An important theme of the Jimmy Savile story is the way that celebrity excuses social norms, and that is exactly what allowed him to escape scrutiny and dodge accusations for so long.
Celebrity brings with it microscopic attention to people’s looks and daily actions, which might be why we stop asking the critical question about whether their overall behaviour is within acceptable bounds. And there is a creepy, limpet-like need for fans to maintain the celebrity’s existence to validate their own attention to them. Whether its Michael Jackson, Donald Trump or Savile there is a very high level of turning a blind eye to overt and unacceptable actions over a long time because their fans see that as irrelevant to their deeper [saintliness is the wrong word]. Savile became untouchable through his celebrity and building a huge fan base that was willing to believe he was a good man. The weird look was part of his public persona. Its hard to give credence to the claims of a victim of his abuse when most people wanted to believe he was something of a national hero.
As a PS - the Sherlock [Cumberbatch version] episode with Toby Jones aimed to explore the Savile phenomenon with another loved celebrity charity benefactor, who also could shoot someone in the street and get away with it [to coin a phrase]
If you watch the Louis Theroux documentary he did filming spending time with Savile and entering the ‘inner-sanctuary’ of this very famous public figure in Britain, with the benefit of hindsight it is very eerily disturbing how hidden in plain sight that man was. He made comments which I suppose at the time may have just registered as throwaway remarks baked in an old-fashioned sense of humor but now are a revelation into his mind. I am no psychologist but I wonder if he enjoyed dropping in little hints during his interviews knowing he would likely get to take his dirty secrets to the grave.
I’m not from the UK, but in the doc, Mark Lawson, one of the interviewees (who apparently once had to physically step in between Savile and a female producer to stop Savile from rubbing his crotch against her), says “Jimmy Savile, a working class, former miner, and, crucially, Northerner. Northern voices are regarded as more authentic in Britain. Warmth, trustworthiness. A man of the people is allowed near the people. Terrible, terrible things happened because of that.”
I’m reminded of the Jeremy Clarkson scandal, which happened after Operation Yewtree was in full swing. Clarkson (a popular host of popular show Top Gear) punched a producer in the face over a triviality. And his fans rushed out to demand that his felony assault be ignored precisely because he was a popular presenter on a popular show.
That’s a hell of a non-sequiteur. What has that got to do with Savile? or with Yewtree?
You may as well have used the recent Will Smith assault and the various defences of it. That’s equally as irrelevant to the hideous crimes of Savile et al.
Not a non-sequitur at all. What Clarkson did isn’t comparable to what Savile did by any means, but if your reaction to a beloved BBC presenter committing a felony is “We should overlook it because his ratings are good”, it’s the same goddamn problem.
Clarkson was clearly guilty of bullying behaviour and in this case assault…who would have thought! He overstepped the line and resorted to physical assault. That was too much reputational damage and it was the end of ‘Top Gear’, much to the disappointment of the fans.
The fact is that we are prepared to give people who are well established in a power structure a free pass for bad behaviour if they are valued.
Savile delivered light entertainment to the masses. His TV programs appealed to a key demographic who loved his family oriented shows full of stunts intended to raise money for popular charities.
Trump is an outrageous bully and his predations on women are well known. But he has a following who regard him as a buccaneering business guy who tells it like it is and does not tolerate failure. They give him a free pass because his enemies are their enemies. His image was packaged and magnified by media companies in the hugely successful reality TV show, The Apprentice, a format which purported to show the dynamics at the top of big business. That had the unfortunate collateral effect of going a long way to convince US voters that this is the sort of leader the country needs. People become confused between reality and Reality TV, which is not at all real, it is theatre. But then there people who think characters in soap operas are like that in real life.
Clarkson is motoring journalist who branched out into hugely popular TV programs about cars and motoring. His uncompromising opinions were set against those of his companions and together they created an entertaining show full of stunts with cars and schoolboy humour. It sold well around the world.
Gordon Ramsey’s shows about failing restaurants are full of conflict as he butts heads with egotistical restaurant owners… the list goes on.
These formats are full of aggression and conflict. They are quite different from Savile’s output. But there are some common themes. The characters are bullies - macho personalities that lead them make huge amounts of money for the production companies and advertisers. Their antics reliably deliver huge audiences. The public like the spectacle of macho men who dominate their profession or business and are not afraid to tell it like it is. With a guy like that in charge, what could possibly go wrong?
That is just the media business which has an insatiable appetite for formats and content in this media saturated world. It provides some entertainment to people with humdrum lives.
Plenty of other types of business provide rewards for characters who are sociopathic narcissists that manage to get into positions of power. They remain in place as long as the money flows into the business. The corporate world is full of them and they are often difficult to dislodge. They know what strings to pull.
They get their comeupance when they fail or the business or institution starts to suffer serious reputational damage and starts to lose the confidence of their stakeholders and investors.
But while the revenues are maintained, these ‘great’ Men get to bully and exploit the people around them and they are protected by the organisations and institutions that they dominate.
We can, perhaps, be thankful that it is only jobs and livelihoods that are at risk. It is possible to avoid such regimes by changing jobs. It is altogether more serious at the level of the state where the consequences are can be life or death.
