Philomena Cunk is an ignorant but well-equipped documentarian

Some years ago, Dr. Cida Stier took me with her to a communication training for federal highway police officers. At the end of one of the theoretical phases, she proposed a roleplay (a kind of “theater” that simulates situations). The “cast” was a police officer and a reporter, I being the reporter. And the case was: “a truck driver died in a rollover, traffic is interrupted.” In front of a large class, we went like this:

—Good morning, how are you, sir? My name is Vinícius, I’m a reporter. What’s your name?

Back and forth, he gets to the point of telling me:

—A semitrailer overturned. But we have little information, because we are on our way. — I ask: —Is the driver okay? — To which he answers: —Isn’t he dead? — Not even the officer could finish the sentence without an honest burst of laughter. From then on, we all laughed, because, let us say, the actors bumped into the script a little.

I remember that episode when I watch the English character Philomena Cunk (Diane Morgan), produced by the BBC. Philomena is an ignorant but well-equipped documentarian. As a television presenter, she has her dialogues with interviewees recorded on video. Her posture is absolutely exemplary: voice, clothes, gestures. Yet despite that, she is dumb as a post. The episodes are memorable.

In one, she confuses King Arthur’s “Camelot” with “cum a lot.” In another, she films around Michelangelo’s David and wonders whether, given their absence in the sculpture, people of that time had anuses. In the following one, she talks about George Orwell’s predictions in the book “1984.” She stresses that such predictions were made in the book using “nothing but words” — laughs.

Although the BBC is one of the most prominent brands of journalism in the world, alongside ABC in the United States, TV Globo in Brazil, Deutsche Welle in Germany and Franceinfo in France, Philomena’s existence does not seem to me a mere comic format. It is, above all, an invitation to learn to laugh at ourselves.

Some years ago, visiting an agency in Goiânia, advertising man Renato Monteiro told me that the first thing they did upon the arrival of a new ad project was to spend days creating the most obvious interventions. For a funeral-insurance campaign, “prices are to die for,” “buy before it’s too late,” “who is going to worry about the studs on their cleats” (a pun on the idiom for dying, “hanging up one’s boots”). On that occasion, the job that was to go on TV was the sale of a health plan for small companies, with at least seven employees. After the creative process, they had Snow White sign up for the plan (the seven employees being the seven dwarfs). A brilliant piece!

In television journalism there are many variables, as is common in all jobs subject to enormous pressures and instabilities. I consider that one of the great challenges in attracting and retaining talent is reporters’ organizational ability. One who manages to wake daily at 4 a.m., to begin an hour later preparing a newscast that airs at 6 a.m., and repeats that activity daily for months or years, has a great chance of landing the anchor post. For that reason alone one would have found an exemplary employee. On the other hand, when the variable of order is too rigid, creative work can sometimes dwindle. “Journalism is half business, half show,” argued journalist Gladimir Nascimento.

Without penury, without excessive narcissism, without power plays or psychological games out of control, with humor to laugh at oneself, television journalism may have an intellectual afterlife.

You can watch Philomena on the BBC site and in a series that has just premiered on Netflix. The #philomenacunk hashtag on Instagram has good clips.