It's Not Just Me

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is about to launch another of its expensive, shallow television series - we are still serving time with the twenty-two hours of Crownies they've decided to inflict on us (do they really think this glamourfest of drinking and one-night stands and four-parent pregnancies is providing anything that the commercial channels aren't better at doing?) Now we are to be treated to a dramatisation of the novel The Slap. In the run up to this great event, we are being subjected to long interviews with the novel's author, (who seems like a pretty nice guy, actually - it's just the interviewer, with her gurning and wriggling and general St Vitus Dance carry-on, who sets my teeth on edge) and a general frenzy of hype for the whole project.


When it first became well-known, I bought The Slap and tried to read it. Unfortunately, I got fed up before I finished. Although I think that Christos Tsiolkas writes very good prose and although I thought the 'concept' was intriguing, I found the way he told the story tedious. I thought I was the only one who reacted in this way, which is why I was so pleased just now to come across this old article about it from the Guardian. The phrase in the article that particularly resonated with me was this one:


'The characterisations are thin and the endless sex and swearing become boring.'


I thought it was just because I was a prude that I found myself getting so tired of these aspects of the book. Now that I've been vindicated by the Guardian, however, I realise that my initial reaction - the sense that I was out of step and should shut up about it - reveals an interesting aspect of modern cultural life. I have the idea that I will be hectored for small-mindedness and lack of sufficient liberation if I voice my discomfort about the amount of vulgarity that seems to be included in many contemporary television programmes and novels, even though it seems to me that inserting this sort of stuff is just a lazy way of trying to keep a viewer's or reader's attention.  Thanks to Mr Skidelsky, I've discovered I'm not entirely alone.