IN a Florida swamp, many male alligators are not half the alligators their fathers were. (In fact, some of them are barely one third the alligators their fathers were.) The latest generation of alligator lads have tiny sexual organs because exposure to oestrogenic chemicals is feminising them into alligatorettes. Horizon's Assault On The Male made the scary allegation that animals of all species, including homo sapiens, may be going the way of the Florida alligators.
What began as a grim week on the box for men, became a grim week for women too. BBC's The Trouble With Men season, said, more or less, that the game is up for both sexes. "There seems to be no way to escape the oestrogenic tidal wave," wailed Horizon. If this is true, then we're all doomed, for with no more reproduction on our sterilised planet, even the most demented ball crusher feminists can take no satisfaction from this particular end game.
The villains of the story are chemicals' such as the nonyl phenols, used in plastic tubes bisphenol A, found in the plastic lining of many tinned cans and the phthalates, used in dental resins and sealants. The phthalates, it seems, are real phallus busters. Anyway, the nonyl phenols, bisphcnol A and the phthalates leach into foods, are then ingested, mimic oestrogen and wallop the poor old male hormone, testosterone, gets kicked straight in the goolies.
Perhaps there's a poetic or, at least, a chemical justice in attacks on that angry, old bully, testosterone. But the villains take a swipe at women too and, the programme claimed, promote breast cancer Twenty years from now, we could be facing catastrophe. In the 1950s, the average sperm count was 100 million per millilitre. By the 1970s, it had fallen to 75 million. Even the popularity of cling filmy, crotch strangling jeans in the intervening years could hardly account for such a dramatic drop.
To illustrate the contrast, we were shown film of magnified sperm shot in the 1950s and film shot in the 1970s. Now, this was dramatic indeed and it suggested that the drop was far greater than a mere 25 per cent. The 1950s sperm were a synchronised swimming team energetic, rhythmic and clearly enjoying themselves, every one a Johnny Weismuller. The 1970s sperm were a lazy crowd, shuffling self consciously with, it seemed, neither grace, nor purpose. No doubt, if the magnification had been greater, we would have seen many of these listless, 1970s sperm wearing tiny tank tops.
It's not that any of these dire warnings are a laughing matter. But how can we cope with the predicted results of an oestrogen ravaged world? Fish, birds, reptiles, mammals all appear to be affected. Nobody said it, but it was hard not to think that a falling birth rate would be no harm for the 21st century. The tragedy, of course, is that humanity may not be so much engaged in voluntary family planning as it's enforced sterility.
This was a fine documentary, typical of the kind of science narrative at which Horizon excels. Ominous new evidence was promised early on and we were hooked until it was divulged. It is, I suppose, television by formula, but the formula works and what else can we expect from science anyway? Still, it's hard to accept that the short term future might be so bleak, even though a particularly ominous note was sounded by a British government agency insisting "there was no immediate cause for concern". Some cliche's come with alarm bells attached.
BY Wednesday, we were back from science to soap, where the week's big story was assault on the female. Jim McDonald dementedly jealous on hearing that his wife, Liz, had a long ago affair with his pal, Johnny, beat her across the face, pulled her from their car and sped off to the sound of Coronation Street's signature tune. Since then, wife beating has featured heavily on radio and TV phone in shows and on the feature pages of newspapers and magazines.
Mind you Jim's attack on Liz had been signalled loudly enough. Ever since her relationship with Des ("Jim", "Liz" "Des" don't you just love the friendly one syllable Coronation Street names?) it has, really been only a matter of time. And so it came to pass. It was realistic too. The couple met Johnny and Lucy, Johnny's new, young, Liz look alike, redhead wife. Jim sussed that there was a past between Johnny and Liz.
"Something happened between you two," he says to her as they drive home. "You're paranoid," she replies. "It's even obvious to me, a thick Mick," he insists making sure that with the rising dramatic tension, you realise that it's a typically stupid Irishman who is going to thump his wife. Good that, eh? The fact that he says it himself is clever, of course. Maybe he's using it as sarcastic hyperbole, or perhaps he's being ironic. There's no insult there it's just recognition of reality, in keeping with the series naturalistic tone. Isn't it?
Like hell it is. There can be no doubt that there are many leprechauns out there swamped by the, uh, benevolent" racism of stereotypes. To take offence, is to be "very touchy" or to have "no sense of humour". But is it not bad enough that an Irishman should be the wife beater without his announcing his "thickness" in a preamble to the assault? Even if such dialogue does not necessarily transgress the naturalism which makes Coronation Street so respected, the most popular show on television has a duty to guard against racism.
