| < ott | DRAMA | COMEDY | FACTUAL | CHILDREN'S | LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT | FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | REVIEWS | BLOG | search > |
| PLAY
FOR TODAY - "THE CHEVIOT, THE STAG AND THE BLACK BLACK OIL" Thursday 06/06/74, BBC reviewed by David Agnew |
October
2000
|
|
|
|
|
When the narrative drive of a television programme is inseparable from its underlying ideological imperatives, it can make for some fairly disconcerting viewing. Making inventive use of the single play format, In "The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil" John McGrath constructs a politicised polemic that engages directly with the ideological problematics between media representation and interpretations of history. The play is most specifically influenced by the Brechtian concept of a separation of the elements in terms of narration, music and the means of production in contrast to the integrated, illusionistic and "reactionary" realist drama we usually see on our television screens. The separation of the elements in McGrath's work encompasses theatrical performance, historical drama and documentary in order to tell a critical tale of the oppression and exploitation of the Scottish people throughout history. At first sight, the play appears to be a straightforward documentary, examining how the exploitation of the Scottish has manifested itself throughout history; moving from the brutal evictions of the Highland crofters by landowners to make way for the more economically viable Cheviot sheep in the 18th century to the development of stag hunts in Highland game parks in the late 19th century and finally to the exploitation of Scottish resources in the oil boom of the 1970s. We are invited into a community hall where a Highlands audience is about to witness a performance by the 7:84 theatre company - the moniker alluding to the statistic that 7% of the country's population own 84% of the country's wealth - of "The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil", "a story with a beginning, a middle and as yet no end." We then see a montage of shots displaying a truck on a building site, an oil rig, sheep grazing in the countryside, a highlander being chased by English 18th century redcoats and a stag being shot dead. In just a few minutes, the play has complicated itself in terms of spatial and temporal relations, juxtaposed imagery from different historical periods and confounded audience expectations. It is the central motif of the theatrical performance by the 7:84 company and the reaction of its in-house audience that brings a sense of fluidity to the unfolding story, combining and mediating the disparate modes of representation such as the use of historical drama, documentary footage and interviews. Frequent shots of the theatre audience are used to conceal the sudden switches from stage performance to filmed drama and as their viewing position is not unsettled, neither is that of the television audience. The audience is indeed a key figure in the force of the piece: their very regional identity in being the descendants of those whose plight is documented in the play is essential in giving a sense of immediacy and authenticity to "Cheviot"'s political refection and construction of argument. This concept of a unified audience is also linked to the lack of any individual protagonist in any of the theatre, drama or documentary segments. Highlighting the ensemble nature of the 7:84 company, there is no one actor playing one central character, no main character in the historical dramatic reconstruction and no one interviewer in the documentary footage asking the oil rig workers and people of Aberdeen for their views. The need to stress the universality of the issues raised takes precedence over any display of thespian or technical virtuosity that seems such a central impulse in much other television drama and documentary. It would seem clear that on one level, "Cheviot" stands as a true vanguard of progressive television in its apparent eschewing of normative dramatic convention, and yet, on closer examination, one must ask whether the play has truly broken out of television's constraining naturalist structure. The final section of "Cheviot" details the exploitation of Scotland's oil resources and is presented mostly in a documentary form, giving the opinions of the people of Aberdeen and how the oil boom has affected their lives. In this segment, we are faced with a much more conventional structure than previously, with contributions from the 7:84 company in the form of satirical songs implying that the multinational companies in control of the oil industry have taken the place of the landowners as the oppressors of the Scottish. However, realist techniques prevail here - in addressing these contemporary concerns to a mainstream audience, "Cheviot" employs the devices of the autonomous documentary form and its connotations of realism and truth to validate its argument. In fact, the dramatised sequences of the enforced evictions of the 18th century crofters also involve the use of classical continuity editing - it is only when they are interspersed with the theatrical scenes that they take on a formally innovative significance. One scene in particular involves a succession of shots of battered Highland women after a clash with the police, followed by a cut to the stage where the actors appear to be reading from a medical report, listing in cold, clinical detail, the injuries they have suffered. By making a direct comment on the historical reconstruction, the theatrical performance and play as a whole is invested with an authoritative realism. Although "Cheviot" can be legitimately cited as a subversion of established dramatic practice, it has however also had to acknowledge the power of naturalist techniques to put its case to a wider audience. The play's progressiveness does not merely lie in the use of these techniques - none of which are startlingly new or innovative - but in the specific means of their deployment and the way in which they demand active audience involvement which makes "Cheviot" the complete and concise sum of its parts. In its manipulation of formalism and narrative drive, "Cheviot" offers not only a progressive political intervention, interrogating an interpretation of history that has expropriated the "true" version of events according to the Highland people, but also an invitation to reflect upon television's essentially constructed nature. This would seem to be a fair appraisal of "Cheviot"'s credentials as a distinctive example of innovative single play television, although its achievements are not seamless. The late, esteemed media scholar (read: chronically out of step old duffer) Leslie Halliwell had denounced John McGrath as "a propagandist of ardent left-wing views" and "Cheviot" as a "tendentious" and "agitational" programme "alleging capitalist exploitation of Scotland." Certainly, it is fair to argue that the vast majority of televisual narrative fictions are not in the business of explicitly espousing any particular political philosophy. Rather they are invariably acquiescent, bound by a striving for communal consensus within the framework of popular reception. "Cheviot", on the other hand, is resolutely oppositional television, consciously fostering its questioning, confrontational stance throughout its length (although it is by no means as radical as it would like to think it is) with an emphasis on class relations as the impetus for a specific discourse. The use of the sympathetic Highlands audience for the 7:84 actors immediately gives the impression of preaching to the converted, whilst the working-class view of history is depicted as being intrinsically correct. The crofters are presented throughout with realism and reverence whereas the representatives of the upper class we see are pompous and hypocritical. This divergence is particularly notable in a theatrical segment in which a grossly caricatured upper-class couple proclaim themselves "the ruling class" and are the embodiment of the arrogant, idle rich. Whilst the claim made by Lord Sutherland that no crofter suffered during the clearances is matched by shots of burnt-out communities whereas his own castle remains intact. "The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil" has only ever been repeated once (17 April 1975) since its original transmission. Its ultimate consignment to the netherworld of the BBC archive is possibly indicative of the reactionary conservatism of television institutions towards programmes with a provocative political stance and experimental take on the programme-making process. Viewed on its own terms however, the play should be championed as a privileged expression of a man Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping have described as "one of television's great innovators", and as a unique and welcome reminder of television's innate ability to provoke and question. |
|
|