Julie Burchill on class

[ArabellaScott]

A couple of mentions of feminist related issues, including KJK's Party of Women.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/lets-hear-it-for-the-oiks/

Well, to be honest I'm not sure that having a conviction for assault should bar someone from being a comedian. Why should it? Must comedians be morally pure?

@ArabellaScott he's not barred from being a comedian. He runs his own comedy club. Google suggests he stopped doing television to focus on traditional standup before the assault conviction and the creeping over Greta Thunberg anyway.

"In 2000, Lee decided to semi-retire and concentrate on running his comedy venue, the Backyard Comedy Club, acting as resident compere. In 2010, Lee closed this club and razed it to the ground. In its place Lee developed a seven storey hotel, on the ground floor of which is the new Backyard Bar & Kitchen, home of the Backyard Comedy Club."

On a total side note, I went to see Lee Hurst many many years ago. He was absolutely terrible. His whole shtick was taking the p*ss out of the audience ( he didn’t seem to have a routine). He spent a good 15 minutes laughing at my flat mate, end I realised that I could do it so much better him. Vowed never to pay money to see him again. Had totally forgotten about him till this thread.

i would say he was not getting work years ago because he was not very good.

I can’t get sentimental about this - she seems to care more about the exceptions who broke through class barriers (to become artists, pop-stars or whatever) rather than the general condition of working class people.

Does Julie Burchill actually do anything to support working class female journalists herself? You know, mentoring or providing training, supporting a charity or perhaps endowing a scholarship…Or perhaps she would be better off quitting journalism and signing up to ‘NowTeach’?

When she has spent as much time as the average state-school teacher trying to support working class children then I will take her a bit more seriously.

Commercial art makes sense- someone wants a thing, they can pay someone to make it. Someone makes something amazing- everyone can bid for it.

It makes sense as well for the artist to maintain ownership a proportion of It, so they benefit when the value shoots up. Royalties as well, obviously.

I’m not fussed about the government paying people to be artists, rather than buying the product. Patrons, I suppose.

Art should not simply be commercial. Otherwise we end up with little great art.

I think that in writing about her own experience Julie Burchill she hasn't really reflected that her experience was very much a product of that time.

ie post WWII after the attempts to get the UK back to what it had been before WWII ie class and sex rules re-establilshed not only failed but promoted a backlash. ie women resented being told to go back to the kitchen (the main spring for what became WLM) and working class people had been expected to take up roles and responsibilities to help the war effort, weren't going to be told to go back to their traditional roles of just obeying orders.

The media may have been the sphere where the voices and experience of the working class were most obvious in late 50s early 60s, but in them becoming icons it spelt the end of their prominance. So for young people growing up during that time who aspired to be like them, found that as has ever been the case, having middle class or even upper class links gave them a head start.

And inevitably those who were sucessful became as it were "middle class". So the class order re-established itself.

ie the middle class stays entrenched but has fads when it promotes outsiders, once it was the working class, then it was women, then Black people and now ... trans / queer?

Also not sure how you define working class now. Partly because the communities that fostered a sense of being part of that class and having its own values and role models have been and are being destoyed by gentrification. Many of the jobs that were traditionally thought of as working class dont exist any more ie even if low paid, at least jobs with contracts or through the apprentice system something you could count on through your life. Now low paid jobs are all short term contracts or worse, and are as likely to be done by members of other communites, ie Eastern European, Bangladeshi.

One place that maybe what is still the working class now have an opportunity is reality shows, some of which I am sure the producers thought would make the participants objects of ridicule, but have become aspirational??

(I think this is a more urban reflection, and am not sure that what has / is happening in the countryside is the same.)

Sorry my internet connection is playing up, so above has bits missing.

But of course the real example of what happened, is Julie Burchill writing this in the Spectator.

ie she reflects what happened to (some of) the working class!

I've come to the view that art is a craft as much as anything.

Very great art is more than that, but maybe that's true of the greatest crafts of all kinds?

Tbh I feel that the arts have in many cases been harmed by insufficient attention to craft - inspiration isn't enough.

But to the subject of the OP - yes, right now we do seem to have moved the working classes out of cultural creation. Maybe it doesn't matter if some art forms move to being more favoured by elites or the other way round. But I do think the transformation of journalism, for example, into a sector dominated almost entirely by middle class, university educated people, has been very negative.

It's also arguably a historical anomaly. WWI and WWII created a huge capacity for social mobility, and I think it's probably not a situation that can be recreated without a similar loss of life and destruction of the material fabric of the nation.

We tend to assume that level of social movement is and should be the norm but I don't see any evidence that it is.

It's also arguably a historical anomaly.

In one sentence you have said what my long post was trying to say.

I've noticed when I'm watching chat show type programmes with upcoming new singers they're nearly all a bit posh sounding - or nepo babies.
Same for attractive young female actresses, and it's not because they've had elocution lessons...the blokes all seem to be regional though!
You need money behind you to indulge in a career in the arts these days.

Same for attractive young female actresses, and it's not because they've had elocution lessons...the blokes all seem to be regional though!

