The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know their Hunger Games from their Hunger Stones.
This week we look, in our politics section, at how we should handle TV programmes featuring language which we now consider offensive. How does this relate to the UK ‘culture war’ and why are the disputes to bitter?
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic the shock jock at the end of our Friday PC brigade. This week we feature the history of floral clocks.
How should old TV programmes be handled, if they feature content that’s now considered offensive? New polling by YouGov looks at this question: should offensive programmes be a) banned, b) screened with the offensive content removed, c) screened with the content bleeped, d) screened with a warning at the start, or e) screened as they are?
This is a tricky thing to consider, but there is a surprisingly strong consensus around the answer. A plurality of Brits favour making the content available with a warning at the start, whether in the case of racism (where 60% support this approach), homophobia (59%) or sexism (57%). (Polling for the latter is pictured below).
An interesting element of this is the view taken by those who the offensive content harms. Whereas LGBT groups and women are roughly in line with the population as a whole when it comes to the steps they favour, YouGov found that ethnic minority Britons were much more likely to support making offensive programmes unavailable.
Many of the most contentious ‘culture war’ issues circle around these types of issue – whether it’s the removal of statues, the signage at National Trust properties or the decolonising of the curriculum. Progressive activists often propose removal (e.g. taking down statues). More moderate liberals prefer to offer context (e.g. a plaque explaining the history of said statue). And those on the right fear a slippery slope and favour things staying as they are (e.g. keeping the statue in place). There tend to be ‘shots fired’ in the culture war, metaphorically speaking, as soon as this breaks into the open.
One of the reasons why the issue is so difficult to resolve is the amount of ammunition available. Every past generation was less socially liberal than our own, and thus fails to live up to present standards. Hence, there is an almost limitless list of things which could theoretically be ‘cancelled’. Those on the far left have a broad field of material to call into question – from the gender politics of Friends to the racial language in To Kill A Mockingbird. And those on the populist right have a vast range of figures and topics about whom they can ask ‘where will this end?’ – implying that Enid Blyton or William Shakespeare will be the next to get the chop.
As we can see from the charts, the numbers proposing the more extreme positions at either end are very small. Thus, the topic makes entertaining content for a radio phone in, a Twitter spat or a Friday newsletter (we hold our hands up here!). But it is perhaps less helpful thread to pull at, in terms of the overall political discussion.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, the part of the bulletin where we read the internet so you don’t have to:
