Art Imitating Lies
Artistic licence is an often necessary aspect of turning life into art. Unless the subject under the biographer’s microscope has recorded every waking moment of their life, there are inevitable gaps the imagination needs to fill. Most of the time, there are enough known moments already covered that can suggest the likely outcome of an unrecorded one. If, say, it was on paper that a renowned practitioner of promiscuity took it upon herself to visit Lord Byron one evening, but no one else was present at a visit that spanned several hours, the chances are we can guess the famously debauched poet and his frisky visitor didn’t spend their time together playing scrabble.
But there’s a world of difference between merely joining dots by using past facts as a guide and basing a fictitious account of a real life on hearsay, rumour, an absolute absence of evidence to substantiate the script and basic lies to present the writer’s work as authentic. For all the sophistication they like to credit themselves with, theatregoers are just as susceptible and gullible when it comes to a play in which an actual once-living person features as the lead character (and the writer has chosen to mould his characterisation via utterly unreliable sources) as a cinema or television audience would be. How many movies or series have we all seen over the years that have been based upon the lives of real people who lived within living memory, ones that those who personally knew the people involved have condemned as inaccurate and inauthentic?
I remember the cinematic portrayal of the tempestuous relationship between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath that appeared around ten years ago being ripped to shreds by family and friends of the poetic twosome; and while it’s understandable that there can be resentment at the lives of our nearest and nearest being caricatured as entertainment, even an audience for whom such figures were distant and untouchable deserve at least as close an approximation of them as is feasible, given the legal and moral minefield a project of this nature has to navigate. Recent critically acclaimed TV plays about the likes of cherished comedy legends such as Harry H Corbett and Tommy Cooper have raised the hackles of their children, which highlights the care and delicacy that needs to be taken by the writer when seeking to fictionalise a life.
What if the person being portrayed was universally reviled, however? Surely they’re fair game for a poison pen and unworthy of the same considerations a beloved public figure would demand? Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, for example, once had their gruesome criminal careers dramatised on the small screen twice in the space of a year and the only complaints came from the families of their victims. Nobody raised any objections on behalf of the Moors Murderers themselves, and why indeed should they? But in a way, this sets a dangerous precedent in that anyone who has been deemed beyond the pale can be portrayed in any way the writer sees fit and nobody will complain; this gives them a degree of artistic licence they can abuse to their heart’s content.
The final belated blow to Channel 4’s lingering reputation as a broadcaster with a conscience came with the appalling so-called drama-documentary of 2009, ‘The Execution of Gary Glitter’. Blending fictitious moments of drama with talking heads of such noted liberal opinion as Anne Widdecombe and Gary Bushell, this terrible programme invented a crime the viewers would associate Mr Glitter with and imagined the return of capital punishment in the UK, with the ‘Portly Paedophile of Pop’ ( The Sun) the people’s choice for the reintroduced noose. Anyone else would have sued Channel 4 for such a gross character assassination, but I suspect the station knew Glitter wouldn’t dare; and he didn’t – although he did lodge a complaint with Ofcom. My elderly grandfather tuned-in and apparently thought he was watching a news programme, believing one of the biggest home-grown pop stars of the 70s had indeed gone to the gallows – for real.
Imprisoned and ruined he may be, but Gary Glitter is still alive, whereas Jimmy Savile isn’t. This makes the job of the man with a hatchet-job in mind a hell of a lot easier. In essence, Savile can be portrayed as anything from a necrophiliac cannibal with a penchant for bestiality to a closet Nazi turned on by footage of concentration camp corpses. Who (bar marginalised and mistrusted Savile family members) would have the nerve to raise any objections after the relentless grave-pissing project of the past three years?
