Pao­lo Ker­na­han

I was pass­ing by a tele­vi­sion set when some­thing caught my eye. There is a very dap­per man, wear­ing some ridicu­lous pair of up­dat­ed horn-rimmed glass­es, in­spect­ing the body of a young woman in the morgue. OK, so I paused for a bit to fig­ure out what the hell is go­ing on. There are oth­ers in the room stand­ing against the wall, al­most like body­guards (could very well have been) as the host of the huge­ly pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion pro­gramme Crime Watch phys­i­cal­ly probes this ap­par­ent vic­tim of a shoot­ing. He is giv­ing his stud­ied as­sess­ment of the cause of death, point­ing out en­try wounds and con­duct­ing an all-round thor­ough ex­am­i­na­tion.

I am sure the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty will be very in­ter­est­ed in this be­cause, if mem­o­ry serves, there has al­ways been dif­fi­cul­ty se­cur­ing the ser­vices of a pathol­o­gist, and here it is tele­vi­sion host Ian Al­leyne is moon­light­ing as one. Some­body, get that man a con­tract right quick. Now di­rec­tor, pause that video. Just con­sid­er every­thing in the frame; here you have Al­leyne dressed like a For­tune 500 banker stand­ing over the body of a beau­ti­ful young woman felled by gun­fire. Bril­liant. If this does not get eyes glued to the screen noth­ing will. It is a ver­i­ta­ble or­gy of death and gore with a touch of sar­to­r­i­al flair; the same hu­man trait that makes us slow down to rub­ber-neck at a road fa­tal­i­ty is the very weak­ness that Crime Watch ex­ploits. It ob­vi­ous­ly did not take any ge­nius to come up with the for­mat of that show which hov­ers like a buz­zard over hu­man suf­fer­ing.

As con­cepts go, it is mon­ey in the bank. Let's go back to the video clip: Al­leyne has in­fil­trat­ed a morgue (through what are clear­ly strong con­tacts) and is con­duct­ing his ex­am­i­na­tion. Noth­ing that the host says or does in that clip can add any val­ue to the in­ves­tiga­tive process. Let me be clear, Al­leyne pok­ing and prod­ding the body of a dead woman by no stretch of the imag­i­na­tion can as­sist the po­lice in the cap­ture of her killer. That, how­ev­er, was not the in­tend­ed pur­pose. So I am stand­ing there won­der­ing if the tele­vi­sion sta­tion that airs the pro­gramme, TV6, had con­sid­ered the rel­a­tives of this young woman; the emo­tions churn­ing in their chests as they watched their loved one on a slab used as fod­der for cheap, crass en­ter­tain­ment.

More than in spite of, but be­cause of this the­atre of the macabre, the suc­cess of this pro­gramme has been phe­nom­e­nal. The view­ers are meta­mor­phosed in­to dis­ci­ples, ei­ther in­ured to the ob­scen­i­ty or qui­et­ly ad­dict­ed to the pa­rade of the per­verse. The pro­gramme al­so seems to have no com­punc­tion about show­ing a woman re­duced to her con­stituent parts on a high­way. Some may have re­coiled in hor­ror at the pre-prime-time spec­ta­cle but I am sure many oth­ers snort­ed greed­i­ly in­to the trough. Now Al­leyne is be­ing ac­cused of cross­ing the line where the squea­mish and prin­ci­pled among us ac­cept­ed that this line had been erased long ago.

The re­peat­ed broad­cast of a video clip of the dis­turb­ing rape of a 13-year-old men­tal­ly chal­lenged girl was be­yond the pale. Di­rec­tor cue the hordes with torch­es. There were calls from civ­il so­ci­ety for the in­ter­ven­tion of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty, ex­pres­sions of out­rage on Face­book. Con­verse­ly there was the speed di­alling set, bom­bard­ing every ra­dio talk for­mat with un­equiv­o­cal sup­port for the tele­vi­sion show host. Ian Al­leyne is an eas­i­ly de­fined so­cial phe­nom­e­non. Pub­lic frus­tra­tion with the in­abil­i­ty of gov­ern­ments past and present to bri­dle vi­o­lent crime has al­lowed Al­leyne, who worked for many years to cul­ti­vate this cru­sad­er per­sona, to slith­er in and fill the breach.