There's some interesting research about the gendered difference of class in the civil service, with men playing to the stereotypes, but women feeling they have to hide their class.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gwao.12776

“Art should not simply be commercial. Otherwise we end up with little great art”

Hmmm … Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were commercial artists, and they were pretty good.
Mozart and Beethoven worked on commissions. Shakespeare wrote what he thought would sell. Dickens sold his stories chapter by chapter.

I do understand what you mean, but much of the greatest art has been created because somebody paid for it to be made.

And Leonardo da Vinci was effectively supported by his brother’s patronage.

Great art will get made, money or not.

@RandySavage many of those had rich patrons. They did not live by selling their art.

Just snatching a moment while my internet connection is temporarily working to add a futher comment.

One of the big differences now compared to the era JB is so nostalgic about is that at that time given that the BBC and the establishment sort of set what aspirations are, it was inevitiable that people who were not part of the establishment tried to get noticed by it, get invited to be part of it etc..

Nowadays there are many people who probably only have the vaguest idea of what the BBC is, and have aspirations and interests that the BBC probably has no idea about.Let alone the arts events the broadsheets focus on, etc..

Not only has their been a growth in the number of tv and radio stations but of course the internet has given people the opportunity to happily live without any concerns about white middle class values..

Even when I was about to leave school (some decades ago) we sniggered about silly it was that people aspired to get to got to old fashioned events that had grown out of upper class life style. The idea that people's social calendar focused on these centuries old "events" (the boat race!!!! grand national???) we found unbelievable.

Because of the growth in music festivals, alternative art exhibitions and sub culture trends, we no longer have a society that aspires to the in fact very narrow social sphere of the chattering classes.

So maybe the problem is JB has stranded herself in what is now a minority culture (which still has power within decision making groups) and it is just possible that the working class and other minority groups no longer think it is their dutiful role to aspire to the so called heights of achievement of mingling with becoming part of middle class culture.

So in asking what happened to the working class maybe JB needs to ask herself why she has marooned herself in a rather narrow sub culture of those who think 21st century UK still functions under the concept of society that was challenged by the "angry young men" (1950s incels), then 60s hippies, then feminists, and so on. And for man people no longer exists.

In a way it is the older established sports that still cling to an age old class division where working class can achieve recognition etc.. But maybe JB doesn't think sport counts.

we sniggered about silly it was that people aspired to get to got to old fashioned events that had grown out of upper class life style. The idea that people's social calendar focused on these centuries old "events" (the boat race!!!! grand national???) we found unbelievable.

The Grand National isn’t attended - or watched - exclusively by people who aspire to be upper class.

Even when I was about to leave school (some decades ago) we sniggered about silly it was that people aspired to get to got to old fashioned events that had grown out of upper class life style. The idea that people's social calendar focused on these centuries old "events" (the boat race!!!! grand national???) we found unbelievable.

Don't most people have calendar events with the groups they identify with ie Pride, Notting Hill Carnival whatever. And enjoy doing events even if it's not aimed at them It's quite "cool" to go to the Wickham Horse Fair for example even if you aren't a gypsy/traveller.

Someone Oxbridge type who worked on a film with John Lennon said ' Imagine what he could have achieved with a proper education '. Hmm. He might have ended up hosting some review programne on Radio 4. Or been a senior executive on a local authority. He'd have had to tone down the accent , mind.

The thing that strikes me particularly about the arts/performing arts is the absolute loss of affordability and 'off grid' living in London. 40 years ago, aspirant arty types could still afford to rent a dive in Soho with some mates, or find a squat to live in (a setting many performers, fashion designers etc made their start in). Even Thatcher was better for them in some ways because the YTS scheme I have often heard quoted as a source of funding and support for working class youth starting up then - for example I think it was YTS that provided funding to Alexander McQueen to buy fabric for his first collection. But now nothing like that exists, or not on a large scale.

I think grammar schools can have a role to play but only if they are actually good - and sadly those that exist now (like the one I went to) tend to be so few they get dominated by middle class students, like my sister and I, with only about 10% WC students.

You could live on benefits in a cheap council house much easier in the 80s-00s than now.

If you were a single mum you didn't need to look for a job or even visit a job centre until your youngest was 16. You could get budgeting loans of up to £500 to help you into work eg art equipment/ music instruments.

Now it's all about pushing everyone into low hours low paid McJobs with no security, and no hope of ever owning your home.

(Buying a flat being a rout to having equity to spend on an art/ getting a lodger so you have no housing costs.)

@Echobelly you are bang on about cheap/free living (the squat scene was huge in the 70s and 80s) and 'free' government funding for working class creatives via the dole, YTS, EAS etc. And of course the art schools that allowed school leavers to avoid the workplace for a couple of years and gave us pretty much every major pop/rock act of the 60s and 70s, there's a great article on their influence here: https://aarkangel.wordpress.com/2020/04/13/art-school-was-rock-school/

Oh, and of course the music press - who gave 17 year old Julie Burchill her start.

Broader social support nets like cheaper housing and more benefits seem to have helped more artists than bodies like the Arts Council.

At least they have (belatedly) launched the SGM fund to support grassroots venues that are being absolutely decimated by greedy developers.