Despite the legitimate questions posed on forums such as this (and numerous others), ones that point to holes in the paedophile plot so wide one could drive a whole fleet of coach-and-horses through them, the posthumous image of Jimmy Savile is now as fixed in the public imagination as the one he had during his lifetime. He was previously regarded as vaguely creepy albeit ultimately harmless, opinions largely overlooked because few could dispute the extent of his charity work; but now he is Genghis Khan. He is Jack the Ripper, Hitler, Stalin, Sutcliffe and every other human being who has inflicted misery on millions or half-a-dozen. Nothing will change that for the immediate future, which enables somebody like broadcaster Jonathan Maitland to nip in and add to the industry with a play by the name of ‘An Audience with Jimmy Savile’.
An article by the author of the play that appeared in last Saturday’s Independent willingly waded through bullshit from the very first paragraph. In it, Maitland claimed the BBC had edited out every appearance of Savile from surviving editions of ‘Top of the Pops’ he hosted; this is a blatant untruth, a convenient rumour that serves to confirm the Beeb’s commitment to atonement and gives the survivors’ lobby a sense of victory. Maitland’s Independent article recites familiar phrases, ones that have become this scandal’s equivalent of the track-listing on a TV-advertised K-Tel LP. Featuring such classics as ‘How on earth did he get away with it brazenly for so long?’; ‘I had no idea what was going on’; ‘He was a brutal, psychopathic paedophile and rapist’; and the unforgettable ‘He groomed a nation’.
Maitland has apparently interviewed various Victims of Savile and has amalgamated their testimonies into one fictitious character to represent them all – well, there are so many of them, casting the lot would require the play to be staged on the pitch at Wembley Stadium. None other than the post-modern Mike Yarwood, Alistair McGowan, has been chosen to play the pantomime villain, just as he did on his own BBC1 series fifteen years ago, when spoofing Eminem’s video for ‘Stan’. To counteract initial Twitter accusations that his great artistic endeavour was ‘profiteering from misery’ (perish the thought), Maitland has promised ‘a substantial proportion (of profit) will go to victims of abuse’ – a noble gesture to add a further sheen of legitimacy to the latest product of a booming business.
Anyone can accuse Jimmy Savile and receive the thumbs-up from press and public alike. It’s a win-win situation, as they say – with the exception of anyone, whether or not they gave two figs for Jimmy Savile, who cares about the truth. But it doesn’t matter if Jonathan Maitland is unfaithful to the truth; truth is the first casualty of a life when that life has been rewritten to fit an agenda palatable to those with a vested interest in the rewrite.
Petunia Winegum
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June 10, 2015 at 9:16 am -
ones that have become this scandal’s equivalent of the track-listing on a TV-advertised K-Tel LP. Featuring such classics as..
A tip of the Dwarf’s iron helmet to you for that bit of prose.
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June 10, 2015 at 9:20 am -
Well said, Pet!
I’m sure some people will remember the fuss over David Peace’s ‘The Damned United’. “How dare anyone ‘imagine’ what was going on the in the great Brian Clough’s head?’ etc etc.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and film, and only barely managed to feel sorry for the Clough family at the time. But I must confess I’m beginning to view such work rather differently now.
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June 10, 2015 at 9:52 am -
Peace is a keen recommender of Dan Davies’ biog of Jimmy Savile, so his reputation for attention to detail, historical consistency and fact-checking is plainly legendary. His “Red Riding” books do seem to have been seminal in the paranoid mind of 21st Century UK about the dark satanic north of the 1970’s.
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June 10, 2015 at 10:17 am -
June 10, 2015 at 10:20 am -
I think you’re on the money with Red Riding, though I didn’t realise it had quite that big an impact.
btw the Stan video is really rather well done, don’t you reckon?
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June 10, 2015 at 10:37 am -
Red Riding seems to have been a slow-burner. A bit like David Icke perhaps, bubbling under for years and then suddenly going mainstream.
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June 10, 2015 at 9:20 am -
Maitland was on the Andrew Marr program last Sunday, and there was a clip of McGowan in the Savile play – but not dressed as Savile. Maitland said this was because he didn’t want to ‘trigger’ any victims. This is total bollocks, as you can’t get away from photos of the actual Savile. Anyone ‘triggered’ by McGowan in full Savile regalia would need to go live in a cave to escape.
