Television’s Portrayal Of Adult Blogging
Sonic made a comment on one of yesterday’s posts asking what we thought about the recent Channel 4 documentary “The Sex Blog Girls”. Rather than answer in a comment I thought I’d answer in a more considered manner in a post.
We didn’t remark on the show at the time because quite frankly we thought the programme was pitiful. Its portrayal of adult blogging was almost wholly inaccurate and the ideas they chose to feature were so thin that it could have easily been condensed into a half-hour slot, or less.
What came across was a light-weight programme made by researchers who really should have looked at their job descriptions and actually done some research. The programme’s mini-site at Channel4.com here declared that adult blogging is dead. The programme re-iterated this when it aired. Well sorry “researchers” but there are hundreds if not thousands of genuine adult bloggers out there still writing and thousands of people each day read what we create.
So for the reasons above we chose not to give it any more attention than it deserved.
Frankly though we didn’t expect anything else. TV’s interpretation of anything sexual has to conform to the guidelines laid out by UK law. We have taste and decency guidelines and legislation in this country to ensure that only content suitable for those individuals viewing a transmission is aired. If a director/producer and their team are talented this means they find innovative solutions to the problems posed by the presentation of delicate content. They ensure that a subject is discussed fully and frankly without crossing the boundaries set out for them.
What happened with the “The Sex Blog Girls” is that a TV company got hold of an idea and appeared to decide what their conclusions should be without actually talking to anyone or researching the subject. If this was Channel 4 or the production company is irrelevant, the mistake started there. They then went out and interviewed a few people like Emily Dubberley, Abby Lee (Zoe Margolis) et al and cut together a programme that they believed supported their presumptive conclusion.
I felt sorry for Emily and Abby during the programme as they didn’t seem to be saying a great deal. They appeared a bit wooden as if they’d been wheeled out to do a piece-to-camera and then heavily edited. For women who have been writing for such a long time and would have been teeming with ideas and insicive discourse on the subject of adult blogging they were stilted and repetitive. I can only put this down to the heavy editing that must have been used to filter out all the non-obvious (and therefore interesting) stuff they had to say and leave one of the three premises of the programme; i.e. women are sexual animals too and should be allowed to express it with the same freedom as the other half of the population.
I don’t disagree with that point, no right-thinking person would. To disagree with the idea of sexual equality is to attempt to oppress and suppress one half of the population. If you read the last sentence of the last paragraph out loud it takes about four seconds to say. Not 44 minutes of air time.
The second point was obvious; If your family found out they would be shocked and the effect on the relationship between the blogger and their family, the blogger and their friends, the blogger and their work colleagues would all be irreversibly altered.
No shit Sherlock!
Again I agree but not ground breaking documentary journalism.
Finally there was the “Tabloid Sting”. That would be what? According to the documentary, to paraphrase Zoe, “I received a bunch of flowers saying congratulations on the book”. Somehow the tabloid in question had found her name and address. But the poor lass wasn’t given the opportunity to explain how they found out. Anyone could have given her name to the papers and the documentary didn’t explain what had happened.
To me a tabloid sting is dressing some guy up as a Sheik and nailing crooked arms dealers. Not getting a tip-off about the identity of an author and sending her a bunch of flowers. That’s a hack following leads. The effect was to leave me initially wanting to know what had actually happened for a moment, then thinking “Do I give a monkey’s?”.
And don’t get me started on the repeated shots of skinny girls typing naked on a laptop or the tracking shot of newspaper headlines used three times in the space of ten minutes. Someone ought to tell TV companies that audiences are more sophisticated than that these days. Oh, I just did.
The show was a missed opportunity, which is particularly surprising from Channel 4, a TV channel for whom I have always had a great deal of respect. They have provided some interesting, enthralling and ground-breaking television in the past.
I suppose we’re all allowed a Turkey from time to time especially at Christmas.
Tags: Abby Lee, Zoe Margolis, Girl With A One Track Mind, Channel 4, The Sex Blog Girls, sex blogging, sex blogs, adult blogging, adult blogs, tabloid newspapers, red tops
I didn’t see the programme in question, though from the sound of it, I didn’t miss anything. Anyone who so much as dips into the links in here and on my blog (and on many many others) knows only too well that adult blogging is alive and well, and full of diversity – there’s something for everyone out there, much of it very creative and often delightfullly erotic. If anything, I’d expect adlut blogging to increase after the Billie Piper thing, and the numbers visiting my own blog are as healthy as they ever were – the last audience participation event I held in my blog (the virtual orgy) resulted in 640 comments, and I’m by no means one of the ‘major’ bloggers like Alex & Suze – so no, I don’t think we need to worry about adult blogging dying out just yet, it seems pretty darn healthy to me…
All moot points, but I can’t help but think that it was all a media exercise that focused on the microcosm of the macrocosm. The confessional style of writing didn’t originate blogs, and certainly not from one particular blog. People were writing their sexual confessions to sex researchers more than four decades ago, and it really boggles my mind how people employed as television researchers couldn’t rub two brain cells together to figure that out, and mind you, all those people who confessed or wrote pages of confessions for real sexual pioneers, like Shere Hite, Alfred Kinsey, and Masters & Johnson weren’t wired for media attention or any type of attention. There was the good, bad, ugly and horrifying confession, whereas today, a percentage of ‘famous’ confessional blogs are all written to effect, like airport fiction. There are no sexual flaws, and as for those that are famed, there is hardly anything sexually educational. For example, you both go to good lengths to research a sexual piece of information, whether it be paraphilias, kinks or new technology, and a lot of the other blogs (with the exception of Dubberley who has written 9 books) that featured in that documentary hardly explore these things, and function more on a voyeuristic level than anything else; as for how educational this is? I’m buggered if I know. I guess that’s why qualified professionals still write dry Sex Ed books (which is a pity really), because they’re the only one’s who’ll be bothered with facts, and those bloggers who are bothered with facts (ie you, and other certain blogs), are largely swept under the carpet. The only exception is Emily Dubberley, who I think should have received more ad space on the Channel 4 web ad preceding the show (she hardly got a mention), considering she’s written more than any of the bloggers on that show. And what about the couples who blog? Where were they? It’s like ‘single white (with emphasis on white) female sex blogger.’
errata: ‘confessional style of writing did not originate in sex blogs’
It is sad they did such a lame job of it.
“Someone ought to tell TV companies that audiences are more sophisticated than that these days. Oh, I just did.”
Yes dear, you did an excellent job of it, but sadly, they won’t see it considering they think adult blogging is dead. :/
DB I think I summed it up when I said the programme was a missed opportunity. There is so much out there that could have been discussed and the viewers made aware of but that seemed to be passed over for the paltry hour of TV we were served up with.
Ana your point about Emily is well made, they seemed to have one goal on mind and while Zoe may have had some recent success she’ll be a while catching up with Emily as I’m sure she’d agree. I’m not saying she shouldn’t have been part of the doco, but frankly they seemed to miss the point that “Girl” was not the alpha and omega of adult blogging. Even Zoe admitted that on her blog and found it necessary to put the record straight. Getting a release from participants in such a projetc before the final cut is common practice (on all channels) and the standard wording of such releases (because otherwise you the production company can get into dreadful trouble because of the way the law stands over here) means that you relinquish all control of the end product. Unless of course they totally distort what you said.
LD Ta for the vote of confidence in my writing but I suspect you’re right about how much difference it’ll make.