:00:17. > :00:21.Tonight, four days before the US elections, we hold a mirror up to
:00:21. > :00:26.the cultural life of America, reflected in print, on screen and
:00:26. > :00:30.in sound. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney say their favourite
:00:30. > :00:35.family viewing is the sitcom Modern Family, but that benign view of
:00:35. > :00:42.life in America, isn't the whole story. Tom Wolfe's new novel, Back
:00:42. > :00:47.to Blood, rips apart the idea that the US is a racial melting pot.
:00:47. > :00:51.Conservative commentator, Dinesh D'Souza, rips into President Obama,
:00:52. > :00:56.in his feature-length documentary. Obama is a radical communist.
:00:56. > :01:00.think he's a Marxist. While the Sundance Grand Jury prize went to a
:01:00. > :01:04.film that condemned the country's called war on drugs as a disastrous
:01:04. > :01:07.failure. We watch American imports by the box set, but do prime time
:01:07. > :01:13.shows influence the way Americans vote?
:01:13. > :01:18.Remember this voice? Come with me, down memory lane. Radio 4 releases
:01:18. > :01:27.more than 900 episodes of Alistair Cooke's Letters From America. How
:01:27. > :01:32.did he shape our view of the United States.
:01:32. > :01:34.My transatlantic guests are the writer and broadcaster, Lindsay
:01:34. > :01:38.Johns, Sarah Churchwell Professor of American Literature at the
:01:38. > :01:41.university of east aingia, and the novelist, Lionel Shriver. We begin
:01:41. > :01:47.with a new novel from Tom Wolfe, only his fourth in a career that
:01:47. > :01:52.began in the early 1960s, Back to Blood is set in contemporary Miami.
:01:52. > :01:58.A city, seen through Wolfe's eyes, is a racial vortex n which Russians,
:01:58. > :02:03.Haitians, black, white Americans, collide furiously.
:02:03. > :02:09.It's 25 years since pioneering journalist, Tom Wolfe, cemented his
:02:09. > :02:14.reputation with his debut novel the Bonfire of the Vanties, a satire on
:02:14. > :02:20.race in 80s New York. Which was made into a film starring Bruce
:02:20. > :02:25.well lisence and Tom Hanks. Now, in Back to Blood, his first
:02:25. > :02:29.novel in eight years, Wolfe picks up on similar themes, casting his
:02:29. > :02:34.eye over another city transformed by immigration, where crime and
:02:34. > :02:40.racial resentments are rife. The book, inspired by visits to Miami,
:02:40. > :02:43.over the space of five years, a shadowing of former myamy Herald
:02:44. > :02:50.Reporter, features a diverse cast of character, including a black
:02:50. > :02:53.police chief, a Haitian professor, Russian oligarchs, and a Cuban cop,
:02:53. > :02:58.Nestor Camacho, whose daring rescue of an illegal immigrant from the
:02:58. > :03:02.mast of a yacht, makes him headline news. He look up, the man on the
:03:02. > :03:10.mast is no more than ten feet above him. He's looking him right in the
:03:10. > :03:16.face. What an expression. The cornered animal, the do you know
:03:16. > :03:21.rat, drenched, dirty and exhausted, panting, barely able to utter a cry
:03:21. > :03:26.for miraculous salvation. Another strand of narrative sees Wolfe
:03:26. > :03:30.returning to a theme close to his heart, the contemporary art world.
:03:30. > :03:37.And centres on the gift to the city museum of an apparently impressive
:03:37. > :03:43.collection of paintings. The fools had put $500 million into a world-
:03:43. > :03:50.class cultural destination now worth precisely nothing! They all
:03:50. > :03:56.become world-class jokes, utterly lamebrained, unbelievably gullible
:03:56. > :04:01.culture-strivers. The horse laugh would resound round the world.
:04:01. > :04:08.Wolfe is now in his 80s, but does this tale of Miami vice prove that
:04:08. > :04:12.the great man of letters still has his finger on the pulse of America.
:04:12. > :04:22.All people, all people, everywhere, have but one last thing on their
:04:22. > :04:31.minds -- Back to Blood, all people, everywhere, you have no choice but,
:04:31. > :04:35.black to blood! Obviously the biggest story in this book is about
:04:35. > :04:38.race and the fault line, do you think he has it right? I think it
:04:38. > :04:43.was absolutely superb, I loved it. Tom Wolfe is somebody who really
:04:43. > :04:48.does have his finger on the pulse. As far as I'm concerned America is
:04:48. > :04:52.a cauldron of racial insanity. When I was reading novel, I could almost
:04:53. > :04:57.feel Tom Wolfe stirring that pot. Do you know of Miami? I do, it is a
:04:57. > :05:04.very sexy city, it is sultry, he has company turd it beautifully.
