One for the kids
Speaking of Ash Sarkar…PBS here is running a BBC series called The Rise of the Nazis, which I watched a bit of last week. It includes historians explaining things, including Richard Evans, so I settled in expecting good things…and then suddenly there was Ash Sarkar, giving her thoughts on the rise of the Nazis. Ash Sarkar??? I thought. Alongside real historians?? Wtf??? What she said was of course vapid and of no interest. I turned the tv off.
Later I consulted Google to see if anyone else had noticed, and anyone else had. There seems to have been a slight uproar. One article is titled Ash Sarkar is not an expert on Nazism. And the BBC should not treat her as one. My thoughts exactly.
So, here’s a question. You are making a three-part documentary series about the rise of the Nazis. You have lined up a terrific cast of German and British historians, including Richard J. Evans and RJ Overy. You have shot some first-rate drama sequences in Lithuania and commissioned some fine graphics. The narrative is a bit GCSE. Nothing very original or exciting and lots of big gaps. But you have found a couple of very interesting human interest stories, about two lawyers who stood up against the Nazis.
So, what induces you, and the BBC Commissioning Editor, to pretend that Ash Sarkar, one of the interviewees, is some kind of “expert” about Nazism?
What followed her appearance last night was entirely predictable. There was a tsunami of protest on social media. Not just because Sarkar doesn’t know anything worth knowing about Nazism or German Communism. Her contribution to last night’s episode consisted of a handful of ten or fifteen-second soundbites which managed to be both unilluminating and annoying. She described the leader of the KPD as “definitely a charismatic guy” and “red as Hell”. The scale of the Nazi attack on the KPD, she said, was “insane”. Not one soundbite was longer than fifteen seconds. This was not BBC2. This was history as a banal mix of BBC3 and Radio 1.
But it’s ok, the BBC had an explanation.
“As well as featuring interviews with some of the world’s leading experts on pre-war Germany, this series asks recognised contemporary figures from different professional fields, amongst them historians and journalists, to examine in detail the motives and experiences of individual historical figures from this period. Ash Sarkar is one of a number of current public figures who feature, alongside representatives from military and legal backgrounds.”
But it would make more sense to grab someone at random off the Tube platform.
So, apparently, Sarkar was chosen because she’s a “contemporary figure” or a “current public figure”. This is completely vacuous. And what makes Sarkar, a Left-wing self-publicist, “a contemporary figure”? The BBC, in a moment of panic that they are not watched by enough young people, have started filling up many of their current affairs programmes with Left-wing activists in their 20s. And that makes her a “contemporary figure”, who can be interviewed in a BBC2 historical documentary programme alongside Professor Sir Richard Evans, author of almost thirty history books, including a 2000-page trilogy on the history of Nazism. No one at the BBC has come up with a remotely plausible argument for her inclusion.
That was exactly my reaction. Richard Evans is the real deal, and Ash Sarkar is…irrelevant.
Having no idea who Ash Sarkar is I put her name into Google. The first result was her Twitter bio, in which she describes herself as ‘Anarcho-fabulous’, at which point I decided that I knew enough about her to not want to know anything more.
Anarcho-fabulous? A possible category for her. Though until convinced otherwise, I would incline to ‘anarcho-ignorant’.
I’d never heard of this anarcho-fabulous person before either, and I’m not curious to know more. Putting her on this programme reminds me of sending Princess Ivanka to G20 to lecture the grown-ups on economic policy.
Beeb history programmes with a writer/presenter eg Simon Schama setting out a coherent narrative are pretty good. It’s a shame that they’re doing that annoying Channel 4 thing of sound-biting from one head to another. Not that I would watch anything about the Nazis, who along with Henry VIII, infest our television.
This one I have to say is pretty dire, even apart from having Ash Sarkar saying things. It’s got that maddening thing of trying to convey profundity or seriousness or something via endless dramatizations that dramatize nothing. The one that caused me to terminate my second attempt to watch it was a “dramatization” in which a man sat still for awhile [music playing] then got up and moved for a bit [music] then stared out a window [music]. It went ON and ON, and added absolutely nothing. And it was all slowed down and ponderous and somber-but-empty like that – except when they let Evans talk for a bit and then Sarkar talk for a bit.
