0:00:04 > 0:00:08Culture once seemed so easy to define.
0:00:08 > 0:00:10It was ballet...
0:00:11 > 0:00:14..theatre...
0:00:14 > 0:00:18and the finest paintings.
0:00:18 > 0:00:20The highest of artistic achievements,
0:00:20 > 0:00:24to be enjoyed by a refined audience at their leisure.
0:00:26 > 0:00:32But with the advent of broadcasting, this polite world was blown apart...
0:00:32 > 0:00:34What do you think of this one?
0:00:34 > 0:00:36It's not too bad,
0:00:36 > 0:00:38but what's the point of all this here art?
0:00:38 > 0:00:41And culture became a battlefield.
0:00:43 > 0:00:48Most people, when they hear the word culture, have a vague notion
0:00:48 > 0:00:50that one's talking about classical music.
0:00:50 > 0:00:54That's not the sense in which I use it.
0:00:55 > 0:00:58I know very well there's nothing difficult about what I'm saying,
0:00:58 > 0:01:01but there is a terror of understanding it.
0:01:04 > 0:01:09This is the story of the culture wars of the 20th century.
0:01:10 > 0:01:14And how thinkers used the BBC to fight for nothing less
0:01:14 > 0:01:18than the future of civilisation itself.
0:01:19 > 0:01:24Some wanted to show the values of high culture to the masses.
0:01:24 > 0:01:26What is that I hear?
0:01:26 > 0:01:32That note of urgency, of indignation, of spiritual hunger.
0:01:32 > 0:01:33Yes, it's Beethoven.
0:01:35 > 0:01:37But radical thinkers
0:01:37 > 0:01:41were to fight to seize culture from a narrow elite.
0:01:41 > 0:01:46Nearly everything that we learn or read about art encourages
0:01:46 > 0:01:49an attitude, an expectation.
0:01:49 > 0:01:52Borders, I think, are meant to be crossed.
0:01:52 > 0:01:55And finally, thinkers took to the airwaves
0:01:55 > 0:02:00to expose how culture is used as a political weapon.
0:02:00 > 0:02:04You can't pretend that they are factual or scientific
0:02:04 > 0:02:07generalisations, they are rooted in rule.
0:02:10 > 0:02:13Culturally, we're in the kind of phase of permanent revolution.
0:02:31 > 0:02:37In 1922, Britain was rocked by a quiet revolution.
0:02:37 > 0:02:41It was to wrench culture from the grasp of the upper classes.
0:02:43 > 0:02:46For the first time, ordinary people were given entry
0:02:46 > 0:02:50into the finest offerings of art, literature and music.
0:02:52 > 0:02:56All at the flick of a switch.
0:02:59 > 0:03:02'This is London.'
0:03:02 > 0:03:07The invention of the BBC was to spark a battle over culture
0:03:07 > 0:03:09which still rages today.
0:03:13 > 0:03:19And it was all the brainchild of an eccentric Scots engineer,
0:03:19 > 0:03:20John Reith.
0:03:25 > 0:03:28He had a bold vision -
0:03:28 > 0:03:31to bring the best into every home.
0:03:33 > 0:03:35The only problem was that he didn't have
0:03:35 > 0:03:37a single qualification for the job.
0:03:41 > 0:03:43I didn't know what broadcasting was.
0:03:43 > 0:03:45How do you mean you didn't know what it was?
0:03:45 > 0:03:48I literally didn't know what broadcasting was.
0:03:48 > 0:03:50The advertisement was attractive.
0:03:50 > 0:03:55I thought it was the sort of thing I wanted, and I applied.
0:03:55 > 0:03:57And did you really have qualifications
0:03:57 > 0:04:00at that time for this job, do you think?
0:04:02 > 0:04:07Oh, I had qualifications for managing, I thought, almost anything.
0:04:07 > 0:04:10- That all right?- Fine, yes!
0:04:10 > 0:04:13'He was a figure and a half, I can tell you.'
0:04:13 > 0:04:16I mean, he was very tall and he had this great scar
0:04:16 > 0:04:19across the side of his face.
0:04:19 > 0:04:23And he looked as though he'd been hewn from granite, Aberdeen granite.
0:04:28 > 0:04:32Reith had been shaped by an austere Presbyterian upbringing.
0:04:32 > 0:04:36And his high moral values had been instilled in him by his father,
0:04:36 > 0:04:40a minister in the Free Church of Scotland.
0:04:42 > 0:04:47Were you very conscious of religion in your family life?
0:04:47 > 0:04:49Yes.
0:04:49 > 0:04:52Perhaps more conscious of that than anything else.
0:04:52 > 0:04:56In what sort of form? For instance, family prayers with full ceremony?
0:04:56 > 0:04:58Indeed, morning and night.
0:04:58 > 0:05:00And how often did you have to go to church?
0:05:00 > 0:05:02Every Sunday, twice,
0:05:02 > 0:05:04and Sunday school as well.
0:05:04 > 0:05:08And when I got older, the Wednesday evening prayer meeting.
0:05:08 > 0:05:10- I liked to go.- Sure.
0:05:10 > 0:05:14I liked to go. I enormously admired my father's preaching
0:05:14 > 0:05:16and the music was very good.
0:05:16 > 0:05:18I enjoyed it.
0:05:21 > 0:05:25Reith felt he had an almost religious obligation
0:05:25 > 0:05:30to improve the nation, and he used the BBC as his pulpit.
0:05:33 > 0:05:38He achieved this by broadcasting only the very best of culture.
0:05:40 > 0:05:43'To appreciate Shakespeare's significance, one must first look
0:05:43 > 0:05:48'beyond the man himself and at the England into which he was born.
0:05:48 > 0:05:50'The potential genius...'
0:05:50 > 0:05:52What Reith produces is actually a set of values
0:05:52 > 0:05:55that it should inform, educate and entertain.
0:05:55 > 0:05:58Perfectly legitimate public service purpose.
0:05:58 > 0:06:02The notion that you would take a mass form of entertainment
0:06:02 > 0:06:09and turn it into a vehicle of improvement,
0:06:09 > 0:06:12which always sounds grim and lectury.
0:06:12 > 0:06:17'It was a time of intellectual flux and material change.'
0:06:17 > 0:06:21But actually, improvement is what everybody wants.
0:06:21 > 0:06:22It's hopeful.
0:06:26 > 0:06:29Over 15 years, these Reithian values
0:06:29 > 0:06:33became ingrained in every BBC broadcast.
0:06:38 > 0:06:44Reith's control was total, as he dictated both what was said and how.
0:06:46 > 0:06:48Good evening, everyone.
0:06:48 > 0:06:50Here are details of alterations
0:06:50 > 0:06:53to two of our programmes for this evening.
0:06:53 > 0:06:59He explained the BBC's received pronunciation to Malcolm Muggeridge,
0:06:59 > 0:07:02as he looked back on his life.
0:07:02 > 0:07:04What I tried to get
0:07:04 > 0:07:10was a style or quality of English
0:07:10 > 0:07:14which would not be laughed at
0:07:14 > 0:07:16in any part of the country.
0:07:16 > 0:07:20But the interesting point is
0:07:20 > 0:07:24that this particular accent somehow
0:07:24 > 0:07:27identified the BBC as the organ
0:07:27 > 0:07:33of the, as it were, genteel and respectable elements in society.
