EastEnders
EastEnders is one of the most profoundly dangerous programmes on television and probably does more to promote the Daily Express nightmare vision of a violent, broken society than that newspaper itself. My objection isn’t to soap operas per se - to a large extent, I agree with Jeremy Bentham about pushpin being as valid an entertainment as bel canto. Following his utilitarian line, though, the happiness it gives to people who watch it is more than the damage - and ensuing unhappiness - that it causes. As we know from (check study), a significant number of people who watch a lot of television massively overestimate the number of doctors and lawyers in the US.
The same applies for EastEnders. Its vision of grim, grey London represents, perhaps, a reality of life in the capital but not the totality. Cultivation theory comes into play, as people believe what entertainment they see to be, at some level, accurate. EastEnders needs crime, sex and scandal because life is generally a bit dull and a bit shit and a bit useless for an long-running soap opera.
If all that is a bit paternalist-liberal, consider that EastEnders is one of the most popular television shows on television. I would think that the commercial channels can maintain one more soap - indeed, advertisers are very keen to associate their brands with Coronation Street - and I’m sure that Mr Murdoch would pay handsomely for the show.
As I understand it (and I am very happy to be corrected if I’m wrong), much of the criticism levelled against Bentham’s utilitarianism was that it had perverse effects; if I do what’s best for me, it may either damage someone else to a greater extent (which would be a particularly crude interpretation) or turn around later and cause problems. Given that we have imperfect knowledge, Benthan’s felicific calculus falls back to heuristics or, as they’re also known, political parties and political philosophies.
Either way, the answer is clear: Albert Square delenda est!
xD.
1 - as Matt Sinclair once put it in a debate against me, ‘it’s the entire point of advertising’.