Untrammelled naturalism is no excuse that were the case, then every other line of dialogue should contain swear words. Anyway, it has happened, and wife beating and men's assaults on women in general are being discussed. Fair enough, but it says a lot when such a real problem needs the attention of a soap opera to concentrate minds. As a plot development, the assault was both dramatic ("Get out of the car, you whore... you dirty stinking whore... with your string of men") and valid. It's a pity, though, especially these times, that "a thick Mick" was shown dispensing the violence.
IN contrast to raging Jim, the three men Cyril, Philip and Rob featured in Dark Secrets No Hard Feelings were a hang dog lot. They had no hard feelings because they were impotent. So, even though they were more listless than a couldn't be bothered, tank topped, 1970s sperm, they seemed content enough to have, if you'll excuse the expression, hung up their condoms. If there's no great desire for sex, then there can hardly be any great frustration at not being able to indulge.
But life's not so simple. The men had wives or partners who were feeling the pinch, or rather, weren't. So what to do? They went off to Sheffield's Hallamshire Hospital to see Sister Patricia Allen, impotence counsellor. Why they let the cameras follow them is hard to understand, but they did. Sister Patricia cracked vibrator jokes as Cyril and his rather embittered wife, Nellie, sat there, sombre as headstones.
When it was clear that the vibrator jokes' weren't forming the type of stimulating foreplay that Sister Patricia desired, she took out a vacuum pump, some thick rubber bands and explained the procedure to Cyril, who seemed to be stifling a yawn. Still, great oaks and all that ... a few weeks later, Cyril was a new man. The pump had done the trick. "If you give it too much vacuum, it'll go up like Blackpool Tower, but you'll have no feeling in it," he said. Ah the Aristotelian mean in all things, Cyril Philip opted for injections directly into his member. "Make sure to avoid veins and blood vessels," Sister Patricia advised him. (You couldn't help but think that it would really want to be worth it to go through this sort of torture. Mere orgasm was hardly due reward.) Perhaps though, the results are spectacular. Why else would Sister Patricia have further advised Philip to wear a jacket or a long coat for his next appointment so as not to alarm patients in the foyer?
And finally, there was Rob. Well, Rob went the whole hog and fair play to him. He even allowed himself to be filmed during the operation to have implants inserted into his manhood. "When you want to have sex, you just bend it up, and when you don't, you just bend it down," the surgeon, had told him. "It's a bit like a bendy toy.
The next time we saw Rob, he was back in his native Scotland and wearing a kilt. How had it been for him? A bit rough really, but now that all the stitches were out and the rods were in working order, he felt it had all been worth it. "It's not bendy though," he said. "It feels like a steel girder... rigid", the rolling Scottish Rs leaving you in no doubt about just how rigid. His partner, Samantha, looked very tired ... absolutely knackered, actually. This was a warmly comic documentary on a serious topic. It struck the right note, ironically.a eliminating stiffness, although the needle and operating theatre scenes were passion killingly graphic.
STILL, whatever lift was to be had from No Hard Feelings, the television week's black mood reached its darkest point with the screening of Male Rape. In the same slot as last week's horror story about the Goldenbridge orphanage, this was another stomach churner. Six men spoke about their experiences of rape and how it affected their lives.
Their stories featured "touching", "pulling", "stretching", "bleeding" and "sickly smells". The victims were raped, mostly by other males. But one was raped, for years, by an older sister. There was an overpowering sense of violation about it all, for these stories seemed to have far less to do with sexual desire than with the desire to degrade. One victim told of how his persistent rapist made a funnel "in order to get sperm inside a 12 year old even though he couldn't fit inside himself".
To conceive of, make and use such a thing indicates a sexuality so warped that you can understand how some prosecutors make a case for chemical castration. In the six months it took to make Male Rape 800 males contacted Irish rape crisis centres that's four or five a day. In terms of its information, this was a remarkable documentary. But because of the understandable desire of most of the victims to retain anonymity, it was bard to know why it wasn't made for radio 50 minutes was too long to fill with camera tricksiness.
And so, a week which began with ominous warnings about chemical assaults on male organs, ended with ominous warnings' about human assaults on those same organs. Jim McDonald wasn't the only man paranoid this week.