LOS ANGELES, May 25 (Reuters) – Hollywood is questioning its love affair with violence with two popular television shows deciding on Tuesday to rein in the fighting. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the popular TV show about a high school vampire hunter, said it will postpone showing its season finale — which has a monster attacking students — on Tuesday night out of sympathy for families devastated by violent school rampages in Georgia and Colorado.

Meanwhile, the distributors of one of TV’s most popular programs — the “Jerry Springer Show” — said it has become disenchanted with guests talking with their fists and vowed that the “talk show” will no longer contain violence. A spokeswoman for Studios USA, the program’s distributor, said, “We will produce and distribute a program that we feel is responsible — no violence, physical confrontation or profanity … We will inform stations that we are not providing any Jerry Springer program if these standards cannot be met.”

Chalk up another two victims to creeping, post-Colorado paranoia, though both may well end up shooting themselves in the foot — if that’s not an unfortunate metaphor. To take Buffy first, it was inevitable that any program about a self-descibed “slayer” in a school would run into problems after the massacre at Columbine High. Though it was never taken off the air, they postponed one episode due to some dialogue, and have now done the same with the last episode of the current season. What is surprising is that this only took place at the very last minute: right up till the day, it was still being trailered. What suddenly happened to trigger it?

Slightly more worrying is the potential long-term implications. Despite the time it’s shown in Britain (it’s heavily cut for the 6:45 pm slot), it is avowedly not a show for kids. It is dark, gloomy and undeniably violent — I saw the first part of the finale [tips hat in direction of Chris!] and it had an amazing fight between Buffy and Faith (rogue Gothette slayer) which was not far short of Hong Kong standard. But it covers things in a mature and reasoned manner: this is not the ‘A-Team’, where Mr.T machine-guns a car, which crashes, somersaults and burst into flames, but no-one gets hurt. Buffy depicts the results of violence and the traumas it causes too.

But this seems to be taboo nowadays. Yep: it’s okay for an unfaithful, lying president to make war, but a modern fairy story like Buffy is a “bad role model”. Next season I can see the show, which has spent its first three seasons getting better and better, petering out in safe, Disneyfied stories: Buffy Gets a Hangnail. Losing one of the most imaginative and inventive shows on television would be a pity.

Similarly, albeit in a different way, with Jerry Springer. Already, we’ve seen “I’m Proud to be a Prostitute” replaced with “Street Kids Update” and other topics indistinguishable from Oprah, Leeza, Ricki or the host of tedious clones which clutter up the American airwaves. Jerry Springer is the ONLY chat show I have ever made ANY effort to watch, and if the energy and originality which made it so are removed, in favour of the same pabulum that you get everywhere else, why bother? In this case, however, market forces *will* win — audiences will drop, and if Jerry doesn’t give people what they want, someone else will. And if TV doesn’t give people their dose of catharis, who know what might happen? Watch out for pissed-off Buffyfans running amok. You heard it here first.

On a similar subject, a quick thought on Lawrence Dallaglio, lured by an reporter into admissions that he was a drug user and dealer. The points to notice are that said report was a) female, and b) attractive. Standard practice for any man faced with such a woman is to say whatever impresses her i.e. lie through your teeth in the hope of a shag. This applies double to rugby players, who tend towards the Neanderthal and unreconstructed end of our sex. Dallaglio is, in all likelihood, guilty of nothing more than being an idiot.

Note, however, the predictable bleating from predictable sources. I guess Messrs. Cunningham et al have forgotten who the biggest drug dealer in the country is: H.M.Government. Through taxes of alcohol and tobacco, they rake in amounts beyond the dreams of the biggest pusher, and the products they sanction kill many more too. As far as role models, I’d much rather have our youth influenced by Buffy, Jerry and Lawrence than Clinton and Blair.

Despite being the hardest of hard-core carnivores, even I have limits — and they are usually delimited by two red arches in an M shape. For what is served up in McDonald’s bears only the loosest resemblance to meat, being ground, pounded, boiled and with every last vestige of taste removed from it. On the whole, I would rather go down on Linda McCartney.

So why have I consumed, over the past two weeks, ten Happy Meals (TM)? The answer is Teeny Beanies (TM), an answer which will be obvious to anyone who has been visited Ronald’s Evil Empire (TM) recently. These are, needless to say, not for me, they’re for a friend’s daughter, who collects such things, but it has now become something of a personal crusade. Ahab had Moby Dick; Sir Galahad, the Holy Grail — and I am questing for a small monkey filled with plastic pellets, which looks as if it’s been on the losing end of an encounter with a ten-ton truck.

