Keeping an eye on the media today, the whole Jerry Springer thing has got more and more high pitched and out of hand. There have been demonstrators outside the BBC, and even threats made against senior executives following a posting of their contact details on a website. However the director general of the BBC, himself a practising Christian has said that having seen the show there is nothing in the show which he believes to be blasphemous. (See here for a summary)

However, the Oxford Diocese has posted a news item about the show, an item from a Christian (Toby Scott, Media Relations Officer for the Methodist Church) who went to see the show, and even counted the swear words. You can read the whole news item here. However I will repeat two paragraphs that describe the controversial aspects and put them in context.

“The show does portray Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Adam and Eve and God as characters on stage, in a scene in which the Devil has forced Jerry Springer to try and arrange a reconciliation between heaven and hell. None of the characters of Jesus, Mary, Adam and Eve or God are shown as sexual deviants. The scene does contain profanity, at least one instance coming from the Jesus character, but the entire tenor of it is, oddly enough, largely in keeping with mainstream theology. When Jesus is accused of being absent from key events, he asks in return why people were absent when he was on the cross. In the end, the Devil’s inability accept that he is wrong and unwillingness to change means that he must remain in hell, while Jesus is clearly identified as the saviour of humankind.”

“There is clearly material here that will cause offence to some. However, the show overall is not deliberately and specifically offensive to Christians. Its barbs are aimed at the society that allows and the people who take part in shows such as Jerry Springer, and support it by watching the channels that show it and buy products from the advertisers who buy time slots. In other words, the satire is aimed at pretty much all of us. Springer’s descent into hell and meeting with the holy figures is a dramatic device that allows him to realise some of the error of his ways. Whereas the opening chorus sings “I want to be on TV, choose me Jerry please,” at the end the closing lines include “Take care of each other, and yourselves.” It is in some ways a journey from selfishness to concern for others.”

I have a little poser for you. Below I’ll describe two programmes. Both have been seen elsewhere before coming to TV. One has already been shown on pay TV, but is coming to free-to-air soon, the other hasn’t been on TV before, but again is about to come to free-to-air. All the information I will use to describe the programmes is accurate and can be confirmed from freely available reputable sources.

The first is a show whose initial concept was to try to broaden the appeal of opera. The writer has enjoyed considerable success, including a successful comedy series on BBC Radio 4. It has been staged by the National Theatre, and currently is enjoying a successful west end run. The show is due to move to New York later this year. The show has won multiple best show awards including the Evening Standard and Olivier Awards. As well as receiving critical acclaim from theatre critics, the public and the theatre industry, the show has also attracted celebrities from around the world: Sir Michael Caine, Simon Cowell, Sheryl Crow, Michael Douglas, Kelsey Grammer, Harvey Keitel, Sir Ian McKellan, Helen Mirren, Pink, Rachel Stevens, Meg Ryan, Sigourney Weaver and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The show was described by the Guardian as “…a mega hit… this is easily the hottest ticket in London.”, and the Daily Mirror billed it as “The greatest production on earth… two hours and 20 minutes of sheer theatrical bliss….”.

Turning to the other, it is a movie that is regarded as one of the most violent of recent years. The film has a number of extended scenes of graphic, sadistic violence and torture, some lasting as long as twenty-five minutes. The well known director has in a previous film included a graphic execution and disembowelling scene at the climax of that movie. The film is in a large part based on books that have been declared as blasphemous, and banned by the Catholic Church. The film includes dialogue that is regarded as the cause of a large amount of religious hatred and violence. At showings of this movie, audience members have been removed suffering from symptoms of shock, and many are distressed by the experience. There are some cases of audience members having died during the most graphic parts of the movie.

With one of these, as a result of advance publicity, many leaders of prominent groups, without having seen it themselves, gave away free tickets to shows as they considered it so important that everybody should have a chance to see it. With the other, prominent groups have campaigned against it, saying that it is offensive and blasphemous. As a result of an e-mail campaign over 15,000 complaints the majority of complainants objecting on principle, not having seen the show, have been received prior to the TV showing. In addition Mediawatch, who monitor TV standards have written to the chairman of the TV station asking that it not be shown on free-to-air.

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the news over the past year or so, you’ll know exactly which two programmes I am talking about, and will of course have realised which show the complaints are being received about.

However, if you used only the facts that I have given, and no other information, you would quite probably conclude that the 15,000 complaints were received about the blasphemous violent movie, rather than the award winning show. When I say that the award winning show is “Jerry Springer: The Opera”, and the movie is “The Passion of the Christ”, things become more clear!

The main point I want to make is that, if they receive an e-mail that says the BBC is going to show a programme that contains thousands of swearwords and is blasphemous, most Christians will get concerned (indeed 15,000 of them have complained). However with The Passion of the Christ, it was trailed, and indeed most people seem to think that it is strongly based on the bible. The fact that Mel Gibson based large parts of the film used two books that were banned as blasphemous by the Catholic Church, and that those sequences can’t be found in any Bible, usually comes as a big surprise. The fact is that both campaigns are examples of exactly what I have done here. The campaigners know exactly who they’re trying to sell their message to, and are highlighting specific facts in order to get the desired response. Basically it is spin.

Moving on to the secondary question about whether either of those controversial programmes should be shown (incidentally “Passion of the Christ” is the one that has already gone out on pay TV), I would say yes, but with caveats. The caveats being that in both cases there is significant content that people may find offensive, or be disturbed by, therefore it has to be shown at a suitable time, and with suitable warnings. One is excessively violent, the other uses large amounts of bad language, both of which are offensive to large proportions of the audience (not just Christians), both contain sections considered blasphemous and sections that are religiously offensive to some group or other in the multi-ethnic United Kingdom.

