Is Britain dumbing down?

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, SEPT. 2. Writers and publishers are chasing quick fame and fast bucks, broadcasters are obsessed with ratings and schools are fudging results to produce better results...So, is Britain dumbing down? Is it then the end of the road for good old British publishing, the famous public service broadcasting and the old- fashioned, but reliable, education system?

It has been a week of dissenting, discordant voices with the Booker Prize contender, Ms. Beryl Bainbridge, attacking the trendy profit-raking ``chick lit'' popularised by novels such as Ms. Helen Fielding's ``Bridget Jones's Diary''; a former Cambridge board examiner alleging that examination boards were deliberating lowering qualifying marks resulting in a fall in standards; and a topnotch TV professional accusing the BBC of pursuing ratings at the cost of its public service obligations.

Ms. Bainbridge's attack on ``chick lit''- an easy-to- read-easy- to-market genre pegged on the lifestyle of the ``liberated'' Ms - was promptly endorsed by Ms. Doris Lessing who wondered why young women were writing such ``instantly forgettable books''. ``I wonder if they are just writing like this because they think they are going to get published...It would be better, perhaps, if they wrote books about their lives as they really saw them, and not these helpless girls, drunken, worrying about their weight and so on,'' she said alluding to The Bridget Jones's Diary which has sold over one million copies and been made into a hugely successful film.

Ms. Bainbridge dismissed the ``chick lit'' as a lot of ``froth''. ``What is the point writing a whole novel about it? It just wastes time.'' Novelist, Ms. Pat Barker, who won the Booker in 1995 for ``The Ghost Road'' nodded but was less dismissive arguing that literature of this kind played well with the insecurities of young people. ``Young people, because they have an insecure sense of their own identity, love reading books which confirm that identity,'' she said.

Others believed such writing had more to do with the changing nature of publishing. ``The ideal author, from the viewpoint of a modern publisher, is a twenty something babe, making her debut in chick lit who will look hot...in a glossy magazine,'' Ms. Celia Brayfield, a former literary judge, was quoted as saying.

The savaging of BBC came from ITV's Mr. David Liddiment in a lecture at the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival on Friday, and it provoked a prompt retort from the BBC which said it did not ``recognise the picture Mr. David paints of the BBC''.

Mr. Liddiment, whose own channel has been criticised for chasing ratings, charged that the BBC was not delivering on public service broadcasting. The BBC1, he said, had turned into a ``nakedly commercial beast'' and the country's most powerful and resourceful broadcaster was losing sight of its ``cultural responsibilities in its rush to beat the commercial competition at its own game''. He called for a ``new way of governing the BBC'' that would make it more professional and genuinely accountable.

The BBC of course had heard this before, and dismissed Mr. Liddement's criticism as a ``headline-grabbing'' tactic.

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Section  : International
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