Saturday 22 November 2014

It Was Alright to debate - The reaction to It Was Alright in the 1970's

So after two programmes, It Was Alright in the 1970's is finally over from seeing people's views from 'They knew' through to 'OMG wasn't that amazing'. I can reveal that I did donate a clip to the programme highlighting Ken Dodd's performance on a 1974 edition of The Golden Shot and I know will get brickbats for doing that. But frankly I couldn't care less at all, but in the two editions it has caused debate.

Isn't that a good thing for a programme to do? In this world of poverty porn, surely its is good for programmes to cause any type of reaction. I admit my part in all of this maybe a small one, however when I do research I do it for a reason to help people make programmes and write books. Though yet, in some way the public never see what goes on behind the scenes of anything like that. Presuming that shows are just thrown together in a way to make everyone look unmitigated, in all of this the producers used people who worked on the shows in question to look again at the clips and see what they thought now.

To some this almost like tantamount to locking them up and throwing away the key, however the explanations were there for people to see. As such, context is a key word to use in these cases, yet even today can everything said to be as clear cut as anything can be. No, not at all but that never stops people from trying something.

Its almost like throwing the baby out of the bath water as happened when alternative comedy came to sweep away the old style comedians, do we sweep every bit of entertainment from the 1970's under the carpet? Yes, in hindsight we do know about things that took place and abuse of power which happened, as always people should be exposed for this.

But for all that do we suddenly want to kick what Morecambe and Wise did, no we should not at all. As the new hipster generation comes along with their attitude, some people have been exposed already for what they are doing today and as such this will always happen with people in the limelight, the responsibility lies with everyone to like things or not like thing. Consistence in judgement comes the ability to watch something with new eyes and that we should be grateful for. 

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