0:07:33 > 0:07:34Anything wrong with that?
0:07:34 > 0:07:38'The sort of puritan side of him was easy to satirise.
0:07:38 > 0:07:40'He became almost a figure'
0:07:40 > 0:07:44of mockery, if not denigration.
0:07:44 > 0:07:49But I remember reading his memoirs,
0:07:49 > 0:07:53and there was a phrase in it which stuck in my mind because,
0:07:53 > 0:07:57at the time, I was running BBC Two.
0:07:57 > 0:08:04And he said, "It is royal to do good and receive abuse,"
0:08:04 > 0:08:08which is not a bad notion, actually.
0:08:13 > 0:08:17But while Reith was trying to bring the arts to all,
0:08:17 > 0:08:22another thinker despised everything the BBC stood for.
0:08:29 > 0:08:32From the elite colleges of Cambridge emerged one of the most
0:08:32 > 0:08:35controversial thinkers of the 20th century.
0:08:41 > 0:08:45The literary critic, FR Leavis, thought
0:08:45 > 0:08:50that high culture was being diluted, dooming us to moral depravity.
0:08:54 > 0:08:56Leavis was proud to be an elitist,
0:08:56 > 0:09:00but he wasn't your typical Cambridge figure.
0:09:02 > 0:09:07Leavis always thought of himself as some kind of outsider.
0:09:09 > 0:09:13He was unusual because he didn't come from the traditional
0:09:13 > 0:09:15well-off background.
0:09:15 > 0:09:17And, in fact, was local to Cambridge.
0:09:17 > 0:09:22His father ran a piano shop in Cambridge, and so Leavis was,
0:09:22 > 0:09:29in that old dichotomy, he was a town boy, before ever he was a gown boy.
0:09:29 > 0:09:31So he had, I think, some of that,
0:09:31 > 0:09:36as it was from the early 20th century, lower-middle-class English
0:09:36 > 0:09:40earnestness about what he came then to devote his life to,
0:09:40 > 0:09:44and which he brought to the study of English.
0:09:47 > 0:09:50English literature had, for too long,
0:09:50 > 0:09:53been treated as a mere pastime.
0:09:53 > 0:09:57Nothing more than a pleasant hobby to be enjoyed at one's leisure.
0:10:04 > 0:10:09But for Leavis, it was far more serious than that.
0:10:12 > 0:10:15His 1948 book, The Great Tradition,
0:10:15 > 0:10:20argued that great works of literature should be venerated,
0:10:20 > 0:10:23because they could teach us to live better lives.
0:10:26 > 0:10:30The problem was that very few novelists
0:10:30 > 0:10:34could live up to Leavis' high ideals.
0:10:34 > 0:10:37By the time I arrived at Cambridge,
0:10:37 > 0:10:42there was an approved list, and that approved list was incredibly short.
0:10:42 > 0:10:44And if, like me, you were interested in the literature
0:10:44 > 0:10:49that had just gone before you, if you named Auden or Orwell,
0:10:49 > 0:10:52I remember arguing about Orwell.
0:10:52 > 0:10:57If you named Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, they were so unapproved as
0:10:57 > 0:11:00to be a complete joke, because they did not belong to something that
0:11:00 > 0:11:02was called "the great tradition".
0:11:02 > 0:11:05Leavis was an incredibly passionate defender
0:11:05 > 0:11:08of high culture and literature.
0:11:08 > 0:11:12For Leavis, high culture was a religion really.
0:11:12 > 0:11:15He thought that it contained all the best that had ever been
0:11:15 > 0:11:18said or thought in the whole of human history.
0:11:18 > 0:11:22And he therefore felt that it contained these nuggets of universal
0:11:22 > 0:11:26wisdom that taught us about the higher spiritual purposes of life.
0:11:30 > 0:11:35With his deep distrust of broadcasting, he never appeared
0:11:35 > 0:11:40on camera, and only once permitted the BBC to record a public lecture.
0:11:58 > 0:12:01Frankly, Leavis' lecture was pretty po-faced,
0:12:01 > 0:12:04but there was one extraordinary moment in it,
0:12:04 > 0:12:06when the academic facade slipped
0:12:06 > 0:12:10and he launched into this outrageous rant against the working classes.
0:12:37 > 0:12:39I mean, it was such a shockingly elitist outburst.
0:12:39 > 0:12:42You could actually hear the shock and horror rippling through
0:12:42 > 0:12:45the audience as he said it. But this wasn't really an outburst,
0:12:45 > 0:12:48this was the absolute crux of what Leavis felt about culture.
0:12:48 > 0:12:53Leavis felt that he was living in an age of enormous cultural decline.
0:12:53 > 0:12:56He felt that the rise in democracy, the rise in public education
0:12:56 > 0:13:00and universal literacy had created this monstrosity.
0:13:04 > 0:13:09Elitism became a persistent criticism.
0:13:09 > 0:13:15Leavis was a man who inspired as much hatred as he did adoration.
0:13:17 > 0:13:21My principal problem with Leavis was that, given that
0:13:21 > 0:13:25the values were meant to be, in quotes, "life affirming",
0:13:25 > 0:13:30then why did the study of this life-affirming literature
0:13:30 > 0:13:34produce so much meanness and spite?
0:13:35 > 0:13:41The Cambridge English faculty in the '50s and '60s was a snake pit.
0:13:41 > 0:13:44The atmosphere was foul.
0:13:44 > 0:13:49And you just looked at these horrible people being horrible to each other,
0:13:49 > 0:13:51and you thought, "Well, if this is
0:13:51 > 0:13:55"meant to be the civilising effect of the study of literature,
0:13:55 > 0:13:57"I don't want anything to do with it."
0:14:01 > 0:14:04When Leavis' rigid views were challenged
0:14:04 > 0:14:09by a fellow Cambridge don, he unleashed his righteous fury.
0:14:13 > 0:14:17He sought to destroy his adversary,
0:14:17 > 0:14:22a mild-mannered physicist turned novelist called CP Snow.
0:14:24 > 0:14:31'Somehow I seem to have touched a nerve which I can't explain.'
0:14:31 > 0:14:36It's rather odd to find oneself suddenly either passionately
0:14:36 > 0:14:39defended or passionately attacked.
0:14:43 > 0:14:48And this vicious attack was prompted by Snow's lecture
0:14:48 > 0:14:50called The Two Cultures.
0:14:53 > 0:14:56It argued that the high-minded values
0:14:56 > 0:14:58held by the likes of Leavis were
0:14:58 > 0:15:00out of date in the 20th century,
0:15:00 > 0:15:05and that science was as important to cultural life as literature.
0:15:12 > 0:15:14The lecture wasn't recorded,
0:15:14 > 0:15:18but some years later he explained to the BBC
0:15:18 > 0:15:23that the literary world's version of culture was full of empty promises.
0:15:27 > 0:15:32On the whole the literary world had, since roughly the turn of the
0:15:32 > 0:15:36century, become increasingly antisocial in just that sense.
0:15:36 > 0:15:40They tended to be more optimistic about the human condition, you know,
0:15:40 > 0:15:45slogans about life and so on, like DH Lawrence's which were meaningless,
0:15:45 > 0:15:50were being brandished, but about the realities of this world,
0:15:50 > 0:15:53and they're very important realities,
0:15:53 > 0:15:56on the whole they were on the despairing side.
