Inviting viewers to see a man risk his life is a landmark in depravity
Mark Lawson
Saturday October 4, 2003
The Guardian
Legend says that deaths come in threes. But this weekend may prove that live media suicides occur in twos. The rock band Hell On Earth say that a man will kill himself during a gig tonight in Florida that is to be broadcast on the internet. And, at 9pm tomorrow night on Channel 4, the entertainer Derren Brown insists that he will play Russian roulette during a show. Live death, it seems, has become the new media thrill.
There are claims of mitigation in both cases. The threatened Florida suicide claims itself as euthanasia: the unidentified volunteer is said to be dying and wishes to make a public point about patient choice. And Derren Brown is by profession an illusionist, so it may be that his game with the rotating gunbarrel is a pretence. Russian roulette is, anyway, an exercise in spin, but is Brown giving it another twist? The performer insists that he isn't - but can you ever believe an illusionist? - and that his mind-reading powers will ensure that perspiration is the only bodily fluid that we'll see spurting from his brow.
But neither case is settled by such wriggling. In the past, if you had put a gun to my head, I would have said that censorship of adult entertainment was almost always misguided. But now, with Brown putting a gun to his head, I don't. Suicide-as-showbiz is a new low.
more
http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/comment/0,7493,1055796,00.html(No personal commentary on this. Only that
it must be stopped.)
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