Culture on the cutting room floor

by Neil Thomas
January 29th, 2010

I read that Tesco is set to become a filmmaker. The supermarket giant is launching its own multi-million pound film production unit adapting books by bestselling authors, apparently beginning with Paris Connections using a Jackie Collins original, suitably tweaked, or should I say ‘titillated’, filmed in Paris and set in the world of fashion. The plan is that it goes straight to DVD after a few cinema previews and then, guess what, will be sold exclusively through Tesco stores.

For Tesco, the appeal of selling DVDs alongside their range of books is obvious, and fits the company’s wider retail strategy of developing their sales of books and home entertainment. They see the exclusivity as a way of driving people into the stores, with competitions (win a trip to filming locations), blogs on the shooting process and interviews with the ‘stars’ apparently also being used to spur customer involvement.

We can only guess, can’t we, where this will all lead. Culturally (and I use the word loosely) is it a good thing?

Sadly, they aren’t talking about a Tesco Finest range of films (and incidentally why don’t they have a Tesco Finest range of things other than food or drink?). Unfortunately, the influence of the supermarkets (and the superchains of booksellers) has driven cultural standards down and narrowed the choice for consumers. Now, the decision-makers in Tesco are to be the arbiters of cultural taste for a lot of people, pushing them in their book and film buying decisions. We know that these decision-makers follow the old adage that “nobody ever got rich by over estimating the intelligence of the public”.

Culturally, this can’t be good. Just as they have dragged the publishing world downwards, so they will damage the film world. Roger Lewis has perhaps summed the situation up best in his excellent book (apparently not for sale in Tesco!) Seasonal Suicide Notes: My Life as it is Lived: ‘Imagine how happy it made me to learn that because so many of my former editors are in and out of The Priory, screaming and tearing off their clothes and walking into walls with a saucepan on their head, The Roger Lewis Mentally Handicapped Publishers’ Wing is already at an advanced planning stage. In any case publishers don’t want literature any more. All they want to do is sell Jordan’s tits in Tesco, I kid you not.”

And, how much longer is it going to be before Tesco starts becoming a publisher as well as filmmaker?