Jul06

Disarming Britain

Posted by Blakeborough on Jul 6, 2008 in channel 4, Media/News, Stuff, TV | 5 comments

I know that Blackett has already written something about the shocking trailers for this Channel 4 season of programming- here.

I thought I’d stick in my oar and be all opinionated. I kind of expected Channel 4 to use these programmes focusing on knife crime as a bit of a stunt to attract some more viewers as Big Brother doesn’t seem to be doing so well. However, I was wrong. What I’ve seen of the Disarming Britain, and there has been a lot of it, has been informative, interesting and suitably shocking.

But I have to come back to a comment that I believe Mr Morgan made on the original post. Try as they might, Channel 4 are preaching to the converted, and no amount of pictures of stab wounds is going to stop some of these horrible little thugs from carrying a weapon, threatening people and quite possibly using said weapon.

Then you have the other people who truly believe that the country is no more violent than it ever has been, and in fact the media are making too much of nothing. Well, I agree that massive media coverage hypes the issue beyond all sensibility so that we’re all paranoid to leave our homes, but day to day I do think that the world around us has changed somewhat to a unpleasant degree. I’ll admit to feeling a little bit nervous walking around some areas of Leicester, and I really hate feeling that I should keep my head down and never make eye contact with people for fear of being murdered.

Paranoia? Yes, a little bit, but I’d rather err on the side of caution than the unthinkable potentially happening.

Whether or not knife and gun crime has actually gone up all that much for me is not the issue. The bigger problem I feel is how aggressive everyone- not just teens- seems to be these days. A close friend being attacked several times in the last few months springs to mind as well as me having to endure a frightening incident in Sainsbury’s where a woman around my Mum’s age violently screamed at me when I apologised to her for blocking her passage down the aisle. A few years ago I would have laughed that off, or possibly come up with a sarcastic remark, but I’ll freely admit that this time I scuttled away frightened and burst into tears on the way home.

No-one smiles at each other in the street any more, no-one holds doors open for anyone else, the disabled and those with pushchairs run down those not quick enough to get out of the way, and children speak freely in profanities I only learned when I was a good way into puberty. I’m by no means a saint; a worrying aggressive streak rises in me when encountering large crowds or queues, and my patience is extremely limited these days.

I’ve wandered from the point somewhat. I’d just like to identify where exactly it all seemed to go so wrong for British society, as surely it hasn’t always been like this. No wonder my national pride has all but ebbed away. But to get back onto the topic in hand, Channel 4 are trying valiently- if slightly misguidedly at times- to bring these issues to the forefront of our consciousness. Not in a trashy tabloid way, but in a documentarial manner that explains rather than condemns outright. Its a step in the right direction, but much of it makes me more afraid. Hmm.

Opinions anyone? We all have to live here after all.

Andy

I’m certainly not of the opinion that the current situation with regard to armed youth crime is constant with recent history but it’s worth remembering that it has been much, much worse in the past, particularly in the 19th century. It’s also noteworthy that the vast majority of these incidents are in areas of the country with a number of social problems, not least of which is poverty and frustrated aspirations of youth. When a generation is surrounded by unprecedented personal wealth and consumerism, but their efforts to achieve even a small proportion of this are frustrated, they feel powerless, and much of the feedback from the young people who have been interviewed about carrying weapons talk about how they feel powerful. It’s more complicated than simply being an issue of class, but class manifests itself chiefly in dynamics of power, and when you add the powerlessness that comes with lower economic class to the powerlessness felt when an individual is failed by an education system geared toward the white middle classes, you’re left with a pretty potent mix. If you’re poor, have been failed by the education system, and feel powerless to change your circumstances, you’re far more likely to become involved in crime than other social actors. This is a far broader issue than dealing with a ‘knife culture. It’s about dealing with social inequality, dealing with the frankly disgusting rates of social mobility in this country, and overhauling the education system so those with what Bourdieu called ‘cultural capital’ (in this case the middle classes) are no longer afforded an unfair advantage from reception up.

Oh, and there’s definitely an issue with conceptions of masculinity in our culture. Traditional masculinities used to be directed into manual jobs. That’s no longer the case for a lot of young men, so either we need to look at channeling those traditional masculinities elsewhere, or developing a new masculinity for an economy no longer focused on manual labour.
Andy

Frank Turner makes some interesting points too:

http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=3530822107858653314
Blackett

This is something I have been thinking about alot recently and to an extent I agree with you Andy that there is an expectation in society to achieve alot by a young age and people are left feeling powerless.

However the media (especialy film, tv and computer games) need to take greater responsibility for what they release into the public domain. The normality of death, killing and guns in these media especially with lack of consequence is something that has reached a worrying level.

Although the magic bullet effect of media is widely criticised there is still an element of truth in it especialy with those who perhaps do not have the cognitive capacity to work out right and wrong. So I think producers should step up and take some responsibilty.
Andy

If the media is at fault what haven’t these problems manifested themselves before? For most of the late twentieth century Westerns and gritty cops loomed large over the film and television world, solving problems large and small with a bullet. That and it was much easier to get hold of knives, and handguns have only really been difficult to get since the post-Dunblane reforms of 1997.

I’m reminded here of Robert K. Merton’s concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Social actors don’t respond to reality, but rather their perception of reality, and this can lead to peculiar outcomes. If social actors feel vulnerable, and perceive that their peers are carrying weapons, the actual numbers don’t matter as much as the perception. The actor may then react to the perceived threat by arming himself, adding to the real numbers of armed youth and perpetuating the cycle. In this respect lurid focus from the media could be argued to be a stimulus for further knife crime rather than a step toward a solution. It’s the same way runs on banks, or panic buying at petrol stations works, only it doesn’t mess with economies so much as it kills kids.

What I think we’re seeing here is a textbook example of Cohen’s Deviancy Amplification Spiral: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Cohen_(sociologist)#Work

Claire made the point earlier that nobody smiles at eachother anymore, and I think that’s a particularly important point. I would argue that what other generations perceive as a lack of respect from the young is the result of a sustained media attack on young people which has only increased in breadth and venom over time. There are certain aspects of youth behaviour, like knife crime, that need to be reported and tackled, but certain groups within politics and the media, notably the Conservative Party and the right-wing tabloids, have created a social climate in which the young feel scapegoated and victimised.

Now there are a great many other factors which have contributed to the breakdown of what politicians call social cohesion. People move about a lot more, so have less chance to know their neighbours, and the increased affluence the past two generations have enjoyed means they no longer need to. It’s worth remembering that community solidarity for our grandparents’ generation, and those prior to it, was as much about mutual aid and survival as it was about being nice to one another.

Personally I blame individualism. Not the kind of individualism that allows us to express ourselves through creation, consumption, clothing, music, etc. but the kind that says “I’m all right, so who cares how the other guy is?”. What we used to call being a selfish bastard before everyone bought into the anti-solidarity competitive culture the Tories peddled in the 80s.
Andy

Mark Easton is the man! The entry from the 7th of July is the relevant one.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/

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Disarming Britain