In prepubescent bedrooms all over the nation, under replete iPods and Wii
bats, pristine books lie beside computer consoles and Game Boy controls,
their spines rigid and uncracked. Inside are heartfelt dedications to a
young Scott or Brett to enjoy this marvellous adventure. All children know
that in every Christmas holiday, a little novel must fall. They are the
bitter pills for which all the DVDs and ho-slapping games are the sugar
coating.
In the centuries since the popular and available novel was invented,
middle-class England has made reading an article of more than mere faith —
it’s one of belonging. The great divide in society is, above all things,
between those who read literature and those who watch it on television. Why
books should have such an emblematic cultural imprimatur, when classical
music, theatre, poetry and painting on velvet are seen as extracurricular,
voluntary options, is a mystery. Books have no more intrinsic cultural value
than watercolours or television. Of course, there is the interior
decoration. Books do make a room. A bookcase name-drops without vulgarity.
There is one great drawback to the middle-class pushing and peddling of books
to male offspring. Until very recently, there have been precious few
contemporary stories written for boys. Even back in the 1960s, when I was
becoming addicted, I got hooked on the adventure stories from my father’s
generation, the Edwardian golden age of boy books — Jack London, John
Buchan, H Rider Haggard and, above all, the rumpty-tumpty tide of GA Henty.
Apparently, we are, according to the BBC, entering a new golden age of boy
books. Return of the Hero (Thursday, BBC4) was a
page-turner of a documentary for those of us with a streak of pluck. The new
boys’ authors are a funnily intense, rather nerdy lot and include the nerd’s
nerd, Andy McNab, who still insists on being filmed in silhouette, not so
much as a military imperative, but as a pantomime cloak-and-dagger piece of
salesmanship. I’ve actually met McNab, and he’s a perfectly nice bloke. He’s
just 3ft tall, and looks more like Snow White’s little helper than Bulldog
Drummond.
Children’s authors seem to inhabit their creations in a way that writers for
adults would think weird. There is a messianic glint, a sense that the book
is a bit more autoanalysis, a laying of some personal trauma. Almost all
boys’ heroes are orphans. They say this is so that they are unencumbered by
parental authority. I suspect it’s also something nastier and darker.
This programme gave me a sudden pang of envy for the lads of today, being
offered good, laddy stories. The reason boys’ fiction went into hibernation
is that publishers tried to kill off little boys fictively. Publishing is
run in the main by women, or by men who are frightened of, or would like to
be, women. Girlie fiction of the domestic-crisis type dominates the shelves
— publishers say that boys would rather play with their consoles than pick
up a book. But electronic games gave them all the adventures publishers
thought were too embarrassingly incorrect and nastily violent. Tellingly,
there aren’t any games offering interactive life-problem adventures on how
to cope with divorce, a gay best friend, a junkie brother or having your
first period.
Television has faced an almost identical problem. The Tristrams have worried
and worried about the vanishing audience of boys, complaining, like
publishers, that they’d rather play with themselves or go happy-slapping
than watch Emmerdale and Friends. But nobody ever thought to make more lads’
television. Broadcasting is a business commissioned and edited by lots of
forceful, competent, booming women who know that what the audience wants is
lots of programmes about people like them. The huge success of Top Gear,
Doctor Who and the pretty ropey Robin Hood is an indication of how few
options there are for boys who want to be treated like boys. There is a
fundamental belief that programming is gender- indifferent as long as
everyone can feel and think like a big girl.
This week, there were two big productions of subjects that should have been
traditional boys’ adventures. The Ruby in the Smoke
(Wednesday, BBC1) was an Edwardian-style adventure in the manner of John
Buchan. It was adapted from a book by Philip Pullman, whose work my daughter
reads. The story had all the elements of a boys’ adventure — an orphan hero,
buried treasure, deathbed conundrums, shady characters from the East,
mysticism and a really evil villain. It all rollicked along at a terrific
pace and was stuffed with more plot than a Victorian municipal cemetery. It
was replete, robust, flatulent with red herrings, dead ends, MacGuffins,
nods, winks, threats and enigmatic ciphers. And, all this considered, it was
a pretty good pastiche, though I’m sure Pullman would have called it a
homage. Only two things were modernised. The hero and the villain had both
changed gender: Billie Piper, a girl, played the orphan adventurer; Julie
Walters, the very, very wicked nemesis.
Though I’m usually a great fan of Piper, she was rather lost in the role. I
don’t think it was entirely her fault. She was called on to be both
laddishly up for a scrap and femininely vaporous and lovelorn, all in a
frock that precluded much physical activity in either department. The usual
trusty sidekick had to double as the romantic interest, which confused,
diluted and held up the narrative. Walters, though, was a brilliant villain,
properly menacing, avariciously psycho- pathic. But making the boys’ roles
female ranked as an improvement only to the publishers and producers, with
their smug sense of political correctness. The damn good tale of The Ruby in
the Smoke was spoilt by casting Violet Elizabeth Bott as Just William.
Dracula (Thursday, BBC1) is a character and story that has
been kidnapped by feminists. Bram Stoker’s villain is the sort of
blood-sucking despoiler who should bring out the Van Helsing in all boys. We
all know the girls in a vampire movie should have large, heaving breasts and
screams that can be heard in Carpathia. Then Anne Rice got hold of him, and
the vampire got a makeover as a metrosexual and a metaphor for all sorts of
deep girlie erotica. Here, vampirism was symbolically linked with the hidden
shame of syphilis that stalked the blood of Victorian society.
The production started off badly, with the worst sort of stiff costume acting
and unspeakably arch dialogue. But it all looked up when we met the count
(Marc Warren), who was more Nosferatu and Dennis Nielsen than Christopher
Lee. He was creepy and attractive, in a serial-killerish kind of way. David
Suchet played the unhinged Van Helsing as a cross between Poirot and Fiddler
on the Roof. Conventionally, Dracula movies are an excuse for
hammer-and-tongs bodice-ripping and dripping overacting. But, apart from
Suchet and the count, everyone was rather underpowered. It might have been
EastEnders. Once again, there was far too much about relationships and
feelings, and nothing like enough nudity and biting. But then, that’s true
of so much of life.
