TRASHFUTURE - PREVIEW - Britainology 71: Brass Eye

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Milo and Nate do a deep dive into the classic British satire series Brass Eye by Chris Morris, and specifically the episode that got it cancelled - “Paedogeddon." Get the full episode on Patreon! (https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture)

said this was the one thing we didn't want to happen. I've seen that that did. The demime is that. And the way that they illustrate the text with all the different fonts is it's very, very funny. But it's also like, I guess it shows really ahead of its time. But the thing that gets me about it, I suppose, that really kind of shocked me,

is that they've made up fake, not characters that sort of play the roles in this thing, is like this guy, whoever this person is, and it's an actor playing this random guy or whatever, like the joke that like this guy was beaten up in prison and it's quadriplegic, they use them much more vulgar, or, and they,

but you know, you know, you know, like he's gonna be released from prison and he's brain dead in a coma and quadriplegic, but scientists may have built a mexude for him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's like an artist's rendition of what this would look like. Yeah, like Peter Follett and a mexie running across a park chasing children who is screaming.

Yeah, and it's like, so that's a fictional character, but the fact that they actually used a real child murder or as part of that, to me I was like, God damn, like sensitivities were obviously different and this got a fuckload of complaints. But that was, yeah, we'll get into the control. That was one of the things, even because that's the jump,

that's literally the very beginning is that bit. And I had heard about this episode, and I was like, when I watched, I was like, oh fuck, they're really, this is really like going to, especially like disregard the standards of the time, which I mean to be real with you, I barely remember I was,

I would have been like 16 when this came out. Well, I know also in America, which had extremely different standards. Yeah. Now though, you watch it and just from the beginning, like the reaction I was having this whole time was sometimes I was laughing, sometimes I was like, nah, that funny of a joke, but pretty much the entire time I was like, how on fucking earth did this get made even in 2001? It's pretty funny. I mean, well, the thing is I think bizarrely, whilst this would in be less shocking to a lot of audiences now, it would actually be harder to make. I think the media culture in the UK has circled the wagons even more. Like in 2001, there was more room for stuff like this where there was kind of a like, oh, yeah, you can take the piss or whatever.

But like now, I think the fact that there is a bunch of children playing, children who are notionally other being chased by pedophiles are like being stitched around or like the scene where the pro pedophile activist group has attacked them and then now they have the guy in the pillory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that Chris Moore or it's not Chris. Chris Morris is presenting it, but the guy in the stocks is a guy who he's in jam

and some other stuff is fantastic. Who's the guy doing the questioning? Who's the host? Chris Morris, that's Chris Morris. And Chris Morris has a small child actor in front of him, he's like, here's my son, do you wanna have sex with my son? Like, I was like, no, I don't fancy him. Like, doing that, having the child,

and in a position where, I mean, if I recall the way it's shot, like the child's getting the... I guess Mark heaped the guy in the stocks. Yeah. The child actors stand there while he's delivering the lines so the kid can hear these jokes being done. I wonder if Simon Pegg is in the stocks. Mark heaped is in another bit of the show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. But the point I'm trying to make is that like, you couldn't do a thing like that now, even as a joke, even as satire with child actors, where the kids are curing the lines and stuff like that. They're in the shot with as well as being delivered. I feel as though that would literally get you, in my opinion, literally get you shut down. Like literally get you, potentially charged, arrested, all sorts of things.

People would lose their fucking minds. Yeah, I don't think it would be a crime, but like it would certainly, because I think the difference now, because we'll get into the controversy in a bit, but like various like politicians at the time said stuff that, oh, this is in bad taste. But I feel like if you did this now,

you would have Tory bank bench MPs specifically saying like your secret Peterfiles, or like there would be like the kind of like the bleed of like Facebook boomer shit would like, I think. Because you see it now, don't you, with like, oh, the railways of woke or whatever, like stuff is gone. So instead of also say too that there's been attempts to do stuff like this, like there was a, I can't remember the name of it that there's a woman who was a comedy writer in America.

