I read something about this show elsewhere. I would love to check it out but I threw out the TV 20 years ago for all the obvious reasons. Perhaps there are some clips on YouTube.
hisenormity
4 years ago
Thank you, and I get what you are saying. Indeed it is a great TV show and you are spot on in many of your points. I would like to add to this: “…held back in life by their hubris and their capacity to self-sabotage.” Yes people are, but ironically you later mention the structural reasons as well that hold people back. I don’t think you mean to, but that sentence could be read to mean it is 100% their own fault and responsibility, which fits neatly into the “lack of aspiration” narrative. Personal agency is bounded by psychological mechanisms (for example lack of self efficacy, external locus of control), biological mechanisms including, increasingly important in many sectors, personal attractiveness and norms of ‘beauty’, and finally social mechanisms such as social class which affects things like access to private education, and material benefits that help children develop positively. You acknowledge this later in your piece, and I’m reminded of Orwell’s comment in Down and Out about how poverty ‘annihilates the future’, about the ‘crust wiping’ and the ‘boredom’. There is empirical evidence that poverty affects cognitive development and creates feelings of fatalism. This can then lead to other self sabotaging behaviours. Some people like to blame the individuals themselves and leave it at that. ‘This Country’ avoids that overly simplistic understanding.
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago
Well I’ve had a look on YouTube and I don’t really consider it to be a ‘modern miracle’. Instead, I find it to be somewhat puerile and a rural Office knock-off.
And I don’t buy all this stuff about being isolated an unable to get to London etc. I grew up in a hamlet – not even a village – in the middle of nowhere and further away from London. I would get on the train and go to London when I was 16. I was working as a copywriter in one of London’s best advertising agencies when I was 20. Really, it’s not difficult.
As for the village and its environs, it all looks beautiful. I know that one doesn’t appreciate these things when you are the age of the two main characters, but most people would love to live there.
I read something about this show elsewhere. I would love to check it out but I threw out the TV 20 years ago for all the obvious reasons. Perhaps there are some clips on YouTube.
Thank you, and I get what you are saying. Indeed it is a great TV show and you are spot on in many of your points. I would like to add to this: “…held back in life by their hubris and their capacity to self-sabotage.” Yes people are, but ironically you later mention the structural reasons as well that hold people back. I don’t think you mean to, but that sentence could be read to mean it is 100% their own fault and responsibility, which fits neatly into the “lack of aspiration” narrative. Personal agency is bounded by psychological mechanisms (for example lack of self efficacy, external locus of control), biological mechanisms including, increasingly important in many sectors, personal attractiveness and norms of ‘beauty’, and finally social mechanisms such as social class which affects things like access to private education, and material benefits that help children develop positively. You acknowledge this later in your piece, and I’m reminded of Orwell’s comment in Down and Out about how poverty ‘annihilates the future’, about the ‘crust wiping’ and the ‘boredom’. There is empirical evidence that poverty affects cognitive development and creates feelings of fatalism. This can then lead to other self sabotaging behaviours. Some people like to blame the individuals themselves and leave it at that. ‘This Country’ avoids that overly simplistic understanding.
Well I’ve had a look on YouTube and I don’t really consider it to be a ‘modern miracle’. Instead, I find it to be somewhat puerile and a rural Office knock-off.
And I don’t buy all this stuff about being isolated an unable to get to London etc. I grew up in a hamlet – not even a village – in the middle of nowhere and further away from London. I would get on the train and go to London when I was 16. I was working as a copywriter in one of London’s best advertising agencies when I was 20. Really, it’s not difficult.
As for the village and its environs, it all looks beautiful. I know that one doesn’t appreciate these things when you are the age of the two main characters, but most people would love to live there.