Читать книгу Talk to the Hand - Lynne Truss - Страница 10

It ought to be clear by now that manners fulfil a number of roles in social life. Arguably, their chief role is to make us feel safe in the company of strangers. In his book The English (1998) Jeremy Paxman says that manners seem to have been developed by the English “to protect themselves from themselves”; there is an attractive theory that, back in the mists of time, language evolved in humans simply as a less ghastly alternative to picking fleas off each other. We placate with good manners, especially when we apologise. Erving Goffman, in his Relations in Public (1971), wrote that an apology is a gesture through which an individual splits himself into two parts: the part that is guilty of the offence, and the part that dissociates itself from the crime and says, “I know why this was considered wrong. In fact, I think it’s wrong myself.” Goffman also explains what is going on when a person tells off a naughty child or dog in public: he is signalling to other people that while he loves the child/dog, he is also responsible for the child/dog, and since he clearly shares the general view of how the child/dog has just behaved, the matter is in hand and everyone can calm down.

Increasingly, it seems, this splitting does not occur – and to those who expect this traditional nod towards shared standards, the new behaviour can be profoundly scary. Point out bad manners to anyone younger than thirty-five, and you risk a lash-back reflex response of shocking disproportion. “Excuse me, I think your child dropped this sweet wrapper.” “Why don’t you Eff Off, you fat cow,” comes the automatic reply. A man on a London bus recently told off a gang of boys, and was set on fire. Another was stabbed to death when he objected to someone throwing food at his girlfriend. How many of us dare to cry, “Get off that skateboard, you hooligan!” in such a moral climate? In the old days, when the splitting occurred, a person would apply a bit of moral honesty to a situation and admit that he deserved to be told off. Not any more. Criticism is treated (and reacted to) as simple aggression. And this is very frightening. As Stephen L. Carter points out in his book Civility (1998), people now think that “I have a right to do X” is equal to “I am beyond censure when I do X.” The comedian Jack Dee tells the true story of a health visitor friend who was appalled to find a quite large child still suckling from his mother. “I wonder whether we should be putting a stop to this?” she said. At which, the boy detached himself from the breast, told her to Eff Off, and then went back to his dinner.

One hesitates to blame television for all this because that’s such an obvious thing to do. But, come on. Just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it’s not true. Popular culture is fully implicated in the all-out plummeting of social standards. Abuse is the currency of all reality shows. People being vulgar and rude to each other in contrived, stressful situations is TV’s bread and butter. Meanwhile the encouragement of competitive, material self-interest is virtually its only other theme. The message and content of a vast amount of popular television can be summed up in the words, “And you can Eff right Off, too.” No wonder people’s aspirations are getting so limited, and their attitude to other people so cavalier. I got in a taxi recently and the driver said, “Do you know what I’d do if I had a lot of money?” I thought, well, take a holiday, buy a smallholding, give it to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds? He said, “I’d crash the car through the wall of that pub, drive right up to the bar, wind down the window and say, ‘Mine’s a pint, landlord, and you can Eff Off if you don’t like it coz I’m buying the place.’”