"FUNNY, ironic and incorrigible, the New Lad is a rebel with one cause Baywatch," said Jaci Stephen on Without Walls: J'accuse - The New Lads.
Without being either funny or ironic, the incorrigible Ms Stephen had a point. Laddism has become a bore. Whatever, irony it might once have had, it has reduced itself to vulgarity pricking hypocrisy is one thing belching and farting for laughs something else entirely.
One Lad moron thrust his behind to the camera and held a lit cigarette lighter where he hoped a forced emission of methane would turn his Bic disposable into a DIY flame thrower. In his mid 20s and with the impenetrable and rigid grin of the ignoramus, he looked, appropriately, as happy as a pig in his own waste. There was nothing shocking about the performance, although presumably that was its intention. It was just uncouth, cheap and nasty. Asshole, indeed.
It's the nastiness of Laddism which has killed the joke. It was always going to happen, of course, but the depth of boorishness is alarming. The Ladettes are no better, though at least they are fewer in number. Still, comedian Jenny Eclair's Anne Frank jokes were in such poor taste that they were simply disgusting. Lads and Ladettes, it seems, mistake ignorance for iconoclasm, cruelty for comedy.
Ms Stephen rolled on a number of heavyweights a sociologist, a social anthropologist, a psychologist, a literary editor and sundry columnists to explain the rise in vulgarity. Laddism is the response of a generation of males to a world in which women are forging ahead, out performing them at school and in work, said the social anthropologist, a female.
"We are seeing the descent from New Man to New Lad to New Boy," said a male columnist. "Male pop stars today have big heads and button noses their bodies are the bodies of children. This reversion suggests a renunciation of responsibility," he added I am Gallagher was posited as proof of this bizarre thesis, an example of the sort of pseudo intellectuality which makes even Camille Paglia seem rational.
The sociologist, male (well, male-ish), suggested that lad culture was the result of "middle class gits acting working class". Okay, the football, beer and ribaldry have a working class tinge. But the nastiness, the sheer lack of good humour, the attacks on the weak instead of the strong, are of a different order there's a Thatcherite spite at their core. And spite masquerading as satire is still spite.
Bumper stickers in London proclaim "F*** the poor". That's a great joke, isn't it? Hilarious! How faddish! "F*** the poor". As one clown tries to set fire to a tart, others drive around proud of their crassness. Compassion is not only weak it is to be derided and mocked. In that sense, the New Lads and Ladettes are mere manifestations of the New Right a generation of idiots, political bimbos in trousers' and in authentically sparkling football shirts.
Jaci Stephen's polemic was overdue and underpowered. Apart from missing the context that as given rise to these designer morons, it accepted too much. It came from within Lad culture and was too unquestioning of dubious "lifestyle" magazine labelling. Even the too neat terminology of New Lad has a marketing ring to it. Loaded magazine, I understand, is the handbook of New Laddism. But whether it mirrors or leads, who knows?
Certainly, there has been a puncturing of some hypocrisies in Britain in the 1990s. But civility has taken terrible punishment in the process. For all their beery buffoon cry and designer earthiness, most of these New Lads are really New Sads. Sold a culture of the bottom line, they have, aptly perhaps, been reduced to setting fire to their own farts surely the bottom line's bottom line.
BACK on This Life, the five young lawyers become more repulsive by the week. They have been joined by Delilah, a flaky, bulimic, cocaine snorting babe, who after having sex with Miles in the toilets of the law courts, has moved into his bedroom. The other four are understandably miffed as Delilah and friends proceed to burgle and wreck the place after Warren has lent her the plane fare to Amsterdam. The money goes up Delilah's nostrils just as swiftly as these characters get up viewers' noses.
It's a pity really, because there are some valid observations about 1990s London life within this drama. But the marauding New Rightness of the characters even that of Egg the Lad makes it practically impossible to care about them. They have a veneer of sophistication and they are foul mouthed enough to claim a degree of street cred, but, primarily, they are as pushy and demanding as spoilt children.
In Monday's third episode, Egg, the least, ruthless of these vipers, became personally involved with a client dying of cancer. They smoked grass together, exchanged deep meaningful banter and were humanly Laddish i.e. Laddish without the spite.
But the client went off and committed suicide, leaving Egg to learn the first lesson of ruthlessness humanity and professionalism must not be mixed.
Because in This Life', humanity or more specifically, humaneness invariably equals weakness. Where the creepy characters of the 1980s drama Thirty something indulged in squelchy sentimentality these twenty something lawyers revel in callousness. Bitter and harsh, they are barely above displaying "F*** the poor" bumper stickers. Rats in a rat race, they are, to indulge in the terminology of the lifestyle mags, "New Rodents", super resistant to altruism.
