WHEN VOYEURISM OVERTAKES ARTISTIC & MORAL MERIT, THAT'S WHEN IT BECOMES PORN

April 23 2007: The Media is still chuntering away about The Truth About Size Zero, a TV show in which a woman batters her way down to a size zero through over-vigorous exercise and lunatic dieting within a month (it's always ludicrous time constraints in reality TV in order to add to the surreal......excavate a giant Roman settlement in 20 minutes, renovate a gem of a clapperboard townhouse in an hour, have your entire genital area tattooed in 30 seconds).

The "truth" about high profile size zero characters is actually quite complex. Themes might include borderline major eating disorders amongst the style-obsessed, coupled with an emergent notion of what extra inidividual status symbol can the materially over-indulged possibly acquire? - and hence we move into the realm of personal body projects and the proof of ultimate chic control, making one's body totally compliant by all-but disappearing.

However, this kind of "truth" doesn't seem to be front-of-house in this particular show. There's lots of pain and suffering and a deficit of analysis, advice and hope.

Just the other week I watched The Passion Of Christ again. As a Christian it left me more proud than ever in my faith, yet I was also left, again, somewhat disturbed by the film (and that is beyond my unease related to some of the controversies it caused at the time).....in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on. It wasn't the sense of enormity, eternity and majesty - I love all that. The late John Paul II commented simply "It is as it was".  Then it dawned on me when all this The Truth About Size Zero bullshit came up. The problem with The Passion is that by dealing with the agony of the final day largely out of context of the ongoing miracle of the Feast of the Anointed, the violence becomes too visceral, too concussive, excessive.....even though "It is as it was". It comes terribly close to porn.

Eating issues are too close to the heart of too many people to deal with in the flippant and pornograhic style of The Truth About Size Zero. Just search through the myriads of Pro-Mia and Pro-Ana (and Pro-Anna) websites to see the glory and the mystery attaching to all of this.

Perhaps it will spawn a whole new genre of TV reality freakishness. Why don't we take essentially normally balanced people and, by systematically challenging their beliefs, behaviours and existential assumptions, see how quickly they can be reduced into states of significant anxiety and depression. It is quite realistically done, using the established routines of brainwashing.

As a final word on the porn of The Truth About Size Zero, I read a piece today about the launch of Ultimate Fighting (cage fighting) in the UK. Apparently US Senator John McCain has condemned this vicious spectacle as "human cockfighting". Well, yes, stupid men do fight over issues related to their cocks and you can see his point........however, when it comes to glorifying the whole size zero crap, you might have expected better. It's porn - and crap porn at that.