fleaaaaaa
I've just become a fan of Brass Eye after seeing the DVD at a friends house, I have to say it is brilliant and there is no doubt in my mind as to why so many people were against the show. Brass eye shows how the media manipulates and exploits situations to tell you the viewer just what to think about everything. It is a satire on Panarama type shows where all the facts are laid out straight for everyone to see, that way everyone can agree that something is wrong, let's say "drugs" for example. The most controversial, maybe the funniest episode is the episode on Paedophelia. If only people realised that not only do the media promote and fuel paedophelia (just look through the papers, counting down the days that Mary Kate and Ashley became legal, Britney Spears first video, definite exploitation of Paedophelia). The media also speaks out against it, in around 2001 they used the subject spread hatred and fear, everyone was a suspected Paedophile. This is where I believe the humour lies in the show, it is not making fun of the serious issues but it is making fun of the way the Media uses these issues and will exploit them to their own advantage. A very clever and a very funny satire.
BStalker
Brass Eye is a quite awesome achievement. As I write this review, most of Britain's press is up in arms over the recent one-off episode which satirised the particularly sensitive subject of paedophilia. The majority of people claim that it is simply sick to even attempt to make a comedy based on such a theme. However, while not for the easily offended, Chris Morris' style has always been to approach serious issues using interesting methods. This particular episode managed to make some very interesting points, often highlighting the gross inconsistencies in the way in which crime and taboo subjects are dealt with.A great deal of the humour comes from Morris managing to get celebrities to say the stupidest things. The fact that they are so easily convinced to speak such nonsense, highlights the ignorance and paranoia surrounding the whole subject. Amongst other things, we are told that paedophiles can feel children's faces via computer screens, that they occupy an area of internet the size of Ireland, that they can make toxic fumes rise from keyboards to make children more suggestible, that, genetically, they have more in common with crabs than people. At one stage, Kate Thornton tells us with utter seriousness that HOECS games are used by paedophiles to interact with children. It is quite incredible to see these people saying such things with such belief.Other highlights include the Eminem spoof, JL B8; a story about a cheeky cockney ex-paedophile who does bus tours of his 'old haunts' - a brilliant spoof of the way the press treats the old east-end London gangsters these days; and an on-going news report showing a crowd lynching a paedophile when released from prison and burning him in a wicker phallus: scarily reminiscent of the mobs that ran wild in Britain in summer 2000.To dismiss this or any other episode in the '97 series as sick and utterly unamusing, is to display an ignorance or unwillingness to address the very serious issues being dealt with. Just because there is humour involved, does not mean the issues are being sanitised - it actually makes them more poignant.
Ben Jewitt
I wish to God that Channel 4, in all their infinite wisdom, would see their way clear to releasing Brasseye on video... Just look at the sales of the Day Today videos well over five years since the series was topical...For anyone unlucky enough to miss the TV airing, I must echo the sentiments of previous commentators in saying how spot-on Morris' parodies were. TV execs now loathe him as much as the celebrities he mocked; being too much of a hot potato, but students and the disaffected love him.PLEASE RELEASE BRASSEYE ON VIDEO!!!! (Maybe we should set up some kind of petition?)
Dewey-5
Brass Eye is a TV show which spoofs newsmagazines, celebrity as reason for living, "big issues", left and right, up and down, and is outraged about outrage. If you you cut this baby open, you find in the stomach every hand that fed it! Definitely one of the Three Funniest Series ever to come from the UK (with Fawlty Towers and Father Ted). Unfortunately, much would not translate across to North American audiences (Morris sets up Brit celebs with mock interviews which the unwitting participants thought authentic - hilariously deflated egos drape the studio walls) but the tone is always spot on. Notorious and demonized in some corners here, its last episode contained a very rude insult to outgoing Channel 4 chief Michael Grade (who had censored a segment about a musical based on the Yorkshire Ripper) and probably will not be re-shown anywhere for a very long time. Which would be a monstrous tragedy.