Once a butler, now a gangsta: the BBC pulls no punches! Impact! Ka-pow! Cue trailer!

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On principle, I would never ever go to any movie in which the trailer features a deep, rumbling digital synth note, a deep, male voice, blue smoky darkness pierced by explosions, a gun, and a series of low frequency juddering Dolby impacts every couple of seconds in the soundtrack -- sometimes accompanied by a blue-white flash onscreen, sometimes completely unmotivated by logic. In fact I just sit there with gritted teeth thinking 'You cretins! Do you think 'impact' and 'impact sounds' are the same thing?'

I would also never listen, on principle, to a radio station -- like the new BBC Radio 6 Music network -- which makes clear its contempt for me by commissioning station idents with impact noises and a male voice snarling the name and URL of the station as if he were annoucing the arrival of Dirty Harry in 'Magnum Force'.

'...from the BBC!' spits the announcer, with the twisted contemptuous cool of Arnold Schwartzenegger's slightly foolish British cousin, as if 'the BBC' was a gangsta godfather in a Guy Ritchie movie.

What the fuck? You cretins! It's the BBC, a great big cautious corporation dedicated to wall-to-wall mediocrity! Woman's Hour and The Archers and Tracey McLeod annoucing a Bruce Springsteen soundalike band called Marah as 'new music'. How can it be Dirty Harry too? (Well, I guess Dirty Harry was a just an unusually brutal policeman, and the BBC is a bit like the police, a public body with a license to enforce the status quo.)

Does anybody actually like gratuitous 'impact' in trailers and idents? What is this all about? What does it say to you about the societies we live in? Why is conformity and caution disguised as 'hardness'? Is this an American thing?

When the BBC stopped addressing us in the respectful tones of a butler and started snarling at us in this bully voice, was it a good day for me as a media consumer, or a bad one? Is the idea to cow people into listening to something tame with a faux- tough front end, does it appeal to some wish we have to hang with the 'tough guys'? Or is it just a convention, less and less linked to the aggression and violence it seems to portend? I mean, in 20 years are we all going to be saying 'pass the salt, dear!' in this stupid macho way, like 'Pass.. the salt...' with a menacing rumbling synth note and some sounds of punchbags being pummelled in the background?

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That's the bad way to present cultural products in the media. The good way, says me, is the clean modernist logo design of Paul Rand, the copywriting of Bill Bernbach, and the innovative jingles of Raymond Scott. All Americans too, although 1960s Americans.

Maybe the thing I really object to is the way the BBC tries to add 'impact' by doing this lame parody of the most violent tics of American popular culture, yet somehow gets it so wrong, ignoring the lucidity of someone like Paul Rand, the civility and civic-mindedness of a lot of US culture.

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

And I'd tie this in with Susan Sontag's definition of rock music; 'aggressive normality'.

Between the 60s and now, rock music changed from being 'subversive' to being 'aggressively normal'. The same thing happened in media. My heroic triumvirate of Rand, Bernbach and Scott were essentially pushing Modernist ideals -- progress, rationality and originality -- and saying 'The world is your playground. Explore. Contribute. Experiment'. The current message seems to be 'It's a hard world out there, be sure you're on the side of the winners. Fuck lucid, liberal, progressive. It's about power, it's about weapons, it's about impact. Run with us or lose.'

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

My first impression: I take it you do realize the irony of triumphing Paul Rand's glorious modernist creativity when it was the public face of super-conformist/military-industrial-complex companies like IBM? It doesn't necessarily detract from what you're saying so much as complicates it, I guess. As for Bernbach: "Momus -- do you like Volkswagon?"

(Additional irony: as I wrote this, there was an ad for the new Adam Sandler movie, ewwww...)

