“Skins” review

The things I do for Solidarity, eh readers? I was asked (well, I voulenteered) to review Skins, the new teen drama from E4 (the yoof digital channel from Channel 4). I sat down in front of the telly with a tin of cider, ready for the televisual delights that the trailers and promos plastered on Channel 4 and E4 promised me. Halfway though, I was curled up in a ball, knawing away at my fist in terror and fright, and at some point near the end, I just couldn’t take it anymore and switched over to an old repeat of Most Haunted on ftn.

Yes, it was that bad. The said trailers for Skins promised me a wicked concotion of Hollyoaks and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrells. Now, I absolutely hate Hollyoaks; most soap operas (Eastenders and Corrie are execptions) are based in a bubble of middle class life, which instantly turns me off – hey, if I want middle class gubbins, there’s the Daily Mail for that, but most of it is just rubbish, frankly. Hollyoaks more so; that programme is probably the worse advert for middle class life ever, only slightly surpassed by Dawson’s Creek, or probably the OC. (Bear in mind that, despite the fact that I’m sounding like a grumpy old fart, I’m only 21 years old and thus in the audience demographics for such programmes.)

Anyway. This is supposed to be a review of Skins, right? Except, when it comes to cultural reviews, the best time to write them is straight afterwards so you remember most of it; but I’ve procratinated on this review in the hope that I delete the entire memory from my mind, and because I didn’t take notes (who does?) I’ve forgotten half of what actually happened. Thankfully.

In any case, there is very little to recommend of Skins. I know most drama is supposed to be a flight of fancy, and that it’s just a story, but Skins claims that this is somewhat based upon real life, as if all teenagers handle unpaid for drugs and have the mafia on their backs, and it all ends in hilarious consequences. No, no it bloody well doesn’t. Don’t pay for drugs? You get shot, that’s what happens. As if white middle class teenagers would go near Mr Big; they’d probably just get on the phone to their deelah and would go nowhere near guns.

Look, not only is it as flat as, well, something that’s very flat – Norfolk, say – it’s also a gigantic lie. This is not what teenage life is about, and even when you take into account that it is a drama after all, it’s still rubbish. I wouldn’t mind if they said before the promo started. “you are about to be lied to, on a grand scale, but there’s some totty, too” (I’m not being sexist here, they really do pile it on) because then I would know what to expect. Neither was I expecting Ken Loach’s take on modern teenage life, either, but Skins is just one flight of fancy too far, given that they sold it on realism, as if what it portrays is actually how teenagers live.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the comissioning meeting for Skins went something like this:

Exec 1: Guys, guys, we need a new yoof programme, yeah? Something the kids will watch, that’s hip, that’s now.
Exec 2: Well, we need some eye candy…
Exec 1: OK, OK, hot teenagers, right – I think we have some left over from Hollyoaks. Should we put a story line about drugs in there?
Exec 3: Oh, yes, of course, Tarquin. The kids are all on drugs.
Exec 2: And joyriding, of course. And happy-slapping…
Exec 1: Oh, keep up, happy slapping is sooooo last year…
Exec 2: Look, I think we’ve got it sorted. Who’s up for lunch?

What is a real shame is that they said it was from “the people who made Shameless”. What a horrible, horrible slur; the fact that “the people who made Shameless” could mean anything (same production company, same director, same writer, same channel…) is one thing, but Shameless is a masterstroke of comedy and drama, it accuratly represents the people it claims to represent. It says it’s set in Manchester and you can tell it’s set in Manchester. The characters have a real depth, and there are brilliant lines on a very regular basis. It’s excellent. It’s genius. Skins is not.

OK, so there are some redeeming features. The central characters have some common traits which we can all share, and they did chime with people I knew at school.

Look, if you don’t believe me (and I have a feeling that there will be many of my peers who will no doubt virulently disagree with me) check it out on Thursday nights, 9pm, E4. Fortunatly for me, I have an appointment to have hot needles stuck in my eyes at that time, which, compared to watching Skins again, is a rather appealing prospect.

Solidarity article: An Iraqi Social Contract: Labour for benefits, but labour doesn’t benefit

As regular readers of this blog may well know, I am a contributor to Solidarity, the newspaper of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. I have already had published a fairly contraversial piece on ‘Ashley’, the American girl who will undergo surgery so she remains nine years old (physically) for the rest of her life. I say ‘contraversial’ because nearly everyone I’ve spoken to about it thinks I am very, very wrong. You can read it here.

I am also reviewing “Skins”, the new E4 drama series which looks at the life of youth in modern Britain. Teasers that I’ve seen lead me to think it’s Hollyoaks meets Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but I’ll reserve judgement until after I’ve seen the first epidose, this Thursday, 9pm, on E4.

Below is a short piece on the new neo-conservative plan for Iraq. It will be published alongside an article on the privatisation of oil in Iraq (not by me, though). The new issue of Solidarity should, I believe, be out later this week.

An Iraqi Social Contract: Labour for benefits, but labour doesn’t benefit

Two of America’s leading neo-conservatives, former New York mayor Rudi Giuliani and former Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, have decided that what Iraq needs is a new social contract. Of course, those two words for any working class socialist should send a shiver down their spine as memories of wage controls spring forwards. Imagine that, then times it by ten, and this is what Giuliani and Gingrich’s ides will do for the Iraqi people.

Their piece for the Wall Street Journal tries to give a progressive gloss over it all, even invoking Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Keynesian measures during the Great Depression. But the reality of what they propose – an “Iraqi Civilian Jobs Corps”, overseen by the US military (because ‘private contractors’ would be seen as cronyist, apparently), which would force Iraqis to work on reconstruction projects in return for a daily wage. These wages, according to Newt and Rudi, will “be used to purchase goods and services that will employ other Iraqis.”

Giuliani has some form here. His ‘Workfare’ (or ‘Work for Welfare’) schemes saw the 1.1 million New York City welfare claimants slashed as people had to work 20 hours a week in order to get their welfare checks. They had no other choice; it was either work for it, or you don’t get it. Of course, the benefits didn’t add up to 20 hours of pay at the minimum wage, and the tasks undertook by ‘Workfare’ claimants were jobs already being done by New York City workers, in the Sanitation Department, Parks Department and other public works. The real effect of Workfare was to shunt hundreds of NYC workers onto welfare, where they would end up being forced to do the same job they were doing before, but at an obscenely reduced rate. It is Marx’s view of the unemployed as a “reserve army of labour” for capital taken to it’s logical conclusion.

Newt and Rudi’s plans for Iraq would have a similar effect, but it will be much worse. It will involve forcibly privatising currently idle Iraqi factories and plant in order to produce materials for ‘reconstruction’. While the duo mention the fact that the median Iraqi monthly income before the invasion was US$700, they do not mention whether or not they will actually pay this. If Giuliani’s track record with Workfare is anything to go by, they most certainly won’t. Of course, because it is just the right moral side of slave labour, there will be no labour rights – no strikes, no pay rises, no unionisation. In short, neoliberalism’s dream; a smashed, atomised workforce, highly flexible, low paid.