And she, I mean, my impression is that she sucks and that she's actually not very well likes. But she tried to do a series like this one time and it never got released, but people have like aired the footage on Twitter. And like, I know I'm being vague, but for one, I don't remember. I literally don't remember her name and I don't want to just like Google in the middle of recording. And secondly, like the point being this was this kind of thing was tried. It was in such bad taste. It was so unfunny. And it did actually use children actors in it, or at least one child actor, and I believe that actor later filed a lawsuit for the experience of having been put in this

not knowing what, as a small child he was getting into, where it was like, they're basically making fun of it. So this kind of thing now, I think, would just be very difficult. And there's also a question, would you even want to, like, is it worth, like, a lot of people have the Chris Morris touch? Yeah, because this is, this to me,

is like, you're about to put your foot down, taking one step over the line. You haven't quite done it, but there are some things also where I'm like, yeah, I just, I don't know, like, it's funny, but I think it's, there are some things where I'm like, I don't necessarily know if I'd even want to, like, go I don't know. Like, it's funny, but I think it's, there are some things where I'm like, I don't necessarily know if I'd even want to,

like, go there joking about that. Genuinely. I think the, like, maybe we just recap so we can actually talk about it in detail. So I think, before we get into Peter getting itself, I think a good thing to start with is, because I've seen all of Brass, I mean, many years ago now, but the episode actually that I think about the most often

is the drugs one from the first season. So I think this is such a potent satire of drug hysteria in the UK and it's still the fucking same. Like nothing has changed. So there's this bit where basically they invent this fake drug called cake, where the pills are like the size of like a small cake that you would get from a supermarket and they were like, pill this big being extremely strong. And again, they get loads of celebrities

in to like say how dangerous this cake drug is. And there's this great bit where it's like, one drug mentioned was a fictitious drug called cake, described as being from checkers Lavacchi, despite the country no longer existing when the episode was screened. The drug purportedly affected an area of the brain called chatness bassoon, all during the user's perception of time, leading to massive water retention, giving them something known as a check neck. And so they basically go, all of these people like, no Edmunds, Ralph Harris, murdered Manning to do these like cake-sized pills, like, yeah, this is really dangerous, make sure

your kids aren't doing it. And then fucking David Ames, the Tory MP for South End and Baselden, read out a question about it in fucking Parliament, the man who was later murdered at a constituency surgery in what, 2021? Yeah, yeah, remember, yeah, he was stabbed to death at his constituency surgery, yeah. Was just going to show,

a British meteorite all into twines in the end. I'm trying to think of something I can come up with where, as an example of this in America, and there might be some really obvious ones that I as someone who probably just didn't consume enough pop culture for a long enough time could tell you about about fake things like that that were taken seriously. But I just, I don't know if there's an equivalent. I really don't think there's an equivalent.

I feel like American politics has had less of these, like, I mean, that haven't been many hoaxes in British politics either, but in American politics, there's been a lot of stuff that's just made up for people going along with it, like the fucking motley-cruisotanic type stuff, like where it's just like, this is demonstrably insane, but it's being taken seriously, but it's not exactly a hoax, it's just like deranged. No, and I would say also in the United States, yeah, those kinds of things where people indulge,

paranoid fantasies, they indulge, like very, very strange, cherry-picked kind of views of the world. That's definitely a thing, but also I would say too that like the Borat films, for example, being shot in America. One thing to bear in mind is that like you can see that obviously a lot of Americans are really credulous. I mean, I think like anyone else.

Obviously Brits are too, looking at RASI, but like there were people who filed lawsuits against Sasha Baron Cohen for how they were portrayed in that. The first boy at movie is so good. It's like, it's remarkable to stuff that they get to do. I mean, that guy who's a senator, he's just like fucking insane. I mean, I just, the degree to which, yeah, I remember, I saw the first Borat film in theaters. And yeah, I was just like, I remember just thinking like, how on fucking earth did you have to get done?

Not in a horror way, but more in like, this is our people really, this, this credulous. And it's like, yeah, yeah, they are. Well, and I had a similar thing about this Peter Getten thing where I was like, I had to go through and triple check, because I was pretty sure that like, all of the people taking part in the show

were taking it completely seriously and had no idea it was a joke, but I was like, because some of the lines in it, I was like, surely, I had to like, double check that none of them were plants who did actually know that everyone who's not a cast member who's interviewed in this thinks it's real. And it's the thing about like, that we're talking about Neil Fox hammering a nail through a crab. Orth, whoever it is saying that online pedophiles can emit, make your computer keyboard emit a scent that makes you like a toxic gas that makes you more suggestible. And then Richard Blackwood smells his keyboard and goes, I'm more suggestible already. Yes. I got to be real with you, dude. I genuinely didn't realize. I mean, I knew about the Phil Collins thing.

Yeah. But I thought this was a mix and match of actor of people taking the piss and people who were being duped. I did not realize they duped. When we get into the situation of like the controversies, it's going to get so funny because it is fucking insane. realized they duped. in general, like not long before, and that was kind of part of the genesis of it.