Why is it that when there's a massive surge in gang culture and knife-crime, the media are so sure that they have nothing to do with it?Remember when everyone at school was walking around howling "Arse!" from the Fast Show, or when you couldn’t find a single kid immune from Ali G-speak or, more recently, reciting "Bovvered", ad nauseam from the Catherine Tate Show? Who would argue against television taking credit for the latest catchphrase?
Another example of the media's contagious effect in setting trends is last year's sudden rise in popularity of Victoria Beckham's "pob". Surely our media helped inspire the thousands of girls who headed to their hairdresser's with specific instructions in mind…How about any idiot walking around slurring "Bud-wise-errr" thinking they were being the funniest thing since sliced bread? And remember the grisly "You've-Been-Tangoed" craze? Didn’t it end up in a spate of acts of emulation around the nation's schools?
So why is it that when there's a massive surge in gang culture and knife-crime, the media are so sure that they have nothing to do with it?
Channel 4 and the BBC's recent run of documentaries about Kids, Knives, Broken Lives and Street Weapons failed to analyse that one tiny little aspect. Did gangsta-rap play a part in glamourising anything by any chance? Or the normalisation of televisual ultraviolence and nastiness?
Another example of the media's contagious effect in setting trends is last year's sudden rise in popularity of Victoria Beckham's "pob". Surely our media helped inspire the thousands of girls who headed to their hairdresser's with specific instructions in mind…How about any idiot walking around slurring "Bud-wise-errr" thinking they were being the funniest thing since sliced bread? And remember the grisly "You've-Been-Tangoed" craze? Didn’t it end up in a spate of acts of emulation around the nation's schools?
So why is it that when there's a massive surge in gang culture and knife-crime, the media are so sure that they have nothing to do with it?
Channel 4 and the BBC's recent run of documentaries about Kids, Knives, Broken Lives and Street Weapons failed to analyse that one tiny little aspect. Did gangsta-rap play a part in glamourising anything by any chance? Or the normalisation of televisual ultraviolence and nastiness?
No-one's saying that the media are culpable, for goodness' sake - anybody with a bit of sense would rightly point the finger at the total collapse of parental control and sense of direction, and in turn at the vicious circle of social deprivation and family breakdown. But to think that the media are totally immune from responsibility does sound a bit iffy.
In the meantime, the bulletin of youngsters stabbed to death in London alone since 2008 reached 18 this week. Some may find the comparison offensive, but they've started to outnumber coalition casualties in Iraq. And no-one seems to have the slightest clue about what to do. In the wake of Ben Kinsella's murder last week, The Mirror started the commendable Stop Knives Save Lives campaign. It's great that some papers are finally conceding we're in front of a national emergency and acting accordingly. However, the idea of an amnesty to bring in the blades figures amongst their suggestions to stamp out knife murders. But hadn’t it been tried already in 2006?
1 comment:
Violence has been glamourised for a good few years now. Some rap and hip hop music has been doing so in disgraceful fashion. For years.
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