:05:04. > :05:09.Even down to talking -- Captured it beautifully. Even talking about the
:05:09. > :05:18.creole? I loved it, the Haitian character: what I really enjoyed
:05:18. > :05:22.about the novel, the politics of shade, the pygmantocracy, the way
:05:22. > :05:27.the aesthetic ideals came out. The Haitian professor don't want his
:05:27. > :05:32.son speaking crole, that is the lingo of the people of Haiti, but
:05:32. > :05:39.the Haitian professor doesn't want it, it is pure self-hate. Straight
:05:39. > :05:45.out of Fanog. All the characters, Russians, Haitians, anglo-s, are
:05:45. > :05:49.they characters Ormeauity ofs? think they are -- motiffs? I think
:05:49. > :05:52.they are bigotted stereotypes, I don't think there is a character in
:05:53. > :05:56.the book, aside from Tom Wolfe. If you wanted to save everybody in the
:05:56. > :06:02.audience �20, read more of that text. That would unsell the book
:06:02. > :06:07.faster than anything. I mean, you can review one of my books any time,
:06:07. > :06:13.because you obviously give everyone the benefit of the doubt. But, boy,
:06:13. > :06:17.I honestly found this book so bad as to be unreadable. It is gimmicky,
:06:17. > :06:22.it is boring, it is repetitive, it uses the same line over and over
:06:22. > :06:28.again. It has these stupid little punctuation marks, you could see it
:06:29. > :06:34.on the page, all the colons, instead of using ittalalics for
:06:34. > :06:40.thoughts. I -- italics for thought. I think it is an embarrassment. And
:06:40. > :06:47.a big shame for Tom Wolfe to be spending his life like this. I love
:06:47. > :06:52.his earlier work. Bonfire of the Vanties and Man in Full, there was
:06:52. > :06:56.a tremendous sense of energy. Did you get that sense? There is energy
:06:56. > :07:02.in the book, it is like talking to someone on cocaine, boring, and I
:07:02. > :07:05.have to agree with Lionel on this one, it is overwrought, hyperbolic,
:07:05. > :07:14.hyperactive, hypertension, hypertroughied. Everything about it
:07:14. > :07:18.is so over the top. It was the novel novelistic equivalent of a
:07:18. > :07:24.car crash. What is exploding is the language, the words erupt into
:07:24. > :07:29.sleeks, and cat calls, and explanation marks and --
:07:29. > :07:37.exclammation marks and question marks. I couldn't stand it. I have
:07:37. > :07:47.to disagree, I loved the Latin vocabulary, there is the
:07:47. > :07:47.
:07:47. > :07:53.monsvenerace. The monspubice comes open. There is onomatopaya, it is
:07:53. > :07:58.hard after the fourth or fifth time. I know that he's a big fan of
:07:58. > :08:03.Balzac. The big theme, power, money, class, especially race, you know
:08:03. > :08:07.what, he also functions with the little character. I cared about
:08:07. > :08:10.Nestor, and the Haitian professor, and the Russian oligarch. He says
:08:10. > :08:15.outrageous things about race, but you don't think it is a problem?
:08:15. > :08:19.Far from it, I welcome it. I'm tired of all this post-racial Obama
:08:19. > :08:23.BS. I think it is wonderful, as far as I'm concerned, America is one of
:08:23. > :08:28.the most racially polarised societies I have ever been to. It
:08:28. > :08:31.is wonderful he tells the truth. Nobody is disputing this, he's
:08:31. > :08:35.animating stereotypes to say, guess what, this is a racist country. Who
:08:35. > :08:38.was in doubt about that? Nobody rational is in doubt about that.
:08:38. > :08:42.The fact that he has these character, each of some
:08:42. > :08:46.representing a type. The wasps who are just gestures towards the
:08:46. > :08:56.schools they attended, that is all you need to know about it. All
:08:56. > :08:56.
:08:56. > :09:04.about John Smith is going to Yale. I read it as an elogy of the dying
:09:04. > :09:08.genus, the wasp. The Latinos in the ascendancy. It is almost a goodbye
:09:08. > :09:14.to the Anglo-Saxon white Protestant class. It is a scream of fear that
:09:14. > :09:18.the wasp is dying. He didn't, funnily enough, he paid scant
:09:18. > :09:23.attention to the wasp character, he was more interested in other
:09:23. > :09:29.characters. In the Miami Herald. seemed to think newspapers held a
:09:29. > :09:34.lot of power and that was Wu break the story. He was living in the --
:09:34. > :09:37.he was going to break a story. He was living in a bubble. Can we go
:09:37. > :09:41.on to another area where he takes a pop, he loves to take a pop, that
:09:41. > :09:45.is in the art market. In a sense he definitely has a point there, maybe
:09:45. > :09:49.an obvious point, but he has a point there? He has been making the
:09:49. > :09:52.point over and over again, I don't think this advances his point any
:09:52. > :09:58.further. The jokes are really lame, they are really crude, he makes the
:09:58. > :10:05.same joke over and over again. You think OK, she don't know who
:10:05. > :10:08.Sheigal is or what an aura is. There is an argument that says that
:10:08. > :10:11.the Magdalena character a nurse and highly trained, would knot know a
:10:11. > :10:16.lot of the stuff that Tom Wolfe says she doesn't know, for example
:10:16. > :10:21.what is "cutting-edge", did you feel there was a reductive nature
:10:21. > :10:25.to the female characters? I can see a little bit of what you are saying,
:10:25. > :10:35.I found he decks trously weaves a lot of the plot lines together, in
:10:35. > :10:35.
:10:35. > :10:40.a very good way. I found the plot wandering and unfocused. I found
:10:40. > :10:43.the characters that I cared about them. I cared about the Haitian's
:10:43. > :10:47.daughter, I thought that was an excellent case, OK the argument is
:10:47. > :10:50.made that he's an octogenarian, maybe his powers are declining, I
:10:50. > :10:55.didn't think so. The fact that he could get into that character's
:10:55. > :11:00.mind and explore the shade-based politics, I thought that was
:11:00. > :11:06.fascinating. Will he remembered more as an essayist, and Bonfire of
:11:06. > :11:11.the Vanties, is there room for people like him now? Well, sure.
