In the last issue Steven Taylor accused Socialist Outlook and the left in general of over-hasty condemnation of Alan Bleasedale's GBH television series, and of too-narrow PAUL CLARKE replies. Steve Taylor thought our article on GBH was too severe; I thought it was soft. In the series Bleasedale does portray state intelligence forces and some right wingers as sinister; but GBH was full of caricatured venom for the socialist left.
The supporters of the thinly-disguised Derek Hatton haracter are pictured as moronic thugs, ready to resort routinely to violence. They intimidate schoolchildren and beat up blacks to provoke street violence. Is that what the Militant tendency or the rest of the far-left really does? Do me a favour.
Bleasedale's hero is the school teacher played by Michael Palin. He stands upto the left bully-boys, and mobilises normal 'decent working class people against them. In a crucial speech he tells the militants - 'the prob lem with you is that you've only read one book. (Marx's Capital.
The message is clear. The far left are loud-mouthed ignoramuses, their heads filled with half-baked dogmas. Ordinary working class people will sort them out and see them off.
Can anvone doubt that this is the Neil Kinnock-Eric Hammond view of socialism and the working class? Steve's argument that GBH was condemned a couple of episodes is beside the point; a lot of people only saw one or two episodes, and the rest of the episodes were just as bad.
Steve's accusation that pointing these things out amounts to a neo-Stalinist view, or more generally that the left has a view of culture and a similar to that of Stalinism during the Prolekult era is far-fetched. The view that art is either politically 'correct' or rubbish is totally discredited on the left. Óf course art is a 'highly mediated' product which cannot be simply assessed in terms of political correctness. Steve doesn't have to lecture anybody about that.
But neither can any political criteria be discarded when assessing artistic products. British drama is highly political. Is it impermissible, an example of Stalinist dogmatism, to think that Rambo is reactionary drivel? Or that the book and movie on the Greek civil war, Eleni, while having many merits, gives a one-sided picture of ELAS and the Greek Communists? Or that Hidden Agenda has political as well as artistic merits? Or that the work of Madonna or Arnold Schwarzenegger has some political implications? What's the problem of including political assessments in an overall account of artistic production?
A piece of drama can be politically right-on and appallingly done. Or artistically clever and politically drivel. GBH was very slick. Its overall political message was utter poison, not just in its portrayal of the far left but its patronising view of the working chess.
accused neoStalinism for pointing this out is ridiculous.
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