in ‘cockumentary’ The World’s Biggest Penis. Forget Freudian ambiguities – it was pretty hard not to be conscious of this monster.Not disturbed yet? There’s a lot worse in Four’s appalling archives, like Obscene Machines. The programme charts the marriage of sex and technology, ending up in the darker realms where fantasies are more Cyberman than cybersex. One subject describes his ideal woman as an ‘attractive female…with a silvery metallic bikini and a key in her back’. He tells us that ‘technosexual’ is the ‘politically correct’ way to describe him.
Yes, it may well bring in the ratings, but is this the only way Channel 4 can do that? When it comes to television there’s no shortage of innovative ideas. Think of Big Brother – a show built on a sickeningly simple yet devastating effective formula, and MTV; originally dismissed as ‘radio on the telly’ the channel has snared the attention of teenagers worldwide. The phenomenal growth of websites such as youtube shows a demand for interactive entertainment which could prove a goldmine for television channels – but Channel 4 prefers to opt for the lowest common denominator.
Indeed Channel 4’s orgiastic offerings consciously aim to be pornography. Often it’s only the soundtrack with separates these documentaries from being ‘soft’ pornography. What better example than Lap Dance War, a show which follows the feud between strip club entrepreneurs in 1990s London. While the programme mainly consists of titillating footage of naked women dancing it is strangely dubbed over with footage of academics discussing the effect of Westminster Council laws on lap dancing.
Then there’s Celebrity Sex Tapes where the voice-over offers a sincere apology that they can’t show the more explicit moments of Abi Titmuss’s coke-eyed romp for legal reasons. Oh well, looks like the leering viewers will have to make-do with Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson. And back to Obscene Machines once more, where the programme makers choose creative camerawork rather than disappoint their viewers with clusters of blocky pixels.
Isaacs is right - Channel 4 is a channel which delights in the distasteful; twenty years since its birth, the channel is stuck in a fumbling adolescence offering crass and crude excuses for entertainment. Today they may not struggle to compile a sex-sodden schedule, but one has to wonder what’ll happen once they’ve exhausted all taboos. Until then anyone with more sense than hormones will surely be reaching for the remote rather than the tissues.
Agree? Disagree? Have your say at http://ueaconcretetv.blogspot.com
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