1) Shameless

Over the past few weeks, the disappearance and then discovery of Shannon Matthews has been the subject of much press interest and seems to have left many commentators thrashing around for explanation and understanding of disadvantaged Britain, for example http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=557960&in_page_id=1770&ct=5 While coverage has been diverse, the comments are always written from the perspective of outsiders struggling to understand ‘people like that’. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that writers have cast around for a schema that structures and ‘explains’ with the most popular comparisons being with the TV series Shameless, which is seen as prescient or even causal to the events in Wakefield. Apparently we live in post-modern times where fiction shapes reality. I think not, rather it was because the author of Shameless drew on his own life experience, that of growing up in a chaotic and disadvantaged family that he had a repertoire and way of writing about ‘these people’, which others are now borrowing. When reading this Sun article I noted that the family had three computers in the home; one apparently supplied by social services. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1034032.ece It would seem that it is not just the newspapers who try to understand social disadvantage in the UK using categories of analysis borrowed and mediated by fiction, albeit Oliver Twist rather than Shameless. For my part, I can only hope that things work out for Bianca and Ricky.