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One thing the Lonely Planet forgot to point out in its new guide to Britain (in
which the British are described, not inaccurately I thought, as
celebrity-obsessed, cyber-porn-addicted alcoholics) is how empathic we’ve all
become.
So, for example, I can tell you that I am addicted to drink or partial to drugs
and not fear opprobrium. I can hit you with the news that I am anorexic,
bipolar or a victim of abuse and I can rely on you to listen. If whatever
happened to me was especially bad, I mean almost but not, when it came down to
it, unprintably horrible, you’d probably do more than just listen: you’d rush
to read the first interview, sit glued to the harrowing documentary, shell out
for the poignantly graphic autobiography. Yes, if something terrible happened
to me, particularly if it was potentially sordid, I could count on you for your
empathy. Lately, empathy has become this country’s middle name.
So, in the spirit of these confessional times, here is my admission.
I have not been kept up all night because I’m worrying about Madeleine McCann.
My mood doesn’t do a U-turn every time Cuddle Cat is mentioned on ITV News. I
care, of course I care, it would be inhuman not to, but if you really want to
know, I think the public references to a private thing such as a child’s soft
toy are in poor taste, as are the overfamiliar
abbreviation of the girl’s name to bring us closer to the scene of this
wretched mystery. Worse than the abbreviations are the people who correct the
abbreviators: “It’s Madeleine, not Maddy. That’s what the parents call her,” in
an offended tone as if they know her, or have been personally affected. People
talk about “feeling the McCanns’ pain”, but we do not, and cannot.
What else haven’t I done? Ruminated endlessly and pointlessly with others about
whether or not she was abducted; strung out baseless theories about childless
oligarchs, or international paedophile networks, or wished aloud and angrily
that the death penalty be reintroduced (but only for sex offenders). I can’t
see how my doing any of these things could have meaningfully contributed to the
missing girl’s wellbeing, but no doubt you’ll correct me on this point.
Other countries are starting to wonder what is happening to Britain. The
Herald Tribune, which initially reported the McCann case in full, now prints
reports on how the British are coping. Not how the McCanns are coping. But how
the British public are coming to terms with what has happened to the McCanns.
But the Herald Tribune is wrong in assuming that this is “the British” en
masse. It is specifically British mothers – not by any means all of them, but a
critical mass of mothers – who have collectively decreed that, where potential
child abuse is concerned, caring is not enough.
Where the welfare of a child is concerned one must, in Britain, now be
obsessed – especially when there is a whiff of abuse. And not merely obsessed
but hysterically, visibly, mawkishly so. Once you are obsessed, it is necessary
to wear your hysteria on your sleeve. Or, as MPs did with
yellow ribbons, on your lapel. More important still is the need to
reassure yourself that everybody else feels the same. That the vicarious worrying is not just normal behaviour but
required. There is a tyranny here.
Now let’s get back to the confessional culture. In the publishing industry it
has found its natural home, the lucrative subgenre “Mis
Lit”. Misery Lit, ie, memoirs of child abuse, “have
emerged as the liveliest new category of books”, reports The Bookseller.Five to ten of these books come out every month.
A high-ranking publisher friend tells me that the books’ lurid titles are made
up at brain-storming meetings before the manuscript has been seen or in some
cases, written.
So we have: Please Daddy, No; A Child Called “It”; Don’t Tell Mummy: A True
Story of the Ultimate Betrayal; A Girl Called Karen: A True Story of Sexual
Abuse and Resilience; and Damagedto name a handful.
The stand-out Mis Lit success story, Sickened: The
True Story of a Lost Childhood, has sold 500,000 copies. Of the top 100
bestselling paperbacks in 2006, 11 were misery memoirs; with total sales of 1.9
million copies.
Why are these books so popular? Like the McCann case they deliver a predictable
emotional charge and allow the reader to experience a strong sense of vicarious
self-pity.
Richard Humphreys, Borders senior nonfiction buyer, says that an “element of
voyeurism, a macabre fascination” attracts readers to stories of human
suffering. Patrick Janson-Smith, a literary agent at
Christopher Little Agency, suggests that “a fair amount of prurience” is
involved.
But who reads these books, I asked The Bookseller.“It’s 95 per cent mums.”
Isn’t there something wrong with this picture – when a woman’s idea of
relaxation is to watch or read about a major catastrophe unfolding in somebody
else’s life? Especially if it’s about paedophilia.
Perhaps it makes her feel better, to assuage temporarily all that guilt and
paranoia that mothers seem to habitually now carry around with them. Perhaps,
deep down, she finds it titillating. Perhaps she enjoys the tingle of
self-righteous misandry that most stories of sex
abuse will allow her. If this lurid compassion is empathy, the McCanns don’t
need it.
The missing girl few have heard about
I will eventually get off this morbid subject, but finally we have an answer to
the question: what if the McCanns hadn’t been white and good-looking? In a
strikingly similar case, except that it was in America,
Jewel Mahavia Strong, 4, went missing on a beach in Florida last May. Local
police assumed that she had drowned, but now a new video obtained by Jewel’s
frantic parents shows her alive and in the company of three women.
You can read about her parents’ desperate search for their daughter on their
MySpace page: myspace.com/jewelmahaviastrong. Because
Jewell is black, the appeal for her safe return has somehow not managed to
attract much interest beyond the black community in Britain
and the US.
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