We shrug off Mary Whitehouse as a relic of the past at our own peril
Filth: the Mary Whitehouse Story
BBC2
On BBC Radio 3's Night Waves, serious discussions about Mary Whitehouse, the significance of. She was the devil incarnate, said one talking head, a dangerous enemy of free speech. Not so, said another: didn't she have a point? Don't children need to be protected from certain brutish images? This chat was by way of previewing Filth: the Mary Whitehouse Story (28 May, 9pm), starring Julie Walters as the old trout herself and Alun Armstrong as - so blissfully well-named! - her husband Ernest, and though it was all very worthy and interesting, it was also a touch misleading.
In the end, the most serious thing about this biopic was its acting, which was swoon-inducingly good, especially that of Armstrong, whose crumpled white face manages to be so intensely expressive despite looking, just a little, like a bit of tripe hanging in Bury Market. Mary's story was played almost entirely for laughs, from her beloved hats - they looked like the cakes in a Wayne Thiebaud painting - to the moment when, at breakfast, she asked Ernest if he had heard of oral sex. As her hand involuntarily moved to her mouth, the look on his face was so replete with hope, you half expected him to whip round to her side of the table then and there, the better to give her a full demonstration.
This, predictably, was the film's main narrative thrust: that Mary's crusade was the product of her own sexual repression as much as of her deeply held Christian faith, and that by trampling on other people's sexual fantasies, she would somehow keep her own terrifying desires at bay. To be metaphorical about it, her campaign against filth was a kind of girdle, one that she could not ever loosen on account of its being so very public. She and Ernest, as written by Amanda Coe, certainly had a sex life, but it involved hair nets, long nighties and exhortations on Mary's part that, as he assumed the missionary position, her husband should mind his back.
Late at night, however, when she was watching television specifically that she might complain about it the next day, a certain tightness of lip, a certain narrowing of the eyes, suggested that she was more fascinated by the liberal horrors of Sixties drama than she was willing to admit. This hinting about her interior life reached a climax, almost literally, with a dream she had as Ernest, in vest and pyjamas, lay snoring beside her. In it, Sir Hugh Carleton Greene (Hugh Bonneville), the director general of the BBC and Whitehouse's sworn enemy, was moving his plump fingers across her stout breasts. In her bedroom in a sleepy village, Mary stirred hotly, but awoke just in time.
It's been ages since I've enjoyed a BBC biopic - and God knows, there have been plenty of them of late - as much as this. Greene's rants about Mary were sublime, especially his suggestion that, given enough time, Whitehouse would eventually get round to objecting to the scenes of "puppet troilism" in Andy Pandy (and she did once complain about Pinky and Perky, "constantly unkind to the point of callousness to the adults in their programme"). But still, I think we shrug off Whitehouse as a good joke, as a relic of our past, at our own peril. This is not because I worry that we've lost our way over filth and all who sail in it. I'm like my father: a trusting believer in the off button. I am also an optimist. I think we'll tire of the really nasty stuff in the end (if this summer's Big Brother isn't the last, I'll be amazed as well as depressed). It's more that it is increasingly obvious that, far from being over, the real battle for freedom is only just beginning. The concept of offence is now far more deeply and dangerously political than it ever was in Mary's day. Indeed, the horrible irony at play here is that it is often the same leftist types who feel free to slag off Whitehouse for her Christian beliefs who are so afraid of upsetting other religious groups. Believe me: if you think she was an enemy of free speech, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
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