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June 10, 2015 at 10:51 am -
If they did go live in a cave, it’s the rest of society that’d escape. It’d escape them!
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June 10, 2015 at 11:59 am -
Does he walk across the stage in Scary Slow-Motion?
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June 10, 2015 at 9:44 am -
“As they used to say about expensive cars, if you have to ask “How much?” you probably can’t afford him. He’s been all over the news this weekend just gone, because to follow up his blockbuster Play about Geoffrey Howe and Maggie Thatcher at a tiny little Arts Theatre someplace in Finsbury Park, he’s now looking to break the logjam, and get a play what he wrote staged, about Jimmy Savile! Of course, it won’t actually be about Jimmy Savile, it will be about The Black Legend of Jimmy Savile. That is assuming he’s able to get it to the stage with a sustainable economic model. It seems he anticipates having to cross a few palms with silver first. Graft as they used to call it in Prohibition America… “Yes, absolutely: a substantial donation from any profits will go to NAPAC.”
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/polymath.htmlI noticed in another article that he has chatted to three victims ( accompanied by their lawyers – weird!! ) and from their testimony is contriving a composite victim called Lucy. A journalist constructed a fictional composite of fictional victims yet Susan remains unheard, unmentioned and confined to the Snug.
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June 10, 2015 at 9:52 am -
I am disturbed by the mass hysteria which seems to have broken out and, thanks to this forum, I am far better informed than I ever thought I would be.
There are several examples of using the dead as a bucket into which transgression can be dumped. I am sure that had Savile died penniless, events would have unfolded differently.
Many years ago, I made a living as a trader. In those far-off happy days of open outcry, the trading ‘pits’ were packed to the gunnels with hordes of dealers, all of whom were baying for money. One of their number, overwhelmed by the pressure/stress of it all, died. Lights out; stroke, coronary infarction, whatever.
But such was the crowding, he was held vertical by those packed in around him. Word apparently spread, though, as when the pit cleared (it was ‘World #4 Sugar”, I recollect) and the poor man simply fell over, it was discovered that his pockets were full of trading tickets. Nothing odd about that, but when the PM came through, it emerged that he had died at around 9.30 a.m. (NY time) and the bulk of the trades were time stamped as being many hours later.
He simply could not have done them! Needless to say, it took some time to sort it out…
A trivial parallel, but apposite in its way.
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June 10, 2015 at 10:02 am -
* There are several examples of using the dead as a bucket into which transgression can be dumped *
At least since the time when Shakespeare portrayed Richard III perhaps.
“History, they say, is written by the victors. Tudor writers and artists had no qualms about depicting Richard III as an evil tyrant and child-murderer, as well as a crippled hunchback. Shakespeare’s eponymous play, written 106 years after Richard’s death, cemented the King’s bad reputation (and appearance) among the general public for centuries, although scholars including Francis Bacon and Horace Walpole sought to re-evaluate his reign.In 1924 the Richard III Society was founded, aiming to challenge accepted beliefs and assumptions about ‘the last Plantagenet’, not least the accusation of murder and the popular depiction of Richard as having a crooked spine. Among the inarguably good works of this popular King, they pointed out, were a number of significant changes to English law, including the presumption of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and a reformation of the jury system.”
http://www.le.ac.uk/richardiii/history/whowasrichard.html
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June 10, 2015 at 10:11 am -
I’m reminded of a comment attributed to the brother of Glenn Miller, when asked about the accuracy of the James Stuart film biopic.
His reply was that “There was a man called Glenn Miller and he had a band”.
It seems a bit odd that the film might have been so far from reality, as Harry Morgan (Chummy MacGregor in the film) was a good friend of Miller in real life. Perhaps it’s just that we all see people from different angles and put our own interpretations on things.
