The 2-part drama, "Britz" on Channel 4 showing a brief segment of the lives of two British Muslims, one, a guy who joins the security services and the other, his sister, who, via her friend's activities, gets drawn from a purely political stance on issues to more, how can we say, direct action.
It was a good vehicle to outline the draconian laws that now exist. It had a good ending except for the very final part.
Two issues I had were this:
1. It repeats the meme about "innocents" - i.e. none of us are, so we all justifiable targets. It is also hypocritical in that it condemns accidental - but possibly not proactively minimised - collateral damage when visited upon Muslims (conveniently ignoring the fact that most Muslims die at the hands of other Muslims squabbling for power and money), yet seems to think a legitimate response is intentional, premeditated death and maiming. It goes on about people voting for the government so they are "to blame" as if people can unbundle all policies or, if they did not vote for Blair, somehow not get killed. It was and is a daft, irrational, self-serving, disingenuous cop-out.
2. At the end there was a summary of the new legislation, but, in a highly misleading and disingenuous way, it was presented "since 1997". No, dears, since 11th Sept, 2001. This is a dangerous meme as it attempts to disconnect the laws from 9/11 and make out that actions of Islamists are entirely reactions to such things. It is not.
Regrettably, the show sullied its message with the above failures, requiring me to suspect the overall balance and good faith of the creators. It is a shame, as it was otherwise a very good concept.
Arguments against the Police State should not be undermined in this way.
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4 comments:
Roger,
This is a very calm piece - I was really F*cking angry when I went to bed last night.
I'll probably need to blog on this - composing a post in my head in the dark was one of the things keeping me awake last night...
C
You thought so? "It" repeated the "meme" about innocents because that is what those who blow up having first made these videos say isn't it?
It would be interesting to know the percentage of writers who write from a left wing perspective.
It would also be interesting to know the percentage of writers who write from a left wing perspective and who see their work televised…
My money would be on the latter being a high percentage.
Dave,
It left it as the last word. It did not challenge the meme to any extent during the programme. That, tied with the disingenuous use of 1997 instead of 9/11/2001 speaks volumes.
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