Nathan Barley, a
sitcom by Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker, when viewed more than six years
after it first aired in early 2005, has a prophetic air about it. The lead
character, Nathan Barley, originated on Charlie Brooker’s TVGoHome website: a
satirical TV listings and reviews page. Barley is first mentioned in the 14th
May 1999 “issue” as the focus of a fly-on-the-wall documentary series entitled Cunt. Barley is described as ‘a
twenty-something wannabe director’ in the program’s fictitious blurb, and ‘a
worthless, moneyed little shit who deserves to die’ by Brooker.
It’s fair to say that Nathan’s persona changed little in the
transition from the web to the small screen. The televisual Barley epitomises
not just what leading character Dan Ashcroft describes as ‘self-regarding
consumer slaves, oblivious to the paradox of their own uniform individuality’,
or more simply ‘idiots’ but also, unintentionally, his own ‘credos’. Barley
runs a website, trashbat.co.ck: ‘registered in the Cook Islands, yeah?’ named
for said ‘credos’: ‘trash, as in what’s all around us and - bat’.
Nathan Barley is indeed bat-like: flitting from place to
place, unable to form a clear view of his world, but dimly aware of its
constituent parts as echoes within his hollow skull. His “political views”
reflect the low level of his external awareness, consisting largely of an
ill-defined anger with George W. Bush and a tasteless fetishisation of 9/11
imagery: ‘Trashbat is - two people leaping from the twin towers - but they’re
fucking on the way down’.
The detachment from the non-trivial aspects of reality
shared by Nathan and his fellow idiots is one of the most zeitgeist-skewering
aspects of the show. Despite the massive quantities of sophisticated communication
technology that the “idiots” own, they exist in their own little universe and
display minimal awareness and concern for real-world problems. A recurring
theme of Nathan Barley is the
inappropriate reactions that the “idiots” have to Dan’s sister Claire’s
documentary about drug addicts, the homeless, and other socially marginal
groups. When Claire first shows Nathan footage of an ex-heroin addict singing a
song to schoolchildren about his ordeal, Nathan starts laughing mindlessly.
Claire later receives a similar reaction from a half-witted TV commissioner,
Ivan Plapp: ‘it’s not funny, but it does - make us laugh…there’s a positive
message for people, but if we want, we can drop back a layer and laugh, if
we’re in the chuckle demographic’
What do the ‘idiots’ care about? Much the same things as
their real-world counterparts, or at least the section of the idiot world that
takes the most savage satirical beating in the show: pretentious urban types
with plenty of money and an impaired sense of morality.
An excellent example of
how close to the bone Nathan Barley
gets when attacking this target is found in trying to spot the article title
from the show’s inane lifestyle magazine SugarApe
amongst a selection of titles from genuine publications. Scope the following:
A) Serial killer sock art B) German ice rapists C) Do you want to have sex with
my fake leg? D) Ethiopia’s iconic mentally ill dress so impressive [Answer at
the bottom of the page]. Certainly attention-grabbing titles, but the problem
for Barley et al is the superficial
mindset that won’t allow them to look past sensationalism and image and see
what lies beneath.
You could even go as far as to say that Nathan Barley was a very appropriate show for the New Labour era.
Tony Blair even makes a brief, but memorable appearance in the show as the main
villain of a video game called Labour
Party Conference: lurching from the darkness, cock in hand, grinning
demonically at the player’s character. New Labour, like the “idiots” of the
show, seemed to value style over substance. Admittedly, it is quite the stretch to
go down the “Nathan Blair” route in analysing the show. If nothing else though,
Labour Party Conference is just one example
of the relentless attention to comedic detail that characterises the programme.
However, does Nathan
Barley still seem as prescient in less frivolous times? These days, with
cash less abundant, the consumerism of the “idiots” can seem almost dated. But decades
of cheap-money-fuelled frolicking in a sea of stuff have left their mark on
western society. Political disorientation, self-obsession and sheer idiocy all
remain hallmarks of our time. Even one of today’s more intelligent and sane
political movements is not immune to the curse of modern idiocy. Pause to
consider this quote from an “Occupy Wall Street” protester: “I like the use of
public space as a performative realm and I like the combination of bodies in
space”, printed in Private Eye’s
“Pseuds Corner” as a reason for their involvement. So, the hijacking of
democracy by heartless corporate interests and their subsequent rape of the
world isn’t enough to get you out on the street, but conceptual performance art
is?
To paraphrase Dan Ashcroft, the idiots are still winning.
Answers to earlier question:
B) is from SugarApe,
A) is from Fun magazine, C) and D)
are from Vice magazine
