‘Civilisations’ needs to be a one-man show
A damning review of BBC Two’s muchheralded new series,
Civilisations, appears on the BBC website. The author – oh dear
– is the corporation’s own arts editor, Will Gompertz, memorably described by my mother as the bald man with the long hair.
Gompertz sounds personally offended by the “well-funded”
Civilisations, which he calls a “messy failure that lacks the coherent intellectual argument” of the original. Awarding it a passive-aggressive two stars out of five, he says it is “more confused and confusing than a drunk driver negotiating Spaghetti Junction in the rush hour”. His harshest criticism is reserved for a “particularly disappointing episode” presented by Professor Mary Beard. “We are served a tepid dish of the blindingly obvious and the downright silly.” Why don’t you tell us what you really think, Will?
I suspect I know the root of the problem. When the BBC first mooted a modern take on Civilisation, Kenneth Clark’s legendary 1969 series on the history of Western art, architecture and philosophy, there was only one presenter who could hold a tealight to the original. Simon Schama is arguably the best art historian of his generation and undoubtedly one of its most gifted communicators. In 1987, The Embarrassment of Riches, a masterly analysis of Dutch culture in the Golden Age, confirmed his academic reputation. Better than that, Schama writes (and speaks) like Fred Astaire dances: the sheer exuberance threatens to run away with itself were it not for the anchoring weight of expertise. Few people in broadcasting possess gravity and levity in equal measure; two useful ingredients for a blockbuster to match Lord Clark’s. There could be no doubt about it: Schama was the best man for the job.
Ah, you see the difficulty there, don’t you? Man. *Shudders politely*
There was no way the BBC could allow a straight white male to present its new show on civilisation. It would display a distressing lack of diversity, that which there is no greater crime in politically correct organisations. Even worse, it might imply that the art made by white men was in some way superior to any other kind. That happens to be the inconvenient truth (mainly due to the fact that, for several centuries, women were too busy dying in childbirth to paint or sculpt).
So, a compromise had to be reached. Schama would present five of the nine programmes, filmed in 31 different countries, while Prof Beard and David Olusoga, a British-nigerian historian, got two each. If you think that sounds more like a pantomime horse than a recipe for a coherent thesis, you’re not wrong.
The first programme, fronted by Schama, was excellent. Cleverly, it mirrored the original opener in which Lord Clark, outside the Notre Dame, claimed that it is hard to define civilisation, but “we know it when we see it”. Citing Isil’s destruction of the ancient sites at Palmyra, Schama observed, with quiet fury, that we know civilisation when we see its hateful opposite.
In part two tomorrow night, Mary Beard tries, ambitiously, to shift the emphasis from the artists who created early civilisation to the ordinary folk who viewed their work. “Can we ever look through the eyes of people in the distant past?” she muses. No, we can’t, Mary. Much better to focus on the amazing artefacts left behind.
But that wouldn’t be “inclusive” enough, another PC faux pas the BBC can’t be seen to be committing. Looking up at some giant seated statues, our presenter says: “I’m sure Ancient Egyptians would have found them as vulgar and irritating as we do.” Is she quite sure she’s sure what slaves would have thought 5,000 years ago?
Here’s the thing. I like Mary Beard very much. She is a refreshing presence on our screens. But, Romans apart, there is nothing she knows more about in art than Simon Schama. She is there to provide gender balance. It’s International Women’s Day tomorrow and, sorry, but I really don’t count it as a victory when a member of my sex is included for any reason other than merit. It’s downright patronising. I haven’t seen either of David Olusoga’s episodes, and I hope they are really good, but this is already starting to feel like a missed opportunity for the BBC. If you appoint three presenters to one art series, don’t be surprised if you end up with a Doge’s dinner.
We live in an age when the Barbarians are no longer at the Gate. The blighters have come in, made themselves at home and are pumping out industrial quantities of brainpulping reality TV to a woefully under-educated population. We really don’t need a series that sets out to challenge the Western canon when most people wouldn’t know said canon if it shot them in the bum. General knowledge of art is in a parlous state when the Kardashians are a bigger name than Caravaggio. Lord Clark’s
Civilisation was such a huge hit is that the great aesthete didn’t stoop to conquer. He told us the story of the finest things human beings had made with clarity, eloquence – and in order. As a result, viewers flocked in their millions to galleries and museums.
A posh old aristo with terrible teeth, Clark would not get a look-in at the Beeb today. We have stopped deferring to toffs and started deferring to ignorance instead. This does not feel like a huge leap forward. Rather, it is a symptom of cultural timidity which could end up betraying the very things it champions.
Schama insists that, in these times of “raw power, the swagger of money and hard reckonings”, there is a need to contemplate again “the greatest achievements of human creativity” which are, for the most part, “our common possession”.
Beautifully put, Professor. I only wish they had given him a series of his own to say it.