It’s surprising how easily you overcome embarrassment. The first time, you go in and whisper “Happy Meal (TM), please” surreptitiously, almost as if you were engaging in a purchase of crack cocaine. It’s then you discover the nightmare of choice, for neophytes like myself are blissfully unaware that there is actually no such thing as a Happy Meal (TM). There is a Hamburger Happy Meal (TM), a Cheeseburger Happy Meal (TM) and the Chicken McNugget (TM) Happy Meal (TM). Just asking for an indeterminate article will blow your carefully constructed attempt to make it sound as if you do this every day.

However, after the fifth or sixth lunch, you don’t care any more — not even the multicoloured box in the shape of a doll’s house fazes you any more, and you abandon the need to explain precisely why a thirty-something bank employee is purchasing a product aimed at very small children. However, the further you get in, another problem starts to raise its ugly head, eventually looming over your entire lunch-hour like something removed from ‘Fantasia’ on the orders of Walt Disney’s psychologist — you start to get duplicates.

Again, this is largely a question of overcoming your self-consciousness: you either demand a specific Teeny Beanie (TM) when ordering, or march back to the counter, and hurl your unwanted toy at the poor server, with a shriek of “I’ve *got* this one.” It’s helpful that, on any given day, there are three of the twelve Teenie Beanie (TM) on offer. I’ve now got to the stage where I’ll establish before ordering which they are, and if I’ve got them, I just turn round and head off for a more nutritious and tasty lunch — such as the inside of a toilet roll. Fortunately for my digestive tract, this has been happening more and more often as my collection approaches totality.

Because, not all Teeny Beanies are created equal. One lunchtime, I traipsed round the City of London, from Aldgate to Cannon Street, and Liverpool Street to Tower Hill, only to find every branch offering the same trio, led by a mutant aberration, allegedly a koala. The faint resemblance to what I know of this species would suggest that Australia has been enduring hitherto unsurpassed levels of radiation over the past couple of millenia. After hitting the fourth branch without success, I began to hate this ill-conceived montrosity fervently. Its grinning, squashed face became a symbol of evil, corporate capitalism at its most pernicious, and was deeply in favour of introducing every gum tree in the Antipodes to the delights of Agent Orange. I think such psychotic episodes are perhaps due to something in the Chicken McNuggets (TM).

At the moment, I possess nine of the twelve: I am lacking a penguin, monkey and something that’s perhaps a dog, except there already is a dog: Doby the Dobermann [Raised eyebrows there, but the makers don’t limit themselves to the traditional subjects of soft toys: lobster and worm are also in the set, though I don’t see pigs, cows, chickens or anything else which is found on McDonalds’ menu.] Three to go, and it’s really a question of whether my immune system collapses first. If there are no more updates to the site, you know why…

I am allergic to hype. The more I’m told I should go see a film, by the people who made it, the less likely I am to bother. ‘Titanic’ seemed like an idea with potential – after all, Jim Cameron has turned out some great films in his time – until the marketing machine switched on, and that bloody song turned up everywhere. My interest in seeing the film evaporated like morning dew — and by most accounts [save those of Di Caprio-obsessed teenage girls, not usually the most reliable source of information] I didn’t miss a lot. While the list of movies which HAVE lived up to the hype is virtually non-existent, I could fill up the rest of the editorial with films that didn’t: Armageddon, Independence Day, The Fifth Element, Batman & Robin, Waterworld, Godzilla, etc.

Indeed, notice anything the above have in common? They’re all SF films, to a significant degree. By the nature of their special effects, they will tend to be massively more expensive than normal films, all other factors being equal, such as cast and crew. To recoup this investment, it is necessary to get as big an audience as necessary — hence the enormous advertising and marketing which tends to accompany these films.

On its own, this might not be a problem; my diet generally consists of more than McDonald’s Happy Meals [well, most of the time…] and I’m usually not bad at avoiding overdone publicity. However, accompanying this quest for the maximal audience, is a “dumbing-down” to the lowest common denominator. And John Doe in Knobsuck, South Dakota is a *very* low denominator, who needs plenty of dumbing down. The end result is probably inevitable: movies which require no thought. Again, like Happy Meals, they’re great as an occasional snack, but Hollywood is now serving up a menu consisting of nothing else.