:11:11. > :11:15.Tom Wolfe created what was called the "new journalism", we are still
:11:15. > :11:19.writing it. In a way he really changed the culture, opened up a
:11:19. > :11:25.whole new way of writing about reality. I feel protective of him,
:11:25. > :11:30.believe it or not, just because I think this is rubbish, and the
:11:30. > :11:37.earlier stuff is really great. Everybody should read that. I grew
:11:37. > :11:42.up on Radical Chic, all that is fantastic. Go back to basics with
:11:42. > :11:46.him. And that's where he's best at. Two feature-length documentaries
:11:46. > :11:53.have been trying to tell Americans two very different stories over the
:11:53. > :11:58.last two months. First 2016, Obama's America, presented by the
:11:58. > :12:04.conservative writer, Dinesh D'Souza, Dell was into the President's past
:12:04. > :12:08.-- delves into his past and talks about the what the future would
:12:08. > :12:13.hold were Obama to be re-elected. It has taken more than $30 million
:12:13. > :12:18.at the box-office, making it the second-most popular political
:12:18. > :12:23.documentary of all time. Obama came out of nowhere. Dinesh D'Souza's
:12:23. > :12:26.lock into the future of the USA under a second Obama administration,
:12:26. > :12:29.depicts a President at odds with his own country. He doesn't really
:12:30. > :12:36.like the United States. But, on the other hand, he's President of the
:12:36. > :12:42.United States. Using his own book, the Roots of Obama's Rage, and
:12:42. > :12:45.Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father, D'Souza tries to relate
:12:45. > :12:51.his current policies to the people who influenced him in the past.
:12:51. > :12:56.a long time I said between the two greys -- I sat between the two
:12:56. > :13:02.graves, the pain I felt was my father's questions, and my
:13:02. > :13:07.struggles of my brothers and my birthday. He says that it is his
:13:07. > :13:10.Cologne yummism that has led him to reduce the power and influence of
:13:10. > :13:14.America. Theoretically there is nothing to stop a Government taxing
:13:14. > :13:19.100% of income, so long as the people get benefits from the
:13:19. > :13:24.Government, commensurate with their income, which is taxed. Obama is a
:13:24. > :13:28.radical communist. I think he's a Marxist. Do you really believe he's
:13:28. > :13:32.a welfare thug and Muslim? He's acting like it. The film attempts
:13:32. > :13:37.to link the President with communism, anti-American, and even
:13:37. > :13:41.terrorismism. It will clearly chime with a certain section of public
:13:41. > :13:47.opinion, can a polemic like this sway a larger section of the
:13:47. > :13:51.American electorate? Dinesh D'Souza starts out which
:13:51. > :13:55.setting himself up as in parallel with Barack Obama, they are both
:13:56. > :14:02.the immigrant to America. Were you intrigued at the beginning? I was,
:14:02. > :14:06.I was invited in. And I think that because D'Souza is an Indian
:14:07. > :14:12.American, it is a very clever approach. Here I am, you know, I'm
:14:12. > :14:19.also a minority. But I'm the good minority and he's the bad minority.
:14:19. > :14:23.I'm the real American convert and Obama is now the enemy within. He's
:14:23. > :14:28.the Trojan horse, and he's trying to destroy the country I have come
:14:28. > :14:31.to love. It is very clever, in a way. But it started out, and then
:14:31. > :14:36.the arguments build, and then he goes to some strange places,
:14:37. > :14:40.doesn't he, for his evidence? enjoyed the fact that he went to
:14:40. > :14:45.Indonesia, Honolulu, he put Obama in a geographical international
:14:45. > :14:50.context, but, to be honest with you, after the first 20 minutes it
:14:50. > :14:58.degenerated completely into an anti-Obama tirade, it was a
:14:58. > :15:02.pernicious polemic, it was a tendenshious pieces, there was the
:15:02. > :15:07.mobile phone doing the interview, let me let you in on the secret.
:15:07. > :15:13.Inciting all the people, the founding fathers of Obama's beings,
:15:13. > :15:21.Bill Ayer, Edward Saied, Jeramiah Wright, this was the evidence he
:15:21. > :15:23.had, that what Obama was out to do was undermine America. It is the
:15:23. > :15:27.Manchurian candidate, purporting to be non-fiction. When he ends the
:15:27. > :15:34.film and saying when Obama says it is time to change America, what he
:15:34. > :15:40.means is he wants to change it into this post-apock lift liptic
:15:41. > :15:46.landscape -- post-apocalyptic landscape. He likes to drag people
:15:46. > :15:50.in if as trigger points. There is a psychologist who never met Obama,
:15:50. > :15:53.who talks about how an abandoned son might feel like. The real
:15:53. > :15:57.evidence is Obama senior himself, it is not evidence, but that is the
:15:57. > :16:02.real story. He basically makes up this story that he says that this
:16:02. > :16:06.is what Barack Obama senior taught his son to think, and now this is
:16:06. > :16:09.what his son must think, though he never actually lived with him. Now
:16:09. > :16:13.he's this robot who has been programmed. The whole reason he has
:16:13. > :16:18.run for President is to destroy the country by building up debt. He
:16:18. > :16:26.brings in the former controller general of America, who says it is
:16:26. > :16:33.true the debt is sky rocketing and points out it started with George W
:16:33. > :16:38.Bush, and he said when Obama is do done with it, that is his nefarious
:16:38. > :16:43.plan, and ignores that. We are not at a point when we don't have to go
:16:43. > :16:47.back and look at Obama's childhood, we have an entire term to look at.
