Margaret Hodge: Harbinger of the Dark Ages
Poor Margaret Hodge. You have to feel sorry for her. She sees anti-intellectualism and knee-jerk nationalism stalking across the land like fifth and sixth horsemen of the apocalypse and thinks, ‘I’d like some of that action.’
She made the mistake, however, of choosing the wrong target. If she’d laid into that nest of communists, the complacent, middle-class bastion Radio 4 or the pernicious, inquisitorial, politically correct Race Relations ‘Industry’, she’d have been quids in and a grateful nation would have carried her around on their shoulders. But no, she rashly chose the Proms.
The audiences for many of our greatest cultural events – I’m thinking in particular of the Proms, but it is true of – is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this. I know that this isn’t about making every audience completely representative, but if we claim great things for our sectors in terms of their power to bring people together, then we have a right to expect that they will do that wherever they can.
She’s right when she says ‘this isn’t about making every audience completely representative’. It’d be difficult to do that without herding a demographically balanced crowd into the Royal Albert Hall at gunpoint every September. This is about changing the content of the event to make it more appealing to a broader audience. In other words making the common dominator that bit lower.
It’s reverse aspiration - instead of raising up the lower orders, Hodge and others (see also her fellow anti-intellectual Jane Garvey) want to drag down British culture to them, thus ruining it for everybody. You piss off those who are already enthusiastic and serve up a watered down dog’s breakfast to those you’re trying to reach.
This isn’t about doing away with elitism (perceived or otherwise), or making the arts more accessible and cheaper for the masses, it’s about changing the arts themselves to fit targets. It’s not about championing them, it’s about debasing them. It another ‘choice’ agenda disguised as cultural barbarism and homogeneity.
Not that I have any particular axe to grind about the Proms. I wonder if she had the classic stereotypical image of the Proms in mind when she made her speech: a bunch of Hoorays braying away while having a Union Flag hanging out of every orifice. (You can see why Gordon Brown would slap Hodge down, that’s pretty much what he said he wanted for the country as a whole.) Good luck to them but I’ll get my classical music somewhere else, thanks.
We’re surrounded by British institutions that don’t have wholly representative audiences. Do we work through them all, until everything is the same uniform brown sludge, like the one you get when you mix all the plasticine colours together? You end up with the antithesis of diversity.
In theory, the anti-multiculturalists should be cock-a-hoop. In reality though, they won’t be because Hodge is threatening ‘our’ values (whatever they are, possibly the tolerance and fairness of popular legend) rather than the values (whatever they are, hand-chopping and stoning probably) of some imagined dusky horde.
The thing is, once you’d addressed the Proms, where would you stop? I, for instance, am not a fan of that great British institution, Big Brother. I think it demeans the participant, the viewer and us all. How best to make it appealing to me? Make sure at least 30 per cent have the contestants have at least double figure IQs? Instead of showing an outside shot and playing birdsong when the contestants are swearing or being libellous, why not cut to a shot of a famous painting (something by Hieronymus Bosch might be appropriate) accompanied by Bach’s cello suites? Why not? Because Channel 4 would be burnt down by a mob within days, that’s why not.
What about that other great British institution, The Sun newspaper. I don’t think it fosters a sense of belonging or ‘people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this’. How about having, say, 30% of the articles having words longer than three syllables. Put a bloke with his top off on Page 3 now and again. Have one day a week where the over-weening ethos of the paper isn’t the blackest misanthropy and ignorance and bigotry.
I could go on all day, improving our great British institutions. Make the Top Gear bunch review mountain bikes every other week. Introduce a Battle Royale storyline into Coronation Street. Fewer right-wing demagogues owning British newspapers. Do you think Margaret might be interested in moving in my direction, even a little?
You see, Hodge’s pop at the Proms appeals to the nation’s baser instincts. The feeble minded and Billy Britain racist will mutter darkly about ‘political correctness’ and ‘diversity targets’ and, no doubt, ‘Muslims’. The aficionados fearing for the arts being adulterated will be resentful and there’s no guarantee that your target audience will turn away from whatever it is they’re enjoying now.
In my brighter moments I believe arts and culture have the power to save us. Just not in the hands of the likes of Hodge. A manager who refers to the arts and culture as ‘our sectors’.