0:15:56 > 0:15:58I think that is genuinely true.
0:16:01 > 0:16:04Leavis' fury knew no bounds.
0:16:06 > 0:16:09As well as attacking Snow's arguments, he accused him
0:16:09 > 0:16:12of being a failed scientist with no mind.
0:16:16 > 0:16:21Leavis' response to Snow's lecture was, in its day, notorious.
0:16:21 > 0:16:23It caused a scandal.
0:16:23 > 0:16:27And I think the main reason for that was that it was thought by
0:16:27 > 0:16:32many, many readers to be absolutely unpardonably personal.
0:16:32 > 0:16:34Did you expect it to cause
0:16:34 > 0:16:38the extraordinary furore that it did cause?
0:16:38 > 0:16:41No, not in the slightest degree!
0:16:41 > 0:16:46No-one was more astonished than I was with this hullabaloo afterward.
0:16:46 > 0:16:49You see, it seemed to drive some people really quite wild.
0:16:49 > 0:16:54For instance, Professor Leavis said that you were quite negligible, had
0:16:54 > 0:16:58no mind, knew nothing of history, were completely naive
0:16:58 > 0:17:00and your lecture was ridden with cliches.
0:17:00 > 0:17:03Had you offended him in some way?
0:17:03 > 0:17:06Not as far as I know, no.
0:17:06 > 0:17:09I was as surprised at this as anyone could be.
0:17:09 > 0:17:11You knew him, did you?
0:17:11 > 0:17:13I met him several times, yes...
0:17:13 > 0:17:14What do you think got into him?
0:17:14 > 0:17:16- Mmm?- What do you think got into him?
0:17:16 > 0:17:20I haven't the faintest idea and I still haven't.
0:17:24 > 0:17:30The face-off between Leavis and Snow wasn't simply an academic spat.
0:17:33 > 0:17:36It was a sign that the bastion of elite values,
0:17:36 > 0:17:40defended by the likes of Leavis, was finally crumbling.
0:17:53 > 0:17:55Until now, the word "culture"
0:17:55 > 0:17:59described the high-minded ideas of an academic elite.
0:18:02 > 0:18:06But in the 1950s, a new generation started looking at other areas of
0:18:06 > 0:18:11life, asking, "couldn't the experiences of ordinary people
0:18:11 > 0:18:12"be part of culture too?"
0:18:17 > 0:18:21The first of these thinkers to break away from the old crowd
0:18:21 > 0:18:24came from the Black Mountains of Wales.
0:18:29 > 0:18:33Raymond Williams was a very unorthodox Cambridge don.
0:18:37 > 0:18:41Born into a working class family in a tiny Welsh village,
0:18:41 > 0:18:45he was the first person in his family to go to university.
0:18:45 > 0:18:48An unusual background for a Cambridge academic,
0:18:48 > 0:18:51it was to give him a totally fresh perspective.
0:18:54 > 0:18:59Raymond's basic conviction was that the "culture", to use his words,
0:18:59 > 0:19:06that he came from was infinitely more profound and more sensitive
0:19:06 > 0:19:10and in a profound sense, educated,
0:19:10 > 0:19:13than the culture to which he went.
0:19:13 > 0:19:16And he never let go of that conviction.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19And, for that reason, I think of him
0:19:19 > 0:19:22as a very noble person. He was a noble man.
0:19:24 > 0:19:29In Culture And Society, Raymond Williams delved into history,
0:19:29 > 0:19:33interrogating how the word "culture" had been controlled
0:19:33 > 0:19:37by the ruling classes for the last 200 years.
0:19:40 > 0:19:44Williams wanted to seize the word back from the elites.
0:19:44 > 0:19:47He said culture should mean a whole way of life,
0:19:47 > 0:19:51to include areas like his traditional Welsh background.
0:19:54 > 0:19:58He wants to say, culture comprises all sorts of other things.
0:19:58 > 0:20:03We can't reserve the word culture for this area of art and literature.
0:20:03 > 0:20:06We've got to see culture as something which arises from the practices
0:20:06 > 0:20:08of ordinary people, working class people,
0:20:08 > 0:20:12everyday people in their lives, what they produce, the views,
0:20:12 > 0:20:18the ideologies, the notions, the productions, the arguments,
0:20:18 > 0:20:21everything there counts as culture.
0:20:26 > 0:20:28Williams joined forces with the BBC
0:20:28 > 0:20:31to make a film called Border Country.
0:20:33 > 0:20:36In it, he crossed the cultural borders
0:20:36 > 0:20:39between the two worlds of his home...
0:20:39 > 0:20:40and his work.
0:20:44 > 0:20:47In Cambridge he found more borders still,
0:20:47 > 0:20:52between the life of the university and the people in the town.
0:20:56 > 0:21:01When I first came here, I used to walk out past these gates and walls,
0:21:01 > 0:21:06out of historic Cambridge and into another and very different Cambridge.
0:21:13 > 0:21:17'You can feel almost at once the change in the atmosphere.
0:21:17 > 0:21:21'A different feel, a different sound in the air.
0:21:21 > 0:21:24'This again is crossing a border.
0:21:24 > 0:21:27'If we'd come to Cambridge as a family,
0:21:27 > 0:21:30'this is where we would have lived.
0:21:30 > 0:21:35'Just back down there, down the road, is that enclosed quiet world.
0:21:35 > 0:21:39'Learning, yes, but also implying and owning.
0:21:39 > 0:21:43'This is where people come from to work in the colleges.
0:21:43 > 0:21:47'This is where the colleges are not teachers but landlords,
0:21:47 > 0:21:51'and it feels often like a place that is just used, a back yard.'
0:21:58 > 0:22:05He even took the cameras behind the scenes at one of the colleges
0:22:05 > 0:22:08to interview staff about their day-to-day lives.
0:22:10 > 0:22:12The people who work in the colleges as waiters,
0:22:12 > 0:22:14porters, gardeners,
0:22:14 > 0:22:17are still called servants. I find that very strange.
0:22:17 > 0:22:21It's a way of seeing people I never learnt to share.
0:22:23 > 0:22:25They're always on the want.
0:22:25 > 0:22:28You know, "Get me this, get me the fresh spuds,
0:22:28 > 0:22:32"and get me more greens, and get me water, get me bread,
0:22:32 > 0:22:33"get me more cutlery."
0:22:36 > 0:22:38Sort of posh grads, they don't really want to know us,
0:22:38 > 0:22:40but you know the people who are
0:22:40 > 0:22:44the scruffiest ones, I don't mean the long-haired ones, the scruffy
0:22:44 > 0:22:47ones that haven't got long hair, they sort of talk to us all right,
0:22:47 > 0:22:50but the, sort of, white-collared ones, they don't
0:22:50 > 0:22:54want to know, and these long-haired blokes don't want to know either.
0:22:54 > 0:22:57Just think we're there, you know, sort of slave sort of thing.
0:22:59 > 0:23:02'The border country is everywhere.
0:23:02 > 0:23:03'In so many places now,
0:23:03 > 0:23:08'people are moving out and being moved, from old settled ways
0:23:08 > 0:23:14'into new ways, unprecedented ways, which have to be felt, recognised,
0:23:14 > 0:23:18'understood, responded to, altered.'
