It has become quite commonplace to review the concerns and goals, if not the work, of Mary Whitehouse and despondently comment that “she had a point”. I will never be able to forgive Whitehouse for ensuring that The Omega Factor did not get a second season. She
Mar 7, 2023·edited Mar 8, 2023Liked by Millennial Woes
I think Whitehouse held the opinion that even though she was basically a lone voice and therefore assured of receiving widespread mockery, she would have been falling below her own personal standards had she just sat back like everybody else and watched the creeping degeneracy unfold. By the late 1970s, she was about the only principled Briton left. Were the country being invaded by a foreign army, while all the native men caroused or even cheered as the sound of jackboots got louder, Mary Whitehouse would have stood alone and faced the enemy - sword in hand and in her petticoat.
In 1995 Whitehouse apparently appeared on the Mrs Merton Show, although not in the studio. I can't find any footage, but I'm sure they would have been giving her a spiteful kicking. A size-5 Patrick Cox Wannabe Loafer from behind and between the legs for the old dear, as she was slowly exiting the stage to hoots of derision from Cool Britannia. By this point, Caroline Aherne would have already flowered into the alcoholic husband-beater who would later attempt suicide and finally die of lung cancer at the age of 52.
Had Mary Whitehouse not been left to fight the British entertainment industry alone, we might not live in an era when her life is ridiculed while Aherne's is celebrated.
Mar 15, 2023·edited Mar 15, 2023Liked by Millennial Woes
This is a bit of a digression, but your mention of the role played by social class (or, to be more precise class prejudice) in the tale of elite disdain for the courageous Mrs. Whitehouse, reminds me of a question about social class in America that you posted on Telegram some time ago. The best introduction to that topic is Paul Fussell's "Class." You can take a look at it on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/class00paul
Terrific article. I think we all knew why Destiny, Vaush and the like play those silly games in debates but it was very nice to see it here well articulated.
Agree that mockery is a good tactic. The Fool can say much truth in jest and point out hypocrisy without having to provide citations and references for those who want to argue points. If you view the whole of identity politics as a "cheap parody" designed to undermine common decency, then why not use the same strategy to reflect the damage back onto those currently parading themselves as the new moralists.
I have a significantly more negative reaction to the portrayal of violence in visual media than I have towards, for example, pornography. Funnily enough, that's sometimes a kind of "toy position" brought up by left-wing people in conversations about America's allegedly censorious TV culture (I say "allegedly" just because I don't watch American TV, so I can't really comment). Joe Rogan mentioned it once: "You can show horrific violence but not sex," etc. Regarding said gratuitous violence, though, it did always strike me that there was an artlessness to the way violence is presented in anything on television produced from at least the start of the 21st century onwards; the director often feels the need to marinade in the gore and, paraphrasing something half-remembered from the Distributist, to glory in pure human defacement with no higher purpose in store. See Game of Thrones. See BBC's Rome. Etc. There is an infamous shot in season four of the former wherein a character's eyes are gouged out in glorious hyper-real HD. Not sure what that added to my life. At the very least, I could have done with some warning.
The best counter-argument is probably the slippery slope argument: maybe there's no real way to have "just a little" censorship, and so you inevitably end up censoring things based on arbitrary whims. Not sure I buy that myself, but it seems like a live possibility. And slippery slope arguments have other issues in general. Also: it could be said that films such as the Saw films actually only fill a small niche in the media landscape, i.e. sensation-seeking types who genuinely enjoy gore are the vast majority of people who see them, so I don't see much need to worry about those films being thrust upon squeamish/gore-naive general audiences. The real problem, as I see it, is when it sneaks up on you: theoretically, you're warned because Game of Thrones is "for adults," but there was no additional warning for that particular shot despite the fact that it absolutely eclipses anything else on the show in my opinion. Sorry for the delayed reply, by the way; I know you wrote this a while ago. I go by Ashley Messinger on other sites, and I think I sent you a private message on YouTube once bemoaning the state of Doctor Who back when I cared about that.
