At 11:20pm on Thursday 2nd January 2003, 3.4 million people in the UK tuned in to watch Beverly Hills Cop II on BBC One. Another 900,000, though, were over only Channel 4, 15 minutes in to the documentary Beijing Swings. I was one of them.
Controversy began even before the programme aired. On 30th December, The Guardian reported that Channel 4 planned to broadcast images of a man, quote, “biting into the body of a stillborn infant”, and, “a man drinking wine that has had an amputated penis marinaded in it.” They quoted the then-Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe, who said, “Jesus Christ said suffer for the little ones to come unto me, not that they should be eaten for public entertainment. This programme sounds hideous.”
The film’s presenter, art critic Waldemar Januszczak, says that such moralising missed the point of the documentary. In our conversation we discuss the changing face of Beijing as it prepared for the 2008 Olympic Games; Waldemar’s ‘participatory’ approach to documentary; his interview with Zhu Yu, the man behind the controversial performance piece Eating People; authenticity in Chinese art; and the sorry state of arts programming on British television today.
Episode #5 - Waldemar Januszczak on Beijing Swings