Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Sex, Youth & Video Tape: Turn it Up and The Struggle to be Heard

2013; Routledge; Volume: 33; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439685.2013.823026

1465-3451

Ieuan Franklin,

Media Studies and Communication

Abstract TV represented an opportunity to take a radical position and get it across to as wide an audience as possible—and all this without having to train as an assistant editor with the BBC for 10 years first. Pirate television, home-made (non-art school) scratch video made great media myths and fed the theorists’ need to romanticize working-class production.Footnote 1 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Tony Dowmunt, Graham Peet, Rob Burkitt and Tim Morrison for agreeing to be interviewed specifically for this article. Thanks also to Roger Shannon for providing information and support. Notes 1 Mike Stubbs, Beyond public service broadcasting, in: New Media Culture in Europe (Amsterdam, 1999), 70. 2 David Hall, Structures, paraphernalia and television: some notes, in: Signs of the Times: a decade of video, film and slide: tape installation in Britain, 1980–1990 (Oxford, 1990), 29. 3 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3yMWASb8_c (accessed 6 February 2013). 4 Digital Britain report (Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, June 2009). Cm 760. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/digitalbritain-finalreport-jun09.pdf (accessed 25 January 2013). 5 See http://www.channel4.com/info/corporate/about/channel-4s-remit (accessed 21 December 2012). 6 Anthony Smith, Grade expectations, Impact, October 1992, 11. 7 This subtitle borrows the title of an early edited collection on Channel 4, which sought to present an alternative set of criteria for considering the channel’s performance than that provided by the ITV companies. See Simon Blanchard and David Morley, What’s This Channel Fo(u)r? an alternative report (London, 1982). 8 Sargant, who had a background in statistical research, was here advising Jeremy Isaacs (Channel 4’s first Chief Executive) on new forms of research that might be required to allow the channel to assess its performance against its unique remit. See Paul Bonner and Lesley Aston, Independent Television in Britain, Volume 6. New Developments in Independent Television 1981–92: Channel 4, TV-am, Cable and Satellite (Basingstoke, 2003), 56. 9 Naomi McIntosh, Channel Four—a new choice and a new challenge (1982). Channel Four Research Vol. 2, Dec 1982–Dec 1984. File ref. 9002/17. IBA/ITA/Cable Authority Archive, Bournemouth University. 10 See Alkarim Jivani, Making a difference: the impact of Channel Four, in: Broadcastindg Debate: The Neglected Audience No. 5 (Broadcasting debate monographs) (London, 1990), 21–29. 11 Carl Gardner, Like it or lump it, The Listener, 16 August 1984. 12 Steve Taylor, Ideas and independents, Televisual, April 1986. 13 Sophie Balhatchet, Inside Media: inside the independent sector, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) Talks (London, 1988), http://sounds.bl.uk/Arts-literature-and-performance/ICA-talks/024M-C0095X0414XX-0100V0. 14 Quoted in Stuart Hood and Garret O’Leary, Questions of Broadcasting (London, 1989), 61. 15 Phillip Whitehead, Reconstructing broadcasting, in: Bending Reality: the state of the media (London, 1986), 155. 16 Alan Fountain, Rod Stoneman and Caroline Spry, The Work of Channel Four’s Independent Film and Video Department (London, 1986), 7. 17 Anon., Four to Grant £1/4m to Video Workshops, Television Today, 8 April 1982, 14. 18 Paul Madden, Channel without a cause, Stills, 6 November 1983, 46. 19 Ibid. 20 Quoted in Jennifer Selway, Channel 4 and a case of the seven-year itch, The Observer, 29 October 1989. 21 Tony Dowmunt and Andy Porter, interviewed by Ieuan Franklin, 25 September 2012. 22 The ‘terms’ of this budget seem to have been later adjusted to engineer a certain amount of productivity, as in the first year £200,000 was spent for capital expenditure for ten video workshops and £130,000 for ‘programmes of work’ rather than ‘revenue funding’ (the wording originally used in pre-launch plans), to bring them in line with the film workshops. See Anon., Four to Grant £1/4m to Video Workshops. 23 Ch4: The Eleventh Hour: Some Views (undated), 4. Independent Film, Video & Photography Association Archive (Box 33), Sheffield Hallam University. 24 Quoted in Kathy Myers, A complex relationship, City Limits, 29 October 1982. 