But perhaps the greatest weakness of the series is its total acceptance of the workings of the law. There are, to be fair, occasional, but ultra mild digs at the court system. For the most part though, these 1990s yuppies are principally concerned with their careers and their "shagging". They don't have to be radicals, far less revolutionaries, but if these would be hard cases are so utterly unquestioning of the nature and function of the law, This Life is squandering dramatic opportunities. Conservatism is one thing wilful ignorance is another.
ANYWAY, from This Life to this death for its final show of the season, Twelve to One included an item on fashion for corpses. Burial shrouds, it appears, are something you really should not be seen dead in. Instead, you should consider what sort of an outfit you'd like to spend eternity in. Different personality types, we were assured, should opt for different death wear.
As an extension of market driven lifestyle journalism, death style journalism offers obvious possibilities. Mind you, it has to be admitted that, like an over dressy wedding outfit, you can expect to get only one wear out of a death wardrobe. It's not the sort of clothing that most people would wear about the house for practice either. So, it's really the ultimate in special occasion wear.
The type of coffin is crucial too, of course. Those on display appeared to range from snug fit (like elasticated denim jeans) to out size (for those who like baggy dungarees). Model Niamh wore a velvet frock and Halloween horns. The frock was described, with some justification, as "the deb's dress from hell". Another model, Tara, was kitted out as "a Barbie esque angel wearing a planet print dress". Tara seemed lost in a coffin that was as big as a telephone kiosk.
Patrick wore a sharp suit and carried insect repellent "to keep away maggots". He did this because "it's important to look cool when you're groovin' with the likes of Elvis and Einstein," said a style guru. Paul wore a spacesuit and had a coffin with a halt door. Astronauts with a love for horses would doubtlessly be keen on this arrangement. Colin the clubber was rigged out in "wild and lethal trash". He was, allegedly, "dressed for hell".
What can you say? Though revelling in its own infantile irreverence, the item was not humourless. There were all manner of shroud jokes and ghastly puns some worked, most died so tragically that they deserved a headstone. But the unnecessary commercialisation of death, albeit with a degree of black humour, is fundamentally about making money from corpses. It's not, quite grave robbing, but surely, needless coffin clothing is just that bit too entrepreneurial for most sane people.
THE corpses in Poorhouse, a rare and weird drama made for RTE, didn't even have coffins. Set during the Famine and shot in atmospheric (albeit pushily atmospheric) sepia, it told the tale of an oldman a poorhouse undertaker and a young woman. Birdy Sweeney played the narrating old man and Derbhle Crotty the unfortunate woman.
As far as I could tell, the young woman was raped, castigated as a whore and died in childbirth. The old man, guilty at not helping her earlier, meticulously prepared her corpse for burial. This was a search for dignity and meaning and love in appalling circumstances but the solemnity was incongruously comical at times. Just before the end, the action switched to modern day Ireland.
There were cars and a television and the dead young woman reincarnated with her" bouncing baby. Outside, the old man, still in 1840s clothing, strode the now tarmacadamed and white marked roads of Ireland. He carried an old storm lamp. Written by Michael Harding and Frank Stapleton (who also directed) it screamed with symbolism. But it seemed more suited to the written word than to the visual image. Strange and wispily haunting, screening it was better than screening no drama at all, but it was a weird choice.
FINALLY, football. The best stuff on television this week was football splendid FA Cup and English Premiership matches. When Manchester United beat
Chelsea 2-1 on Sunday in a hell for leather FA Cup semi final, we saw one of the best games of 1996. Three nights later however, Liverpool's dramatic 4-3 win against Newcastle proved to be even better the game of the season so far.
Sky Sports continues to go completely over the top, of course. Screaming and bellowing and hyping, it can be embarrassing. But now the very sober BBC coverage is beginning to look just a little dull a marching army band competing against the Hollywoodised excesses of a Superbowl half time show. Not that the trappings matter a whit beside the action on the pitch.
Of course, it is becoming more and more difficult to separate the show business, from, the soccer. But, under almost any criteria, the biggest television star in Britain (arguably, Ireland too) in the 1990s has been Eric Cantona. Idolised and despised in equal measure, he is an authentic star. Sure he knows what he's at, acting the Gallic enigma it's a standard showbiz move. But he's scoring vital goals too and all that poetry and painting makes the New Lad vulgarati sick. Nice one, Eric.