Both have been particularly successful with large numbers of people in the UK. The BBC is paid for by everybody in the UK with a TV, and therefore has a duty to provide programming that will appeal to both broad areas, and specialist programming that will appeal to minority groups. In simple terms it has to appeal to some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. However I believe that to do that it can’t appeal to all of the people all of the time, and that if it is forced to do that then ultimately it will be lost, if not in this charter review, but in ten years time.

There are loads of programmes on the BBC that I don’t watch, and that if I had to pay on a per programme basis, there are a number I would be quite happy not pay for, however it is important to realise that for all of those programmes there is an audience, even if I’m not part of it. The same is true of both Jerry Springer: The Opera, and The Passion of the Christ.

I know people who, having actually seen Jerry Springer: The Opera on stage, loved it, and are looking forward to watching it again on TV. Others I know don’t want to see it at all. The BBC and others offers a choice of channels, precisely to allow people to have a choice over what to watch, and there has been ample publicity of the content of the programme.

Incidentally, as to whether I’ll watch it – probably not. Based on what I’ve heard, it doesn’t sound like something I’d enjoy, but besides that there is something else that I want to watch on another channel, I’ll watch that instead!

I’m sure someone at the Make Poverty History campaign thought it would be a really great idea to give a visible launch to the campaign through the Vicar of Dibley, the BBC were probably also keen, as alongside the launch show that went out on New Years Day, they also got a Christmas special into the bargain, which is of course where the problem comes from.

Firstly it is worth noting that, in common with a lot of representations of the Church of England on TV, the Vicar of Dibley is stunningly inaccurate. (As a side note, on one of the occasions that EastEnders used my parents church a couple of years ago, the scripted service bore no relation to a real service and the vicar ended up providing the text of a service on the day. Revd Richard has also ended up on screen as part of an ITV drama that used our churchyard through a similar mess that left Richard as the person who knew what was supposed to happen at a military funeral.) Turning back to the Vicar of Dibley, the problem is that although most people closely involved with churches could easily list off a number of the inaccuracies, the majority of the audience won’t notice any problem at all. Essentially, Vicar of Dibley is a Richard Curtis comedy series that just happens to involve a vicar, however by it’s subject matter it is much more likely to attract a Church audience than any other similar comedy.

Had the BBC just gone with the Make Poverty History episode, there probably wouldn’t be too much of a problem, however the episode that went out on Christmas day has kicked up quite a stir. A number of the secular discussions I’ve read on the episode have said that it was probably the worst episode they’ve done, and that a number of the jokes were pushing the bounds somewhat. In church terms, another big problem area was that Richard Curtis chose the Christmas episode to pretty strongly bang home his opinion on the whole Jeffrey John/Gene Robinson affair, which not suprisingly was, like most of the population at large, he didn’t see what the problem with a gay bishop was. Whilst I and a large part of the Church of England may well agree with much of what he was trying to say, in light of the ongoing debate and calls for restraint, it was delivered at the wrong time, and I can very much appreciate that the way it was delivered, wrapped up as it was in a series of jokes that a number of people would regard as offensive, and delivered as it was on the day of a major Christian festival, went down spectacularly badly. As I said to Beth at the time, I thought that the episode would spectacularly upset at least 50% of the church. The whole issue needs to be sensitively handled when dealing with groups of church people, both groups need to respect each others opinion and recognise that in both groups the beliefs are deeply held. However in the case of the Christmas episode, sensitivity went out of the window.

After that, it was with no great suprise when one of the notices on our pew sheet this week gave the address of the BBC Complaints/Information department, and suggested that we might like to express our opinions on the Christmas Day episode.

So then, into that situation, on New Years Day we got the second special. As I have said, this was an altogether more serious show. One of the key strands of the plot was to launch the Make Poverty History campaign, and how in general, we are much more concerned by trival matters such as the new traffic lights outside Sainsbury’s, rather than the fact that 30,000 people a day die in the world as a result of poverty. There have been a number of similar campaigns over recent years to do with fair trade, writing of third-world debt, but this campaign is tied to the fact that during 2005 the UK is going to host the G8 summit and hold the EU presidency, as a result an incredible array of organisations, including the major UK Churches, and well know charities that St James supports have brought together the campaign. Before Christmas I’d recieved several flyers from a number of different places, aimed at church people, and trailing the campaign, and the special episode.

The episode of the Vicar of Dibley finished by using one of the Make Poverty History videos (video 3 on the web site if you didn’t see the programme), and then a simple closing credits sequence, powerful enough that the BBC put up the number for their action line for people affected by the programme to call. Whilst on it’s own it probably would have gone down fine, and to the audience at large it probably did significantly raise the profile of the campaign, in the context of the Christmas episode it is a real problem.

From my point of view on the Communications group at St James it poses a big problem. The campaign is a major series of events backed by charities that our Church supports, indeed backed by the Church of England itself. The topics are continuations of subjects we’ve covered with the Youth Group, and within the wider church community. However the main way that much of the public will now know about the campaign is through a TV show that has offended a proportion of the church, but in a way that the general public would probably not appreciate. Such is the lack of subtlety with the press that the fact that as a church we are supporting the Make Poverty History campaign but quite separately members are offended by the programme that launched it will get lost, and if reported is more than likely to come out as St James being against the whole Make Poverty History campaign. Having said that it needs to be handled in such a way that those who have been offended by the Christmas episode do not feel that their opinions have been ignored, nor that their right to be offended has denied. Whilst I’m not quite sure the best way to steer things through at St James, from my point of view I can certainly feel a stiff letter to the BBC may be a place to start. Whilst thier opinion is pretty obvious from this episode, and their choice of location for Sunday Worship on Boxing Day, I would hope that they regard the Make Poverty History campaign as more important than continuing to stir up the ongoing debates within the Church!