Nathan Barley comes to TV

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there are non-enthusiastic gay people. being gay does not shape your whole persona, any more than being straight does. in any case only barley was revealed as being straight in ep one -- there may well be gay characters.

― Henry Miller, Monday, 14 February 2005 13:23 (twenty-one years ago)

So who in NB is enthusiastic in this clever, Warholian way? Actually, the Idiots themselves are. They're happy, positive, encouraging even when attacked, creative and productive.

yeh but unlike Warhol there is nothing at all clever about these Idiots (stating the obvious here?)

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:24 (twenty-one years ago)

There are black characters in this, but no gay characters. How would the satire be different if, say, Nathan Barley were gay?

the two things continue to be bugbears - attention is drawn to the ethnicity thing only because of Nathan's use of 'my nigga' on anyone (regardless of their ethnicity), otherwise it would be completely irrelevant i think. i expect there will be some sort of 'faux pas' re homosexuality/phobia to come that will draw the second thing to attention also (as with The Office et al).

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:28 (twenty-one years ago)

there may well be gay characters.

I suspect that even two nothing sacred 'comedy terrorists' like Brooker and Morris will not go there. It's a lot more acceptable to 'bash' hipsters in a sitcom than it is to bash obviously gay characters. Hipsters have been designated 'okay to hate' in our culture.

The shot near the beginning of episode one, where Dan looks up the street and sees a guy with flip flops on his ears. Dan looks with withering scorn. Now, what if Flip Flop Guy were mincing, or butch or some other gay signifier (a 'big ole bear')? Dan's withering scorn would be... well, simple homophobia, wouldn't it?

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:29 (twenty-one years ago)

morris has been there before. didn't day today have that whole 'this week's gay motorways...' thing?

these comments on 'NB' are considerably more interesting and entertaining than the show itself.

― Pete W (peterw), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:33 (twenty-one years ago)

also, something about Dan Ashcroft makes me think of Jacques Perretti.

― Pete W (peterw), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:34 (twenty-one years ago)

those 'gay signifiers' belong to police academy films. morris has spoofed aspects of gay culture before i think -- but in any case spoofing cultural faux-pas is not like spoofing sexual orientation.

re peretti -- i said that!

― Henry Miller, Monday, 14 February 2005 13:34 (twenty-one years ago)

xxpost
Morris does this in the gay seamen sketch in the Brass Eye sex episode

― Masked Gazza, Monday, 14 February 2005 13:35 (twenty-one years ago)

There are black characters in this, but no gay characters.

wait, that black guy with the little hat isn't gay?

― cutty (mcutt), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:36 (twenty-one years ago)

I do think dandyism is an 'orientation', not a 'cultural faux pas', actually.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:38 (twenty-one years ago)

(To be honest I thought some of the satirical fashions in NB were bloody good. I'm prepared to try hanging flip flops on my ears after seeing how good that guy looked with them. If you hate fashion, I suppose that image just sums up 'keepin' it futile'. But if you love fashion, that image is actually a very glamorous one. Oh brave new world, that has such people in it!)

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:43 (twenty-one years ago)

You're self-aware, but somehow it doesn't seem to help.

― Masked Gazza, Monday, 14 February 2005 13:45 (twenty-one years ago)

just the fact that this show has caused all this "discussion" already, and has momus trying to hang flip flops on his ears, makes it good.

you are ALL going to watch every episode, whether you've said you like it or hated it upthread.

― cutty (mcutt), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:49 (twenty-one years ago)

momus, will you post a picture of you dressed up like that?

― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:51 (twenty-one years ago)

I'll post the originals first. They're the commanders, I'm just the space cadet.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:52 (twenty-one years ago)

I've got similar shades to Flip Flop guy, at least.

http://www.imomus.com/skishades.jpg

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:54 (twenty-one years ago)

This guy has flip flops inside his head:

http://www.cucamonga.be/afbeeldingen/DevendraBanhart0504.jpg

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:57 (twenty-one years ago)

i am already campaigning for the american re-make of nathan barley:

it takes place in williamsburg, brooklyn and VICE magazine is SUGARAPE.

momus have a walk-on cameo as flip flop ears.