:16:47. > :16:53.We know what he wants to do, because he has been doing it. The
:16:53. > :16:58.fact that this film distorts say what he has done with Iran,
:16:58. > :17:02.according to D'Souza, Obama's just letting Iran get the bomb. No
:17:02. > :17:08.problem. It is pure scaremongering. The sanctions have been incredibly
:17:08. > :17:12.effective. I agree with everything that has been said. There is one
:17:12. > :17:15.redeeming feature, there is a comic gem of a line, they go and speak to
:17:15. > :17:19.the granny, and say the speaking fee is a goat, and they brought
:17:19. > :17:24.three, just in Kay. They also went to see Obama's half brother George.
:17:24. > :17:28.We can show a clip of this. This is an extraordinary interview when
:17:28. > :17:33.Dinesh D'Souza, and Obama's half brother Josh who won't play the
:17:33. > :17:40.game. Recently President Obama spoke, he was quoting from the
:17:40. > :17:46.famous story of Cain and Able, and we are our brother's keeper. My
:17:46. > :17:50.question is you are his brother, is he your keeper? Go ask him, he's
:17:50. > :17:55.other issues to deal with. He's taking care of the world. What
:17:55. > :17:58.about at home? He's taking care of me, I'm part of the world. When he
:17:58. > :18:02.fights for global warming he helps you, there is less carbon in the
:18:02. > :18:07.world and you can breathe more easily. He doesn't have to help you
:18:07. > :18:12.directly. No. I think that Dinesh D'Souza
:18:12. > :18:18.kept it in, lots of people want to go pursue that agenda would have
:18:18. > :18:24.put it on the cutting room floor. What a beautiful slapdown. It has
:18:24. > :18:29.made $33 million, the only one that made more was Fahrenheit 101. It is
:18:29. > :18:35.being promoted in one section of America, but Rupert Murdoch urged
:18:35. > :18:39.everybody to watch it, I find that surprising? I find it terrifying.
:18:39. > :18:43.It is showing we are in a political climate that nobody is having
:18:43. > :18:49.recourse to fact. There was no reason or logic, it was purely
:18:49. > :18:54.emotion, and that is paranoia. It is a thesis that Richard Hofstedder
:18:54. > :18:58.wrote in 1964, there are passages from that essay. It is as if
:18:58. > :19:05.D'Souza set out to show the truth, this is about pure paranoia. That
:19:05. > :19:09.is what it is about. When you look at some of American television,
:19:09. > :19:13.Glenn Beck and some things on Fox, that is where the roots? Compared
:19:13. > :19:16.to that this is mild. Because he's smarter, it is strategic. He's
:19:16. > :19:19.presenting himself as the rational intellectual, that is one of the
:19:19. > :19:23.reasons why he kept that scene in there. He's presenting himself as
:19:23. > :19:26.the good guy, willing to listen and go down the world. And completely
:19:26. > :19:29.falls down at the end. There is a bizarre scene at the end, where he
:19:29. > :19:33.says this is what the world will look like, the future of America,
:19:33. > :19:36.there is this frame that is a little Indian boy, and so that
:19:36. > :19:40.seems to be, speaking of the enemy within, the threat seems to be
:19:40. > :19:43.somebody who looks a lot like Dinesh D'Souza, it is really,
:19:43. > :19:49.really strange. It is very scary when you have the kids singing at
:19:49. > :19:54.the end, it is almost like demonic. Everything in this documentary is
:19:54. > :19:59.trying to delegitimise Obama's presidency. I was glad I saw t I
:19:59. > :20:04.wouldn't have normally gone to see it. And the fact is, Americans like
:20:04. > :20:08.us do not get exposed to the other side and visa versa. The only
:20:08. > :20:11.people who will pay to go and see this film, are already card-
:20:11. > :20:17.carrying members. It won't affect the election.
:20:17. > :20:21.Next we turn to a film by the documentary maker Eugene Jarecki,
:20:21. > :20:24.which won the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It
:20:24. > :20:29.examining the relationship between drugs and the law in America.
:20:29. > :20:34.The House I Live In takes its name from the 1946 Oscar-winning short
:20:34. > :20:38.film starring Frank Sinatra, made to oppose anti-semitism and
:20:38. > :20:42.prejudice in post-war America. It is a pointed gesture as Jarecki
:20:42. > :20:47.follow the consequences of the war on drugs. Launched by Richard Nixon
:20:47. > :20:52.in 1971. 40 years on he depicts an American divided along racial lines
:20:52. > :20:55.and in denial. As I started to ask around, I found
:20:55. > :21:00.if people knew anything about the war on drugs, they thought I was
:21:00. > :21:03.talking about something in a foreign country. Yet surprisingly
:21:03. > :21:08.very few seemed to have an idea about a war going on in their own
:21:08. > :21:14.country. I haven't heard the term "we're on drugs", sin the 1980s.
:21:14. > :21:18.Using his own history as a starting point. He interviews a family
:21:18. > :21:22.friend and former housekeeper who looked after him to the detriment
:21:22. > :21:26.of her own family, in particular her son, who fell victim to drugs.