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June 10, 2015 at 1:17 pm -
Any film which is ‘based on a true story’ can be taken for granted as totally embellished. There is an argument that it doesn’t matter, but I think it does.
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June 10, 2015 at 2:09 pm -
James Stuart?
Has the Hollywood actor been rebranded for SNP tastes??
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June 10, 2015 at 10:31 am -
the chances are we can guess the famously debauched poet and his frisky visitor didn’t spend their time together playing scrabble.
the chances are , that scrabble not yet having been invented, Byron would have composed a sonnet in the Lady’s honour -detailing her dishonour and where it happened….
Now, by my foul, ’til most delight
To view each other panting, dying,
In love’s extatic posture lying,
Grateful to feeling, as to sight.
It wasn’t until I read Heine, taking breakfast with two lesbians, that I discovered that the classical poets didn’t just ‘j**k off to sunsets’-S. King.
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June 10, 2015 at 10:36 am -
Re scrabble – artistic licence!
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June 10, 2015 at 10:46 am -
I know, but I think a few rubbers of Strip Piquet whilst smashed on whatever opium derivative Byron had to hand would have been the more likely option.
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June 10, 2015 at 10:56 am -
Strip Piquet! If I’d only know when my own frisky visitors were a little more regular…
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June 10, 2015 at 11:35 am -
Re scrabble – artistic licence!
Oh Bloody Hell! THAT was the word or phrase I was racking the remains of my gin addled brain for the other day when replying to your favourite Pissed Off Prussian . “Poetic Licence”. East of Berlin. Ugh!
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June 10, 2015 at 10:46 am -
This sorry saga has really seperated the men from the boys; and the majority of those claiming to possess principles and integrity shown to have none. It was obvious – blatantly, screamingly obvious – to me what was happening before this was ignited (and my rather accurate predictions were made online).
The “Savile Scandal” – aside from being a brutally ugly reminder of how utterly stupid most people can be – is an exercise in re-writing recent history, the first step on a very slipperly ladder. The majority of those calling themselves writers, journalists, historians etc fell at the first hurdle, not only choosing to believe things that are not only ridiculously implausible but also an insulting betrayal of those people ‘around then’ but in doing so acqueisced for pages to be ripped from the history books for a myriad of pathetic reasons -peer pressure (step forward the ‘music media Twitterati’, to be found on Twitter daily brownosing each other and tainting the art they covet with faux-socialist revisionism), subscribing to ‘feminism’ (the art of infantisiling women being so empowering, of course), towing the media ‘company line’ (which is money, not principles or truth), arrogance or the bain of the under-30’s – infantile ignorance.Anyone who cannot see what this is really about – the death of party politics leaving a huge need for distactions and desperation, a foreign stock-exchange-listed law firm bribing backbench MP’s to subvert the Rule of Law for commercial gain, said foreign investment-funded firm raping the public purse, the annexing of ‘wealth’ back to an ‘elite’ (leaving a desperate population desperation to do anything – anything at all – to join ’em) and not to mention the gradual rubbishing of an era of cultural riches as we now are thrust further into a culturally – and morally, it would seem, bankrupt century.
If people can’t see the obvious, they have no place calling themselves journalists, historians or whatever they profess to be.
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June 10, 2015 at 10:53 am -
The constant publicity barrage has done it’s job. Stop the average man in the street, and he’d probably be astonished to be told that Savile had never been arrested. Just this morning, I had a Twitter convo with someone over the ECHR attempt by the DE Menezes family, who who confidently aserted that ‘well, he shouldn’t have run from armed police, should he?’.
We’re doomed.
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June 10, 2015 at 11:27 am -
We’re doomed.
Aye, we’re all d00OOmmed…still people out there though that think Global Warming will be what ‘does’ for humanity.