― cutty (mcutt), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:59 (twenty-one years ago)

All those crowd members at the GOP convention were just a whisker away from being Nathan Barleys then

― Masked Gazza, Monday, 14 February 2005 14:00 (twenty-one years ago)

ha, reminds me of the big 'hipsters and the things they wear' fite we had last Summer/Autumn. if Brooker and Morris are sneering at this aspect i don't sneer with them because that's such a petty little thing to criticise - i mean The Idiots at SugarApe and elsewhere often look pretty good! and Morris and Brooker have terribly dull dress sense judging by their TV appearances, but then they're scatter-brained/neurosis addled writers bigger on substance so it's par for the course (and Dan wears dull clothes in the programme too, because he doesn't care either - which is a philosophy i often go along with myself, but it doesn't mean The Idiots are idiots just for wearing 'daft gear').

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Monday, 14 February 2005 14:00 (twenty-one years ago)

But it's not a petty little thing to TVGoHome's Nathan Barley, it's something that he spends much more time and energy on than his rubbish media.

You're also maybe making the mistake that people who don't look 'smart' don't care what they look like, when usually they care at least enough to not want to look 'smart'.

(I still haven't seen the episode, though I have it on tape somewhere)

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 14 February 2005 14:15 (twenty-one years ago)

There is the thing where it's much easier to write a story about the most amazing song/dance/etc in the world ever, and much harder to translate this to a medium where you actually have to produce something that good. Except now with 'bad' :)

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 14 February 2005 14:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Most of the fashions so despised in TVGH were (perceived) futile grubbings around in irony and kitsch and backward-looking stuff, like a foretelling of PornStar, rather than actual new stuff like the flipflops. The only new element was low-slung trousers, which is a pretty rubbish innovation in the first place.

(cue the fashion cognoscenti telling me that actually PornStar was around ten years before TVGH, and people have been wearing low-slung trews since 1929)

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 14 February 2005 14:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Okay, I've been experimenting with slippers and pink thread and here's what I got:

http://www.imomus.com/slipperyears.jpg

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 February 2005 14:42 (twenty-one years ago)

surely the machismo of revulsion incarnate! ;-)

― debden, Monday, 14 February 2005 15:09 (twenty-one years ago)

fancy a quick round of cock muff bumhole Momus?

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Monday, 14 February 2005 15:13 (twenty-one years ago)

I am just wondering how many people contributing to this thread are actual media types? ie people with first hand experience of what's being portrayed in the program. I mean how many people know the ins and outs of pitching ideas to newspaper editors? I'm guessing more people on this thread than in your average suburban estate.

― elwisty (elwisty), Monday, 14 February 2005 15:19 (twenty-one years ago)

People enjoyed 'Ab Fab' though, didn't they? And unbelievably some people in the media or on its fringes grew up in the suburbs.

I mean fair play. The last time I went out was to a bar near Old Street decked out in Communist kitsch, with a DJ who veered between undi hip-hop and George Formby where they served Polish beer at £2.80 a bottle. But I'm no media wanker, trust.

― Henry Miller, Monday, 14 February 2005 15:23 (twenty-one years ago)

momus, that is truly delightful :)

― CarsmileSteve (CarsmileSteve), Monday, 14 February 2005 15:23 (twenty-one years ago)

this thread is making me like the show more, for sure.

― cutty (mcutt), Monday, 14 February 2005 15:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Momus, you look like a baddie from Doom II.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Monday, 14 February 2005 15:33 (twenty-one years ago)

But compared to Ab Fab none of the characters were grotesque enough, daft yes but no where near as vile as they could have been. This is why for me at least it wasn't as funny as it could have been. With the exception of Pingu everyone was treated nicely. Unless we are give decent reasons to dislike these people (like in the original tv go home bits in which Barley is a vile horrible person though that could of course be Brookers projection though the icky stuff with prostitutes would suggest other wise) then it's just Teachers in Hoxton.

― elwisty (elwisty), Monday, 14 February 2005 15:36 (twenty-one years ago)

where was it actually set? hoxton, westbourne grove, soho? or some sort of composite? it had a feel of west london and hoxton intermingled. i was v. drunk while watching it though.

― debden, Monday, 14 February 2005 15:43 (twenty-one years ago)

it's a made up name ('hosegate'?) but i wd say hoxton/shoreditch/clerkenwell.