― Michael Daddino, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sad, true and a reason to feel blue, Nick. But what disturbs me these days is the new currency of "Arrgh! Watch out for that Explosion!" drama. It remains the same from programme to programme (exploding parked cars, shock pregnancies, gay characters)from the Saturday Night Drama to the godforsaken daytime Doctors. There is now a utopian commonality to all TV drama, a standard bodycount, a uniform amount of tears and choice of plotlines. As a reality to peer into and as a window on Britain, to me it seems to me "BBC Dramaland" is somewhere between the world of Donald MacIntyre and the Damon and Debbie special. The human moment is lost in favour of placard moralising and the scary world outside the characters front door. Surprise, surprise the diachotomy with whats going on outside my window is stark and comic. It seems at the moment we're getting a mean of thrills in our drama and if nothing else it must be making the country seem very stale to those who see little more of it than the idiot box. And possibly very frightening.

― Paul Henty, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

the odd thing is that actual real advertising in the UK — as opposed to the bbc's often rather desperate advertising for itself on itself as a system of channels — is still generally much more elliptical than the american equivalent (i don't just mean graham heffer vs crazy eddy, but the whole "for god's sake don't let on that you're selling a product" thing that many brit ads have going) (and many don't, i guess, but even the brashest fast food sales-pitch is liely to be goosed by some little twist of bogus hornby-oid social insight about men vs women.... )

bbc2's long series of idents remain little islands of vestigial oddness on a channel which no longer really knows what it's for (apart from gardening and cookery)

― mark s, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

As for "agressive normality" (Sontag has no rebop in her whatsoever, so it's not like she would know), I have considerably less patience for the most mainstream of mainstream movies than I do for their musical conterparts. I've never quite understood why, but I think I'd now argue that pop music is much less dependent on a stock set of emotional cues than contemporary Hollywood movies or television are. Or maybe it is EVEN MORE than Hollywood, only it really doesn't matter -- paying attention to the truly interchangeable aspects of pop songs distracts us from what's really going on. Haven't really thought this one through fully yet, sorry.

― Michael Daddino, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I take it you do realize the irony of triumphing Paul Rand's glorious modernist creativity when it was the public face of super-conformist/military-industrial- complex companies like IBM?

Yes, that's a good point, and I suppose my answer would be, at least IBM and CBS and the rest were keen, back then, to have a liberal image. Sometimes the cart leads the horse, and sometimes a liberal image can tie you to liberal policies. At least they were making the right noises.

Now, it seems to be the other way around. The BBC basically has a wishy washy liberal stance (for instance, reporting the death of the creator of Barbie, they quickly get to the stuff about how she was criticized by feminists and had to make dolls in different racial types) but likes to put a hard image at its front end, its 'logo end'.

I don't know which is preferable, having public bodies trying to appear liberal with Vietnam going on in the background, or having public bodies trying to appear 'hard' when their actual content is so mealy-mouthed and politically correct.

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

is this a view-from-japan thing tho? (or a radio-only thing?) bbc one's selling of itself on itself is more fey than aggressive, exceopt for promo for "specials" (eg on casualty or eastenders, when something "big" is going to happen: these are always a loud bore but they are still the exception more than the rule) (maybe they have different more aggressive promo in other countries) (maybe i'm just too practiced at screening it out)

(i just remembered that the role of bbc2 is to screen buffy, the simpsons and malcolm in the middle, for those stranded in terrestrial)

― mark s, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I don't see UK terrestrial TV here, but I can watch the BBC 1 news on the web, and sometimes they show the station ident right before it. I was quite surprised to see one featuring a very fey bunch of ballet dancers on a clifftop the other day. So I guess I'm talking about Radios 1, 5, and 6 mostly. And cinema trailers. And it may be the Japan angle that makes it seem so strange. Here, TV never shows any violence and never has a strident tone. The newsman bows to you, for god's sake! It's all like 'I am inexcusable, pardon me for living, now here is the weather, if you permit.'

I wonder if Radio 6 have a policy document detailing strategies to attract passive aggressive CDE social groups (or whatever they call them, Tom?) by using exhausted cod American station idents modelled on Reaganite hawkish war movie trailers (alas back in Bush's America)?