:21:26. > :21:30.It is devastating what happened to my son with drugs, I would love to
:21:30. > :21:36.change that. Jarecki uncovers disparities in the criminal justice
:21:36. > :21:39.system, which impose lengthy jail sentences for drug-related crimes,
:21:39. > :21:44.and appears to have a disproportionate effect on the
:21:44. > :21:48.African-American community. A long time ago we made drugs into this
:21:48. > :21:53.huge thing, and we have made it so illegal, I think sometimes we have
:21:53. > :21:57.people doing a whole lot of time for not very much crime. More
:21:57. > :22:00.disturbingly, some interviewees suggest that sinister forces have a
:22:00. > :22:04.vested interest in keeping the war on drugs alive. The thing with the
:22:04. > :22:08.law on drugs is, and the question we have to ask is, not why is it
:22:08. > :22:13.failure, why given that it seems to be a failure, why is it persisting.
:22:13. > :22:18.I'm beginning to think, maybe it is a success. What if it is a success,
:22:18. > :22:21.by keeping police forces busy. What if it is a success by keeping
:22:21. > :22:28.private jails thriving. Maybe it is a success on different terms than
:22:28. > :22:32.the publicly stated ones. Sarah, in that film, incredibly
:22:32. > :22:38.simple statistic, 5% of the world's population is in America, 25% of
:22:38. > :22:41.the world's prison population in America, and 500,000 people in for
:22:41. > :22:44.non-violent drug crimes. It patently doesn't work, had you
:22:44. > :22:47.heard these argument before? I had heard some of them. The way he
:22:47. > :22:51.connected all the dot was extraordinarily. This was one of
:22:51. > :22:54.the best documentaries I have ever seen in my life, bar none, it
:22:54. > :22:57.should be mandatory viewing, not just any American, but anyone who
:22:57. > :23:01.wants to understand how America works, but how the interconnections
:23:01. > :23:07.of the criminal justice, the economy, drugs, race, how it all
:23:07. > :23:14.tuely ties up. One of the spwes interviewees is the writer David
:23:14. > :23:18.Sigh -- interviewees is the writer David Simon who wrote The Wire, I
:23:18. > :23:23.finished the departmentry thinking of him for President, he's the only
:23:23. > :23:27.one that understands the way the world work. You have a cogent
:23:27. > :23:32.expression of how the drug trade works on the streets, from the
:23:32. > :23:37.father of a drug user who is now in jail himself in Florida. He talks
:23:37. > :23:42.about the street where the drug dealer gives the kid 10 cents to
:23:42. > :23:48.get the water and keep the change, then it was time to make their own
:23:48. > :23:53.money. That was cogent, chilling and easy? It is powerful, and
:23:53. > :23:57.humblinging, as someone who spend a lot of time mentoring people in
:23:57. > :24:00.Peckham, the lack of role models. Anthony Johnson, and they
:24:00. > :24:04.introduced his father, and he was in jail, and the father broke down.
:24:04. > :24:07.It get you there. It is so poignant. At the same time, it was a
:24:07. > :24:12.brilliant documentary, but I never once got the sense that I'm being
:24:12. > :24:16.bashed over the head. It wasn't "worthy". It was done with a real
:24:17. > :24:21.deftness and lightness of touch. What was interesting as well, is
:24:21. > :24:24.what Jarecki was saying, is when Nixon brought in the war on drugs,
:24:24. > :24:29.actually, the balance was for treatment over incarceration,
:24:30. > :24:34.people forget that? I didn't rather that. For me, the most startling, I
:24:34. > :24:40.knew the statistic, but one million African-Americans incarcerated in I
:24:40. > :24:47.will ja. There was an early 1990s lyric, "crack cocaine degenerate
:24:47. > :24:52.the black folk", when the documentary put it in a stark
:24:52. > :24:56.narrative. Race is there, it starts with the nanny and coming back to
:24:56. > :25:00.her at the end. The personal story that sparked this and Jarecki found
:25:00. > :25:04.himself, the idea is the nanny, they leave, they go to New York,
:25:04. > :25:09.they want to take nanny with them, they offer double the money, and
:25:09. > :25:13.she thinks she's doing the right thing for the family, but it isn't.
:25:13. > :25:17.Did you think the story needed to be there for Jarecki? Not really,
:25:17. > :25:22.it makes a nice point of entry for the film maker, but the story
:25:22. > :25:27.itself is so big that you don't need that in. It is a decorative in.
:25:27. > :25:29.I'm not sure I agree, she makes the story about him. It makes this
:25:30. > :25:33.question about responsibility and guilt. If this is all something
:25:33. > :25:36.that is happening to other people. He becomes partly responsible for
:25:36. > :25:41.this, because he was chosen over her son, and her son died as a
:25:41. > :25:47.result of that choice. It was her having to go away to look after the
:25:47. > :25:52.white kid? One of the things I like about what he puts together is
:25:52. > :25:56.sympathy with, especially, the Small drug dealers. Because what
:25:56. > :26:01.they are doing, perparticipating in the economy that is available to
:26:01. > :26:06.them. The only one. There are no jobs in these areas. There are no
:26:06. > :26:09.factories. So the drug dealers are actually the entrepeneur. They are
:26:09. > :26:12.the real Americans. They are enterprising. They work very hard.