25 Letter from Alan Fountain to Dermot O’Hagan, 21 May 1984. Channel Four Programmes: ‘People to People’. File Ref. 5102/33. IBA/ITA/Cable Authority Archive, Bournemouth University. 26 The workshop budget was initially £875,000, but in the Channel’s first full financial year this was cut to £500,000. See Basil Comely, Workshops: Persecuted Minorities? Broadcast, 29 August 1983, 34. 27 Joel Cayford (registering a comment by Claire Johnston on the first year of the slot), Ch4: The Eleventh Hour: Some Views (undated), 4. Independent Film, Video & Photography Association Archive (Box 33), Sheffield Hallam University. 28 Unlike film, video had not system of theatrical distribution, and so tapes were watched in small groups, amongst whom discussion could occur after or during the screening. Turn it Up managed to replicate this experience through its use of on-screen presenters, and hence obviated these problems around contextualization. 29 Mandy Merck, Raise your voices for the big screen, New Statesman, 15 February 1985, 18. 30 Fountain, interviewed by Justin Smith and Rachael Keene, 24 February 2011. 31 A copy of the booklet is held in the National Media Education Archive collection, held at the National Arts Education Archive, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield. 32 Fountain, quoted in Julian Petley, C4: is innovation being ousted by convention? Television Weekly, 15 February 1985, 8. 33 Rob Burkitt, interviewed by Ieuan Franklin, 21 February 2013. 34 A. L. Rees, Experimenting on air: UK artists’ film on television, in: Laura Mulvey and Jamie Sexton (eds), Experimental British Television (Manchester, 2008), 152. 35 See Terry Flaxton, Art and Television, http://highdefinition-nomercy.blogspot.co.uk/2012_04_01_archive.html (accessed 6 February 2013). 36 S. Marshall, Video: from art to independence, Screen 26 (2) (1985), 71, doi:10.1093/screen/26.2.66. 37 See David E. James, For a working-class television: the Miners’ Campaign Tape Project, in: David E. James (ed.), Power Misses: essays across (un)popular culture (London, 1996), 248–265. 38 Catherine Elwes, Video Art: a guided tour (London, 2005), 118. 39 Alexander also recalled that the presenters were invited to present the programmes in a ‘wacky’ manner in the spirit of some of the films, but preferred (perhaps wisely) to take a more conventional approach. Karen Alexander, Innovation in British Television, ICA Talks (London, 1987), http://sounds.bl.uk/Arts-literature-and-performance/ICA-talks/024M-C0095X0260XX-0100V0. 40 Anon., In the air, The Listener, 11 December 1986. 41 Graham Peet, interviewed by Ieuan Franklin, 11 January 2013. 42 Memorandum from Senior Television Programme Officer (Neville Clarke) to Director of Television (David Glencross), Channel Four Programmes: People to People file, File Ref. 5102/33. IBA/ITA/Cable Authority Archive, Bournemouth University. 43 Sean Cubitt, Innocence and manipulation: censorship, consumption and freedom in 1980s Britain, in: Alan Tomlinson (ed.), Consumption, Identity and Style: marketing, meanings and the packaging of pleasure (London, 1990), 102–118; Sean Cubitt, Timeshift: on video culture (London, 1991), 164. 44 See Lipman’s Video distribution and the law, Appendix D, in Jon Dovey and Jo Dungey, The Videoactive Report (London, 1985). 45 Julian Petley, Video screen gems, Marxism Today, November 1988, 42. 46 Alexander, Innovation in British Television. 47 Jon Dovey, Copyright as Censorship-Notes on ‘Death Valley Days’, Screen 27 (2) (1986), 54, doi:10.1093/screen/27.2.52. 48 Alexander, ibid. 49 Tim Morrison, interviewed by Ieuan Franklin, 4 February 2013. 50 Michael O’Pray, Kitsch in sync, AIP & Co., October 1985, 10. 51 See George Barber, Scratch and after: edit suite technology and the determination of style in video art, in: Philip Hayward (ed.), Culture, Technology & Creativity: in the late twentieth century (Blooington, IN, 1990), 113–114. 52 Lipman, quoted in O’Pray, Kitsch in Sync. 53 Lipman had written a play entitled Kenny Hydig, This is Your Life, which involved video, and in seeking assistance with this he collaborated with Oval Video (a video workshop based at the theatre) and Albany Video (which itself was based at the theatre/arts centre the Albany Empire). I am indebted to Tony Dowmunt for this account of the origins of Framed Youth, from an interview (by the present author), 21 January 2013. 54 Amongst this group were several individuals who achieved a high level of fame shortly afterwards—the film-maker and artist Isaac Julien, and Jimmy Sommerville and Richard Coles, who later formed The Communards. 