You know we’re in trouble when people criticise films like ‘eXistenZ’ because they “couldn’t understand” it — and this was on the Internet, which tends to exclude the thickest members of society. This implies it’s the fault of the film, not of an audience who couldn’t be bothered to make the effort, because they’re completely bloated on Lucas-films and their descendants. It seems it is now the responsibility of the director to deliver nothing more mentally challenging or stimulating than a cardboard morality play of cowboys and indians in outer space, with whizzy effects, which is all the ‘Star Wars’ trilogy really boils down to.

The other point is that it *is* possible to integrate entertainment and stimulation — they’re not mutually exclusive. ‘eXistenZ’ managed it, as did ‘Starship Troopers’, and the masterpiece of them all is ‘Blade Runner’, which works brilliantly as an action pic AND a meditation on the nature of life and humanity. However, why bother? You can’t sell bendy Jennifer Jason Leighs to Toys R Us.

For this is the real purpose of ‘Phantom Menace’, since director Lucas will make more money from the merchandising rights than the movie. It was amazingly prescient for him to acquire them, but such overpowering business considerations will undoubtedly have an impact on the product — Lucas is only human, after all. So the film promotes the toys, rather than the other way round, and anyone who has seen ‘Transformers’ and the other crap giant robot commercials of the 80’s know where that leads, creatively.

Add to this Lucas’s poor track record as a producer (has everyone else forgotten the last entry in the series? One word: Ewoks. And here’s another three: Howard the Duck) and you see why I am not one of the sad fanboys who paid merely to see the trailer, rushed to buy the action figures, and who are now camping out to secure a cinema ticket. I will wait for unbiased reviews to turn up, and if these are favourable [which at the moment seems less than certain], and the film offers more than a showreel for the latest tricks from ILM, then I’ll go and see it. Otherwise, I declare TC Land to be a Star Wars free zone, and no further mention of this tawdry exercise in audience manipulation and creation will be permitted here.

Headline in the Evening Standard tonight: MURDER JUDGE BLASTS HORROR VIDEOS. “Two teenage students who stabbed, butchered and buried their friend had their obsessional fantasies fuelled by violent horror videos, a judge said today.” Apparently they and their victim had copies of Scream, The Evil Dead and Children of the Corn in their rooms…hmmm… I could come out with the usual comments, but instead, I’d like to share something posted to the alt.cult-movies newsgroup, which makes the point effectively:

From: f5@windy.org (Windbreaker)
Subject: Re: Columbine School Massacre – NBK mentioned
Date: Wed, 05 May 1999 02:18:44 GMT

It’s time to set aside yesterday’s news… Residents of Kansas and Oklahoma should sue Warner Brothers, Michael Crichton and Jan deBont for the movie “Twister.” Their negligence is responsible for the killer tornadoes that struck the midwest this week. That movie encouraged impressionable hot and cold air masses to mingle with cross-winds until they formed funnel clouds. More people died from these tornadoes than were shot by Klebold and Harris. The tornadoes have caused more property damage than Timothy McVeigh’s truck bomb. This is not an isolated incident — there will probably be several “copy-cat” twisters striking innocent victims in other states.

Precisely. This week’s apocalyptic sign was in Midwest America, and there was plenty of really cool video footage depicting the tornadoes as they rampaged their way across Kansas and Oklahoma, inevitably prompting lazy journalists to make ‘Wizard of Oz’ references. I must confess, there is something beautifully terrible about them; it may be their random and capricious nature, which can destroy a house yet leave the inhabitants uninjured, or perhaps it’s just the sheer power generated, enough to stoke 300 mph winds. It certainly helps that they LOOK malevolent and evil: the meteorological equivalent of a gang of pissed-off Celtic fans.

It certainly helps that we don’t really get them here: if they actually posed a significant threat (as opposed to say, nailbombers), then I would be less impressed. Instead they sit alongside avalanches, sharks and lottery wins as things which are undeniably spectacular, but are unlikely to have much of an impact on my lifestyle in the near future. Does bring home very lucky we are in Britain — or perhaps very boring. We sit on a geographically stable landmass, with a climate politely described as “temperate” (“dull and damp” would be a viable alternative) and our only venomous animal is a) rare, and b) lives in places that no-one really wants to visit anyway.