0:23:18 > 0:23:21Borders, I think, are meant to be crossed.
0:23:25 > 0:23:29Williams showed that there was culture beyond the academy.
0:23:33 > 0:23:36And another thinker celebrated the special character
0:23:36 > 0:23:38of working class life.
0:23:42 > 0:23:47Richard Hoggart, a lecturer not from Oxbridge but Hull,
0:23:47 > 0:23:51seriously studied the lives of the urban working classes.
0:23:58 > 0:24:02Coining a new term, "cultural studies", he investigated
0:24:02 > 0:24:07an ignored culture, of pubs,
0:24:07 > 0:24:11of racing and music hall songs.
0:24:17 > 0:24:22Hoggart's personal experiences, of growing up in the slums of Leeds,
0:24:22 > 0:24:27was to shape his most famous book, The Uses Of Literacy.
0:24:28 > 0:24:31With its candid look at the commonplace,
0:24:31 > 0:24:34the book became a surprise bestseller.
0:24:37 > 0:24:40He explained his radical ideas to the BBC.
0:24:43 > 0:24:47What I mean by a cultural study of a society
0:24:47 > 0:24:53is trying to understand better, and to interpret therefore, the
0:24:53 > 0:24:56whole way of life of that society as it shows itself
0:24:56 > 0:24:59in the way it goes about its daily business.
0:25:03 > 0:25:07When Hoggart came to write about the working class, no-one thought this
0:25:07 > 0:25:10was a culture worth bothering with.
0:25:10 > 0:25:1160!
0:25:14 > 0:25:17There's no-one as easy to rob
0:25:17 > 0:25:20of a culture as them that don't know they've got one.
0:25:20 > 0:25:25And that, in a way, epitomises what Hoggart is doing.
0:25:25 > 0:25:28He's saying, just a minute, there is a great deal here
0:25:28 > 0:25:31that you've never looked at, that you've never noticed.
0:25:31 > 0:25:34The smells, the taste, the touch, the sight,
0:25:34 > 0:25:36the business of eating fish and chips out of a bag
0:25:36 > 0:25:39and licking the salty newspaper after you've eaten it.
0:25:39 > 0:25:43Most people, when they hear the word culture,
0:25:43 > 0:25:45have a vague notion
0:25:45 > 0:25:49that one's talking about opera and classical music, and
0:25:49 > 0:25:53high-brow books and so on, that's not the sense in which I use it.
0:25:53 > 0:25:57The way we walk, the way we gesture, the way I'm talking to you now,
0:25:57 > 0:26:00the way my voice is going up and down in that way,
0:26:00 > 0:26:03the way young people dress today, all these are heavy.
0:26:03 > 0:26:07They're pregnant, they're imbued with the values,
0:26:07 > 0:26:09the attitudes of a society.
0:26:09 > 0:26:12And it's getting hold of that and interpreting them
0:26:12 > 0:26:14that I mean by cultural studies.
0:26:19 > 0:26:23Hoggart's battle for a broader definition of culture played out
0:26:23 > 0:26:26in the highest court in the land.
0:26:30 > 0:26:33In 1960, he was the star witness
0:26:33 > 0:26:38when the State tried to ban DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.
0:26:39 > 0:26:44Hoggart defended the book's sexually explicit language as true to life.
0:26:46 > 0:26:50The trial symbolised, encapsulated, brought to a head,
0:26:50 > 0:26:54showed us, that changes had been taking place underneath
0:26:54 > 0:26:57for at least 20 years, ever since the war,
0:26:57 > 0:27:01and more, that there was a gulf in British society between those who
0:27:01 > 0:27:04thought of themselves as the guardians of established morals
0:27:04 > 0:27:05and most people.
0:27:08 > 0:27:11Hoggart had been central to Penguin's victory.
0:27:16 > 0:27:20As the book hit the shelves, the cameras rushed in.
0:27:20 > 0:27:23Are you going to put this book on the open shelves?
0:27:23 > 0:27:26- No, we shan't do that.- Why not?
0:27:26 > 0:27:29The reason for that is that we don't want the book
0:27:29 > 0:27:33to fall into the hands of any unsuspecting people.
0:27:33 > 0:27:36Thank you. One copy only. Thank you.
0:27:36 > 0:27:39- Two please.- One only.
0:27:39 > 0:27:43Excuse me, sir, why do you want a copy of Lady Chatterley?
0:27:43 > 0:27:46- Can you tell me why? - It'd be rather exciting to read.
0:27:46 > 0:27:48- Madam? - I'm buying it for somebody else.
0:27:48 > 0:27:50- And why do you want a copy? - For my wife.
0:27:50 > 0:27:52For your wife?
0:27:54 > 0:27:58The trial was a watershed moment
0:27:58 > 0:28:02and the starting pistol for the permissive '60s.
0:28:17 > 0:28:19Liberated from the control of the elites,
0:28:19 > 0:28:23people were now claiming culture for themselves.
0:28:26 > 0:28:29And they looked, not to gloomy Britain...
0:28:31 > 0:28:34..but to glossy America.
0:28:38 > 0:28:44In the '60s, Britain was assaulted by a new world of sexy advertising,
0:28:44 > 0:28:51glamorous movies, all that you could desire, direct to your sitting room.
0:28:54 > 0:28:57The BBC tried to catch up with the new pop culture.
0:29:00 > 0:29:04And in 1962, the subject was rather apologetically broached
0:29:04 > 0:29:08for the art strand Monitor by Huw Wheldon.
0:29:10 > 0:29:13Our programme tonight is about four painters
0:29:13 > 0:29:16who turn, for their subject matter, to the world of pop art,
0:29:16 > 0:29:20the world of the popular imagination, the world of film stars,
0:29:20 > 0:29:24the twist, science fiction, pop singers.
0:29:24 > 0:29:27A world which you can dismiss if you feel so inclined, of course,
0:29:27 > 0:29:30as being tawdry and second rate, but a world all the same
0:29:30 > 0:29:33in which everybody, to some degree anyway,
0:29:33 > 0:29:34lives whether we like it or not.
0:29:37 > 0:29:39But by the mid-Sixties,
0:29:39 > 0:29:44Monitor was embracing all that America had to offer.
0:29:47 > 0:29:51And nothing embodied this brash and progressive spirit
0:29:51 > 0:29:54more than hip young academic, Susan Sontag.
0:29:57 > 0:29:59This is New York.
0:29:59 > 0:30:03Eight million people live, work and die here.
0:30:03 > 0:30:05This is my city.
0:30:08 > 0:30:11In her film about New York architecture,
0:30:11 > 0:30:15she took a maverick and unstuffy approach to culture.
0:30:17 > 0:30:22I moseyed over to Philip Johnson's modest stash on Park.
0:30:22 > 0:30:26The Seagram building gleamed like a switch blade in the autumn sun.
0:30:27 > 0:30:33The elevator swished up like a gigolo's hand on a silk stocking.
0:30:33 > 0:30:36Sontag was an academic high-flyer,
0:30:36 > 0:30:40studying at Harvard, Oxford and Paris.
0:30:42 > 0:30:45But she became famous for her offbeat ideas.
0:30:48 > 0:30:51She was like nothing anyone had ever seen before.
