YOU NEVER hear about the good side of bear baiting. In a country that prides itself on freedom of speech and equality of opportunity, it’s very rare that you’ll read in print or see on the telebox any properly considered arguments in favour of the practice. Even back in 1583, when a stand collapsed at the Paris Gardens bear baiting emporium in Southwark killing a number of the ruff-necked spectators in attendance, few of the sport’s aficionados spoke up in its defence in its hour of need, meekly ceding to Puritan cries towards abolition. That the Puritans were, according to a wry Lord Macaulay, against animal-baiting “not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to those watching”, still failed to prompt any attempt at reasoned protest from the beleaguered teddy tormentors.
It is with this ham-fisted interpretation of libertarianism and tenuous grasp of sixteenth-century history in mind that I now attempt to mount such a defence. For obvious reasons, including a preliminary admission that blood sports are without exception foul and a fairly ardent desire not to be visited at my home by any friendly firebomb-toting animal rights types, I am going to avoid defending bear baiting in its literal sense. Instead, I have found myself intrigued by a lovely modern-day metaphor, brought to you courtesy of local District Judge Alan Berg. The contemporary equivalent of bear baiting is, according to Judge Berg, ITV’s morning jewel in the crown, The Jeremy Kyle Show.
“Human bear baiting which goes under the guise of entertainment…the purpose of [which] is to effect a morbid display of dysfunctional people whose lives are in turmoil,” is how His Honour described The Jeremy Kyle show in a recent court case. And it’s hard to disagree. Social undesirables, petty crooks, traitorous lovers and general underclass nasties find themselves hoiled up on the televisual equivalent of The Sun to be condemned by their nearest and dearest, screamed at by a dyspeptic Kyle and roundly booed by an unholy alliance of Manchester students and the Blue Rinse Brigade. And all for the edification of a similarly judgmental demographic watching at home. It’s all really very cruel.
But to point out its obvious, celebrated flaws and stagger off choking on your own self-righteousness is to wilfully ignore the clear, evident, tangible, palpable, simply wonderful social function that this particular brand of TV trash performs.
Take an incident from last week, where a surly teen youth blessed with newfound gang membership and a blooming cannabis business was hurled up in front of Kyle by his despairing mother. To say no punches were pulled is a virtuoso display of understatement. It was the verbal equivalent of the scene from Fawlty Towers where Basil thrashes his car with a branch. The lad was left in no doubt as to how his behaviour is viewed by the public at large, or at least the public with an afternoon free and easy access to Granada Studios. After something resembling genuine shock and contrition, he muttered some embarrassed incoherence about following his (terrifying) grandmother’s advice and pursuing his ‘moosic’ career. A reasonably happy ending. Even if he doesn’t follow through, the boy will still have been mentally scarred by the Kyle process. Now consider the alternatives that our betters would have us believe shape social change.
Do we think that, had he had the fortune to catch a snippet of Gordon Brown’s exhilarating plagiarised conference sermon promising to “unlock all the talents of the people”, the young punk would have visualised that happy rosy future and resolved on the spot to mend his errant ways? Would he, if caught bang to rights by the long arm of the law, have gamely admitted a fair cop, handed in his laminated membership card to his gang and retired to a homely existence of apprentice beatboxing? Or does perhaps the real key to making the faintest of imprints on the indifferent, disaffected brain of this yob involve dragging him out in front of a baying gallery of judgmental locals, wheeling out his battleaxe Nan and berating some sense into him with a healthy dose of shame?
Asbos are, as the critics are wont to tell us, little more than badges of honour for felons and societal dregs. “Got me an Asbo, innit?” “Yeah, was ‘auled up in front of a beak, weren’t I?” (I imagine dirty young criminals to talk in the fashion of the Artful Dodger. If this is not so, please forgive me.) Try attaching a badge of honour to, “Well yeah, I was pushed in front of TV cameras by my little sister, and a short-arsed middle-aged mockney in a suit called me horrid things in front of two million viewers while my Nan yelled ‘you’re a prick’ at me for selling happy pills”.
This is the glory of The Jeremy Kyle show. It reaches the people that politics and law forgot. And more than that, it shows that in a world of exponentially increasing conditionals and relatives, certain moral absolutes remain common to us all. The serial adulterer, the juvenile smack-pusher, the wife-beating amoeba who repeatedly evades the hapless, impotent grope of the law, will all be met with the unremitting bastardry of Jeremy Kyle and his citizens’ jury. They’ve done wrong, and dagnammit, we’re gonna make sure they know it.
Bear baiting was inexcusable, but mainly because the cruelty was directed at a wholly innocent creature. If it had been a really horrible bear, one with a complete lack of manners who drank himself into a frenzy, cheated on Mrs Bear with a string of bear hookers and subsequently disputed parentage of Baby Bear, even the Puritans would have let it pass. Hell, they’d probably have been at the front of the ticket queue.
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