Class Injuries
The Guardian has lots of interesting contributors but if you ask me, Richard Seymour isn't one of them which he demonstrates only too well in this hand wringing piece in which he babbles on about the "class injuries" of the "feckless poor", as if he were speaking as the authentic working class voice.
Now the logic of Richard's position is that the kind of people who appear on Jeremy Kyle's programme are all innocent victims who are being blamed for state overspending and the economic downturn which has blown the UK economy off course in recent years.
But I don't know of anyone who would advance such a silly argument although there are plenty of people who would say that these so-called "class injuries" mask chaotic lifestyles which society does need to tackle in a serious way - because they affect and harm the lives of lots of other people.
From what I've seen, many of the the men who regularly turn up on such programmes, fathering children they fail to support or take any responsibility for, are just deadbeat dads - not the cruel victims of a primeval sex drive they are completely unable to control.
The same is true of "druggies" or junkies as you might say here in Glasgow, and while it's fine to feel sad and sorry about the way these fellow citizens are ruining their lives and driving their families to despair, the well of sympathy tends to run dry up after they've broken into you home, stolen your possessions and left a big shit on the floor as a calling card.
So grow up and get real Richard, I say, because the working class has always had a 'lumpen' element within its ranks that will exploit family, friends neighbours and strangers whom they live alongside - if society is foolish enough to turn a blind eye and allow them to have things their own way.
As for Jeremy Kyle, he's just a sideshow to what's really going on Richard and if you object to the programme so much, just reach for the off button.
The poor are blamed for general reckless borrowing and a lack of financial discipline, and TV bosses know just how to exploit them
By Richard Seymour
Jeremy Kyle 'tearing at his subjects' exposed wounds – often class injuries – is the emotional crescendo of the programme.' Photograph: ITV/Rex
A 17-year-old woman is called a thief and a crackhead and is tormented and humiliated on national television. Amid all these taunts the host of the programme, Jeremy Kyle, interrupts and pruriently informs viewers that she has a "reputation" and is said to have slept with 33 men. ITV says this did not violate broadcasting standards because, after all, the young woman appeared to accept "the allegation" that she has an active sex life.
Of course, the veracity or otherwise of the allegation is beside the point, as is whether the young women accepted it. The fact that it is considered an "allegation", that it invokes a stigma, is the point. This is sexist, but it is also linked to social sadism. Sadism is hardly particular to "bear-baiting" shows like Kyle's. It is an integral component of a great deal of neoliberal popular culture. In reality TV, such as Big Brother, it comes in the form of a host or a disembodied voice playing the impartial enforcer of the rules, but which is actually imposing irrational superego injunctions and distributing punishments and rewards in a totally unaccountable way. That represents one aspect of neoliberal ideology: life is a lottery, stuff just happens, there is no morality in either winning or losing, but we nonetheless accept the outcome and enjoy the suffering of the loser.
What Kyle's show offers, however, is a hit of something far more potent: moralised social sadism. At first the punitive superego seems hidden behind a staged confrontation representing a moral dilemma: a "druggie" is confronted by a "responsible elder sibling", for example. The show merely facilitates the discussion, engaging the audience's moral passions on one side or other. Except that Kyle himself willingly impersonates the punitive superego.
This has been done more playfully on, for example, the Weakest Link. But Kyle genuinely torments the wretched, evincing moral contumely for their recklessness, self-indulgence, "promiscuity" – in short, their failure to implement the middle-class cultural norms of aspiration and enterprise. His tearing at his subjects' exposed wounds – often class injuries – is the emotional crescendo of the programme.
Any potential guilt over enjoying this spectacle of cruelty is mitigated by the cognitive strategies ITV's apologia refers to: the dupe willingly entered the arena and accepted the outcome. However, the more important subtext is that she really deserved it, and here the show is very efficiently conveying existing social resentment.
In the boom time we heard a lot about the "feckless poor", the "underclass", and chavs – those in the bottom 20% of society with no mortgage, no jobs, and no future. They were scapegoated as the vector of all social ills. Even some of the working class hated them because they were perceived as representing the decline of hard work, cohesive families, cleanliness and stoical resistance. As such they were blamed for the material losses endured by the working class.
Likewise, a section of the middle class hated them because they despoiled the dream of perpetual, information-driven progress under the auspices of neoliberal globalisation. The expanding army of drug addicts, long-term unemployed and homeless people certainly incited moral outrage and demands for social reform. However, the obverse of this was paternalistic authoritarianism informed by resentment for the poor, as expressed in the demand for tough love and discipline. This registered politically in the form of workfare, asbos, and other attempts to morally regulate and punish the poor.
In the era of relative global stagnation and austerity, these old social resentments have been symbolised differently. Now the same feckless poor are held significantly responsible for state overspending, reckless borrowing and the general lack of fiscal discipline that is supposed to have brought about the meltdown. And now we have to clean up their mess.
These resentments, and the desire for cruel retribution that they entail, are not invented by TV producers; they are just canny enough to exploit them.