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June 10, 2015 at 11:42 am -
Continental Drift is beyond the collective imagination plainly…
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June 10, 2015 at 11:47 am -
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June 10, 2015 at 11:53 am -
A seismic gear-shift from the 70’s is back in the ball-park I noticed.
https://youtu.be/23VflsU3kZE
That the star of the film is The Rock is a truly sublime touch.
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June 10, 2015 at 11:57 am -
I’m surprised Michael Sheen isn’t the chosen lead in this, as he seems to be the high-brow equivalent of Jon Culshaw, the regular blank canvas for this sort of celebrity impersonation (including The Damned United, as mentioned by Misa). A few years ago Sheen appeared in just such a vehicle, supposedly about H.G. Wells, smartarsedly titled War with the World. The pre-publicity breathlessly assured the potential viewer that the words Sheen spoke were all Wells’s own. Well, yes, they were, but ourtrageously cherry-picked to tell the story the writer wanted to tell, rather than to give a more accurate picture of a very complex man. As someone who has studied Wells’s life to more than a passing degree, the inapropriate juxtapositions and temporal anomalies were glaringly obvious. More to the point, in places the script made great play with things Wells had actually said much earlier in his life, but subsequently repudiated, and obviously the latter was completely absent.
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June 10, 2015 at 12:03 pm -
McGowan already had the outfit, plus this is a decidedly low-rent production. It it wasn’t that it is taking place in Islington and maitland has lots of luvvie-pals in the Meeja, it’d just be the equivalent of a local Am-Dram in the Church Hall.
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June 10, 2015 at 12:11 pm -
The determination of “real” history is always problematical.
The problems of the historical researcher, like any other researcher, mainly stem from the well-known “Confirmation Bias”. That is, nearly all researchers have some idea of what they “want” to find, and therefore are pre-disposed to weight evidence confirming their position more heavily, and even ignore evidence against their position – its human nature. The “true” researcher will try to guard against it, but it isn’t always easy.
I have spent numerous years (as a hobby) researching certain historical events that took my interest, and over this period have encountered two “more-technical” problems.
Both of these have, partly, as their root-cause this inclination for “confirmation bias”, and are partly due to “laziness”, lack of time (e.g. the rush to get something published ‘first’) or lack of information on the part of the researcher.
The first technical problem is best illustrated by the example of the defeat of Hitler’s U-boats in the WWII Battle of the Atlantic. History written shortly after 1945, did not have access to the documents that historical researchers now do. In particular the part played by “Ultra” and the de-coding of the Enigma machine were still Top Secret.
Nevertheless, the contemporary writer had to come up with some explanation of how the U-boats were defeated. Joining together what few dots they had they vastly over-estimated the importance of other technologies used, such as Sonar, HF-DF and Air-to-Surface Radar.
Those accounts, partly because they written by contemporaries and witnesses of the events that happened, have, to this day, biased (and probably always will) many accounts of the ‘Battle of the Atlantic’.
Indeed, in a number of books I have read it can be obvious (sometimes) where some author with a lack of facts has made an “educated guess” as to what actually happened. Subsequent books then pick this idea up, citing the original book, and run with it. Then a few decades down the line it becomes an “accepted fact”.
The second technical problem is that of “Official Records”. I have noted several cases of historical researchers discounting eye-witness versions of events, because “they don’t agree with the Official Record”.
Well, yes – it is very true that eye-witness accounts are notoriously inaccurate. I can certainly vouch for this – A few years ago I was called as an eye-witness to give evidence concerning a fatal traffic accident. It turned out that what had actually happened (based on the Police examination of the physical evidence) was vastly different from what I thought I had seen. Apparently, it is well-known that when under pressure the mind will take sort-of “snap-shots” of an incident, and only when the ‘danger/excitement’ is over will it try to string the memories together in a linear narrative. It won’t always get it right.
However, having worked in both large and small organizations, I know that the Official Records can also bear little resemblance to what really occurred. There are whole periods of my working career, where my collective “Time Recording Sheets” were/are bigger works of fiction that Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’.