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I hadn't really noticed all this...I guess I live inside my head.

― jel --, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

C2DE, Momus - and no it's more the future Bs and C1s they're going for. I agree that 6 Music's advertising is a horror but no time to analyse it all now, sorry!

― Tom, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

On the aggressive normality theme, here's a review of a Moldy Peaches single that appeared in the NME this March:

'Despicable, juvenile comedy cunts. Dressing like Merry Men and five foot rabbits, drinking your own widdle in cocktails and singing about defecating into condoms is marvellous behaviour if your band happens to rock like Belzebub's [sic] jiggling wrecking-ball bollocks. But if, like Moldy Peaches on their new single, it resembles a mentally-retarded They Might Be Giants with their heads in a bucket of cold sick, you deserve to have the words 'FUCKING STUDENTS' carved three inches deep into your face with your own 'wacky' plastic arrowhead... Twats.'

What this review is saying very clearly is that it's only OK to be deviant if you express your strange ideas aggressively. Deviant ideas expressed gently are impermissible.

My take, of course, is completely the reverse (I like the Moldy Peaches. They sound more like VU than TMBG). I think that deviant ideas expressed gently (does 'Venus In Furs' rock like Beelzebub?) are much more interesting, original, courageous and fresh. Like Bill Bernbach's 'Lemon' ad for VW. A gentle campaign touting the car's unusual ugliness, it had neither aggression nor normality. With great success, it played to the idea of the quirky, loveable outsider -- the diametrical opposite, you could say, of the violent cop.

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Deviant ideas expressed gently are impermissible.

I agree that the 'revolution = loud hard fast' equation sucks. But for me the Moldy Peaches provoke the desire to beat them over the head with a keyboard. I don't think dismissing one side of a situation means automatic embrace of the other.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Another Sunday, and Nick's driving himself into a foamy lather over the bloody BBC. Perhaps the focus group said it was OK to be ironic.

I would personally never listen to a radio station that presents the aggressive normality of Q magazine as its playlist. What a missed opportunity!

But if you think that's annoying, read Neil Spencer's Fischerspooner review in today's Observer.

― suzy, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The New Adam Sandler Movie (not Deeds, The P.T.A one) is in competition at Cannes .

― anthony, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Radio 6 is merely another head of the BBC Hydra. And with each head grown the power of the body politic is further diluted. Possibly the BBC's continued ghettoisation of what it perceives to be minority interests (look! Radio specifically for Black People!) is an attempt to be all things to all men, which, as a public service broadcaster is essentially it's job. I would argue that this is counterproductive, all you are doing is driving people further into the holes that they've already dug for themselves. On the up side, at least it keeps Phill Jupitus out of of my consciousness. More disturbing however is that the further you drive any taste/sect/lifestyle choice away from the mainstream the closer you are to creating irreversible rifts between groups. Mutual distrust develops, with terrible consequences for popular culture, the shibboleth created by millions of seperate voices. As for the Fischerspooner review....it's not a just image, it's just an image.

― Matt Fallaize, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Matt: personally I welcome the coming tribal war. As long as it's a friendly war, like football, with only minor injuries and small damage to property.

Having dug myself into the hole of pure sound, I find only one programme on the whole BBC radio network vital: Mixing It. Of course, if they had programmes dedicated to experimental folk and spooky kabuki vaudeville I would be there. But they don't.... yet.

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

As long as the war results in a polyphonic and pluralist (apologies for alliteration) shouting match then I agree with you. There's nothing healthier. What I fear is a torpid detente, with people retreating further into their prejudices. Though perhaps I should be giving people more credit.

― Matt Fallaize, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Okay, so what did Mr Spencer say about Fishcherspooner in the Observer (it's not in the online version)? Is this another case of British critics (usually the ones schooled at the NME's nasty academy) failing to 'license' New York art groups to bring the gentle deviancy of the NY art world over to Britain? And if so, is it another example of what this thread is about: the British media's stereotyping of American culture as 100% populist and 'aggressively normal' (ie Nick Hornby making a pilgrimage to Asbury Park NJ and being carried away by the corny old bollocks of Marah)?

