In the Editing Suite of History

I see that the BBC are currently writing Huw Edwards out of their history - there is currently a Dr Who episode unavailable, for instance, while they edit out his appearance as a newsreader.  It's part of a disturbing trend in media nowadays to try and expunge from existence anyone who is deemed to have crossed certain boundaries.  In Edwards' case, the fact that he is facing well-publicised child pornography charges might seem to justify such actions, but the fact is that Edwards was employed by the BBC as a presenter and newsreader and was the face of the corporation for several major events, most recently the death of Queen Elizabeth II.  It seems perverse to try and deny this fact.  But it isn't an isolated thing: there are a large number of episodes of Top of the Pops you can't see anymore because they were fronted by Jimmy Savile and apparently It's a Knockout never happened as it was presented by Stuart Hall.  As for Cartoon Time With Rolf Harris, well, I'm afraid that you must have imagined that.  But it isn't just the BBC that does this sort of thing- remember how Kevin Spacey was edited out of that film and replaced by Christopher Plummer?  It happened in order to try and protect the box office after Spacey was accused of various instances of sexual misconduct after filming had been completed - the producers felt they couldn't risk keeping Spacey in if he was charged or went down before the film was released.  Understandable in a way, but also drastic, not to mention more than slightly sinister.

I could, of course, describe this sort of thing as being 'Orwellian' and reference his novel '1984', but the rewriting of history to omit historical figures deemed inconvenient long predates George Orwell.  Most totalitarian and authoritarian regimes have indulged in such practices.  Indeed, you can even go back to the Anglo-Saxons for an example: after the death of King Athelstan, in spite of the fact that he was the first ruler to unite the Anglo Saxon kingdoms and create the first iteration of what would eventually become modern England, his half-brothers who succeeded him did their best to write him out of the records and downplay his achievements.  They even ensured that his tomb was obscure, with Athelstan not interred with other Kings of Wessex.  All of this stemmed from petty jealousies resulting from this brothers' resentment that their illegitimate half-brother had been favoured over them by the Earls to succeed their father as king, rather than from any terrible misconduct on Athelstan's part.  Going back further, the successors of Akenhaton did their best to ensure that the names of this heretic ancient Egyptian Pharaoh and his descendants were erased from history - with considerable success.  (Under their religious beliefs, this erasing of them from living memory would also result in their demise in the afterlife, so it was considered just about the worst thing you could do to someone).

But this current mania for writing the inconvenient out of history just feels far creepier, motivated, I suspect, by the fact that people feel uncomfortable knowing that, for years, they had accepted these media figures at face value, that they had failed to see through them.  Because, apparently, we should know what perverts and abusers look like - they aren't supposed to be respectable, middle class newsreaders or wealthy TV personalities, they're supposed to be slavering scumbags living on council estates, or foreign sex predators coming ashore in rubber boats at dead of might.  People don't like to feel that they've been duped and that these dangerous sex offenders could be someone who looks just like us, with a good job, kids and a mortgage.  So, rather than confront these facts, we erase them from history and pretend that they never existed.  I remember seeing this Robin Williams film once, set in a near future where people are fitted from birth with chips which record their life experiences - when you die, your relatives can have it edited down into 'tribute', that includes only the 'good' bits.  I can't help but fear that's what is going on now: the selective editing of history, eliminating all the troubling bits, in order to render it nice and 'safe'.