0:30:51 > 0:30:53And this was a woman that in the mid-1960s
0:30:53 > 0:30:57was one part intellectual, one part rock star.
0:30:57 > 0:31:00She was one of the first people actually to break down this barrier
0:31:00 > 0:31:02between high culture and popular culture.
0:31:02 > 0:31:06She was one of the first people to devote serious intellectual energy
0:31:06 > 0:31:09to cinema, and science fiction, and pornography, and camp,
0:31:09 > 0:31:13all these things that no-one had bothered to look at before.
0:31:13 > 0:31:15We have an historical piece, five years old...
0:31:17 > 0:31:20Through her unscripted personal journeys,
0:31:20 > 0:31:23Sontag was taking a far more informal view of the arts.
0:31:26 > 0:31:32But Monitor's sharp change in tack wasn't to everyone's tastes.
0:31:32 > 0:31:38On Tuesday, the BBC's cultural programme, Monitor,
0:31:38 > 0:31:41reappeared with a new editor, Jonathan Miller,
0:31:41 > 0:31:44new techniques in the studio very much so,
0:31:44 > 0:31:47and a new approach to its subject, which was summed up by
0:31:47 > 0:31:53the Daily Mirror's TV citric as "a bright look at the arts".
0:31:53 > 0:31:57But how much of the arts are we actually going to get a look at?
0:31:57 > 0:31:58Warhol. Scene one. Take one.
0:31:58 > 0:32:02We were promised a feature on New York culture,
0:32:02 > 0:32:06including an interview with the pop artist Andy Warhol.
0:32:06 > 0:32:08The high point of her Warhol film
0:32:08 > 0:32:12showed her failing to secure an interview with the artist.
0:32:15 > 0:32:17Andy!
0:32:17 > 0:32:22Andy! He's got the radio on.
0:32:22 > 0:32:24- Hi.- Is Andy in?
0:32:24 > 0:32:27- HE LAUGHS - Camera's already rolling.
0:32:27 > 0:32:31- Is he here?- No. - Oh, Christ! He told me to come today.
0:32:31 > 0:32:33- I know.- You know.- So come on in.
0:32:33 > 0:32:37- I brought the BBC with me. - Who are the BBC?
0:32:37 > 0:32:40The reaction to the film was savage and immediate.
0:32:40 > 0:32:42Seven, take four.
0:32:42 > 0:32:45Just days after it was transmitted,
0:32:45 > 0:32:50this spoof was put on the BBC's weekly satire programme.
0:32:50 > 0:32:51Oh, where do I get a ticket?
0:32:51 > 0:32:54No, last programme started at a quarter to eight, madam.
0:32:54 > 0:32:57Christ.
0:32:57 > 0:32:59I've brought the BBC with me.
0:32:59 > 0:33:01No, it's too late, dear, I'm sorry.
0:33:01 > 0:33:03Sontag caused such a furore
0:33:03 > 0:33:07Monitor's editor, Jonathan Miller, was hauled in.
0:33:07 > 0:33:11I thought it was horrific and nauseating,
0:33:11 > 0:33:16because it was in the true sense barbaric. Here were people
0:33:16 > 0:33:20dealing with ideas about art and literature and theatre,
0:33:20 > 0:33:22all the most important things in our civilisation,
0:33:22 > 0:33:24and they were really debasing them.
0:33:24 > 0:33:27They were dealing with them like a lot of hustlers.
0:33:27 > 0:33:30- She's obviously got a woolly and undisciplined mind.- She doesn't.
0:33:30 > 0:33:33- If indeed she has a mind at all. - She does have a mind at all.
0:33:33 > 0:33:36She happens to be rather an intelligent and cultivated person,
0:33:36 > 0:33:41who happens to have, at this time in her life, made a switch from
0:33:41 > 0:33:46rather high-level academic work to a kitsch and popular culture.
0:33:46 > 0:33:50British critics love to wrangle over high versus low culture.
0:33:50 > 0:33:54- Would you explain what that meant... - But hot on Sontag's heels,
0:33:54 > 0:33:59the next cross-Atlantic thinker was to sweep this whole debate aside.
0:34:00 > 0:34:03Marshall McLuhan said it didn't matter what we watched
0:34:03 > 0:34:05on our screens...
0:34:12 > 0:34:16..because society, and even our brains,
0:34:16 > 0:34:20were being changed by the very technology of TV itself.
0:34:26 > 0:34:28Everything under electric conditions is looped.
0:34:28 > 0:34:31You become folded over into yourself,
0:34:31 > 0:34:34your image of yourself changes completely.
0:34:36 > 0:34:40McLuhan coined an enduring slogan...
0:34:43 > 0:34:47But we can only understand the impact of new technologies
0:34:47 > 0:34:50by examining how they affect human life.
0:34:55 > 0:35:00And in 1965, he explained his ideas to the critic, Frank Kermode.
0:35:03 > 0:35:06You use a kind of slogan, I think, the expression
0:35:06 > 0:35:08"the medium is the message."
0:35:08 > 0:35:10Would you like to illuminate that?
0:35:10 > 0:35:13Well, I think it is more satisfactory to say that any medium,
0:35:13 > 0:35:15be it radio or be it wheel,
0:35:15 > 0:35:20- tends to create a completely new human environment.- Yes.
0:35:20 > 0:35:21The human environment,
0:35:21 > 0:35:26as such, tends to have a kind of invisible character about it.
0:35:26 > 0:35:29What you're saying is that there is a kind of built in...
0:35:29 > 0:35:31This interview was never transmitted,
0:35:31 > 0:35:33because it was too bizarre.
0:35:33 > 0:35:36The great communications guru
0:35:36 > 0:35:39struggled to communicate his own ideas.
0:35:39 > 0:35:42I'd like now just to ask you about the distinction that you draw
0:35:42 > 0:35:47- between different kinds of media within the electric technology.- Yes.
0:35:47 > 0:35:52You call some, such as television, cool, and some, such as radio, hot.
0:35:52 > 0:35:53Now what does this mean?
0:35:53 > 0:35:58Yes. Cool in the slang form has come to mean involved,
0:35:58 > 0:36:02deeply participative, deeply engaged.
0:36:02 > 0:36:06Everything that we had formerly meant by heated
0:36:06 > 0:36:09argument is now called cool.
0:36:09 > 0:36:12They obviously thought, "We must do Marshall McLuhan.
0:36:12 > 0:36:16"He's an important American thinker who's thinking about the future."
0:36:16 > 0:36:18And so they go and interview him,
0:36:18 > 0:36:24and he utterly perplexes the poor interviewer, who scratches his head
0:36:24 > 0:36:28and, you know, tries to interpret, in that wonderful BBC way,
0:36:28 > 0:36:31"I think what you might have just said is that."
0:36:31 > 0:36:35And then McLuhan says another set of bewilderingly, perplexingly,
0:36:35 > 0:36:38long worded things that you can't make head nor tail of.
0:36:38 > 0:36:42There's a kind of paradox, there are many paradoxes, but the one that
0:36:42 > 0:36:45I'm thinking of at the moment here is that a lot of people would
0:36:45 > 0:36:49suppose that television is something before which you slump...
0:36:49 > 0:36:52- Oh, no.- ..so you don't participate in it.
