In my previous post, I wrote about how we misremember the past and rewrite history, filling it with the preoccupations of the present. It’s understandable when referring back to a war fought over a century ago.
But this mythologisation can happen in real time during the war itself. And this is why I ended up writing a sitcom for BBC3 called Bluestone 42.
One of BBC3’s early successes was a documentary series called Our War which was first transmitted in June 2011. The programme makers found the youngest, freshest-faced British soldiers serving in the Helmand Province and followed them around on the front line. It was courageously shot and powerfully presented.
Shooting the Narrative
The narrative we were invited to witness was that these young soldiers were helpless, hapless victims of a pointless and political war, too young to understand and too naïve to realise how they were being used as a pawns.
The original rationale for the war – that Afghanistan had willfully harboured terrorists who had killed thousands of innocent civilians on 9/11 - had already been forgotten.
Richard Hurst and I saw another narrative that was more compelling and ultimately more truthful. We were not concerned with the righteousness of the cause – much to the dismay of AA Gill in The Sunday Times – but the notion that the soldiers who deployed were keen to get out there and use their skills and training honed over many years. A group of soldiers doing what it was trained to do is a tight-knit unit, almost like a family. And this is why soldiers love being soldiers. That is what the show is about.
We were at pains to do our research and were extremely well-advised by soldiers who had served in Afghanistan very recently. Judging by the feedback we received from soldiers who served in Helmand, we were broadly successful in showing what life was like on a forward operating base (FOB) in Afghanistan. Sure, it was dangerous. That’s a given. But the life of a soldier is one of jokes, wind-ups, badinage and bullying, along with finding things to do in the ‘hurry up and wait’ life of the soldier, pest control and trying to get a decent meal. And then laughing in the face of danger when there are IEDs to be diffused and the Taliban have set an ambush.
If you’re reading this article in the USA, you can watch the show for free on Amazon Prime. In the UK, you’d have to buy it on DVD or via iTunes or YouTube.
I’ve not written much about Bluestone 42 because I’d rather the show spoke for itself. But I wrote about one aspect of it in my book, The Sacred Art of Joking. Here’s an extract:
But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. (Ephesians 5.3–4)
This passage of Scripture is not a promising manifesto for making jokes. Lots of jokes revel in obscenity, foolishness and coarseness, perhaps the vast majority in the realm of stand-up comedy and jokes told in the pub after work. The Bible says this way of talking is out of place among those who call themselves Christians. Does this put comedy off limits for the Church? Was Mary Whitehouse right all along?
Christians need to take this, and every, passage of the Bible seriously. But we should also note that Paul is being specific. He is writing about the personal conduct of Christians and the standard to which they should hold themselves. Christians really should think carefully about the jokes they tell and the words they use.
But most of the comedy we see on screens is depictions of characters who do not hold themselves to a biblical standard, even on the rare occasions these characters are written by Christians. I found myself explaining this when my aforementioned TV show, Bluestone 42, was broadcast on BBC3. Some Christians found it troubling that a fellow Christian had written a sitcom in which most of the characters swear liberally and with feeling. They swear literally like troopers. They tell one another to get stuffed in all manner of inventively obscene and abrupt ways. How is that okay?
Discerning voices
I’m not a character in Bluestone 42. You will note that I’m not using the expletives from the show in this book, and not even quoting them. I have preferred to used euphemisms like ‘tell one another to get stuffed in all manner of ways’ to convey the kinds of words that were used in Bluestone 42. I feel an obligation to do that because, as a Christian, Paul’s words of Ephesians 5.4 apply to me, unlike all but one of the characters in Bluestone 42. I am writing this book in my own voice so I must take heed of Ephesians 5.
I also want to tell the truth. In fact, I want to be doubly truthful. As a Christian, I want to be truthful. As a comedy writer, I know that comedy is based on truth, so if I want to be funny I have to tell the truth. Scrubbing bad language from a military situation diminishes the honesty of the story and undermines the comedy. If a bomb detonates near a soldier, he does not exclaim ‘Oh dear!’ or ‘Good heavens!’ When a sergeant barks orders under attack, he or she speaks with great emphasis and uses very salty language (and not the kind of salty language to which the Apostle Paul refers in Colossians 4.6). To portray the soldiers exclaiming ‘Fiddlesticks!’ when they’re being hit in the chest by a rocket-propelled grenade would be dishonest and silly.
Sitcom heroes and heroines are deeply flawed people doing foolish things for mixed motives, normally operating within some kind of Judeo-Christian moral framework. People make this mistake when they quote Shakespeare, as if he personally was writing down truths about life for all people in all times and all places. Some phrases have that quality to them, but these bons mots were sections of speeches said by characters in their own given fictional or quasi-historical situation. We should be rather cautious about taking life advice from Danish princes or Scottish kings.
Read on - and find out about what I call ‘The Philippians 4 manoeuvre’ - by getting hold of a copy of The Sacred Art of Joking, which is all about how jokes work, and how they go wrong, especially in the realm of religion.
A signed copy would make a decent Christmas present and a nice change from a Michael McIntyre DVD, especially if coupled with a copy of The Gospel According To A Sitcom Writer. Both available HERE.