Posted on March 4th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
| See also • Look at her now, she’s starting to yawn • The petri dish of ambition • Daniel Davies: What we need is spin |
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I’d suggest you’ve made a similar mistake (at least in part) that I have observed others making. (Note that I haven’t read the speech, and haven’t really paid enough attention to the Proms, so I could be totally wrong here.) You’ve seen ‘Proms’ and thought ‘Last Night’. I say this because “a bunch of Hoorays braying away while having a Union Flag hanging out of every orifice” is, aiui, a peculiarly Last Night phenomenon, and that, if you include the masses at the Proms in the Parks that happen at the same time, seems to me to be exactly what she is after, with its huge popularity and all.
Of course, your argument doesn’t actually hang on that point and I broadly agree with you otherwise.
To be fair, I did prefix that with ‘I wonder if she had the classic stereotypical image of the Proms in mind when she made her speech’ but I think you’re right that that was the image she was trying to conjure and what most people, including me, automatically and initially thought of.
I’m not sure we do agree. I’m suggesting that in terms of the de-eliticising (I didn’t want to say dumbing down, so I made up a word) of the arts that the Minister is talking about, she actually probably approves of the Last Night. I would suggest that it is the other nights that are the elitist things that she is talking about disapprovingly.
For the record, I’d am in favour of the Proms, even if they are elitist, and intend to go this year.
There’s nothing wrong with so-called ‘elitism’. Every time the charge is levelled at me I reply that yes, I do indeed hold the very controversial opinion that very good things are better than absolute shit - that Elgar is, in fact, better than whatever waste of good meat is currently occupying the #1 spot in the charts. If people don’t “get” what is, after all, often difficult, dense music, well, that’s their fault for not putting the work in. I’ve no particular love of the Proms, but it is what it is, and it’s pretty bloody harmless in the overall scheme of things. Statements like this make Enver look like a fuckwit with a chip on her shoulder spoiling for a fight.
MP for Barking. Says it all really.
I’ll echo Jono’s point. The Proms are generally fantastic concerts, and at £5 a ticket all that’s needed to attract a wider audience is some clever advertising.
The Last Night is entirely unrepresentative and awful.
I’ve no particular love of the Proms
I do.
I’m really struggling to know whether either Hodge or Cameron - or for that matter, almost anybody who comments on the Proms - is talking about the Proms, or the Last Night. If she’s saying the Last Night is not inclusive then I think she’s right, but there’s not much can be done about it and it’s only one night out of many. If it’s the Proms as such - then I’d suggest that they’re actually pretty close to an ideal, great works of art accessible to pretty much anybody who wants to go and listen to them. They’re the National Gallery of the Ear.
Is it that they’re only classical music? If so, so what? There are concerts all over the country every night if you want any other kind of music. The function of the Proms is to bring together the best of classical music, new and old, into one place for several weeks of the summer for the benefit of the listening public. There is nothing whatsoever elitist about them other than that they are good. Anybody who wished to create a socialist policy of the arts would bewell advised to take them as a model.
But what is her objection, and to what? What is Cameron’s counter-objection? I really don’t know. I do not know what they are talking about and I suspect that they don’t either.
I also want to challenge our sectors square on …
Is this a … cricket … metaphor?
… all too often our sectors aren’t at their best when embodying common belongings themselves. The audiences for many of our greatest cultural events – I’m thinking in particular of the Proms … – is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this. I know that this isn’t about making every audience completely representative, but if we claim great things for our sectors in terms of their power to bring people together, then we have a right to expect that they will do that wherever they can. I know that many organisations have made great strides, but there is much further to go.
(my emphasis)
Well, what makes me feel ill at ease is knowing that I’m excluded from something even though I have an interest in it. Most likely because I’m not rich enough or don’t know the right people. At least I can buy a ticket for the Proms, and so can just about anyone else. The hall is packed out for six weeks. You don’t make something more accessible by changing the program. You do it by lowering the barriers to entry, or by making sure that there’s a set of steps in place to get people over the barrier, should they choose to go that way.
It’s of a piece with the changes in ELQ funding.
Great post.
is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this.
Hodge seems to want two different things: greater inclusiveness for the Proms concerts in her head (has anybody yet asked if she’s been to one?) and - to put it bluntly - compulsory Elgar for new migrants as part of Labour’s current obsession with ‘British values’
Given Margaret “there’s no child abuse going on in my Council’s care homes even though some of the staff have turned whistleblower” Hodge’s background, she would probably like to see a greater representative population of paedophiles in the audience, preferably abusing some children during the interval, so that she can cover up for them.
DK
Death is too good for this fat stupid harridan