popcorn

I just finished reading Popcorn by Ben Elton yesterday. I got it free from Ottakars while I was frantically Christmas shopping on Friday (cue big thank you to the nice Mr Ottakar) and I spent a very happy Boxing Day reading it with my mince pies (if 'mince pies' is Cockney rhyming slang for eyes then that sentence was so good). Not very Christmassy, my gran said. To be fair, she's very right. It's sex, violence and Hollywood all the way, granted it's not actually advocating those things (my limited literary understanding gives me the subtle feeling that it's actually taking the piss) but it's not something I would have let my grandma flick through, given the option.

Without giving away too much, one of the many things Ben Elton lampoons in this book (including but not limited to - Quentin Tarantino, Hollywood, the Oscars, model-turned-actresses, the concerned mothers of middle America, most of the the rest of middle America, most of the human race) is the media. More specifically, the news and the way it's presented to us, the gormless masses. Parodies are fun, you read them with a pinch of salt (can you read with seasoning?) and you maybe learn a lesson. Despite my uncontrollable delight that someone has finally had the balls to take the mickey out of Tarantino (haha!!!), I thought Elton took the whole thing a bit far. Yeah, American news broadcasting is somewhat sensationalist. I get it. Stop saying it, we get the point.

Thing is, today I've been studying the news pretty carefully, trying to find out about the tsunami in south Asia, and I've actually started to see his point.

The Daily Mail today. The headline was "SWAMPED", printed over a picture of the sodden devastation in Sri Lanka. Swamped? Ok, well that sounds somewhat insincere... "10 page news special, with eye-witness accounts and in-depth analysis". Ok, people want to read about it, that's a fair enough thing to have on your front page.

So I look through the ten pages, and notice that each one is headed with the title "WAVES OF DEATH". Ok, I've had enough. I throw the Daily Mail down in a hissy fit and switch on the TV. Same thing.

25,000 people they reckon are dead out there now. And it seems like the news outlets are almost revelling in it. Do they really think we need phrases like "Death came out of the sea", "The day they thought the world was ending" to appreciate the scale of this horror? Are they trying to be upsetting and melodramatic?

Of course they are. What's sensationalism without some good old emotional manipulation? Damn you Ben Elton, I never used to be cynical.