:26:12. > :26:17.The other enterprising people are the police officers, who get extra
:26:17. > :26:23.pay for the amount of lifts they do. It is easy to do 50 marijuana pick-
:26:23. > :26:27.ups for arrest, but difficult to get one murder charge. Everyone is
:26:27. > :26:32.working on drugs and it is perpetuating it. I'm usually
:26:32. > :26:36.socially conservative, if you forgive the pun, it is an
:26:36. > :26:42.emotionally charged documentary, seeing this documentary I was very
:26:42. > :26:45.challenged. In Britain it is very different to the states, it was so
:26:45. > :26:49.hard-hitting, but at the same time, nisly balanced. What do you think,
:26:49. > :26:53.if you were -- Nicely balanced. What do you think, if you were
:26:53. > :26:58.watching it as an American in America, do you think there is any
:26:58. > :27:03.space for change? No, that is what is so utterly dismaying about the
:27:03. > :27:07.work, it is dead on, incredibly persuasive, and preaching to a
:27:07. > :27:15.brick wall. Nothing will ever change. Nobody is ever going to
:27:15. > :27:20.just go for treatment, or much less decriminalise recreational drugs in
:27:20. > :27:25.in the United States. It will never happen. It is the one thing that
:27:25. > :27:29.politicians will never support. What Simon from the Wire said, it
:27:29. > :27:35.don't look to politicians, you guys, American citizens have to do
:27:35. > :27:40.something? Absolutely. Two things that gave me a modicum of hope.
:27:40. > :27:44.Agree it is mostly desperate. One in a cynical way, it shows that
:27:45. > :27:49.white people are falling into the trap, because they are not being
:27:49. > :27:53.incarcerated at much higher rates because they are taking crystal
:27:53. > :27:57.meth. It is working-class and they are poor. David Simon makes the
:27:57. > :28:02.point that it is cheaper to kill the poorest 15% because it is more
:28:02. > :28:06.effective. What I'm wondering is once white people get caught in the
:28:06. > :28:10.trap it will make white people take notice. All these people,
:28:10. > :28:14.incarcerated, away from their families, no chance of turning a
:28:14. > :28:20.buck for their families, contributing nothing, and costing
:28:20. > :28:25.an absolute fortune? They are not, the prisons are for-profit, it is
:28:25. > :28:30.an inventive to incarcerate individuals. It is four money.
:28:30. > :28:34.hope it is clear I'm not defending it, it is not that it is expensive,
:28:34. > :28:39.it is generating profit. You even have a corrections officer who says
:28:39. > :28:43.I was porn to be a corrections officer, I'm a law and order -- I
:28:43. > :28:47.was born to be a corrections officer, and I'm all law and order,
:28:47. > :28:51.but saying it doesn't work. That is in cinemas in November, it is
:28:51. > :28:56.extraordinary, try to get to see it. American programmes have long been
:28:56. > :29:01.the staple for British TV, some US imports have been the most highly
:29:01. > :29:05.acclaimed on our screens. As well as influencing our view of America,
:29:05. > :29:08.they reflect and refrabgt elements of America back to itself. We have
:29:08. > :29:12.been watching documentaries that examine the velgs relationship
:29:12. > :29:15.between the programmes Americans watch, the sitcom, and the social
:29:15. > :29:18.and political views they hold. would you do if one of your
:29:18. > :29:22.children came to you and said they were gay? You can't separate what
:29:22. > :29:26.happens in marriage and in families from how it affects everything in
:29:26. > :29:30.American life. Debates about family values have
:29:30. > :29:34.come to dominate presidential election campaigns. Issues such as
:29:34. > :29:37.gay marriage and abortion, which polarise the electorate, are
:29:37. > :29:43.reflected in American television drama and comedy, as well as on the
:29:43. > :29:47.news channel. In Family Guy, what sitcom says about America now,
:29:47. > :29:51.which aired last Saturday on BBC Two, we ask whether sitcoms, in
:29:51. > :29:54.particular, show us another side of American public opinion. In the
:29:54. > :29:58.last decade, the proportion of gay couples raising children has
:29:58. > :30:08.doubled. One in four of them are now doing it. In this episode of
:30:08. > :30:13.Modern Family, Mitch and Cambring home their newly-adopted baby.
:30:13. > :30:18.barely sat slept, it is all women in the orfanage, maybe she can't
:30:18. > :30:22.fall asleep unless she feels a woman's shape. So here. What the
:30:22. > :30:27.hell is that supposed to mean. America in prime time, a four-part
:30:27. > :30:30.series from PBS, broadcast by the BBC next year, looks at the history
:30:31. > :30:35.of American television, through the evolution of four distinct
:30:35. > :30:40.character types. The independent woman, the man of the house, the
:30:40. > :30:47.misfit, and the Crusader, in the context of the political and
:30:47. > :30:50.cultural zeitgeist. The writers and producers of hit prime time series,
:30:50. > :30:56.have consistently used television as a sounding board of big issues,
:30:56. > :31:03.not just on niche channel, but commercial networks like NBC and
:31:03. > :31:09.CBS. I was watching Mash at five or six years old. It was all about war
:31:09. > :31:17.and people dying, and I wonder how I interm preted it. I'll take him
:31:17. > :31:25.first -- Intrp preted it first. I'll take him first. Hawk Eye
:31:25. > :31:28.didn't want people to die. What's he doing ahead of my buddy? Dying.
:31:28. > :31:32.Does American television reflect changing public opinion more
:31:32. > :31:36.accurately than other cultural barometer, or is it, itself, in the
:31:36. > :31:41.vanguard of change? What do you think, there are
:31:41. > :31:44.certain things that seem to be tackled a lot, and are just common
:31:44. > :31:49.place in American television, like gay dads and so forth, it is always
:31:49. > :31:53.in the context not of interracial. It is never black and white, is it?
:31:53. > :31:57.You are never going to get, in Modern Family it wouldn't have
:31:58. > :32:01.worked if one of them was black, the networks wouldn't have run it?