Ned: for me the Moldy Peaches provoke the desire to beat them over the head with a keyboard

Is it only peaceful groups who bring out the violent person in you, Ned? Oh, no, I recall you also want to rage against Rage Against The Machine... with a machine.

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Another Sunday, and Nick's driving himself into a foamy lather over the bloody BBC.

Yes, I've become Edna Welthorpe (Mrs.) of Tokyo, haven't I? I actually wrote the BBC a letter complaining about the grammar in a piece on the Radio 3 website about Surrealism last week. It was by Louisa Buck, and this is a representative extract:: '...while Surrealism may not have changed the world in quite the way it's founder's intended, it's rebellion against established ways of thinking and seeing has gone way beyond the clichés...' A BBC official actually wrote back to me saying 'sorry about the mistakes... I have amended the errors'!

Now let's try to get them to 'correct' Radio 6 Music.

― Momus, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Is it only peaceful groups who bring out the violent person in you, Ned?

It makes the contrast all the more marked.

Oh, no, I recall you also want to rage against Rage Against The Machine... with a machine.

You forgot the word 'gun.' Though actually if contrast *is* the answer, then maybe I need to do that one trick that one corrupt Roman emperor supposedly did about crushing his victims with tons of flower petals. Didn't you bring that up once? Seems an appropriate way for Tom Morello to go.

Then again, all I have to really do is dig up this picture for cheap and unfair giggles regarding said guitarist:

http://www.metal-sludge.com/ExposedRATM2.jpg

Who knew he collaborated with Phil Oakey in high school?

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 28 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I've no idea why the review does not appear but a good precis is - since I can't be arsed to type it out - Spencer begins by assuming that Americans never took to the synth (uh, whaaaaa?) so therefore people who use electronic music there, if white, think they're being dead futuristic. Then he has a few goes at them for being of the art world, doing strange performances, and making Human Leaguish filler (and did not spot the Wire cover).

Which is, of course incredibly disturbing - I did a feature on art bands for a magazine a few years back and Mr Spencer happily commented on the freshness and vitality of groups who come from just that background. Maybe he should get his oil changed.

Don't worry about doing an Edna, Nick. Whenever I receive anything from a municipal body which contains spelling or grammatical errors, I tend to send it back for correction.

― suzy, Monday, 29 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Neil Spencer in rubbish review shocker.

Moldy Peaches bring out the brute in me too. Aren't the reviews quoted/summarised here not so much promoting 'aggressive normality' but extending the definition of 'normality' to include (as the reviewers see it) synthpop and rag-week japes, and then getting pissed off about that? Now maybe the reviews are bad reviews for failing to take into account the bands' art-world backgrounds, but on their own terms the reviewers are asking the bands to make more effort to be different, not less.

― Tom, Monday, 29 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Using normality as a synonym for predictability there, which is maybe a bit of a cheat. But I do think there's a difference between the jaded seen-it-before NME haXoR and some hypothetical rock fan who thinks the Moldies are a bunch of fuckin' weirdoes like.

― Tom, Monday, 29 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I haven't seen the trailer M mentions, but I LOVE these trailer cliches. Especially when trailer-voice man starts off with any of: "It was a time of..." "In a world where nothing...", etc.

It's like there's a movie trailer drinking game to be had in here somewhere. You have to eat the entire box of popcorn if someone yells "Nooooooooooooo!" or if a fireball rips apart a CGI cast of hundreds.

Therefore Star Wars I (Phantom) had the best trailer EVAH, ("Noooo" + fireball simultaneous) and it had "Wipe them out. Aaaaaaaaall of them", which cracked me up so much the first time I saw it. Plus extra points for being a dreadful film in reality.

