Sunday, July 13, 2008

Tune In Next Week, When Skinhead Quakers Burn Down a Mosque

The Brits have definitely developed the habit of whistling through the graveyard.

Sure, I suppose it's possible that militant Christians might behead a Muslim. But, as a television show concept, the whole notion just seems to lack...verisimilitude. It would be like a U.S. crime drama featuring a rash of KKK cross-burnings in , say, Detroit. Now, Detroit has a lot of crime, but white-sheeted, redneck knuckleheads aren't the cause. And militant Christians aren't the cause of the escalating violence in England. To me, it is simply bizarre that the show's creative types would project upon Christians (even militant Christians) a form of murder that has pretty much been the exclusive domain of the fanatical practitioners of the religion shared by this episode's victim.

But of course, if the show had striven for realism, some folks - the kind that do more than simply write a huffy letter to the editor - might have gotten upset. Can't have that - not in a country which has largely become a cultural game preserve for everything Non-British.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Given what a few cartoons did to upset the elephant in the living room, the BBC doesn't have the, er, nerve, to cast the beheader as anything other than Christian.

They can't possibly think that their choice will make them last against the wall.

Retread

WV: gbmesesk. gobsmacked? Heh.

Anonymous said...

I've said it before, I'll say it again and I'll stand by it every time:

"Britain need another Prime Minister like Sir Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher!"

They wouldn't take any of this rubbish in such large amounts. We really need another like them in Britain.

Cris said...

Churchill and Thatcher were divisive. Can't have that these days...

Anonymous said...

Well, recall the heroic producers of Sum of All Fears who nearly dislocated their shoulders patting themselves on the back for changing the nuclear terrorists from Muslim Arabs to neo-Nazis. Then skip back to the terrific Schwartzeneggar film True Lies and the fuss it created from the usual suspects for its racist depiction of Islamic terrorists.

Then we have major news organizations infiltrating Muslims with hidden cameras into NASCAR events to provoke discriminatory behavior.

So it'd be better if we could laugh and point at the poor Limeys, who in two generations have abandoned the people who triumphantly lived through Dunkirk and the Blitz and unblinkingly stood up to Hitler, if we didn't have the same sad cowardly rot in our own country.

RebeccaH said...

Yes, we'd all be outraged, if we had ever seen or heard of, anywhere on the internet, a video of (real-life) Christians beheading (real-life) Muslims. Actors in a drama show don't count.

I mourn for Britain.

Anonymous said...

As other commenters have noted, this is not just a British disease. I was watching "Next" t'other night (which is a competent enough terrorists-have-nuke-and must be stopped thriller) but for some reason the said terrorists are a mixture of Brits and Germans! I struggle to think of any film that actually has terrorists in the guise of those groups who've historically done such things.