:32:01. > :32:08.American television right now is strangely segregated, it is partly
:32:08. > :32:13.the product of the advent of cable. When you have literally thousands
:32:13. > :32:17.of channels available, you can cater to niche audiences, that
:32:17. > :32:24.includes racial niche audiences. There are dozens of all-Spanish
:32:24. > :32:29.channels. They don't need to watch shows in English about white people.
:32:29. > :32:32.A lot of them won't. So why try to cater to that audience by just
:32:32. > :32:37.adding a Spanish person. Interesting, though, isn't it. The
:32:37. > :32:40.idea there is a British idea that the families congregate around the
:32:40. > :32:44.television for mass viewing, you are saying really it is very
:32:44. > :32:49.separated in America now. You don't see the shows that reflect anything
:32:49. > :32:55.other than that? These documentaries brought home to me
:32:56. > :33:00.the phrase "sundown separation", never the Twain shall meet, the
:33:00. > :33:03.Cosby Show, Girlfriends, the friendsesque equivalent, but for a
:33:03. > :33:08.black audience. Completely different world and tragic. One of
:33:08. > :33:13.documentaries, and I can't remember which one it was, they were saying
:33:13. > :33:16.it is incredibly unusual on television to see an African-
:33:16. > :33:23.American woman and a white woman kissing on television. You could
:33:24. > :33:28.feel the frisson when she said it. We We can't overstate the case here,
:33:28. > :33:32.The Cosby Show was unbelievably popular with white America and as
:33:32. > :33:36.with black, that was why it was such a landmark programme. It is
:33:36. > :33:45.only latterly, with the advent of this niche targeting audiences that
:33:45. > :33:47.you can do this. It clearly has some dillitorous effects, one thing
:33:47. > :33:52.mainstream television did, is it meant you had to find ways to
:33:52. > :33:55.create a more collective vision of what an American family or career
:33:55. > :34:03.might have looked like. There is collective vision. What happened
:34:03. > :34:06.with cable is it released the medium from the grip of very
:34:06. > :34:11.conservative networks. And their stupid policies about having
:34:11. > :34:18.married couples in two different betdz, and also it released them
:34:18. > :34:22.from federal laws about what kind of language you can use. And how
:34:22. > :34:26.much nudity. The medium has just taken off. I think this American
:34:26. > :34:31.prime time series does a very good job of documenting that really
:34:31. > :34:38.television has overtaken feature film in excellence. But what about
:34:38. > :34:41.in terms of reflecting how people feel and will vote, the sitcom The
:34:41. > :34:45.Middle, which looks entirely at a family through the resomething he
:34:45. > :34:53.is, what did you think of that. It seems to be pretty popular?
:34:53. > :35:00.seems to be. It is hitting a similar demographic that Roseanne,
:35:00. > :35:05.without the acidity and that of Roseanne. Both of these
:35:05. > :35:09.documentaries interview RoseanneBarr, she was great. She
:35:09. > :35:15.comes in and says the TV presented this world in which every girl was
:35:15. > :35:20.thin and blonde and capitulating, she said she didn't want to show
:35:20. > :35:24.that world, she wanted to punch the world out of the stereotype. They
:35:24. > :35:32.showed wonderful clips about her version of working-class America
:35:32. > :35:37.was showing a truth. The The Middle isn't doing that, it is Anwar know
:35:37. > :35:46.dine version where everything is OK -- anodyne version where everything
:35:46. > :35:55.is OK. The Wire, I wouldn't have stressed the the terrible Americans
:35:55. > :36:02.and the segregated TV, the TV is so great, and it is doing things that
:36:02. > :36:05.people use never to do on TV before, look at The Wire. That is
:36:05. > :36:11.performing a social service, preflecting the country back on
:36:11. > :36:15.theself, in much the same way as The House I Live in. Is it art
:36:15. > :36:20.imitating life or the other way, it is a curious fusion of the two.
:36:20. > :36:24.Talking about David Simon running for President, but The Wire,
:36:24. > :36:28.politicians should be watching it to see what is going on? David
:36:28. > :36:32.Simon knows what he's talking about, he was a beat reporter on this
:36:32. > :36:38.stuff for ten years. Before we finish this, let's talk about the
:36:38. > :36:44.role of animation, it seems animation of way out there. So you
:36:44. > :36:48.have South Park, you have Family Guy, and the Simpsons, saying a lot
:36:48. > :36:52.of things before. No cow is too sacred, they are ripping into
:36:52. > :36:58.everything. It was really refreshing. We don't get it here.
:36:58. > :37:04.We haven't got that fabulous sat tie, that fabulous needle help
:37:04. > :37:08.sharp thing? And yet we have the sense of irony, we give people the
:37:08. > :37:12.Simpsons and all sorts of things, it is fairly advanced and our
:37:12. > :37:17.television shows that, even though British people say we have no irony.
