Underbelly
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Last night I saw the first installment of the third series of the successful Australian television franchise: Underbelly. Previous series have caused all kinds of legal issues with the screening of semi-biographical accounts of the lives of real, living "colourful characters" of the Australian underworld. There was a time when people living in Victoria were not legally allowed to watch the series as it is was impinging on issues before the courts at the time. People of course circumvented the banning of local television broadcasts by simply downloading bootleg copies from the internet or tuning into the broadcast frequencies from other states.
This particular series is called "Underbelly: The Golden Mile" and centers on the activities of underworld figures and corrupt police in Sydney's famous King's Cross. King's Cross is of course a center for tourism and nightlife, highlighted by a concentration of prostitution and drug-related activities. In as far as the TV series is concerned, it is well made and entertaining - sticking closely to a formula popular in previous series. There is a mandatory amount of bare breasts, sexual activity and sexual innuendo; a certain amount of violence, drunkenness and drug-taking; and a (very thin) veneer of character development and exploration of the lives of the people who inhabit this, the curious twilight world of King's Cross circa 1988-1999.
A problem I have with this sort of entertainment, perhaps made more pronounced by the proximity of it's subject matter (in that it is the Australian underworld and not the usually seen here American one), is that it truly seems to glamourise the lives of crime being led without asking any kind of deep or relevant questions about the (real) lives the people the characters portray actually led. Violence is (and quite obviously as it is has been for some time in mainstream television and entertainment) merely a plot ingredient: where corrupt police beat people within an inch of their life, it is no longer a moral shock - it is an expected ethical deviation. When New South Wales police police detectives (at King's Cross) steal $200,000 from their Federal counterparts in an elaborate sting operation, it becomes a thrilling ride for the viewer - not a historical revelation of actual events of corruption and theft.
It makes me wonder if recent social history can truly become just so much fodder for the manufacture of a media machine which, ultimately, desensitises us to the true mercenary nature of the events and some of the characters (who are based on real events and people). It is a well-made and interesting television series but the net effect of treating genuine real-world corruption, brutality and vice as so much steamy narrative for entertainment does little to warn the impressionable viewer that real violence, real corruption and real sexual exploitation is not something entered into lightly.
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Underbelly: The Golden Mile (official website)