In many cases this was because of a work ethic that went “just get the job done – and we’ll sort out the paperwork later”. But it also happened quite often because resources had been poorly allocated – so some “unofficial redistribution” took place. Hence, in one example I can recall – not only were the Time-Sheets “adjusted”, but transport, equipment and personnel were several hundred miles from where they were “officially” located at that time – for several weeks.
I’ve also known many people who can confirm similar incidents. One of my favourite Junior School teachers, a Mr Aitken, had a large jagged scar running across his face. He was quite unconcerned about it and must have been used to kids asking about it. He always claimed he got it when he was an RAF Navigator, and his Mitchell bomber crashed in North Africa and his head went through the plexi-glass nose. According to the RAF no Mitchell bomber squadrons were stationed in North Africa. So, was Mr Aitken wrong, are the RAF records wrong, or is there another explanation?
As a last comment, imagine what it would be like for future historians, say in 2400, trying to describe the history of 2015 if the only contemporary historical documents they had were a few copies of The Sun newspaper.
Incidentally, for those of you who have read “The Twelve Caesars”, I’ve always thought that Suetonius would have made a great Sun reporter: “Its Caligula wot done it!”
Cheers,
Andy.-
June 10, 2015 at 1:00 pm -
Some myths are a long-time dying. One otherwise inconsequential detail pertaining to the Battle of the Atlantic is the sinking of grandfather’s merchant ship off the Azores in 1942. In all the accounts that go into enough detail (e.g. Tennant’s British and Commonwealth Merchant Ship Losses to Axis U-boats 1939-1945), the surviving crew were all taken aboard HMS Wellington, and taken back to the UK on her. Except, of course, that the log of the merchant ship shows that after initially being picked up by the Wellington, only the seriously injured and all military personal (e.g. DEMS gunners and some RN ratings) remaining onboard, with the rest distributed amongst other ships in the convoy, which carried on to Sierra Leone.
In a more wider sense, pretty much all the detail about London Underground during the Second World War that appears in books about the system or the Blitz in general can be traced back to London Transport’s own account of its operations, published in 1947. In itself it’s a great book, but in retrospect it’s clear that a lot of it is down to the imperfect recollections of LT staff, as more rigorous contemporary records are often in conflict.
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June 10, 2015 at 1:35 pm -
I have spent some effort at times in an often futile attempt to counter the ocean of rubbish which is believed/spoken/written about Senator Joseph McCarthy, probably the most effectively, and inaccurately, demonized figure in US history outside of actual criminals. Unlike Savile, where its impossible to say whether some of the things he is accused of happened or not, a lot believed about McCarthy is simply unfactual and provably completely untrue, despite it retaining the status of “received wisdom”. Some will get very annoyed when you tell them McCarthy actually never investigated Hollywood or blacklisted actors, conducted “trials” of people alleged to be communists, was a “racist”, led the purge of homosexuals from public office, caused “countless” suicides” etc. The facts about these matters contradict fundamental untruths they have long accepted, the untruths people have digested being repeated constantly by various inaccurate/biased sources of “information”. The factoid it seems is every bit as pervasive and powerful as the fact, often, indeed, more so.
Unfortunately we seem to have progressed not at all from the gullible group think/hysteria which saw thousands of unfortunates executed as witches and “heretics” in the “bad old days”. Many people tend to believe what they want to believe about things – and some are quite impervious to any factual contradiction. Hitler himself once said “I read to reinforce my prejudices”, and simply ignored the inconvenient facts which proved the “Protocols of the elders of Zion” (a fundamental text for his ideological beliefs) was a forgery by the Czar’s secret service.
Speaking of Seutonius – it’s taken a couple of millennia for the picture painted of an emperor like Domitian by that Roman historian (and other ancient writers) to be questioned and corrected by objective scholarship – maybe that’s how long the victims of the great 21st century witch hunt will have to wait?
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