04.01.10
I love BBC4 programmes; they revel in the quiet, the introspective, and the sublime. It's a channel necessary to combat the excessive noise from every other station. In fact, by its scholarly nature and wilful determination not to pollute the world with more cheap schlock, it's arguably the most rebellious.
Dear Diary is typical BBC4 material: Richard E. Grant -- for it is he -- narrates this documentary about the art of diary-writing, and meets with folk connected to famous diarists. He examines works by Joe Orton and Kenneth Williams to find out what it means to put yourself into the most personal and personality-conflicting of literary forms.
Grant is a competent enough host, though he occasionally lets his feelings interfere with the documentary's partiality -- his brief interview with former prison-diarist Erwin James is nail-bitingly awkward. By bringing his careful disclaimer-like opinions to the fore, the interview suffers, and after watching Grant debate exactly how he should react to meeting a person he's never met, James' eventual presence on screen is enough to make passing goldfish hiss wildly. Not that the questions asked make way for particularly insightful answers, but a more balanced outlook would have made for a less frustrating watch.
Grant's video diaries are infinitely more entertaining, and in the comfort of solitude he muses on the small philosophies accompanying a diarist's life. He comes to the conclusion that diaries are written, or can be viewed, as a way to conceal part of one's soul -- which is all deliciously Harry Potter. But Grant's reflections make for a tidy ending: one where the unexpected tone of Williams' diary can be put down to the diary's ability to combine the dichotomy of public and private personae; where so-called "death diaries" can shed light on unknown experiences, at the ultimate sacrifice of personal seclusion; and where words can wield unimaginable power, enough to result in murder.
It plants the seeds of a rather Roland Barthes-esque line of questioning: how much can diaries be considered to be prose with the, sometimes literal, death of its author? After all, life runs deeper than words on a page, and one man's interpretation is another's codswallop; the writer's intended truth being the reader's diverging analysis. And how much does the adage that diaries are written to be read by others factor into the discussion? It will be interesting to see if this mini-series deals with these paradoxes. But, as a BBC4 doc, it's grand stuff, being properly cool over in the quiet corner.
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