And for once I’m not exaggerating. The makers of the show did literally waste a large chunk of time on a guy sitting and then looking out a window while sad music played. I guess we’re supposed to be tweeting during those bits.
Are you sure they didn’t accidentally splice in a segment of Professor Brian Cox doing his wistful gazing? :-)
Ahhh funny you should mention it because I think the wistful gazing trope at least partly goes back to Carl Sagan, and is why at first I didn’t really like Cosmos – i.e. when it was first broadcast some 200 years ago. I compared it to Connections with James Burke, which was broadcast some 2002 years ago. Burke didn’t have glamour, and he didn’t stand around gazing for the camera; instead he talked briskly and copiously and interestingly. I found Cosmos patronizing and pandering in comparison – “Here, stupid people watching tv, here is handsome Carl for you to gaze at while we say a few words about physics.”
Clearly the whine in this post is chapter eleventy seven of my whine way back then: a whine about the “tv is a visual medium therefore we must minimize the words and maximize the pretty pictures” trope.
I came to know of Sagan through his books, initially Cosmos and Comet (written with Ann Druyan), which I found interesting for their mix of physics and history (some of the original artworks created for the books are worth a look, too), and have only rarely seen his tv appearances – I haven’t even seen any episodes of the Cosmos series in full, just the occasional snippet. I believe that the book is far more informative than the programmes, having the space to explain the science whereas the tv shows were obviously focused more on the visual aspect.
I have the same view of Sagan as I do of Richard Dawkins: both excellent writers with the ability to make difficult concepts understandable to non-specialists, but I find them irritating to watch and listen to. If anybody finds that odd bearing in mind my ‘nym, I will say that AoS isn’t a Sagan tribute but a play on words based on the often-heard nonsense from the science-deniers among the religious that views science as the work of the devil trying to hide the truth of their gods from humans. ‘Acolyte of Science’ just doesn’t have the same potential in that respect.
As for Brian Cox, the brilliant comic writer and actress, Diane Morgan, has a character, Philomena Cunk, an uneducated, investigative reporter whose presentation style was very strongly inspired by Cox. She mimics him perfectly right down to the wistful gazes and randomly walking across screen while deep in thought, and she plays it straight rather than exaggerating or parodying him. Even the accent is spot-on, though it helps that they both come from the same part of England. Trust me, it’s genius. See her Moments of Wonder, particularly episodes 1 (Time) and 3 (Evolution). They’re on YouTube, each episode around 4 minutes long.
I apologise now for describing Diane Morgan as an actress. She’s an actor, for crying out loud.
I used to find Dawkins highly enjoyable to listen to, and then things changed…
Egotism is held by some to be an outward sign of an inner insecurity. But I think I can honestly say that there is nobody I have ever encountered from whom I have not learned something; not even TV gurus. It might not have been quite what the ‘teacher’ hoped I might learn, but then again, one can’t have everything.
AoS:
I hadn’t made that connection between Cox and Cunk but now you mention it, it’s there for all to see.
As for Cox, he was a lot less insufferable before he was quite so famous.
I blame it all on D-Ream, latsot. Bloody pop stars with their pop star ways. Cunk did interview Cox for the Dec. 29th episode of Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe*. If you can find the recording it’s well worth watching. In fact, I find Cox very watchable when he’s just being himself (see also QI, where he blows Ross Noble’s mind with talk of tossing dwarves into lakes of frozen methane on Titan!) rather than when he’s working from scripts and doing his ‘enthusiastic scientist with a huge sense of wonder’ schtick.
Yeah, AoS, I saw Cox at… it was probably TAM London, I think, talking about the LHC. It was enjoyable. He engaged well with the audience and said “fuck” a lot. I’ve tended to find him tedious since, though. I know he does some stuff with the Infinite Monkey Cage people, he’s probably OK doing that.
Apologies to all you dozens of Australians and occasional Americans here who don’t know what we’re babbling on about.
I first heard of him from the people who organize QED when I was there; they’re big fans. Local lad, they told us. Also Gia Milinovich is top quality so that speaks well of him. I think it’s more the TV people who are responsible for the Saganesque performing.