0:36:52 > 0:36:55They're paying attention only to the programming, the content,
0:36:55 > 0:36:56which has nothing to do with TV.
0:36:56 > 0:37:00That's right. So you would say that the fact that some people
0:37:00 > 0:37:03may still be struggling to follow our conversation,
0:37:03 > 0:37:07that's not what we mean by... It's not our conversation that's cool,
0:37:07 > 0:37:09our conversation is hot, presumably, is it?
0:37:09 > 0:37:15Well, insofar as we're managing to be relatively detached and urbane,
0:37:15 > 0:37:17- we're real...- We're cool.
0:37:17 > 0:37:20- No, we're square.- Oh, square. Oh, yes, another concept altogether.
0:37:20 > 0:37:22Yes, we're a couple of squares all right...
0:37:22 > 0:37:27So he seems to me a very unscholarly person that all over the world was
0:37:27 > 0:37:29deified, and still is actually,
0:37:29 > 0:37:33partly because he says things that nobody can understand.
0:37:33 > 0:37:36I know very well there's nothing difficult
0:37:36 > 0:37:39about what I'm saying, but there is a terror of understanding it.
0:37:39 > 0:37:42People don't want to understand what I'm saying.
0:37:42 > 0:37:44They're terrified.
0:37:52 > 0:37:54Through the Sixties,
0:37:54 > 0:37:57ideas of culture had become wilder and wilder.
0:38:01 > 0:38:06For some it seemed that not just culture but civilisation itself
0:38:06 > 0:38:08was under threat.
0:38:10 > 0:38:13One man took up the challenge to restore order and calm
0:38:13 > 0:38:18to a world that seemed to be spiralling into chaos.
0:38:33 > 0:38:39A 13 hour television series, celebrating the finest high culture,
0:38:39 > 0:38:42was made by the art historian Kenneth Clark.
0:38:48 > 0:38:51It ushered in a new age of colour television.
0:38:54 > 0:38:58And he called it, rather audaciously...
0:39:07 > 0:39:12Clark was the epitome of the arts' establishment.
0:39:13 > 0:39:17He'd been the youngest ever director of the National Gallery,
0:39:17 > 0:39:21keeper of the King's pictures and chairman of the Arts Council.
0:39:25 > 0:39:28He'd famously saved Britain's art collection
0:39:28 > 0:39:31from the bombs of the Blitz.
0:39:32 > 0:39:38Now, in 1969, he turned to television to save civilisation
0:39:38 > 0:39:41itself from popular culture.
0:39:45 > 0:39:47What is civilisation?
0:39:47 > 0:39:52I don't know. I can't define it in abstract terms...yet,
0:39:52 > 0:39:54but I think I can recognise it when I see it,
0:39:54 > 0:39:57and I'm looking at it now.
0:40:00 > 0:40:06With an enormous budget, Civilisation was incredibly lavish,
0:40:06 > 0:40:11and it was commissioned by the then head of BBC Two, David Attenborough.
0:40:15 > 0:40:17Kenneth Clark was the obvious man.
0:40:17 > 0:40:22He was a populariser, but also a great scholar of the arts.
0:40:22 > 0:40:27And so I took him to lunch and put this idea in front of him.
0:40:27 > 0:40:32And he says in his memoirs that I used the word civilisation,
0:40:32 > 0:40:35and it was that that ticked off in his mind.
0:40:35 > 0:40:38He said he hardly was aware of what else was going on round
0:40:38 > 0:40:40the conversation round the lunch table,
0:40:40 > 0:40:43because he was plotting in his mind how he would do it.
0:40:43 > 0:40:48And he did it, of course, miraculously well.
0:40:48 > 0:40:54At this point I reveal myself in my true colours as a stick in the mud.
0:40:54 > 0:40:57I hold a number of beliefs that
0:40:57 > 0:41:01have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time.
0:41:01 > 0:41:05I believe that order is better than chaos.
0:41:05 > 0:41:09Creation better than destruction.
0:41:09 > 0:41:17Above all, I believe in the God given genius of certain individuals,
0:41:17 > 0:41:21and I value a society that makes their existence possible.
0:41:23 > 0:41:27With its familiar and old-fashioned sense of what art
0:41:27 > 0:41:31was supposed to be, the series became a worldwide success.
0:41:34 > 0:41:39But even as they were filming, the barbarians were at the gate.
0:41:42 > 0:41:45The problem with Kenneth Clark
0:41:45 > 0:41:48was he was completely and utterly out of touch. He knew it himself.
0:41:48 > 0:41:51I mean there's a wonderful moment in Civilisation where
0:41:51 > 0:41:55he confesses himself to be, I think he calls himself a stick in the mud.
0:41:55 > 0:41:58But Clark wasn't just stuck in mud,
0:41:58 > 0:42:02you know, that man was stuck in primordial sludge.
0:42:02 > 0:42:07And to see exactly how out of touch he was, all you need to do is see
0:42:07 > 0:42:09the very beginning of Civilisation.
0:42:09 > 0:42:12The opening sequence is set in Paris
0:42:12 > 0:42:16and you see Kenneth Clark wandering peacefully past the Louvre.
0:42:16 > 0:42:20And that beautiful Paris sequence was filmed in May 1968.
0:42:20 > 0:42:24Now in May 1968 Paris, and indeed the whole of France,
0:42:24 > 0:42:27was engulfed in this cataclysmic kind of civil war.
0:42:32 > 0:42:35And there was Kenneth Clark in his suit, in his tie,
0:42:35 > 0:42:38prattling on about civilisation.
0:42:38 > 0:42:40What a charming room.
0:42:40 > 0:42:42And I think that says it all.
0:42:44 > 0:42:47Of course it's an adaptation of an antique room.
0:42:51 > 0:42:55Almost as soon as the series ended,
0:42:55 > 0:42:58it was challenged by Ways Of Seeing.
0:43:00 > 0:43:05Presented by the Marxist intellectual, John Berger.
0:43:12 > 0:43:16I want to question some of the assumptions usually made
0:43:16 > 0:43:19about the tradition of European painting.
0:43:23 > 0:43:28Where Clark wanted us to bow before the genius of high art,
0:43:28 > 0:43:32Berger set out to prove that in the modern age,
0:43:32 > 0:43:37paintings had become commodities like anything else.
0:43:37 > 0:43:40The process of seeing paintings, or seeing anything else,
0:43:40 > 0:43:44is less spontaneous and natural than we tend to believe.
0:43:44 > 0:43:48It isn't so much the paintings themselves which I want to consider,
0:43:48 > 0:43:53as the way we now see them, now in the second half of the 20th century,
0:43:53 > 0:43:57because we see these paintings as nobody saw them before.
0:43:58 > 0:44:04Where Clark had seen Civilisation as just this great timeless parade
0:44:04 > 0:44:08of wonderful universal achievements,
0:44:08 > 0:44:12Berger saw Civilisation as a battleground.
0:44:12 > 0:44:14A battleground between the classes.
0:44:14 > 0:44:16A battleground between the sexes.
0:44:16 > 0:44:19A battleground between the races.
0:44:19 > 0:44:23Art was not this wonderful, timeless, pure thing, it was
0:44:23 > 0:44:27as dirty and impure as muddy as everything else in society.
