Nathan Barley
Starting a new section, television, for this one: for now it’ll just blend in to the rest of the site but I am planning a total redesign so bear with me 
This is a tough thing to write about because, like all Chris Morris’ work, it really challenges the viewer to make the kind of decision that’s increasingly difficult to make these days: how to react. Even by writing that, I feel like I may have fallen into a trap, by even thinking just a little too much about what Nathan Barley “means”.
Nathan Barley is the kind of young man you see everywhere. He runs an uber-hip website, trashbat.co.ck (yep, that domain really does work), which is filled with weird videos, pranks on the general public (happy-slapping would be the real-life equivalent), he has the latest phone which does everything, a bluetooth headset attached to each ear, follows every trend, talks loudly into his phone on the bus about his amazing life … you get the picture. Dan Ashcroft considers him an idiot. Ashcroft writes for a magazine called SugarApe, which has recently changed its logo to look like “RAPE” with the ‘suga’ inside the R. Ashcroft likes to think he’s not an idiot, but he’s recently started to realise that he appears to be surrounded by them. Strapped for cash, he agrees to write articles about idiot artists and calling them geniuses, only to find himself physically incapable of doing such a thing. Meanwhile, Barley’s popularity seems to know no limits, driving Ashcroft to extreme tactics to prove who’s the idiot in the equation.
I think that’s as good a summary as I can provide. The whole thing is about how society decides what is cool, and that’s why I wrote at the start of this that it’s hard to write about Nathan Barley. There are some interesting discussions going on the IMDb right now. The thing is, the show itself here is almost a part of the concept. There will be people who find Nathan Barley cool because of the surface stuff, the shock language and the cheap laughs. And there’ll be the people who find it cool for deeper, ironic reasons. Then there’s people like me who think it’s pretty amazing for the sheer number of reactions it could provoke, it makes you think. Who knows what Chris Morris’ intention was. I’d like to think he’s poking fun at those who simply didn’t ‘get’ his earlier work, yet who still proclaimed its genius because he did things that made the Daily Mail readership fume. He’s probably out to get everybody, though – I think most people will probably watch this and at some point say to themselves, “F*ck! I do that!”. Or maybe it doesn’t mean a thing. It’s all possible, but you’ve got to make up your own mind in the end.
My favourite moment in the whole series could be in the final episode when Ashcroft catches Nathan Barley out and treats him to a taste of his own medicine. He forces Barley to approach a stranger while he films the encounter on Barley’s phone to go on the website. Barley has to throw peanuts into this stranger’s face, then pour a pint over his head, and finally kick him in the groin. All the way through, this stranger (who recognises Barley) thinks he is part of some kind of “happening” but finally with the kick in the groin, he says that Barley has gone too far. He then pauses after Barley has left, and sees Ashcroft with the phone. “Are you the crew?” he asks, “Am I at the centre of something? Is … something brilliant happening?” I think that’s really the whole show in a spectacularly concise nutshell.
I haven’t fully browsed the DVD yet, but it appears to have a nice selection of extras, including a Pilot episode, deleted scenes, a “re-dubbed” episode (not quite sure what this means but I’m guessing it’s like the extras on the “Jam” DVD – lava-lamp viewing option, mini viewing option, etc), trailers, etc, all accessible via some slightly hard to navigate but visually brilliant menus. The best thing about the DVD for me is the packaging, sturdy like a good hardback book, folding out to reveal the DVD and a small insert with a little paperback book containing photos, song lyrics, and general stuff. With 4-5 hours plus on the disc and this packaging, I think it’s well worth buying.
February 7th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Permalink,
I don’t think that the ‘meaning’ of Nathan Barley is quite so open ended as you suggest; Morris is too sophisticated a satirist to ‘leave you to think what you like’. I think the show is a deliberate and penetrating satire on youth culture; the self-regarding consumer slaves who are so obsessed with their ‘individuality’ that they fail to recognise how homogenous they all are. Indeed this is not limited to the obvious idiots in the program, but also the TV producers and other journalists are obsessed with what is cool, having no real sense of self-driven purpose – this is ironic because they want to appear so individual.
I like your point about Morris poking fun at those who called his earlier work cool just because the Mail kicked up about it, without really understanding what it was all about. Armando Ianucci recently lamented in a lecture that the satire he did with Morris in The Day Today had been somewhat blunted because, despite the success of the program, the news and the media still acted in the same way. The objects of their satire didn’t even care they were being mocked.
Last point – concerning your favourite scene. The “stranger” in the pub is actually the TV producer that Barley and Claire see at the beginning of the episode. He loves Barley’s ideas and his website and ignores Claire’s proposal. Hence his persistant hopefulness in the pub – after Barley pours a pint over him he says, “is something brilliant happening here?” or similar.
Keep it futile,
Kev