55 Mistaken Identity (shown in the third episode of Turn it Up) featured a scene in which a group of young women (the Sukishan Ravers group) laugh and joke as they play back footage in the editing room, and there is inter-cutting between the editing room and the footage of themselves, with their voices providing continuity between the two. 56 Evidence of how such community videos were used in youth work and education is scarce or non-existent, but it should be noted that the frank and provocative nature of these videos must undoubtedly have generated a mixture of responses. An American sex education guide notes ‘some of the references to sexual behaviour and pleasure may be inappropriate for certain audiences’ but also that whilst ‘the film presents positive images of lesbian and gay people,’ it may also ‘reinforce stereotyping by focusing on a group who have deliberately isolated themselves from the community.’ See Hilary Dixon, Gill Mullinar, and Clarity Collective, Taught Not Caught: strategies for sex education (Learning Development Aids, 1985), 191. 57 Indeed, Jim McGuigan and Lesley Watson were asked to produce back-up teaching materials in 1986 for all the Birmingham Film and Video Workshop productions about youth culture. Jim McGuigan, interviewed by Ieuan Franklin, 29 November 2012. Copies are kept at the National Arts Education Archive, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield. 58 G. Swanson, Independent Media and Media Education, Screen 27 (5) (1986), 62–67, doi:10.1093/screen/27.5.62. 59 Julia Knight and Peter Thomas, Reaching Audiences: distribution and promotion of alternative moving image (Bristol, 2011), 108–109. 60 Tony Dowmunt, interviewed by Ieuan Franklin, 21 January 2013. 61 Figures from Jon Dovey and Jo Dungey, The Videoactive Report (London, 1985). 62 Mandy Merck, Veronica 4 Rose, Monthly Film Bulletin, 1984, 215. 63 Cubitt, Timeshift, 138. 64 Mandy Merck, ‘Gay Life’: desire, demography and disappointment, Gay Left, 1980, 16. 65 Alan Fountain, A Different World, Televisual, December 1994, 90. 66 Alan Fountain, interviewed by Justin Smith and Rachael Keene, 24 February 2011. 67 Tony Dowmunt and Andy Porter, interviewed by Ieuan Franklin, 25 September 2012. 68 Petley, Video Screen Gems, 42. 69 Mark Nash, Langston in Retrospect, booklet in Looking for Langston DVD (London, 1989). 70 Isaac Julien and Kobena Mercer, De Margin and De Centre, Screen 29 (4) (1988), 3, doi:10.1093/screen/29.4.2. 71 Rees, Experimenting on air: UK artists’ film on television, 159. Rees is discussing the moment during the mid-to-late ‘80s when video art was becoming ‘lavish’ and hi-tech, and when its ideas were being picked up by ‘straight TV’. 72 Terry Flaxton, Art and Television, http://highdefinition-nomercy.blogspot.co.uk/2012_04_01_archive.html (accessed 6th February 2013). 73 Another example of co-habitation was a co-operative of nine film-makers named Spectre, initiated by Simon Hartog, including Vera Neubauer, Phil Mulloy and Steve Dwoskin, which actually incorporated (and collaborated with) the production company Large Door, which made Channel 4’s series on cinema, Visions. 74 Peter Boyd-Maclean, interviewed by Maggie Warwick, June 2007. REWIND: Artists’ Video in the 70s & 80s. http://www.rewind.ac.uk/documents/Duvet%20Brothers/DB510.pdf. (accessed 25 January 2013). 75 Rik Lander, interviewed by Maggie Warwick, June 2007. REWIND: Artists’ Video in the 70s & 80s. http://www.rewind.ac.uk/documents/Duvet%20Brothers/DB511.pdf. (accessed 25 January 2013). 76 See Elwes, Video Art, 34. 77 Donebauer, quoted in Graham Wade, Welcome—to the last of the conventional TV channels? Television: The Journal of the Royal Television Society, November 1982, 16. 78 John Ellis, What did Channel 4 do for us? Reassessing the early years, Screen 49 (3) (2008), 340, doi:10.1093/screen/hjn037. 79 See Kobena Mercer, Recoding narratives of race and nation, in: Kobena Mercer (ed.), Black Film, British Cinema (London, 1988), 7–8. 80 Fountain, quoted in Comely, Workshops: persecuted minorities? 35. 81 Dukes, quoted in ibid. 82 Richard Luce, Office of Arts and Libraries Press Release, 8 July 1987. 83 This was one of the conclusions of the Boyden Southwood Report on the workshop sector, a consultancy co-funded by Channel 4. See Knight and Thomas, Reaching Audiences, 188. 84 See Mercer, Recoding narratives of race and nation, 8. 85 Digital Britain report (Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, June 2009). Cm 760. 86 Robin Gutch, interviewed by Justin Smith, Rachael Keene and Ieuan Franklin, London, 14 June 2012.