The End of the F***ing World

In some respects, we are living in an age of great art, at least in terms of the moving image. TV and film provide a genuinely high level of quality productions at a rate that can be impossible to keep up with. There are rightful concerns that the types of production that predominate at present are becoming increasingly homogenised in terms of what can be expressed and the way in which it can be expressed. This concern may appear paradoxical; after all, in terms of taste, boundaries have been crossed so often that they have blurred into a background pallor. It feels as though we have never lived in less censorious times. Granted, as some prohibitions fade away others leap up from dragon’s teeth to take their place so that new restrictions on matters concerning race, gender and so on now exist that were not observed only two or three decades ago. But this is never a problem for an artist because art consists in refashioning perennial truths in new forms, and the new forms will always be cast within certain social limitations.