Archive for January 26th, 2009

Listening to Mark Thompson on this morning’s Today programme, justifying the corporation’s decision not to allow the broadcast of an appeal on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee for Gaza, I was distressed. The thrust of his argument was that he didn’t want the BBC’s impartiality being damaged. I am not sure about the semantics but I fail to grasp how is the BBC’s impartiality would be prejudiced by asking others to raise money for the victims of an act of war, by a state using the most lethal arsenal of weaponry against a defenseless population.

The only crumb of comfort is that the appeal has probably benefited from the barrage of publicity surrounding the discourse. After endless debates on TV and radio and acres of print generated in the newspapers, the issues of the appeal have been distinctly elevated. My belief is that the oxygen of publicity and nature of the outrage will most likely motivate and inspire more people to donate and help the appeal.

Vivid and arresting images are commonplace in the sort of appeal films that follow a humanitarian crisis. Unforgivably lurid imagery of the awful damage poverty, starvation and war in every appeal for 30 years means that it’s possible that the viewer is anaesthetised to the impact of this genre of film.

The perception of this type of broadcast is that, thanks to the ubiquity of the imagery, it lacks impact and the intent to shock is muted. If this is the case, then the fact that the BBC are still not willing to show the Gaza appeal – a move that Sky are supporting as well – may well result in the general public responding to the humanitarian disaster in Gaza in a more expressive, compassionate and positive manner than they would have done if it had been shown.

There’s a short review of The Fame Formula in the Financial Times on 23rd January. Stephen Cave also discusses Fame by Mark Rowlands and The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption by Daniel Herwitz.

“It’s these myths [of the iconic early Hollywood stars] that are exploded by Mark Borkowski in his jolly romp The Fame Formula: How Hollywood’s Fixers, Fakers and Star Makers Created the Celebrity Industry.” writes Cave. “His book celebrates the publicists – the myth-makers who turned Hollywood’s patchy raw material into household names. Running his own PR firm, Borkowski has an insider’s eye, and his book is full of revelatory detail.

“Some stunts he describes have already passed into legend: Fox studios insured Betty Grable’s legs for $1m in 1943, while the three-year hunt for the girl to play Scarlett O’Hara in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind was “arguably the most influential publicity campaign of all time”. Borkowski particularly revels in the antics of maverick publicity agent Jim Moran, who led a real bull through a real china shop to promote a musician’s flagging career, and had to be stopped from using dwarfs on kites to fly ad banners over New York’s Central Park.”

To read the full review, click here.