Will we ever learn…? Will civilisation develop checks and balances in businesses and institutions to prevent such lunatics from taking over the asylum? Maybe, but we have a long way to go.
The Savile scandal led to a big investigation by the police into the extent of his sexual abuse called Operation Yewtree, it runs to 700 pages.
This was followed by further police investigations into other individuals who were thought to be involved in abuse. It uncovered some perpetrators who were prosecuted, but it also targeted some people who were innocent or themselves the victims of malicious falsehoods by fantasists. Some of the police investigations were very poor, based in little evidence they raided a number of public figures. The treatment of Cliff Richard was very bad and the BBC were accused of colluding with the police to film his arrest. There was something like a witch hunt that gradually calmed down. The authorities look for quick answers when there is the kind of moral panic that the Savile scandal created. They make mistakes.
Now most public organisations and companies that do business with them are obliged to have ‘Safeguarding’ policies that make clear the responsibility to have processes that protect against the exploitation of children and vulnerable adults.
This is an institutional reform and it follows a pattern. There is a big catastrophy, something blows up or there is a shameful scandal, there is a big government investigation, then some new regulations come in to try to stop it from happening again. But characters like Savile are often highly mobile and they go abroad to countries where there is less protection.
I expect there will be report on the “towering inferno” Grenfell disaster in a year or so, when it is complete. I am sure Netflix is taking note.
Normally i wouldn’t correct someone on their vocabulary, but since you gone a done let your embarrassment at being offered a clarification justify your aggressive sarcasm, i’ll go ahead: look up “flagellation.”
I finished watching the documentary last night. Not being British, I was only vaguely familiar with Savile and the case, so I definitely learned a lot. That said, I think it could easily have been one, two-hour documentary. As it is, I think it spends too much time on Savile’s career and not enough time on the investigation into his crimes. I would have liked more details into the police work and evidence and the report from Operation Yewtree (which they don’t even mention in the movie - I got that in this thread).
I’d heard vaguely of Jimmy Savile both before and after his fall from grace, but never knew much in the way of details, so this doc was a good primer on that. I agree that in focusing on his outsized personality (and royal connections), it omitted some much-needed perspective on the various institutional forces that either turned a blind eye to him or outright shielded him. When you combine this film with the recent Netflix series on the Yorkshire Ripper, it’s an incredibly damning portrait of UK law enforcement through the 70s and 80s: technologically backward, openly misogynist, and largely lacking any sense of accountability for its failures and shortcomings.
I’m old enough to have experienced much of that stuff when it happened, and even I have a hard time remembering how utterly normal lecherousness was treated in the culture when I was young. Watching Savile “joke” about picking off teenage girls in his audience is shocking because we know with hindsight he wasn’t joking (and because, as an American, I have no childhood memories of him and just think he looks like a pervert and attention whore), but at the time, it likely didn’t raise much of an eyebrow because so many people talked like that and most everyone was happy to laugh it off.
Gyrate made their comment in response to my post - which was specifically and clearly about the role of celebrity and how the public sees that as over-riding compliance with social norms. It was the case with Savile, and their example of Clarkson was apt and specific on the point.
No, Clarkson is not being compared to Savile in their actions, but the phenomenon of some people choosing to defend them or never quite being able to accept the reality of what they did, solely on the basis of their fandom, is exactly the same. And that is a big part of why Savile got away with being a dangerous man for so long.
I don’t recall the crimes of Savile being made public, Savile admitting to them and there being a clamour from his fans to ignore it and let him carry on.
The scandal broke after he died. While he was alive he alluded to the fact that he had successfully won legal actions against acusers and got compensation. He was able to pull strings. His friends in the police force protected him from the reform school girls who were easy to dismiss as unreliable witnesses. His friends in the hospitals were able to protect him from accusations by patients and junior staff. His friends in the BBC were able to silence journalists. The scandal loving national newspapers did not expose him because of the strong libel laws in the UK.
This documentary did not really explore these important areas. Characters like Savile get away with teir crimes for many years because of weaknesses in the legal, health care, broadcasting and other structures. Also the network of politicians and establishment figures who Court popularity with celebrity figures.
The moral and ethical compromises that were made by the people around Savile that rendered the vulnerable exposed to prolific abusers. This is the real scandal.
If you famously raise money for charitable causes, coach successful sports stars, run religious or educational institutions, train young servicement and women. If you are a senior doctor, a business leader, a politician. You get feted and indulged and you get a free pass for private failings that may involve the abuse of the vulnerable.
This is the abuse of power and the failure of our institutions to serve the role in society that was intended. The benefits package does not include a supply of victims to abuse.
In this documentary we see Savile as a creepy old guy with a theatrucal style and image. I cannot help thinking that this is more showbiz. A pantomime villain for adults in a moral panic. There was certainly a witch hunt after Savile for other suspects. But of course they had to be from a similar background. No policemen, senior doctors, politicians, BBC executives or lawyers were responsible. Just one evil man?
I am afraid these documentaries tend to suggest this. They do not even examine the psychology very much. How did he get like that? It just focused on the abundant video material from Saviles long career looking for tidbits. And interviews with people who were supposedly fooled by him. People knew what he was really like. Maybe they did not want to be interviewed for some reason?
It lacked depth and relied too much on emotion. There was not a lot of investigative journalism going on here.