Unlike the
presenters on Top Gear who have an audience estimated to be over 350 million, Zoe Williams
has only a theory to offer;
A true programme about cars would be one that roped all this like a
steed, and said: look. Look at what we’ve discovered. We can take the
shapes of the old and the power of the new and create something that is
basically free, running on limitless energy, like in Star Trek.
Well, science
fiction is popular.
Top Gear,
being so far behind the curve, would only be able to catch up if it
undertook a radical rethink of its value system. I suggest an
eco-feminist approach.
Many are called, Zoe.
In the first place, they need to incorporate the
obvious concerns of the entire industry, to produce cars that get you
places without needless waste. It’s not wholemeal and boring. What does
an intelligent species do, faced with a problem? It finds daring
answers. It doesn’t plough into a ditch and laugh.
Apparently it does, if it is concerned with accumulating an audience for the show.
Feminism is relevant because only a macho culture would have allowed a
bunch of idiots to elide heedless fossil fuel use with mindless racial
slurs and scientific illiteracy. I wouldn’t accidentally call someone a slope. I wouldn’t charge around Argentina
spewing asinine triumphalism about some long-gone war. Why not? Because
the impetus behind those actions is territorial, and that’s not what
feminism or, for that matter, human beings are about.
Argentine human beings did seem a tad bit territorial on that show though.
What would my Top Gear look like? Cool cars. Some cars that were not
cool. Intelligent people saying things that were not facile. A vision
for the future; a vision that baffled belief, a little like Tomorrow’s
World, except, you know, just around the corner. Realistically,
possibly, about to happen tomorrow.
Well, you're welcome to pitch such a show to the Beeb.
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