Why can’t the BBC Make a Good Russia Documentary?

Why can’t the BBC Make a Good Russia Documentary?

  

 

By James Pearce

Russia!

March 29, 03:17    

Three months into 2016, the BBC have aired two kinds of documentary on Russia, both of which stayed true to their habit of misrepresenting and out right missing the point when it comes to the puzzling East.

 

Lucy Worsely presented three part series ‘Empire of the Tsars: Romanov Russia’ on BBC Four, whilst her colleague, Stacey Dooley, had an episode of her ‘Sex in Strange Places’ focus on Russia which aired on BBC Three. Out of fairness, both had praiseworthy moments yet continued to serve as evidence of the BBC’s bias opinions about Russia; they were not a far cry from the negative reporting going on inside the country since Maidan, and it would seem any objectivity the BBC claims is very subjective.

 

Whoever is watching these documentaries, clearly has pre-existing assumptions of what Russia is. Most of these usually centre on Cold War fables, Putin’s image or general stereotypes which have popped up over the years. Imperfect though she is, Russia has moved on a great deal in the last twenty six years and it’s high time our perceptions did the same, and the media on both sides can influence that a huge amount.

 

As a historian, I shall start with the new Romanov series. As someone who has been involved in making a historical documentary, I understand the difficulties that come with making them, let alone writing the script. But the problem with ‘Empire of the Tsars’ was the not-so-subtle view coming across that Russia belongs in Europe and is better when it looks westward. That Russia went from a strange land to embracing our ways.

 

For readers who are unaware, BBC Four, formerly BBC Knowledge, hosts a wide variety of programme alternatives to the mainstream TV channels which tend to be considered more ‘intellectually stimulating.’ When this series eventually made it onto another site besides BBC iplayer (not available in Russia), I was quite surprised to hear the presenter talking as if she were on CBeebies, the BBC’s channel for small children.

 

Full credit to Worsely, who has PhD from the University of Sussex on The Patronage of William Cavendish, and, unlike Stacey Dooley, used real experts to tell her story, such as Dominic Lieven. But to start off by saying ‘This is my first visit to Russia and it’s a country I’ve always wanted to visit,’ lost my faith immediately. Imagine a teacher walking into a classroom, exclaiming ‘hey kids, I’ve never done this before, but let’s see how this goes!’ If that wasn’t bad enough, when a tour guide at the Tretyakov gallery showed her the icon ‘Tree of Muscovite State,’ her reaction was ‘it reminds me of Jack and the Beanstalk.’

 

So a non-Russian expert speaking in a tone one uses with small children proceeded to tell the story of how the Romanovs came to rule Russia. Beginning at the Ipatiev Monastry in Kostroma where Mikhail I accepted the offer to become Tsar of Russia, and continued to tell the story of Romanovs.

 

Desperate to get to the first Romanov we have all heard of, however, Mikhail and his predecessors received little attention and the story remained simplistic. Lesson number one; Russian history is not simple. When she eventually reached the man who moved Russia in a more European direction, the tone did improve. In her own words ‘he was a great visionary and the most hard working Tsar [for the west]… who dramatically changed Russia, and created a culture based upon style and wealth among the nobility’.

 

Largely true and it’s also correct that Peter’s darker sides received plenty of attention. In general, however, it came across as though his best achievement was embracing western ideals, which she admitted, were not popular with the majority of people. If only she could have passed on the memo that this is still a contentious issue in Russia today and explained why. Maybe then, the average viewer, who, no disrespect intended, is perhaps ignorant to this age old debate about Russia’s place in the world, could begin understand something about the relationship between Russia and the West today.

 

With credit to Worsely, the next two episodes were much more informed and less theatrical. She painted a decent picture (albeit an incomplete one) of Catherine II’s (or the Great) rule, and showed how she combined enlightenment and despotism. She discussed how serfdom was so taboo that even her reign failed to address — Worsely even explained why! (Serfs were a source of wealth underpinning everything in Russian life).

 

The last century and a bit of Romanov rule got a well-balanced narration, showing that every Tsar had the same set of problems to deal with and approached them in different ways, ultimately leading to Nicholas’ forced abdication.