Putting the mat­ter in the prop­er con­text, it should be not­ed that the pro­gramme does ap­pear to get re­sults; view­ers have grown ac­cus­tomed to see­ing crim­i­nals pros­trat­ing them­selves be­fore Pon­tius Pi­late on the show each week. The Ex­press news­pa­per glee­ful­ly re­ports on ar­rests at­trib­uted to Crime Watch. The so­ci­ety needs to see that some­thing is be­ing done in a time when even a state of emer­gency seems to be trail­ing off in the re­sults de­part­ment. Even Al­leyne was scep­ti­cal about the SoE. This is on­ly nat­ur­al though, be­cause he was not con­sult­ed de­spite re­peat­ed of­fers of his ser­vices to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er. The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion joined the din of con­dem­na­tion and the call for "some­thing" to be done was achiev­ing a crescen­do.

Al­leyne's re­sponse was feigned con­tri­tion which was eas­i­ly whit­tled away in sub­se­quent broad­casts. The em­bat­tled tele­vi­sion host, tar­get of more "as­sas­si­na­tion" at­tempts than 50 Cent, cir­cled the wag­ons call­ing his loy­al fans to his de­fence. The bul­let dodger post­ed on­line: "Fans of Crime Watch across Tri-nidad and all over the world (the world?) right now the fu­ture of Crime Watch is be­ing dis­cussed. There is more in ...blah blah blah." I am not aware if TV6 has is­sued a state­ment. I worked at TV6 when Ken Gor­don was at the helm and he was more con­ser­v­a­tive than sponge cake. I can­not for the life of me un­der­stand why he has not ex­ert­ed his in­flu­ence in this sor­did af­fair.

Al­leyne ad­dressed the is­sue from his pul­pit: "The oth­er peo­ple in the me­dia who crit­i­cisin', they doin' nut­tin'. Lemme ask those me­dia peo­ple this: how would you feel if it was your daugh­ter on the video." Let me an­swer that for you Ian: "How the a-- did this video get on tele­vi­sion? How could they show im­ages like this on tele­vi­sion?" I want you to con­sid­er some­thing folks. Much of the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to Crime Watch is done through a Web site or some con­duit through which mem­bers of the pub­lic can pro­vide any in­for­ma­tion about crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in their com­mu­ni­ties; it is the source of Al­leyne's pow­er. Giv­en that the video came to the pos­ses­sion of Crime Watch, there were two choic­es: it could have been for­ward­ed di­rect­ly to the po­lice or ex­ploit­ed on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion. The lat­ter op­tion was cho­sen.

Some might ar­gue that the re­al strength of the pro­gramme is pub­lic­i­ty, forc­ing the au­thor­i­ties to act. That is a dou­ble-edged sword and re­minds me of the sto­ry of a Mex­i­can tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er with a show sim­i­lar to Crime Watch. Soar­ing with high rat­ings, it seems the pro­duc­er felt pres­sured to up the ante to main­tain view­er­ship. It was even­tu­al­ly re­vealed that sev­er­al mur­ders were ac­tu­al­ly com­mit­ted at the be­hest of the pro­duc­er so that they could be fea­tured on the said tele­vi­sion pro­gramme. Now I am by no means draw­ing a par­al­lel here, just try­ing to il­lus­trate the dan­gers of this sort of un­con­trolled phe­nom­e­non.

Make no mis­take about it, Ian Al­leyne is a phe­nom­e­non. He is the ag­gres­sive re­sponse of a liv­ing or­gan­ism des­per­ate­ly strug­gling to re­pel a per­ni­cious can­cer. Crit­ics should al­so ap­pre­ci­ate that TV6 knew ex­act­ly what they were get­ting them­selves in­to when they bought in­to the show. The con­cept of Crime Watch is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant. Every­one sat by, how­ev­er, as the host of the show be­came in­creas­ing­ly in­tox­i­cat­ed with the pow­er that so­ci­ety gave him every day. TV6 made an er­ror in judg­ment in think­ing that Al­leyne could be con­trolled. There were though, nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties to cor­rect that.

THOUGHTS

• It is a ver­i­ta­ble or­gy of death and gore with a touch of sar­to­r­i­al flair.

• The pro­gramme al­so seems to have no com­punc­tion about show­ing a woman re­duced to her con­stituent parts on a high­way.