Victorian Freakshow Renaissance – Strangelove, Bodyshock, Bizarre ER
Thursday, May 29th, 2008Human Interest or Human Freakshow?
Sometimes, watching TV here amid the comforts of the 21st Century makes me feel like we’ve somehow slipped back in time to an age of Victorian values if recent late evening viewing is anything to go by. Producers in telly land have seemingly tapped into a hitherto uncharted audience demographic – freakshow and body horror enthusiasts.
The year zero of this televisual fixation can probably be traced to Channel 4’s Bodyshock series, which began in 2003 and has being going strong ever since; this year the series brought us The Girl with Eight Limbs: Goddess, about Lakshmi Tatama from India who was actually a one of a pair of conjoined twins, and I am the Elephant Man concerning Huang Chuncai from China, who had a 20 kilogram tumour growing out of his face.
Next was Bizarre ER on BBC Three, a documentary filmed on location in the A&E ward of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, which showcased a series of wince-inducing testicle related injuries and golf ball attacks to the mouth. The tone was generally less sympathetic to those who were born with deformities, complete with ha-ha animated diagrams of the three most common types of testicular injury.
Channel 4 later struck back with a documentary called Living Doll: My Fake Baby, about women who keep ultra-realistic dolls in lieu of actually having real children. Perhaps sensing that it was being outdone in the bad taste stakes, last night Five waded in with Strangelove, a shocker which detailed the obsession of a pair of self-described “mechaphiles,” men who love their cars perhaps a bit too much.
What would Mary Whitehouse say? Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story (BBC Two) was a 90-minute piece on the self-appointed guardian of taste and decency, which took a look at her apparent humourous side, and portrayed her as a David versus the BBC’s Goliath - Maybe that was the joke. Chances are she would have denounced all of the above without having watched any of them beforehand.
