It seems to me that some comment on Princess Di would get big reactions. Pro and Con.
I was watching it last night and I had to turn it off. I was so sick with fear that they were going to be killed.
I saw some clip played as a promo with a ‘lady’ at a gas station asking if they were ‘faggots trying to see how long it will take to get beat up in a redneck town’.
Also everytime they said “Camaro” wrong it rubbed me a little raw.
I did like the next show where the guy hit 407 km/h in that other car.
I agree - I can’t honestly believe there isn’t a hefty measure of engineered failure and scripted disaster in all of their big project pieces - and I’m sticking to that view, unless someone can point me to some that they planned, filmed, then didn’t bother airing because it was too dull.
Things always go wrong in just the sort of comically horrible way that makes for entertaining viewing. Coincidence? I think not. Incompetence? I don’t believe it.
That’s the first thing I think of whenever I remember that particular show, a little bit of me still things “what the hell hit a cow to make it roadkill!!!1!”
Sure, it’d be easy to be downright offensive… slogans about Hillsborough or Jamie Bulger in Liverpool, or Ian Huntley in Soham etc, would get a reaction.
But there’s few (if any) mainstream cultural icons like NASCAR or Hillary Clinton through or against which people define themselves in the UK.
Possibly something around fox-hunting in certain areas, or “George W. Bush is great” at a Socialist Worker ralley, but nothing that would instantly annoy an average high-street.
And yes, Top Gear is clearly scripted - if you “accidently” burnt down a caravan you’d be up on criminal damage charges, and you certainly wouldn’t be allowed to show it on primetime TV.
I actually think that would get you a bigger reaction in the States then in the UK.
I still don’t understand the idolisation of that bint over in the States.
Plus the way phrases such as ‘little Hitler’ have got into the vernacular. And football fans giving Nazi salutes to (sometimes) overzealous police. And so on.