― Alan T, Monday, 29 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think it is disingenuous to pull out merely radio 1,5 and 6 (arf - how we laughed) as examples of this aggression when partially they were designed to be that way in the first place. If in creating and presenting what is seen as youth culture one markets to the youth in a way which has been tested - predominantly in the US admittedly - to work and that would include snappy trailers, shouting - hell being grammatically incorrect. It is interesting though that Radio One (no long 1FM) has a very varied set of idents - usually tailored to the particular presenters, often picking up on the individual presentes lack of skill or talent. Of course they are not cowing people into listening to something tame.

Oddd that you see Home Service BBC to have previously spoke in the tones of a butler - someone who is usually well educated and capable but socially beneath the listener (that is how I infer it).

― Pete, Monday, 29 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(Rumbling ominous low synth tone, darkness filled with smoke and blue light. Gravel-voice): 'You knew them as butlers, but now they're back ...as you've never seen them before. The BBC.' (Impact sounds, wheels spinning in gravel, looming silhouettes blocking your path.) 'Meet Mr Big. They call him The Gatekeeper.' (Machete slams into a block of wood, a chicken has its neck slashed, blood spatters the screen. Mr Big leers into the camera, signals to henchmen. They sit at desks and read continuity announcements.) 'Meet Oakley, the political correspondent.' (Horrible shaven-headed Nazi glares unflinchingly into camera.) 'He'll give you a new perspective.' (Oakley seen from boot's eye view, stomping camera.) 'And Marr, the arts reporter.' (Marr is slashing a canvas with a razor. He wheels round to face us, brandishing his weapon. Paint goes everywhere.) 'Once they brought you the News at nine. Now they want your mind. Once they brought you Radio 3. Now they drive a resprayed XJ6 up and down Streatham High Road. The BBC is back...' (impact sound, explosion) 'You'd better give them what they're asking for. Or they might just get... sensitive.' (Cataclysmic apocaplypse, caption: 'Released now, various media near you.')

― Momus, Wednesday, 1 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You took 48 hours to come up with that?

― One Man, Wednesday, 1 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Momus: The newsman bows to you, for god's sake! It's all like 'I am inexcusable, pardon me for living, now here is the weather, if you permit.'

Yes, they do bow! And those self-effacing words are not far off. But what is going on with the use of placing next to the newscasters those big-headed dolls in the likenesses of important politicians? Somehow those funny dolls don't appear in keeping with the serious tone and formality.

― Melinda Mess-Injure, Thursday, 2 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You took 48 hours to come up with that?

I was just the head creative. Actually my second string team of copywriters, runners and stringers thrashed out the details over cappuchino and cocaine in the New Marlborough Street building.

Doesn't the client like it? It's meant to give them C2DE profile.

― Momus, Thursday, 2 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The client would have loved it if they could have seen through their ridiculous sunglasses.

― Matt Fallaize, Thursday, 2 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

alan t's trailer pretty much uses the exact words of the intro to xena: warrior princess, which currently indoctrinates sat.morn kiddies in the ways of camp nudge-nudge californian leathah-gay culcher hurrah

― mark s, Thursday, 2 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Some clarifications: Marr should in fact be kicking in a bank of televisions showing an Emin video fillum and you forgot Jeremies Paxman and Bowen responding to staged answers with (respectively) cocking a loaded pistol at the reluctant Labour spin doc and an eyeball-rolling 'well, duh' when some eedjit asks if the Israelis have agreed to cease fire..

The C2DE demographic should also be given a racy new name eg. BLINGERS AND MINGERS, to assist with the press campaign.

― suzy, Thursday, 2 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Plus a flak-jacketed Orla Guerin hurdling tanks with contemptuous ease, a wide eyed child under each arm

― Matt Fallaize, Thursday, 2 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

three years pass...

Hmm.

― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 20 January 2006 18:01 (twenty years ago)

Ha, Momus accidentally stepped on his answer in the process of asking the question: Why is conformity and caution disguised as 'hardness'? This should be pretty much intuitive!

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 20 January 2006 18:06 (twenty years ago)

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