 

What went wrong? No connections to the modern day were made. The same arguments which tormented the Russian State for centuries permeate everyday life here, and is central to the political and societal divides which exist. All of which burst open in the 19th century and had their role in causing the revolution of 1917.

 

Granted, the documentary had to entertain, but instead of stringing off dry facts, try and get to the bigger issues out there for people to consider. Maybe then people will show an interest in Russia, understand her more and change their opinions. It wasn’t awful, but disappointing none the less.

 

Moving onto Miss Dooley’s ‘investigation’ on Russian prostitutes. It’s easier to start with the plus sides as they are few and far between.

 

Dooley highlighted the double standards of male chauvinistic club owners, the psychological burden it can have on these women and the issue of an average Russian salary, a mere 30,000 roubles (£300) per month. To earn a significant amount more without a professional qualification is practically impossible for anyone. Finances are an issue for the majority of Russians. Andrei Nekrasov masterfully documented in his ‘In Search of Putin’s Russia,’ series for Al Jazeera. I recommend this to anyone with an interest in Russia today and especially to Dooley.

 

 

Aside from this, nothing featured was especially new, unknown or even surprising to anyone knowledgeable about Russia today. It was abundantly clear from the way she handled interviews and discussed the issues she had done no prior research whatsoever. In fact, it is hard to know what guided her to Russia over other countries where the sex trade is far worse.

 

Dooley documented street prostitutes, underground brothels and escorts making serious amounts of money among the higher classes. Using her own statistics, there are approximately 3 million active prostitutes across Russia, a little over 2% of the population; she only focused on the two capitals. As the Russians say, Miss Dooley:

 

“Москва не Россия!”

 

Dooley, a former shop assistant, rose to fame after taking part on BBC Three series ‘Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts’, and has since made several documentaries on child labour in developing countries, drug and alcohol abuse and sex. Essentially all she does is point a camera and exclaim ‘look at this awfulness that would never exist in Britain’. As a result she never actually explained what is so strange about the sex trade in Russia. As one colleague put it, she simply transmitted ‘grim images to the British public.’

 

Dooley took the issue of street prostitution up with none other than St. Petersburg’s own Dmitry Milonov who pointed out that in Soviet times, the government dealt with it more effectively. Then his more colourful answers came out, ‘to sleep with prostitutes is like swimming in shit,’ and he actually expressed disgust at the police taking bribes, stating they should receive a more severe punishment than the prostitutes themselves.

 

What someone ought to tell Dooley is that we already know Milonov has extreme views on everything. He is hardly the pinnacle of how Russia handles prostitution. She might have looked into what the government and other groups are actually doing to help prostitutes, what is Russian society’s perception of this profession and so on. Prostitution was a much greater problem in the 1990s, but that didn’t get mentioned once. A comparison would have helped her a great deal.

 

Now, I am no expert on prostitution but several of my colleagues at university are, and have written extensively on the subject. one of whom is giving a conference paper on Russian prostitution in a few weeks. When they tell me that Dooley ‘ignored the heart of the problem’ and ‘ignorantly discussed it like a sole authority,’ I am inclined to agree.

 

For those who saw Reggie Yate’s quite simply awful series, ‘Extreme Russia,’ you can add prostitution to the BBC’s guide of ‘things Russia is notorious for.’ What a horrible place to live, racists, prostitutes, child models and homophobes. With shows like these, it’s no wonder BBC Three was forced off the air. The real shame, however, is that Yates and Dooley should never have been allowed to portray Russia to the British public, who will take their representations at face value.

 

There lies another paradox it is worth noting: we Brits criticise Russia for not having a free press, yet are accept the stories in right wing press such as The Sun or Daily Mail as ‘factual.’ That’s another kind of ignorance and one I feel particularly ashamed about.

 

To round off, why can’t the BBC make a good Russia documentary? Because they don’t have a subjective position on Russia, subjective person willing to make one, aren’t interested in doing so or even have any Russian experts at hand who could. That’s how it seems at least since clueless B listers’ get sent to play on existing stereotypes and promote the status-quo viewpoint.

 

If any of these things I mentioned were the case, I’d be writing about how wonderful it is to see such a different and exciting representation of Russia’s great history, and how well the issue of prostitution in Russia was dealt with.