Grand Designs for Everything
You can tell a lot about a nation by the stories it tells.
And one of the first places to look for our nation's stories is on the TV. And then to ask the question: 'Why?'
Yes, TV ratings may be down, YouTube clicks may be growing exponentially, Twittering may be swelling to a cacophonic crescendo, but still it's the case that our nation's primary storyteller is TV. So it's Wednesday April 22nd, 8.53am. I'm glancing through the programme guide for the day's terrestrial TV. Here's the choice at 9pm, the primest of all prime-time slots, when broadcasters roll out their big guns:
BBC 1: The Apprentice - an everyday tale of how a motley crew of highly ambitious people compete to change their lives by landing a lucrative job with a boss that, judging from his TV performance, most of us would not wish on Stalin.
BBC 2: Restoration Revisited - an everyday tale of how a motley group of unloved, decrepit, lonely old buildings compete to have their destinies changed through loving restoration... Ah, but like winning the lottery, did it make them happy?
ITV 1: Hell's Kitchen - an everyday tale in which a motley crew of people - are they celebrities? - learn about themselves and what they are capable of in the high pressure environment of the kitchen of a quality restaurant.
Channel 4: Grand Designs in which couples seek to design, build and furnish a home that will transform their daily lives.
Channel 5: Extraordinary People: The Man with Someone Else's Face. The true story of the attempt to transform Li Guoxing's life by performing a partial face transplant after the horrific injuries he incurred after being mauled by a bear.
Yes, we still have sport on TV. Yes, we still have the news. Yes, people are still murdering people all over the networks, at pretty much every hour of the day and night. However, what we have more and more of at the times that really matter is tales of transformation, tales of hope, tales that allow people to believe that things could be different for them. Tales that help them believe that they could take on a challenge - eat a crunchy mix of Australian beatles, spiders and caterpillars without vomiting, take a bath with a hundred snakes, waltz like John Sargeant or learn parenting skills from a supernanny that would transform their home life into the warm, nurturing, conflict-free oasis that it surely could be, if only...
This focus on transformation, on the possibility of a changed life, of a dream coming true is also the engine of the major talent competitions - whether that be X Factor, Britain's Got Talent, Your Country Needs You or Any Dream Will Do. Clearly, all are genuinely looking for talented people, but the rhetoric of the judges and the emphasis of the mini-interviews is almost always about dreams coming true, about the possibility of a new and very different life for themselves and their families. This is the route out of the life that all of the rest of us are living.
Still, being the transformed life offered by being the best is not all that the voting TV public is concerned about. One of the most heartening moments of the reality TV circus last year was to see the public's response to John Sargeant's valiant attempts to compete on Strictly Come Dancing. Yes, the public may have, in previous competitions, rightly been thrilled to discover that a Yorkshire fast bowler could shake off the shackles of that lumbering stereotype and strut a sizzling tango, but the support for John Sargeant was something altogether different.
Strictly Come Dancing isn't a competition in quite the same way that X Factor is. It's a parade of celebrities having a go. Yes, they are trying to dance better but they are there to entertain. Dancing for them, unlike singing for Leona Lewis, is not their dream. What the public saw in John Sargeant was a weekly triumph of dignity over agility, a celebration of the reality that a man might still dance with a woman in a way that celebrates her and rejoices in movement - even if that movement is limited by age as well as by skill. Of course, John's life wasn't changed but still it showed the possibility that ours might be. And importantly, it offered hope for the middle-aged and the old - for the people we know, as well as for the people we ourselves already are or will become. Sargeant triumphed over apparent limitation.
A few weeks ago something similar happened on Britain's Got Talent - a show designed to unearth hidden talent, whilst simultaneously involving us in the excruciatingly unpleasant process of discovering just how many people who think they have talent clearly don't have much at all.
Anyway, a few weeks ago, there stepped onto the stage a 47-year-old woman with a hair-do resembling a crow's nest in a wind tunnel, wearing a dress that would have sent those sartorial transformers, Trinny and Susannah, into anaphylactic shock, and with a figure that looked like a lot of 47-year-old female figures actually do. Her name was Susan Boyle. She announced that she aspired to be like Elaine Paige. The audience guffawed. 'Another deluded nutter', they must have thought, their mouths beginning to salivate at the prospect of carnage. No doubt the lady in question felt the chill wave of disdain in the hall.
Then she sang. It wasn't Leona Lewis, but it was brilliant. And the audience to their credit gave her not only a standing ovation but a standing audition. They were applauding her not only for her singing but for reversing their expectations. The audience had judged her by looks and assumed that no soaring voice could emerge from such inelegance. But looks aren't everything, they were admitting, and perhaps instinctively rejoicing that limitations can be overcome, that there is hope for 'ordinary me', despite what seems to hinder me.
So what are we to conclude? Certainly, much of the appeal of 'talent TV', like so much of celebrity-watching, is about vicarious living; living our lives through other people's, dreaming for a while that it's me. However, behind this lies a deep yearning for transformation, a deep yearning to be recognised, and to be valued, even though we are, we know, usually a bit more like John Sargeant and Susan Boyle than Lionel Blair and Beyonce. Might we, we wonder, still be capable of bringing joy and beauty into the world?
It seems almost too obvious to point out that nowhere will anyone find a more potent message of hope for personal transformation than in the gospel. Nowhere will anyone find the capacity to live an authentic, significant life that transcends limitations of age, skill, background, gender, race, and status than a life lived in the power of the Spirit of Jesus. Nowhere will anyone find a more coherent basis for living such a new life than in the reality that people who give their lives to Christ are born again, new creatures. What better basis for a new start?
You can tell a nation by the stories it tells.
And the stories our TV tells are a cry for help, the howl of a thirsty wolf for water in a dry and barren land. Sadly, much of this transformation TV is like a mirage of a lush oasis - illusory images of a place that cannot be reached.
But there is a spring of living water, shimmering high ...
Mark Greene
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