Training | 2010.01.05
Are we still in the thick of it? | Zoe Williams
Our understanding of the media has moved on a lot since the US broadcast its first election debate in 1960
Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg and David Cameron are to face each other in three epic, hour and a half-long debates which , being on television, must heretofore always be referred to as "US-style election debates". It\'s massive, isn\'t it, this mighty clash? Four and a half hours in total. Who do they think they are, The Lord of the Rings?
Apparently this already scores massive kudos for Clegg, having equal billing to the other two when he is not exactly on equal footing. It is also a leg-up for Sky, gaining as many live action minutes as the BBC and ITV – although it\'s questionable whether this will translate into actual viewers; probably it won\'t. It\'s more like a thought-that-counts kind of deal.
I can see the point of giving the leg-up to Clegg. This is a good way to convince the casual voter that he and Cameron are, in fact, two separate people. A vote for one is not necessarily a vote for the other, though it might yet work out that way. I can\'t quite see the point of the leg-up for Sky, unless of course the debate was offered to Channel 4 but their schedule was already full of racist members of the public, arguing, and teenagers with suppurating, sexually transmitted sores.
Every time this topic has come up, long before anybody agreed to it, before Brown was marked down as the reluctant one (on account of his withered smile-muscle) and Cameron the enthusiast (for obvious reasons), this format been held up as assuring a near automatic election victory for the better-looking candidate. This is always delivered in exactly the same tone of voice as "nobody will vote for high taxes", and it is always illustrated with the curious case of JFK versus Richard Nixon, in the first-ever television debate of 1960.
Kennedy is said to have won the election because he looked young and vigorous, where Nixon had a grey complexion and a dicky knee. I call it curious because, even taking into account confounding events like a bloody assassination, Kennedy is easily the most popular, eulogised, mythologised president of modern American politics. His sex addiction and privilege only serve to make him more impressive, dearer to the nation\'s heart, closer to their ego ideal. So we can\'t have it both ways, people – he is either Superman, effortlessly superior to other beings by birth and breeding; or he was superior to Nixon by a trick of the studio light, because he was wearing a light coat of makeup and Nixon wasn\'t. And on these shallow waters floats a nation\'s allegiance.
I only mention it because it\'s a bit insulting, isn\'t it? People being too dim to listen to the words, only being able to see the faces and decide who\'s the prettiest. The result of ascribing this kind of idiocy to the electorate can be clearly seen in US politics, where the vocabulary of the debates has gone greatly downhill since the advent of TV. This is a well-worn observation, but normally used to demonstrate that George W Bush\'s intelligence was so low he would have been allowed extra time on his driving test. In fact, everybody succumbs to it: Bush was thicker than Al Gore (speaking at the level of 6.7 on the US standard vocabulary test , the same as a 10-year-old; Gore was at 7.9), but Clinton was thicker than Gore (7.6), and none of them exactly redraws the rhetorical map – 7.9 is only the level of a 12-year-old.
It\'s an unfalsifiable assumption: "The voter is thick, so I will speak as though addressing a 12-year-old. If I win against a more sophisticated opponent, this proves the voter is thick. If I lose, this proves the voter is still thick, but my opponent is better-looking than me." What can a voter do to defend him or herself against these assumptions, when all the available parties are making them? Nothing, except abstain or spoil their paper: and this, putatively, proves "apathy".
So, first, even the assumptions attending that 1960 US outcome could take some re-examining. Since that time, our relationship with TV has totally changed. On a techno-philosophical level, the idea that the camera produced a legible truth, wouldn\'t lie – well, that has been totally unpicked, by a probably universal awareness of the tricks, edits and omissions that visual media can get away with.
Furthermore, the prevailing idea is that, when TV gets less sophisticated, this is a reflection of the mores of the man on the street. Simon Cowell\'s ubiquity, Jonathan Ross\'s prosperity, Bruce Forsyth\'s career longevity – all these things indicate a nation in intellectual crisis. But what if that isn\'t so? What if rubbish TV indicates nothing but the laziness of those making it, that the populace is no stupider, indeed is better informed and less docile and more diverse in its interests than it has ever been?
Then, the notion of sitting in front of a TV set for 90 minutes, gazing at the would-be leaders, unable fully to understand their fancy talk but letting our guts decide which one is trustworthy… this is absurd. You aren\'t like that. I\'m not like that. Why should anybody else be like that? I\'m not saying people don\'t exist who aren\'t totally politically disengaged. I\'m just saying there aren\'t that many of them, and they probably don\'t vote.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]vised-political-leaders-debate
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