[A-List] Social structures of accumulation: poverty as entertainment

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Continuing our occasional series devoted to the use of news media as
purveyors of ultra-individualistic, narcissistic and social darwinistic
ideology geared to the reproduction of the present configuration of advanced
capitalism.

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A poverty of curiosity

Gareth McLean
Wednesday January 28, 2004
The Guardian

Way back when ITV broadcast proper current affairs programmes in primetime,
Matthew Parris took up a challenge from World in Action to live on
supplementary benefit for a week. Parris, then a new MP full of puppyish
enthusiasm for Thatcherite dogma, had been defending the low level of
benefits for the unemployed. And so World in Action shipped him to Scotswood
in Newcastle, where his budget for living was £26.80, and his neighbours
included unemployed steelworkers, single parents and impoverished families.
He shopped thriftily, accepted drinks from strangers, and came to realise
that life on benefits was tough. But, he maintained, that was the way it
should be. Moreover, individuals' problems could not be blamed on society,
economics or politics, regardless of whatever those he met during his
experiment thought.

Twenty years on, Parris returns to the north-east in For the Benefit of Mr
Parris Revisited, and is reunited with many of those with whom he locked
horns in 1984. Harry, who then accused Parris of being condescending with
his "on your bike" ethic, now tells how he was alienated from his own city
by its regeneration. Lorraine, then a carefree 20-year-old, is now a single
mother of three, up to her eyeballs in debt. Jimmy, who had shown Parris how
to shop on a budget, is now a man broken by his son's suicide. Time may have
passed, but neither they nor he had changed their opinions much. Parris's
hair has remained similarly similar too.
In between Parris's adventures in poverty, numerous politicians followed his
lead, sniffing the PR possibilities which swirl around such exploits. Piers
Merchant also travelled to Newcastle to prove he and his family could live
on benefits, while David Willetts made himself homeless for a night when he
was shadow secretary for work and pensions. Most recently, Michael Portillo
"became" a single parent for BBC2 when he took on the responsibilities of
one Jenny Miner: feeding himself and four children on £80 a week.

Such life swaps are now the basis of much of what is called "factual
entertainment" and are by no means the curiosity that Parris's World in
Action was. As the success of Portillo's parental perils proves, the
influence of reality TV on all genres of programming means that what once
would have been a photo call or an "And finally" item on the news can now
fill a full 50 minutes. While celebrities are prepared to pretend they're
blind for a bit of exposure, it seems clear that politicians view these life
swap programmes as the mass media equivalent of kissing babies.
Participating demonstrates a gameness, a bravery, almost a diffidence, as
well as a willingness to understand the plight of the common man (and
woman). They think they'll emerge from them rather well, having submitted
themselves to potential humiliation.

And often, they do. But often, they are the butt of the joke. Like drama,
reality TV - whether Wife Swap or Big Brother - relies on conflict. The
viewing pleasure in the likes of When Michael Portillo Became A Single
Parent comes from seeing posh Michael doing the dishes or trying to
discipline unruly children; the entertainment is the collision of the real
and the rarified worlds. When Portillo complains about the limits of his
budget, Jenny Miner says: "Welcome to the real world, Mikey." This, of
course, begs the question: where was he living before?

Similarly, in For the Benefit of Mr Parris Revisited, Parris voices his
shock at estranged fathers having nothing to do with their children, as if
this was a new phenomenon of which he had never heard. Politicians may
volunteer for such swaps imagining their credibility rising, but they rarely
contemplate how idiotic they may appear. (This at least gives them something
in common with other stars of reality TV.)

All of which is perhaps well and good. The use of personalities, such as
Parris and Portillo, may draw to a film about poverty viewers who wouldn't
otherwise watch. After all, poverty is ugly and nasty: not what anyone would
call preferred viewing. But there is also a danger - in the sparks of worlds
colliding, in the bright lights of personality-led current affairs - that
the bigger issue gets lost. Everything is reduced to spectacle (see refined
Parris in a nasty fitted kitchen!) and the wider context ignored.

In contrast to an authored report on poverty, say, there is scant analysis,
but a claim to greater authenticity. It is, of course, a spurious claim:
reality TV is a misnomer, an oxymoron. Matthew Parris negotiating life on a
£55 budget becomes a variation on the tasks undertaken in the Big Brother
house, slumming it in Newcastle akin to surviving in the I'm A Celebrity
jungle. It's poverty as entertainment and very little else.
· Gareth McLean is the Guardian's TV editor