Virtue reality: the truly unbearable smugness of London Underground
In 1996, a Czech filmmaker in post-soviet Prague released an offbeat take on the perversities of totalitarianism. At least, that’s how I interpreted Conspirators of Pleasure, a surrealist black comedy by Jan Švankmajer, which explores the secret, quasisexual peccadilloes of six Prague residents. Part of what’s funny about the film is that none of the activities the characters get up to are clearly illegal, but the unspoken backdrop of totalitarian control has so ingrained in them the habits of secrecy that their weird private pleasures become inherently subversive.
The activities are truly strange. One man fantasises about dressing up as a cockerel. A woman becomes ecstatic when fish nibble her feet. A postwoman hollows out the insides of bread, rolls it into little balls, puts them up her nose and posts them.
I think of the film often at the moment, whenever I come across a fresh way in which little pleasures are becoming more and more taboo. There’s the newly
forbidden act of flirting at work. There’s the Government’s porn ban (sorry, “age verification system”). Flying abroad will be next, if Extinction Rebellion get their way.
And thanks to London Mayor Sadiq Khan, tasty food is in the crosshairs. City Hall introduced a ban on “junk food” advertising on London transport in February. Now, unsurprisingly, we find that the term “junk food” is almost impossible to define in a way that doesn’t outlaw images of Christmas puddings, popcorn and curry. In one case truly worthy of a Švankmajer short, a contractor actually discussed airbrushing the cream out of a Wimbledon advert depicting strawberries and cream.
Instead of seeing images of these little delights, the
Thanks to the Mayor, Sadiq Khan, tasty food is in the crosshairs
Tube is now plastered with the unbearable smugness of adverts like one for a food delivery service featuring a hipster going for a run on one side (“45 minutes of cardio”) and then virtuously eating a bowl of brown rice on the other (“zero minutes cooking”). What joy. What healthy thrills we can enjoy in this new, airbrushed reality. Who needs personal choice when we have helpful, health-conscious censorship? Who needs pleasure, really, when we have virtue?