Amy Manson as Lizzy Siddal and Aidan Turner as Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Episode 3 of Desperate Romantics BBC Photo Library © BBC


an authentic portrayal of the time as depicted by the artists themselves. Although choosing to recreate scenes from medieval myths and biblical allegories, the PRB transformed their own daily lives onto canvas. Employing those around them as models, including fellow artists and their girlfriends, wives, sometimes prostitutes and locals, the artists in effect documented their own world. The opening titles of


Desperate Romantics read: In the mid-nineteenth century, a group of young men challenged the art establishment of the day. The ‘Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’ were inspired by the real world around them, yet took imaginative licence in their art. This story based on their lives and loves, follows


in the same spirit. So, although the PRB


was based on a revival of Renaissance painting, complete with romantic ideals, their main aim was to bring a new vitality to British painting. However, in bringing the artists’ work to the foreground of the drama, Bowker has constructed a dialogue between the nineteenth- century artists and a twenty-first century- television audience on a current and topic: namely the nature of the relationship between art and fame. Actor Adrian Turner, explains: Dante has an obsession with fame… and as he begins to understand the fickleness of the whole thing and questions success, is it to be known by other people, other painters and the public or is it to sell paintings, or is it


to strive for what you believe is right? And he gets caught up in that whole thing about how many people know him, how much paintings are going for and selling for and that kind of stuff relates to these modern times in which celebrities get their five minutes of fame and you can make a fortune from that. And I think he twigs on to that a century and a half before Big Brother. www.bbc.co.uk/


desperateromantics Representation


and audiences Back to the question


posed at the start of this article: What do a group of nineteenth-century artists, the Sex Pistols and Jade Goody have in common?’ Answer: they wanted to be famous. The Sex Pistols, though founded on a very


unromantic anti-aesthetic pledge, engineered their break-through with a violent attack on glam rock. Employing discordant sounds and non-melodious tunes was only a small part of their short but sensational career. Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen exploited media fascination with their bohemian lifestyle before spiralling out of control to their early and tragic deaths. Similarly, Jade Goody may be seen as a victim of her own relentless pursuit of fame, neglecting her health and alienating the public. Though less productive and commercially successful than the others of the PRB, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was perhaps the most glamorous of the artists. Both daring and seductive, he not only seduced most of his models, but also had an open affair with Jane Burden, the wife of his friend and former student William Morris. However, Rossetti’s flagrant betrayals cost him dearly; at the end of his life he was haunted by Lizzie’s death. In drawing parallels


between Victorian celebrities and those of pop-rock heaven or reality television, Bowker blatantly subverts audience expectations of the genre and its established values. To make his views perfectly clear, Bowker includes a farcical send-up of Dickensian values in the form of a representation of the man himself as a Victorian forbear of Mary Whitehouse. In more than one scene Dickens is featured as a dour old man passing out pamphlets to ‘fallen women’, whilst the PRB party on in the ‘pleasure gardens’. In fact Charles Dickens was indeed


english and media centre | December 2009 | MediaMagazine 45


a contemporary of the PRB who wrote disapprovingly of their ‘fleshy figures’ and bohemian lifestyle in newspaper critiques and private letters. Taken in that way, Bowker’s depiction of events may employ artistic license in the fashioning of dramatic events, but it remains accurate to the time and place, whilst creating engaging characters with whom twenty-first century- audiences can engage. Bowker admits that he has taken countless liberties with the facts: I’ve conflated events, put people into scenes who weren’t really there, and I’ve actually reduced the events of 12 years into 12 months of time. The reason I have done this is that this is foremost a piece of drama and not art history…And I think I have been true to the spirit of the brotherhood. www.bbc.co.uk/


desperateromantics


Brenda Hamlet lectures in Media Studies at Amersham and Wycombe College.


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