A Lethal Weapon

On the day after Derrick Bird shot dead 12 people in Cumbria BBC Radio 4 broadcast a play entitled Six Impossible Things. Based on the true story of a murderer, it contained the line 'I'll put a bullet in your brain'. 66 complaints were made to the network, which quickly apologised and declared it had been wrong to broadcast the play. Why did this upset people? Who were they? Could they be protesting about anything more than ironic coincidence?

This seems part of the disturbing willingness to be part of a 'community of grief' which has marked British society since the death of Diana. People seem to need to think of themselves as 'victims' of tragic events, imagining that it's just too painful in their grief-stricken state to be confronted with images of any sort of violence. I vividly remember that a day or so after Diana's death the scheduled movie, Lethal Weapon III, was replaced by the sentimental (and wonderful) film, Field of Dreams, as if watching Mel Gibson's wild staring eyes as he brandished the eponymous firearm was just too upsetting for those in a fragile state after the tragedy. Of course this sentimentality is all media-led, as the duty of the news networks and newspapers is seemingly to create a community united in outrage and grief. The BBC is the prime offender here, so at least there is another irony: that its drama wing has to play by the strange rules it enforces elsewhere.