:37:17. > :37:26.America in Prime Time will be on in the new year. As part of Radio 4
:37:26. > :37:30.aers's celebration of 90 years of transmissions, the BBC has put 9
:37:30. > :37:36.unhundred episodes of Alistair Cooke's Letters From America on-
:37:37. > :37:42.line. It was first broadcast in March in 1946, and ran to a total
:37:42. > :37:49.of 2,896 installment. Come with me, down memory lane. You are, I
:37:49. > :37:53.imagine yourself to be, in the passenger seat of a 1933 model A
:37:53. > :37:59.Ford. In the driver's seat would be me. Alistair Cooke was born in
:38:00. > :38:05.Salford, the son of a Methodist lay preacher, he won a skorlship to
:38:05. > :38:14.Cambridge, and went to stud -- scholarship to Cambridge and went
:38:14. > :38:20.on to study at Yale and Harvard, he proposed to the BC an and broadcast
:38:20. > :38:23.called An American Letter, bringing the two countries together in
:38:23. > :38:28.understanding and affection. I want to tell you what it is like to come
:38:28. > :38:34.back to the United States after a sobering month in Britain. And say
:38:34. > :38:37.what daily life looks like and feels like by comparison. Cooke's
:38:37. > :38:42.meticulous observations transformed America for his listeners. He
:38:42. > :38:47.didn't peddle his own opinions. Over 58 years he witnessed history
:38:47. > :38:53.in the make, including the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in
:38:53. > :38:58.1968. There were flashes and the button eyes of Kennedy turned to
:38:58. > :39:02.Cinders, she was slapping a young man, saying listen lady, I'm hurt
:39:02. > :39:07.too. There was a huddle of clothings and staring out of it was
:39:07. > :39:11.the face of Bobby Kennedy, like the stone face of a child lying on a
:39:11. > :39:16.Cathedral tomb. Cooke's last letter was broadcast on Friday 20th of
:39:16. > :39:22.February 2004. The year of the 5 5tr United States presidential
:39:22. > :39:29.election. -- 5th United States presidential election. Hence the 15
:39:29. > :39:34.out of the 17 primaries won by the Massachusetts candidate John Kerry,
:39:34. > :39:39.who since the campaign's beginning has sounded an odd and lonely boast,
:39:39. > :39:46."George Bush must be driven from the White House, and I'm the man to
:39:46. > :39:50.do it". It is so interesting listening to his first and last one,
:39:50. > :39:57.even saying ow the cadance in his voice has change -- how the cadance
:39:57. > :40:07.in his voice has changed. He has that avun later Bonn hom me, it is
:40:07. > :40:09.
:40:09. > :40:13.the buet -- avuncula bonhomie. He has seldom been bettered. It is a
:40:13. > :40:19.very poetic prose, a modern given. Did you used to listen to him?
:40:19. > :40:26.voice of my Sunday mornings. He's never pompus, he strips away all
:40:26. > :40:31.the verbage, and the obvuscation, it is limb pid prose, but it is
:40:31. > :40:37.lovely. Did it feel like 15 minutes? It felt more like 20
:40:37. > :40:41.sometimes. I found myself getting a little impatient. I think it is
:40:41. > :40:46.partly an era thing. In today's terms 15 minutes is a very, very
:40:46. > :40:56.long time to be attending to something. Especially if it is just
:40:56. > :40:56.
:40:56. > :41:02.voice. We wouldn't chose to do a 20-minute essay voice now. He's
:41:02. > :41:08.also very digressive. He has a form that repeats frequently, that he
:41:08. > :41:14.comes at a subject from out here, and circles in on it. It's very
:41:15. > :41:18.artful. But it is leisurely. I started, once I had gone through a
:41:18. > :41:22.few of them, was like, look, get to the point. I never found it, the
:41:22. > :41:27.skill is to hide the skill, he does it so well. Sarah? I like the idea
:41:27. > :41:31.of thinking about him as a modern Gibon, it hadn't occurred to me. I
:41:31. > :41:35.was thinking about the 8th grade social studies and history teacher
:41:35. > :41:39.I wish I had. I wasn't impatient with the leisurely nature of it,
:41:39. > :41:42.admire the artfulness, I kept wanting him to tell me something I
:41:42. > :41:46.didn't know. That might be just because I teach this stuff and I
:41:46. > :41:50.work with it. For other people less familiar with when he explains how
:41:50. > :41:53.the Supreme Court works, but he does that really well and really
:41:53. > :41:57.cogently. At the time when he was probably at his height, we didn't
:41:57. > :42:01.have this global internet. And people were listening for things
:42:01. > :42:04.they didn't hear or know about? still think people could benefit
:42:04. > :42:07.from it T it is very educationally, if you want to understand how the
:42:07. > :42:12.system and the country work, he really does understand it. He's
:42:12. > :42:18.very good at conveying it. should plug the website, the
:42:18. > :42:28.website theself is very well put together. It isies toe -- easy to
:42:28. > :42:33.dip in and out. You can go to things separated by theme, by time.
:42:33. > :42:39.Particular events, you can look up the 9/11 broad ka. For the casual -
:42:39. > :42:43.- broadcast. For the casual dandier it is great. That is a shout out to
:42:43. > :42:45.the web teams who created it. A link to the website and details of
:42:45. > :42:54.everything we have discuss tonight are on the website. My thanks to
:42:54. > :43:01.Sarah, Lionel and Lindsay. Next week Jo Whiley will be here with a
:43:01. > :43:04.show about books and Mick Jagger. Before we go, American presidential
:43:04. > :43:08.candidates have picked up an instrument to would the electorate.
:43:08. > :43:12.Even if they don't, it seems there is always a whizzkid on hand to set
:43:12. > :43:16.their words to music. # Hey I just met you
:43:16. > :43:21.# This is crazy # Here's my number
:43:21. > :43:24.# So call me maybe # It's hard to look right
:43:24. > :43:34.# At you babe # Here's my number
:43:34. > :43:34.
:43:35. > :43:39.# So call me maybe I love you back! I love you Obama.
:43:39. > :43:44.I want to make sure people know precisely why I'm running for
:43:44. > :43:47.President, and the answer is simple. # What's up gangster
:43:47. > :43:51.# I love people # I was born and raised here
:43:51. > :43:53.# I love this state # I love cars