A show that debuted on British TV last week broke new ground in the way it shocked, drawing disapproval from the country’s press. In the first episode, which premiered on 25 October, comedian Jimmy Carr and his television channel producers Channel 4 destroyed four works of art they bought, after an audience vote, including a painting by genocidal dictator Adolf Hitler, which was shredded with small chainsaws. The show also featured a vase made by Pablo Picasso, spared from destruction by the audience.
Carr is an experienced British comedian with a style of humor similar to that of the Brazilian Léo Lins. His comedy specials consist of a chain of many jokes, with little or no narrative construction that drives them, without limits: he plays with themes that have the potential to shock the audience, such as the Holocaust. The comedian is an advocate of freedom of expression and has already given an interview to psychologist Jordan Peterson in which he criticized the “cancel culture”.
The premise of the new show, entitled Jimmy Carr Destroys Art (Jimmy Carr Destroys Art, in free translation), does not allow the audience to spare all the works. They are exposed in pairs, something discrediting is revealed by the presenter about the authors’ biography, two media or artistic personalities act as prosecutors or defense attorneys for each of the two works, and then the audience present (whose members can also present arguments) votes which one will be destroyed. Hitler’s painting, however, was exhibited alone, without a rival.
The disapproval of the British press was immediate and transcended ideological divisions. “An idiotic and pathetic show”, said Ed Cumming in the title of the conservative newspaper The Telegraph. “Almost everyone involved” should be ashamed, he reacted. Louis Chilton, reviewer for the most progressive newspaper The Independent, agrees that the show “has to be the dumbest treatment of ‘cancel culture’ ever made.” For Chilton, the artistic value of the works is not what is in question, as they would be irrelevant works that few would recognize. Without the program’s attention, the Nazi painting would “live in silent ignominy.”
Art vs. Art
In the show’s first and so far only episode, five blocks between commercial breaks are dedicated to voting and potential destruction of five works. In the intro, Jimmy Carr gives a short monologue about the destruction of statues by the Black Lives Matter movement especially since the 2020 protests, and mentions that famous artists in action have been betting on creative destruction. Among them Ai Weiwei, an exile critical of China’s dictatorship; Banksy, British graffiti artist of unknown identity who shredded the “Girl with a Balloon” painting with a remotely operated device as soon as it sold for over a million pounds sterling in 2006 (R$6.9 million); and Damien Hirst, a controversial English contemporary artist with works such as a shark preserved in formaldehyde.
In the first block, the rival works were the painting of an Australian landscape by the convicted pedophile Rolf Harris, who before infamy was celebrated in the United Kingdom, going so far as to make a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in 2006; against a collage of nine cards of pornographic drawings that ridicule, among others, the figure of Jesus, by Eric Gil. He is the creator of the “Gil Sans” font used in Microsoft Word and confessed in his biography to having practiced incest, rape of a minor and zoophilia. The audience voted against Gil, and his cards were destroyed with a flamethrower.
In the second block, a black and white photograph of a naked four-year-old girl was shown on one side. , taken by his mother, photographer Sally Mann, in a style reminiscent of celebrated Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado — the problem, for some, is that it exposes the child against their will and potentially sexualizes them, but investigations by the photographer have revealed nothing of bad intentions. On the other side was a work by Marcus Harvey, an English painter, a smaller version of a giant portrait of the serial killer Myra Hindley, who killed five children, along with a partner over the years. . The assassin’s face, reproduced from a police photo, is made up of children’s palm prints, stenciled onto the canvas by Harvey. The last work lost in the public vote and was destroyed with paintball shots.
In the third block, Hitler’s painting came, alone. It is a watercolor not very rich in details of a clock tower, seen from a low angle, within an urban context, with tree foliage in the foreground. Date of 1921 and has the signature of the Nazi dictator. The authenticity of the watercolor was assured by the auction house that sold it to Channel 4 by 25 .500 pounds (R$500.720,00). The painting would have been given by the Nazi leader to the military Hermann Göring.
The audience voted for destruction, and, in a structure resembling a guillotine, the painting was pressed against small electric saws, which tore it to shreds. The painting’s “defense lawyer” recalled that Hitler was responsible for the destruction of more than 1.600 artistic works. A descendant of Germans, he said that he condemned Hitler, but that there was historical value in the painting, to remember the mistakes of the past. The Nazis also organized exhibitions of “degenerate art” to ridicule works by Jews and other persecuting groups.
In the fourth block, the competing works were both about race. The one destroyed was a bust of a black person made by Rachel Dolezal, an American who was criticized for having spent years pretending to be black, tanning her skin and altering the texture of her hair. She even presided over a local branch of one of the largest non-governmental organizations dedicated to the defense of black people in the United States. A documentary about Dolezal on Netflix shows that she was raised in a psychologically abusive environment by her parents, and her “trans-racial” identity may be a way of moving away from that past. Her sculpture was thrown by Jimmy Carr from the second floor of the shed where the program was filmed, shattering in the interior of the building. The work spared was a racist cartoon from the 19th century, made by caricaturist John Leech, which shows a black man with exaggerated features tearing up a map of the United States.
In the fifth and final block, the “ prosecutor” said that a vaguely shaped female vase made by Pablo Picasso was an improper imitation of African art. The “defense attorney” insisted that it was not an imitation, but only an inspiration. The presenter said that Picasso is now infamous for his “abusive misogyny”, as he allegedly put out a cigarette in the face of one of his companions. Two committed suicide. There was a heavy metal block hovering over the vase, supported with a chain and skein threads. Audience votes included the possibility of cutting a wire if the person wanted to. If more than 50% of the wires were cut, the block would crush the work. Most chose not to cut, saving the vase.
Controversial programs are nothing new in Channel 4. In 2016, the broadcaster launched a dating show in which a participant chooses who is of interest to them among completely naked candidates with their face hidden. There were protests against the frontal nudes, but the program was not censored and persists to this day. In 2020, a program aired showing erect penises. The channel was the fourth created in Great Britain, after two channels of the state-owned BBC and the private channel ITV, in 1921, under the government of Margaret Thatcher. Unusually for that government, it was created as the property of a state agency, as it still is today, but unlike the BBC, it is financed by advertising.
