Making a hash of revisiting this treasure? How very uncivilised
Let’s face it, the BBC was always likely to make a hash of remaking its own arts treasure, Civilisation. But to begin by messing with the spelling displays special determination.
Historian simon schama presented the first episode of Civilisations (BBC2), with an ostentatious ‘s’ on the end. Why the plural? this is the Beeb’s right-on way of emphasising from the outset that the West’s civilisation is not the only flavour, nor even the best.
In fact, schama seems to think it’s so rubbish that he barely gave it a mention, and focused far more on cavemen than anything we’d call ‘civilised’.
When Kenneth Clark presented 1969’s original documentary series, commissioned by BBC2 chief David Attenborough, he was criticised for ignoring non-Western cultures.
Clark retorted that it would be presumptuous of him to start explaining to the Chinese or the Native Americans how their societies had evolved: he simply concentrated on europe.
No such modesty restrained schama. He began by plunging back 77,000 years, to the first rock paintings in Africa. then he confidently asserted that music and visual art began together, around 35,000BC, in the el Castillo caves of northern spain.
Never mind that el Castillo’s art might not belong to our species at all: some experts think it was done by Neanderthals. It’s still ‘civilisation’ in schama’s book. He galloped to China, to Mexico, to Mesopotamia and to Jordan, celebrating random examples of ancient art while giving little hint how they slotted into the political and religious landscape of the times.
the genius of Clark’s programme was to fit artworks into the jigsaw of history and complete the picture. He followed a path through the centuries, showing us how Christianity survived the Dark Ages, how the Renaissance arose from feuding city states and so on.
Clark made sense of a subject that, till then, had baffled anyone without a degree in art history. No series has done more to educate viewers, or inspire learning.
But to follow schama’s train of thought, you needed a prior understanding of art through the ages. Admiring el Castillo’s wall paintings of bulls, he started talking about 20th century artist Pablo Picasso and his obsession with bulls. With a wave of his hand, he indicated ten bovine drawings that represented, he said, Picasso’s range of styles. Unless you already knew the difference between modernism, Cubism and Picasso’s ‘blue period’, this was all just so much bull. schama is like Clark in just one respect, his pretentious mangling of words. Kenneth insisted on saying ‘ca-PIt-alism’ and ‘bar-ohhhque’. simon talks about ‘mountaynes’ and ‘fountaynes’. Mary Beard is next week’s presenter. surely she’ll do a better job.
For a proper guided tour through the wonders of the world, we needed The Cruise: Voyage To Alaska (ItV). Aboard the star Princess, a 17-storey floating hotel for 2,500 guests, bound for the Arctic Circle.
Mostly, the dramas in this fly-on-the-bulk-head show are insignificantly small. the captain took offence at the shape of the icing carrots on the carrot cake. A receptionist was irritated by her colleague’s laugh, which sounded like a sealion begging for a fish.
But the generosity of a married Florida couple, the Howards, was touching. they had saved for years to afford the £6,000-aweek Grand suite, to fulfil a lifetime’s ambition of seeing Alaska’s glaciers.
As the gigantic ship sailed up the American fjords, the two invited a host of new friends to come and enjoy the spectacle from their palatial balcony. Now that’s civilised.