Rachel watches a lot of TV, something I'm no longer used to, having all but given it up in the past two or three years. But, watching several hours over the course of one evening, I find myself engrossed and begin to wonder whether the BBC is offering some sort of a primer in developmental psychology. Because programme after programme shows individuals struggling with issues of low self-esteem and self-destructive behaviour and seeking the psychological origins of their downward spiral. And, as the evening wears on, the individuals get younger.
There's a show about a gay man trying a Christian re-education programme in an effort to turn himself straight, and confronting the history of maternal abandonment, paternal absence and abuse in children's homes that led to his unfulfilling sexual relationships with men; there's a show about children playing truant from school because bullied like their father before them, or because orphaned and homeless, or because anorexic after witnessing horrific domestic violence; and there's a show about three eight-year old tomboys keeping video diaries of their lives: one has an absent father, one mixed-race parents who argue all the time, and one upper-class parents who seem to have lost their money and turned to Jesus. (Question: why is this last show on at 10pm, after eight-year olds have gone to bed? They are allowed to make it, but not to watch it?)
And so I wonder: has my televisual abstinence granted me a clarity of vision that allows me to see all these genealogies for what they are, or is it in fact the case that the BBC is fulfilling its traditional role as public service by disseminating - in a fairly haphazard way - accepted psychological wisdom about personality formation and pathological behaviours with the - ultimately socially progressive - aim of eradicating low self-esteem by catching its generative factors before they have a chance to cast their spell?
One sinister fact remains, however: at no point does anyone (with the possible exception of a couple of the eight-year old tomboys) question a social organisation in which it is the continued socio-emotional privilege attached to the idealised nuclear family that forces self-hatred upon anyone who is not a part of that sacrosanct unit.
There's a show about a gay man trying a Christian re-education programme in an effort to turn himself straight, and confronting the history of maternal abandonment, paternal absence and abuse in children's homes that led to his unfulfilling sexual relationships with men; there's a show about children playing truant from school because bullied like their father before them, or because orphaned and homeless, or because anorexic after witnessing horrific domestic violence; and there's a show about three eight-year old tomboys keeping video diaries of their lives: one has an absent father, one mixed-race parents who argue all the time, and one upper-class parents who seem to have lost their money and turned to Jesus. (Question: why is this last show on at 10pm, after eight-year olds have gone to bed? They are allowed to make it, but not to watch it?)
And so I wonder: has my televisual abstinence granted me a clarity of vision that allows me to see all these genealogies for what they are, or is it in fact the case that the BBC is fulfilling its traditional role as public service by disseminating - in a fairly haphazard way - accepted psychological wisdom about personality formation and pathological behaviours with the - ultimately socially progressive - aim of eradicating low self-esteem by catching its generative factors before they have a chance to cast their spell?
One sinister fact remains, however: at no point does anyone (with the possible exception of a couple of the eight-year old tomboys) question a social organisation in which it is the continued socio-emotional privilege attached to the idealised nuclear family that forces self-hatred upon anyone who is not a part of that sacrosanct unit.