She was involved in the Student Christian Movement, according to Wikipedia. This published John Macmurray's Clue to History (1938) - a key book of the 20th century. Claiming intellectual superiority to her might be a bit premature unless you know more of her background.
We should stop using the term "the elite" because they are anything but elite. The so-called leadership would be more appropriate.
I think Whitehouse held the opinion that even though she was basically a lone voice and therefore assured of receiving widespread mockery, she would have been falling below her own personal standards had she just sat back like everybody else and watched the creeping degeneracy unfold. By the late 1970s, she was about the only principled Briton left. Were the country being invaded by a foreign army, while all the native men caroused or even cheered as the sound of jackboots got louder, Mary Whitehouse would have stood alone and faced the enemy - sword in hand and in her petticoat.
In 1995 Whitehouse apparently appeared on the Mrs Merton Show, although not in the studio. I can't find any footage, but I'm sure they would have been giving her a spiteful kicking. A size-5 Patrick Cox Wannabe Loafer from behind and between the legs for the old dear, as she was slowly exiting the stage to hoots of derision from Cool Britannia. By this point, Caroline Aherne would have already flowered into the alcoholic husband-beater who would later attempt suicide and finally die of lung cancer at the age of 52.
Had Mary Whitehouse not been left to fight the British entertainment industry alone, we might not live in an era when her life is ridiculed while Aherne's is celebrated.
This is a bit of a digression, but your mention of the role played by social class (or, to be more precise class prejudice) in the tale of elite disdain for the courageous Mrs. Whitehouse, reminds me of a question about social class in America that you posted on Telegram some time ago. The best introduction to that topic is Paul Fussell's "Class." You can take a look at it on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/class00paul
Terrific article. I think we all knew why Destiny, Vaush and the like play those silly games in debates but it was very nice to see it here well articulated.
Agree that mockery is a good tactic. The Fool can say much truth in jest and point out hypocrisy without having to provide citations and references for those who want to argue points. If you view the whole of identity politics as a "cheap parody" designed to undermine common decency, then why not use the same strategy to reflect the damage back onto those currently parading themselves as the new moralists.
I have a significantly more negative reaction to the portrayal of violence in visual media than I have towards, for example, pornography. Funnily enough, that's sometimes a kind of "toy position" brought up by left-wing people in conversations about America's allegedly censorious TV culture (I say "allegedly" just because I don't watch American TV, so I can't really comment). Joe Rogan mentioned it once: "You can show horrific violence but not sex," etc. Regarding said gratuitous violence, though, it did always strike me that there was an artlessness to the way violence is presented in anything on television produced from at least the start of the 21st century onwards; the director often feels the need to marinade in the gore and, paraphrasing something half-remembered from the Distributist, to glory in pure human defacement with no higher purpose in store. See Game of Thrones. See BBC's Rome. Etc. There is an infamous shot in season four of the former wherein a character's eyes are gouged out in glorious hyper-real HD. Not sure what that added to my life. At the very least, I could have done with some warning.
The best counter-argument is probably the slippery slope argument: maybe there's no real way to have "just a little" censorship, and so you inevitably end up censoring things based on arbitrary whims. Not sure I buy that myself, but it seems like a live possibility. And slippery slope arguments have other issues in general. Also: it could be said that films such as the Saw films actually only fill a small niche in the media landscape, i.e. sensation-seeking types who genuinely enjoy gore are the vast majority of people who see them, so I don't see much need to worry about those films being thrust upon squeamish/gore-naive general audiences. The real problem, as I see it, is when it sneaks up on you: theoretically, you're warned because Game of Thrones is "for adults," but there was no additional warning for that particular shot despite the fact that it absolutely eclipses anything else on the show in my opinion. Sorry for the delayed reply, by the way; I know you wrote this a while ago. I go by Ashley Messinger on other sites, and I think I sent you a private message on YouTube once bemoaning the state of Doctor Who back when I cared about that.
She was involved in the Student Christian Movement, according to Wikipedia. This published John Macmurray's Clue to History (1938) - a key book of the 20th century. Claiming intellectual superiority to her might be a bit premature unless you know more of her background.