Blood on the Rooftops...

Let’s skip the news boy (I’ll go and make some tea)
Arabs and Jews boy (too much for me)
They get me confused boy (puts me off to sleep)
And the thing I hate, oh Lord!
Is staying up late, to watch some debate, on some nation’s fate

There’s been a lot of debate about what should be shown on television recently. The tragic murder of a soldier near his barracks in London earlier this year,as well as the Marikana mine shootings has brought this sharply into focus. With the advent of twenty four hour news channels and the hundreds of choices we now have, its easy to forget that not so long ago when I was growing up,we only had three tv channels. But would they have stopped whatever was showing to give a continuous commentary on the tragic events of this week? Maybe. After all, the Iranian Embassy siege and the subsequent SAS rescue was shown live and I remember as a child being rather annoyed at the interruption to whatever it was I was watching at the time.

So do we live our lives through television? Has the cult of celebrity and social media interactivity led us to live in some international ‘real time’ where our lives are dominated not by what we do or who we are, but by other influences reaching us by cable,wifi and satellite?

I was reminded of this by the lyrics from the Genesis song, ‘Blood on the Rooftops’. From my favourite Genesis album, Wind and Wuthering (and I love the reference in the lyrics to another favourite of mine, Lindisfarne’s  Fog on the Tyne) Its about a couple whose lives are dominated by the television of their day. Written by Phil Collins, they refer to a “typical” middle-aged couple that have very little else to do with their lives than to watch TV, and complain about the content. The various references to TV programmes show how the escapism of fantasy and fiction impact so deeply on their lives that they have real problems distinguishing between that escapism and the grim events of the real world. What would they have made of the TV footage shown repeatedly, of the young soldier’s murder I wonder?

Were the news channels right to show the tragic and gruesome footage over and over again? It’s certainly available on demand on the internet, but many will now be asking the question, should it be? The middle aged couple who seem to be narrating the story in the song don’t appear to like the serious stuff, all that blood on the rooftops is too much for them. They would be horrified with the twenty four  hour news channels today.

I think we've crossed the Rubicon myself. Our lives are made up of a pastiche of soundbites from multimedia sources, and in fact, its changed the way we view most aspects of our lives. I suppose we must also accept that for all the benefits this brings, there will be some potentially big negatives too and maybe recent events in London, and perhaps the shootings of the striking South African miners last year (also shown repeatedly on TV) are examples of this which certainly make some hanker for the simpler way of life from days gone past. But as the Genesis song perhaps illustrates the problem of living our lives through the media may always have been with us, in some shape or other…

Dark and grey, an English film, the Wednesday play
We always watch the Queen on Christmas Day
Won’t you stay?

Though your eyes see shipwrecked sailors you’re still dry
The outlook’s fine though Wales might have some rain
Saved again.

Let’s skip the news boy (I’ll go and make some tea)
Arabs and Jews boy (too much for me)
They get me confused boy (puts me off to sleep)
And the thing I hate, oh Lord!
Is staying up late, to watch some debate, on some nation’s fate.

Hypnotized by Batman, Tarzan, still surprised!
You’ve won the West in time to be our guest
Name your prize!

Drop of wine, a glass of beer dear what’s the time?
The grime on the Tyne is mine all mine all mine
Five past nine.

Blood on the rooftops, Venice in the spring
The Streets of San Francisco, a word from Peking
The trouble was started, by a young Errol Flynn
Better in my day, oh Lord!
For when we got bored, we’d have a world war, happy but poor
So let’s skip the news boy (I’ll go and make some tea)
Blood on the rooftops (too much for me)
When old Mother Goose stops, and they’re out for twenty three
Then the rain at Lords stopped play
Seems Helen of Troy has found a new face again.

“Blood on the Rooftops” as written by Phil Collins and Steve Hackett