0:44:27 > 0:44:30I don't want to suggest that there is nothing left to experience before
0:44:30 > 0:44:34original works of art, except a certain sense of awe,
0:44:34 > 0:44:37because they have survived,
0:44:37 > 0:44:40because they are genuine, because they're absurdly valuable.
0:44:40 > 0:44:42A lot more is possible,
0:44:42 > 0:44:46but only if art is stripped of the false mystery
0:44:46 > 0:44:49and the false religiosity which surrounds it.
0:44:52 > 0:44:56Art had finally been dragged off its pedestal.
0:44:59 > 0:45:05Age old boundaries, between high and low culture, lay shattered.
0:45:05 > 0:45:08And in this revolutionary spirit,
0:45:08 > 0:45:12the culture wars moved to new grounds.
0:45:23 > 0:45:28The 1970s witnessed the final death throes of the British Empire.
0:45:28 > 0:45:33And this independence, a traditional flag showing exercise,
0:45:33 > 0:45:36in some ways is also a very unusual one.
0:45:36 > 0:45:39The Belizeans are saying goodbye to British rule...
0:45:39 > 0:45:45And back in Britain the legacy of Empire could be felt on the streets.
0:45:48 > 0:45:53Immigration meant the nation became more diverse than ever.
0:45:56 > 0:46:03Questions had to be asked about how imperialism had shaped our culture,
0:46:03 > 0:46:06and what it meant for Britain's future.
0:46:10 > 0:46:15Now a new school of post-colonial thinkers came to the fore.
0:46:20 > 0:46:26CLR James was born in the British West Indies in 1901.
0:46:26 > 0:46:31He showed how Empire had used culture as a tool of control.
0:46:34 > 0:46:37He made his home in the London borough of Brixton
0:46:37 > 0:46:41and became a figurehead for black academics.
0:46:43 > 0:46:47And his books were among the first to show the importance
0:46:47 > 0:46:50of a forgotten black history.
0:46:55 > 0:46:56Towards the end of his life,
0:46:56 > 0:46:59he appeared on the BBC's All About Books
0:46:59 > 0:47:03to talk to Russell Harty about his work.
0:47:03 > 0:47:06Now then to matters more immediate, as they say.
0:47:06 > 0:47:09Let me tell you a bit about Mr James first before we start talking.
0:47:09 > 0:47:13He's taught revolutionary politics with Trotsky.
0:47:13 > 0:47:15He's been put under house arrest and, as well as a lot else,
0:47:15 > 0:47:17he's made a reputation...
0:47:17 > 0:47:21He appears in front the camera as a black intellectual.
0:47:21 > 0:47:23An intellectual!
0:47:23 > 0:47:26Well, you know, the shock in encountering a black intellectual,
0:47:26 > 0:47:27who could imagine that?
0:47:27 > 0:47:31I was tired of reading how blacks were in trouble in Africa.
0:47:31 > 0:47:34Then they made the middle passage they were in more trouble.
0:47:34 > 0:47:37Then they landed in America and they landed in the Caribbean
0:47:37 > 0:47:39and they were constantly in trouble.
0:47:39 > 0:47:44I got very tired of it. I said, "I want to find some story where
0:47:44 > 0:47:48"blacks are doing things to people and not being done things by people."
0:47:53 > 0:47:55But James went on to explore Empire
0:47:55 > 0:47:59through a new and surprising prism -
0:47:59 > 0:48:01sport.
0:48:08 > 0:48:10Growing up in Trinidad,
0:48:10 > 0:48:13the young James had become obsessed with cricket.
0:48:21 > 0:48:25In Beyond A Boundary, James tells the story of how cricket
0:48:25 > 0:48:30was used by the British to instil their cultural values
0:48:30 > 0:48:32on the unruly natives.
0:48:33 > 0:48:40In 1976, an elderly James travelled to his childhood home with the BBC
0:48:40 > 0:48:44to show how this legacy of Empire lives on.
0:48:45 > 0:48:50The game is very much as I used to play it years ago.
0:48:50 > 0:48:58The routine, the regularity, the instinctive discipline of the game
0:48:58 > 0:49:02that has forced itself back on me very strongly here this morning.
0:49:04 > 0:49:09It's a book which is addressed in a sense to the immediate historical
0:49:09 > 0:49:13moment of its publication, where we've got these rising independent,
0:49:13 > 0:49:16post-colonial independent nations, and it's asking questions
0:49:16 > 0:49:20about the politics of culture in the context of decolonisation.
0:49:20 > 0:49:22But it doesn't tell you it's doing that,
0:49:22 > 0:49:26it tells you it's a book only about cricket.
0:49:26 > 0:49:30Nobody shouts, nobody's making any scandalous noises.
0:49:30 > 0:49:34They're going ahead and at the end of six balls,
0:49:34 > 0:49:38they will change over as if it's a military organisation.
0:49:38 > 0:49:41We had learned it in books like this, The Captain.
0:49:41 > 0:49:44And when we were watching, we often had a copy of The Captain near to us.
0:49:44 > 0:49:49And these magazines all were governed by the principles
0:49:49 > 0:49:55which you found in the old ideas of public school behaviour.
0:49:55 > 0:49:59And we accepted that, we swallowed it down and we read them all
0:49:59 > 0:50:02and thought that that was the way to behave.
0:50:02 > 0:50:05Beyond The Boundary's not saying we'll teach everyone
0:50:05 > 0:50:09to play cricket, but it is saying that we, in this decisive moment
0:50:09 > 0:50:12of world historic change, at the end of imperial systems,
0:50:12 > 0:50:15can learn something about the value, about the morality,
0:50:15 > 0:50:19about the ritual, about the relationship with oneself that
0:50:19 > 0:50:21one gets through playing this game.
0:50:21 > 0:50:23This seemingly trivial thing,
0:50:23 > 0:50:26which becomes culture in the sense of it being a way of life.
0:50:28 > 0:50:33Cricket had plunged me into politics long before I was aware of it.
0:50:33 > 0:50:39When I did turn to politics, I found that I didn't have much to learn.
0:50:43 > 0:50:46CLR James had broken new ground.
0:50:46 > 0:50:49And others were to follow in his footsteps
0:50:49 > 0:50:54to reveal the full impact of Empire on Western culture.
0:51:05 > 0:51:09Edward Said, a lecturer of English literature, challenged
0:51:09 > 0:51:14the racist stereotypes that prevailed in the wake of the Empire.
0:51:14 > 0:51:18What do you think of when you think of an Arab?
0:51:18 > 0:51:21Somebody with a towel on their head.
0:51:21 > 0:51:25Camel and maybe some sand.
0:51:25 > 0:51:27Want to throw a pyramid in there?
0:51:27 > 0:51:29Well, guess who's here?
0:51:29 > 0:51:32Edward Said joins us.
0:51:33 > 0:51:37Said investigated the art of the world's empires.
0:51:39 > 0:51:44And what he found was nothing less than cultural hijack.
0:51:46 > 0:51:52He challenged how the West dominated the East, not simply by guns
0:51:52 > 0:51:54and direct occupations,
0:51:54 > 0:51:59but in the way it portrayed what the East was to its own people.
0:52:00 > 0:52:06He tried to explain that even where politics is absent
0:52:06 > 0:52:10in the works of great writers, it is there.
