‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ Culture warriors have been known to mock the regularity with which lines such as this, from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, are quoted to describe their behaviour. But if they wish to avoid the charge, they ought to stop acting in such a palpably Orwellian manner.
Take the news this week that the BBC has censored eleven sketches from That Mitchell and Webb Look, recently added to its iPlayer streaming service. ‘This is a 20-year-old sketch show,’ explained a spokesperson for the corporation, ‘in consultation with the programme makers, we have included the ones that still work today and not the ones that don’t’. One notes, with some weariness, the reframing of an entirely subjective judgement as though it were an infallible truth.
Naturally, the cuts have been made because of the BBC’s fealty to the creed of intersectional identity politics. To even joke about race is taken by the congenitally literal-minded as being an endorsement of racism. Nobody seriously believes that Mitchell and Webb were promoting bigoted notions in these sketches, not even their censors, and yet the paternalistic know-nothings at the BBC feel it is their duty to protect weaker minds from exposure to dangerous comedy.
The first time I noticed this behaviour from the state broadcaster was when I was watching an episode of Fawlty Towers on BBC iPlayer. It was ‘The Germans’, the last episode of the first series. A scene featuring a conversation between Basil Fawlty and Major Gowen had completely vanished. Having seen the show numerous times, I spotted the omission immediately. I briefly wondered whether the writers, John Cleese and Connie Booth, had been contacted to see if they objected to their work being mangled by humourless executives. Of course I already knew the answer.
The sole reason for deleting the scene was that the Major uses a number of racial epithets, but one would have to possess a brain of the softest cheese to interpret it as racist. The target of the humour is, of course, the Major himself. John Cleese explained, with infinite patience:
‘One of the things I’ve learned in the last 180 years is that people have very different senses of humour. Some of them understand that if you put nonsense words into the mouth of someone you want to make fun of, you’re not broadcasting their views, you’re making fun of them. The Major was an old fossil left over from decades before. We were not supporting his views, we were making fun of them. If they can’t see that, if people are too stupid to see that, what can one say?’
Evidently, the BBC does not trust adults to curate their own viewing habits. If a viewer is genuinely upset by comedy from the 1970s, he or she can simply choose not to watch it. Thereby, the problem is solved. The last things we need is a crew of tinpot Savonarolas making decisions on our behalf because ‘they know best’.
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