DR MAX PEMBERTON: Why we should all be switching off C4’s cruel Wagatha docu drama
- Channel 4 have announced a two-part film of the Vardy v Rooney saga
- Dr Max Pemberton asks people to hold off watching this and think carefully
- He says it’s not a Punch and Judy show for our entertainment, but real lives
Vardy v Rooney. Just when you thought it was all over, Channel 4 has announced it is making a two-part dramatisation of the sorry saga. Why, for Pete’s sake? It’s only just happened.
Some of us are only just managing to forget the whole thing. We really don’t need it all dredged up again. And two parts? What have the British public done to deserve this? I’m struggling to see why Channel 4 think we should all be subjected to yet more of this circus.
We already have all the sordid details. I know far more than I need — or want — to learn about what is, essentially, a minor spat that got out of hand between people with too much time and money.
But let’s pause for a moment and consider. Although we might view this as Punch and Judy japes, actually these are real people — and their lives are being played out as pass-thepopcorn pop culture.
Rebekah Vardy after day seven of the trial. Channel 4 have announced a two-part film of the Vardy v Rooney saga
It seemed to start with the film The Iron Lady when it depicted the still-alive Thatcher in the throes of dementia.
This felt grotesquely inappropriate to take artistic license with someone’s life when they were still living it.
It’s especially inappropriate as we (particularly the younger generation) so often struggle to separate fact from fiction.
And it’s the same with The Crown, which has now veered into a startling contemporary timeline meaning that people are having their lives dramatised and put on screen. Indeed, there have now been calls from friends of the Royal Family to boycott the newest series.
It’s very easy for the viewing public to take fiction as fact, to see real people as just characters in a story, which makes me uncomfortable because we seem to not care about the impact this must have.
While the Vardy v Rooney drama claims to be based on the court transcripts, there will undoubtedly be a degree of dramatic licence. After all, it’s a drama, not a documentary.
Dr Max Pemberton asks people to hold off watching this and think carefully He says it’s not a Punch and Judy show for our entertainment, but real lives
But should the unedifying spectacle be served as entertainment? While Rooney appeared to have managed to emerge with her credibility intact, Rebekah certainly didn’t cover herself in glory. She was the villain of the piece and we all love a villain, don’t we?
She was a combination of funny, stupid and arrogant; the perfect mix to whip us all into an air-head frenzy. As a society we love to view things as pantomime — blameless goodies and evil baddies.
We love to boo and cheer along and can’t appreciate that things are complex and nuanced and people can be daft and misguided and behave badly while also being human and having valid feelings, too.
Rebekah was vilified, and, in the process, entirely dehumanised. But imagine being her right now? I feel certain this drama will paint her as the villain — the architect of her own downfall.
Why do we refuse to believe there aren’t moments when she feels down, desperate and lost in the misery she has created for herself?
How much of her apparent arrogance after the verdict is actually a desperate attempt to fend off humiliation?
It may be her fault, but who hasn’t doubled-down when they’ve messed up? Are we really so unforgiving that we can’t find a little compassion for her? The kindest thing we could do is switch off, look away and starve her self-destructive ego of the fuel it craves.
Of course, she deserved to lose the case — it was a ludicrous act of hubris to pursue it and she rightly came unstuck.
But it strikes me as ironic that at a time when we are all so obsessed with pussy-footing round people and their feelings, when we bend over backwards to show how caring we are, when social media is awash with demands to prioritise mental health, that this all disappears the moment someone slips into the role of the baddie.
We take sides, shout and jostle to get a ring-side seat and treat the whole thing like entertainment.
From day one it was like watching a slow car crash and, rather than look away, we gawped and giggled.
Rebekah spoke in court about the abuse and threats she has received online and the impact this had on her mental health. Did this mean we hung our heads in shame and gently stepped away? Did it heck!
We laughed and jibed at her even more, and now they’re turning the whole thing into a film.
We like to imagine that we are so much more civilised than our forebears, but is it so very different from laughing and goading people stuck in the stocks in the town square?
Rise above and when it airs, join me in switching off.
Assisted suicide is complex
A 23-year-old Belgian woman has been euthanised after being traumatised in an Isis attack several years ago. Since the attack, she struggled with mental health difficulties before asking doctors to kill her. Dutch research has found that a significant number of those opting for euthanasia had a mental illness. Many have a personality disorder — an umbrella term used to describe deeply ingrained maladaptive patterns of behaviour.
I am in no way minimising the pain mental illness can bring. But a personality disorder is quite different from motor neurone disease, for example. There is no known cure for MND, whereas there are very good and well established treatments for personality disorders.
Feelings of hopelessness sit at the very heart of many mental illnesses. It’s the job of doctors to hold on to that hope for them and remind them that things do get better — not to collude with them and help them die.
The NHS has launched a new campaign about ‘Sunday scaries’ after a survey suggested seven in ten people regularly experience anxiety on a Sunday. This perpetuates the lie that we should be happy and calm all the time. In fact, being nervous and anxious or low some of the time is normal. This is an example of the medicalisation of everyday distress.
Artificial Intelligence that claims to improve diversity and battle ‘unconscious bias’ in interviews actually ends up discriminating against candidates from poorer backgrounds, research suggests. This misuse of psychology is everywhere these days.
The personality tests, for example — beloved of banking and management consultants — have no evidence at all behind them. In fact, there’s some evidence that it makes people more prejudiced. It’s also interesting that while we focus on gender, sexuality and race, we ignore the fact that the most disadvantaged in society are currently white working-class boys. But they aren’t ‘trendy’.
DR MAX PRESCRIBES…
A SAD-BEATING LIGHT
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