― Henry Miller, Monday, 14 February 2005 15:48 (twenty-one years ago)

they should have a fake tube station in it, like in Eastenders, or at least an ELE 'under construction' one

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Monday, 14 February 2005 15:49 (twenty-one years ago)

I liked the wistful 'Crouch End' one in Shaun of the Dead.

― Henry Miller, Monday, 14 February 2005 15:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Some things Barley did in TVGoHome he almost certainly won't do in the TV show. He won't, for instance, read Sleazenation magazine from cover to cover in a hotel room in Tokyo. What would be the point of remaking 'Lost In Translation'? Anyway, it would be expensive to film, although AbFab managed to fly its cast to New York for a few hours' shopping. Another thing the TV Barley won't do is this:

http://pzat.meep.org/cunt/tvgohome16062000.jpg

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 February 2005 15:52 (twenty-one years ago)

But Morris has been there! The gush sketch in Jam trod pretty similar territory. Wouldn't the sitcom format just render that a slightly uncomfortable wank joke?

― elwisty (elwisty), Monday, 14 February 2005 15:57 (twenty-one years ago)

the show reminded me of the Sleazenation offices so badly i thought i was living through a flashback.

-- stevie

See, I thought it looked like The Face offices pre-Shaftesbury Avenue.

I find Dan very sympathetic, yet agree with all Matt's points against this upthread. I found the Sugar Ape meeting and Weekend on Sunday scenes both very funny and beyond painful, but then perhaps this is a little too close to the bone for me.

What it has done is created labels. I can easily see "he's got this Dan Ashcroft thing" or "he was totally Jonatton Yeah?" being thrown around as descriptions.

― Anna (Anna), Monday, 14 February 2005 16:02 (twenty-one years ago)

I think there's been a shift, perhaps related to the fact that Brooker and Morris discovered they were much more interested in Dan Ashcroft than Nathan Barley as they wrote the show. The shift is between a Nathan Barley who's dark and uncomfortable and in all of us, if only we catch a glimpse of the mirror at the wrong time -- something Will Self-ish, if you will -- and a Nathan Barley who's essentially Rick from The Young Ones, an annoying git.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 February 2005 16:02 (twenty-one years ago)

http://hem.passagen.se/tufflan/youngones/bilder/rick.jpg

"Peace and fucking, keep chopping them out, my nigga."

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 February 2005 16:04 (twenty-one years ago)

reminded me of the offices of the short-lived music webzine burnitblue.com.

― Henry Miller, Monday, 14 February 2005 16:06 (twenty-one years ago)

the problem for me is that Barley actually does look and sound like someone i know who i used to work with in nowmedia (as i always preferred to call it irrespective of tossiness) and even envied a little tho he was definitely not anywhere remotely near Barley's level or cnutishness and he'd be appalled for me even referring to him in this light, and rightfully so. whew, i got out of that one pretty well...

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Monday, 14 February 2005 16:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Momus is so right, anyone who has read the original articles knows that Barley is almost satanic in his unpleasantness and who better than Morris to splatter theis over the screen? In my head I saw something like the film version of American Psycho; cold surfaces, hard drugs, hollow relationships and no empathy whatsoever.

― elwisty (elwisty), Monday, 14 February 2005 16:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Actually, the film of American Psycho couldn't help making Bateman way too nice too. Film and TV really can't invoke our fear of our inner demons in the same way prose can. They always cast someone just a bit too cute, and cut out the truly revolting bits. (I don't remember the film Bateman fucking any eye sockets...)

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 February 2005 16:13 (twenty-one years ago)

maybe it's a DVD 'Easter egg'

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Monday, 14 February 2005 16:15 (twenty-one years ago)

but did Bateman really fuck an eye socket in the book?

― elwisty (elwisty), Monday, 14 February 2005 16:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, he fucks some skulls. It would be funny if Barley were a serial killer, but he's mostly just inconsiderate.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 14 February 2005 16:26 (twenty-one years ago)

skullfucking = inconsiderate. Momus you are the master of understatements. if i had a tiny hat i would doff it you.

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Monday, 14 February 2005 16:31 (twenty-one years ago)

no isn't all the skull fucking just a daydream, the sick fantasies of a bored man with everything he could possibly want? That was my interpretation.

― elwisty (elwisty), Monday, 14 February 2005 16:36 (twenty-one years ago)

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