There are also few interestingly contagious diseases to be contracted, and the government, in their infinite wisdom, decided to ban even the tiny thrill obtainable by eating beef on the bone — despite the fact that you’re more likely to CHOKE on said bone, than catch CJD from it. Life in 90’s Britain is intrinsically safe, secure and cossetted. Which is why we embrace enthusiatically – as any glance at a tabloid will prove – the ills we do have, and even more enthusiastically the ills of others. It may be that the ongoing bombing of Serbia is largely a self-inflicted exercise in schadenfreude.

Death and destruction are infinitely fascinating, particularly when they’re other people’s. It’s easy to lose touch of mortality in these sanitised days; I’ve never seen a dead body. Does this explain the popularity of fantasy violence? It’s certainly true that there are few officially sanctioned outlets for aggression these days, yet it remains as much a part of human nature as it has ever been. You can’t reverse four billion years of evolutionary “survival of the most vicious”, with a decade of political correctness.

Some commentators may view this as symptomatic of a moral decline, the fall of civilization; I take the reverse view. When we lose our aggression, we lose our desire and inventiveness. Obviously, there are good and bad ways to release the tension of everyday life: Quake II good, gunning down classmates not so good. But the mere fact that such things still occur is perversely comforting proof that we as a race still possess a “lust for life”, and that’s not something we should give up easily.

It’s all getting rather pre-millenial here lately. First, we have a gang of terrorists setting bombs off worryingly close to me: after Brixton, they did Brick Lane, five mins walk from work, and then on Friday, it was Soho. The previous night, I’d been drinking in a (non-gay, I need hardly add) pub the next block down the road. And then they arrest someone in Cove, Hampshire, which is where I stayed when I first came down to England. At this rate, I am going to see my face on the front of the papers soon, below “IS THIS THE FACE OF THE NAILBOMBER?” type headlines. And then there’s these blackouts, but that’s a whole different story… 😉 I think I should perhaps run a sweepstake, where people have to predict, using their skill and judgement, where the next bomb will go off. Feel free to send me your thoughts on the matter; whoever gets closest will receive an appropriate prize (perhaps a bag of nails). If you’re very close, you will probably also get a 4 am visit from the Special Branch.

Then there was also the Colorado High School massacre, which as several people (Miles Wood and Andy Collins) have since pointed out, also bears a strange, and largely un-noticed by the media, resemblance to ‘Heathers’ i.e. two disaffected teens – one in a trenchcoat, please note, and one who keeps a diary – start offing the jocks, with the aim of eventually going out in a massive blaze of glory. “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw”, as they say. Any similarity to Chow Yun Fat and HIS heavily-armed trenchcoat is also, I’m sure, purely coincidental.

And now, someone offs a TV presenter, execution-style, on her doorstep. Serbians? Disgruntled gangsters? Irate tour company reps? As yet, no-one knows: maybe it’s a particularly specialised serial killer. Comparisons with Lady Di have been myriad — largely because they were both blonde totty, as far as I can tell. That and the massive exercise in bouquet dumping; better add a cabal of florists to the list of suspects. The major difference is that the Jill Dando jokes have turned up rather quicker than the Lady Di ones did. For example: What’s the difference between a dodo and a Dando? One’s an extinct bird that used to be commonly found on tropical islands, and the other’s a dodo. What’s the difference between Danny Baker and Jill Dando? Danny Baker survived the doorstep challenge. Jill Dando had a new antique show for the BBC – the shooting started this week. What’s brown and goes in and out when the doorbell rings? Nick Ross’s sphincter.

It was interesting to compare the coverage afforded the event by the different channels. BBC seemed to be treating it as a dry run for the Queen Mum – who cares about the dozen of civilians killed by NATO – while ITV virtually relegated the killing to the “And finally…” slot: oh, yeah, some trollop from the other side went *down*, good job it wasn’t one of ours. The tabloid press had a field day, unsurprisingly; shot down in her prime, blah blah, so wonderful, blah, tributes pouring in, blah blah.

And all this was for a TV presenter, not anyone powerful, not anyone who actually created anything, just someone who was quite good at reading from a pre-prepared script. God knows what they’d do if someone important kicked the bucket. But such is the power of television: we feel we know the people on it, since we invite them into our homes, and let them sit in the corner of our room and talk to us.

This is, I should stress, the royal “us”, since at the moment, I personally would feel no great sense of loss were current programs to be replaced by five channels of hissing static — except for ‘The Adam and Joe Show’, naturally. If someone were to kill them [probably James Cameron, for their blasphemous stuffed-animal epic, ‘Toytanic’], I might be slightly cut up about it…