0:52:10 > 0:52:12And this interpretation
0:52:12 > 0:52:16of literature, of course, annoyed the purists and the Leavisites
0:52:16 > 0:52:20and people like that, but I think it's a very good way,
0:52:20 > 0:52:22an important way to look at literature.
0:52:26 > 0:52:30I was born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian Arab family.
0:52:30 > 0:52:34My parents gave me an English education in Palestine and Egypt,
0:52:34 > 0:52:41and as a family we lived a strangely hybrid part Arab, part Western life.
0:52:43 > 0:52:47Growing up under the British Empire in the Middle East, Said's unusual
0:52:47 > 0:52:52background gave him new insights, as he explained to the BBC.
0:52:56 > 0:52:59Ever since I can remember, I have felt that
0:52:59 > 0:53:02I belong to more than one world.
0:53:02 > 0:53:04The essential privilege of exile
0:53:04 > 0:53:07is to have not just one set of eyes,
0:53:07 > 0:53:08but half a dozen.
0:53:08 > 0:53:11Each of them corresponding to the places you've been.
0:53:11 > 0:53:14Therefore, instead of looking at an experience
0:53:14 > 0:53:18as a single unitary thing, it's always got at least two aspects.
0:53:25 > 0:53:29Orientalism revealed the dark side of civilisation.
0:53:31 > 0:53:36Arguing that imperial powers had used art to create poisonous myths
0:53:36 > 0:53:38about the people they colonised.
0:53:42 > 0:53:47I was struck by the consistency and the coherence of pictures
0:53:47 > 0:53:51of the East, or the Orient as I called it,
0:53:51 > 0:53:54and the extent to which a lot of this material
0:53:54 > 0:53:58contributed to creating a kind of unified image of the Orient,
0:53:58 > 0:54:01which had a particular set of characteristics that sensuality,
0:54:01 > 0:54:06despotism, wealth, promise, cruelty.
0:54:06 > 0:54:10I was saying, "Really?" But there is no such thing as the Orient.
0:54:10 > 0:54:13The Orient is much more complicated, much more varied,
0:54:13 > 0:54:16much more heterogeneous, and above all much more detailed
0:54:16 > 0:54:18than any of these grand generalisations about,
0:54:18 > 0:54:22"Well, we know that Orientals tend to think in certain ways."
0:54:22 > 0:54:24And I was saying all of that's absolute nonsense.
0:54:24 > 0:54:28You can't make these generalisations and then pretend that
0:54:28 > 0:54:31they are factual or scientific generalisations.
0:54:31 > 0:54:34They are rooted in rule.
0:54:37 > 0:54:40Said became an increasingly controversial figure
0:54:40 > 0:54:44as his work pushed him into real conflicts of the day,
0:54:44 > 0:54:46like that of Israel and Palestine.
0:54:46 > 0:54:50These are poor people. You're taking their land away from them.
0:54:50 > 0:54:53Post-colonial thinkers had proved that culture and politics
0:54:53 > 0:54:56could not be separated.
0:54:58 > 0:55:02And in Britain this was becoming clearer than ever.
0:55:07 > 0:55:12The Seventies and Eighties witnessed brutal race riots,
0:55:12 > 0:55:15born of the political tensions of the time.
0:55:18 > 0:55:21And for one thinker,
0:55:21 > 0:55:25this was yet another symptom of a real struggle over culture.
0:55:28 > 0:55:30Stuart Hall was born in Jamaica
0:55:30 > 0:55:33and after winning a scholarship to Oxford,
0:55:33 > 0:55:37went on to make his name as Britain's leading cultural theorist.
0:55:40 > 0:55:44In the 1980s, more and more schools will
0:55:44 > 0:55:48be taking in children from diverse family and cultural backgrounds.
0:55:48 > 0:55:50Miss, look at the cameras, you'll be on television.
0:55:51 > 0:55:57In 1989, Hall saw hope for Britain's future in the acceptance
0:55:57 > 0:56:00and celebration of its multiculturalism,
0:56:00 > 0:56:03as he explained on The Late Show.
0:56:05 > 0:56:09As we slide out of the 1980s into a new decade,
0:56:09 > 0:56:13the key question is whether we're moving into new times.
0:56:13 > 0:56:18Who's going to define the cultural themes of the next ten years?
0:56:18 > 0:56:22No-one thinks harder about this question than Stuart Hall.
0:56:22 > 0:56:26You can see the impulse of the British that close in
0:56:26 > 0:56:29on old images of themselves in order to, you know,
0:56:29 > 0:56:32tight little island, drawing their suits around themselves,
0:56:32 > 0:56:35to defend themselves against all this otherness that
0:56:35 > 0:56:38is pressing on them. Then I look at young black and Asian kids
0:56:38 > 0:56:41in the third generation, who've been born here
0:56:41 > 0:56:44and brought up here, so they're not from anywhere else and, you know,
0:56:44 > 0:56:48I just think creatively, culturally, they're just on top of the world.
0:56:48 > 0:56:51I mean, they don't know where the next meal is coming from,
0:56:51 > 0:56:56but culturally they just are enormously in a rich, creative mode.
0:56:56 > 0:56:59When Stuart arrives in England, these questions of colour
0:56:59 > 0:57:04and differentiation and difference begin to obsess him.
0:57:04 > 0:57:07He begins to think, "How do I describe myself?
0:57:07 > 0:57:09"What sort of person am I?"
0:57:09 > 0:57:13But, of course, the idea of culture in Stuart Hall is very important
0:57:13 > 0:57:16because of what he wants to say about
0:57:16 > 0:57:20multiculturalism and immigrants to Britain.
0:57:20 > 0:57:23The Britishness that might be forced on them in many cases,
0:57:23 > 0:57:27as Hall points out, is really a very old-fashioned Britishness.
0:57:27 > 0:57:29It's the Britishness of Empire.
0:57:29 > 0:57:33It's the Britishness, you know, which has nothing to do with these people.
0:57:36 > 0:57:38At the start of the century,
0:57:38 > 0:57:41thinkers had fought for a single idea of culture.
0:57:43 > 0:57:48But by the end, it was as diverse as British society itself.
0:57:52 > 0:57:55And Stuart Hall made it clear that culture
0:57:55 > 0:57:58is a constantly changing force.
0:58:02 > 0:58:05We don't actually know what we value in culture any more.
0:58:05 > 0:58:09Everything's interesting. High culture, low culture, from
0:58:09 > 0:58:13advertising to pop art, to great art, it's all in a kind of mishmash now.
0:58:13 > 0:58:15But I think that there's a deeper question
0:58:15 > 0:58:17lying behind your question to me.
0:58:17 > 0:58:21I think you're asking me, how can people live without,
0:58:21 > 0:58:23you know, some sense that there's an ultimate truth,
0:58:23 > 0:58:26or an ultimate scale of values? And I don't know.
0:58:26 > 0:58:31But I don't any longer think that this is just a transitional phase,
0:58:31 > 0:58:35and that we're moving on to some other more settled period.
0:58:35 > 0:58:38I think, you know, culturally we're in the kind of phase
0:58:38 > 0:58:39of permanent revolution.
0:58:43 > 0:58:47Make the connections between great thinkers and discover
0:58:47 > 0:58:52some surprising new ones with the Open University at -
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