At it’s core, the central concepts of The Crystal Maze are based upon Foucault’s interest in power systems, discourses and paradigm shifts. It is the only game show is history apart from The Krypton Factor that has used middle managers in cheap tracksuits as part of a wider analogy of epistemological rupture.

The maze was split in to four zones: Aztec, Futuristic, Medieval and Industrial (later replaced by Ocean). The movements of the contestants through these worlds represented the shifts and changes in knowledge systems throughout history. We could stretch this aspect of the game to include more post-modern themes, i.e. that progress is a myth. Because the team entered the maze at an arbitrary zone and moved both forward and backwards in time, we could take this as a critique of modernist conceptions of linear history.

The design of the zones are sparse, edgy and oppressive – as are prisons. The history of these institutions are of great interest to Foucault. When contestants failed to leave the game rooms before the time ran out they were locked in, only being released on the charge of one crystal. Obviously, the
crystal represents freedom from oppression both from state institutions and the epistemes that are used to keep them powerful. To win this freedom we must use our skill, strength and mental agility.

At the heart of the maze lies the crystal dome. This is meant to refer to a panopticon, a prison design where the guard can watch every prisoner in the building at any time. (Interestingly, the title of Discipline and Punish in French can also be translated as Surveillance/Watch and Punish.)

Finally, the host of the programme, Richard O’Brien, bears an uncanny resemblance to Michel Foucault himself. Coincidence? I think not! The character of “Mumsy” was probably a reference to the philosopher’s sexuality.

Noel Edmonds (b. 1948 ) was especially influenced by Prank, and in the early 1990′s would begin his Gotcha Oscar project. Using the same hidden visual operations used in Beadle’s About, Edmonds was to re-imagine the Prankist formula by utilising recognised personae as a central theme. However, his Gotcha work was tragically cut short in 1999 when renowned televisualist and raconteur personae Jim Davidson fell to his death whilst attempting to live in a small wooden shed on top of the Angel of the North. Edmonds would also later admit to killing the popular all male vocal ensemble 5ive in a Gotcha, this time using the medium of helicopter.

However, Edmonds’ Prank career was soon given a second wind ,this time in his tele-visual adventure serial Jackass which he wrote and directed. With Joseph Fiennes cast as the American ultra-modernist jester Johnny Knoxville, Edmonds re-established the earlier “auto-viewer-event” form of Prankism that was previously gazed at the time of the teetering zenith of Beadle-Mania. But once again, controversy was to plague Edmonds creation as one event was judged to have exploited animals for the purpose of cruelty. Steve-O (played by Jeremy Irons) refereed a game of tennis between a duck and a bear, a marked political satire on the activities of American soldiers in Baghdad Zoo.

After growing disaffection with the Prank movement Edmonds returned in 2005 with his work Deal or No Deal?, a radical re-interpretation of his 90′s piece Grab-a-Grand. Although a commercial success, DOND did not match the earlier creative triumphs of his Prank period.

It is interesting that a term originally used among Marxists to boast how dogmatic they were and was attached to various equal rights movements in the 70′s and 80′s, has ended up being owned by right-wing tabloid culture. To these proud anti-intellectuals “political correctness” is an ideology of the “liberals” – another word which has been turned on its head by rightists both in the UK and the United States. To be liberal means to be middle-class, anti-American/British, woolly-headed, fond of poncey salads and above all, a latent communist. We probably have thirty years of Thatcherism to thank for this distortion.

It is the liberal refusal to paint in broad strokes, to defend private thought/autonomy, and remain wary of the powers of government which makes us unsuited towards expression in the mass media. According to the tabloidists, this would make us more politically incorrect than they could ever dream of.

Jon Gaunt is a media satirist who plays a controversial right-wing DJ on talksport radio and writes a column for The Sun newspaper, an unapologetically popularist tabloid. This is an analysis of a column entitled “Even Cool Kids Die of Drugs” which appeared in The Sun on April 4th 2008.

THE death of pretty actress Natasha Collins should serve as a timely reminder that taking cocaine is not sexy, big or clever.

Gaunt’s opening paragraph is a clear satire on tabloid celeb-itorials. Note the conventional, somewhat patriarchal “pretty actress” and the classic venez ensemble of big/clever. Gaunt wants us to learn something here, he has set up his stall and offered an opinion in the fewest possible words.

The middle class and media types take the dangers of coke far too lightly and there is a casual acceptance of it within the so-called glitterati.

Ah! A wonderful glissandi from the alliterative “middle class media types” to the punchy sarcasm of “so-called glitterati” Some new students of the form may think he is perhaps too heavy handed on his cliché, but for Gaunt it’s overuse is a point in itself.

I’ve said it a million times but I’ll say it again — we’ve tried the softly, softly approach to drugs and it has singly failed so it’s time to be tougher, much tougher, on dealers and users.

He already said it a million times – but he’ll say it again. A sly reference to Orwell’s 101, Gaunt is prepared to go to the very extremes of repetition for the reader – and then repeat himself once more. This adds weight and girth to the opinion – an extra edge of transparency. There is also a chiming, obviously lyrical quality to the sentence – softly, softly, tougher, tougher. The paragraph ends with another wry cliché

Natasha paid the ultimate price and I would like to see her picture used in a similar fashion to the one of Leah Betts, to show young kids that even those with the world at their feet can end up dying a miserable and painful death if they mess with drugs.

Gaunt ends his satire with a final opinion, one that once again shatters all boundaries of taste and reason. Of course, the author knows only too well that the actress did not expire because she chose, as a consenting adult, in her private living space, to take cocaine, but from falling unconscious in scalding water after a taking a devastating mixture of coke, sleeping pills and alcohol. (Possibly, Gaunt could be confusing Leah Betts with Rachel Whitear.) It is This shocking denouement and heavy handed ignorance of Gaunt that stuns the reader and ends a classic work.