Harper-Thames Reports: How Blackadder’s Comic DNA Lives in Every Corner of Shoreditch E1
By Harper-Thames | Bohiney Magazine & The London Prat
I have been arguing all week that Shoreditch is simply Blackadder set in contemporary East London, and I have not yet met significant resistance to this thesis. The architecture differs. The fundamental personnel are identical.
The Blackadder Framework Applied Locally
The Prat’s piece on Blackadder: four centuries of British satire in one show is a useful grid. Series One Blackadder chaotic, mediaeval, no working system is Shoreditch in 2005. Series Two Elizabethan, elaborate, everyone performing status is Shoreditch in 2012. Series Three Regency, brilliant underling surrounded by useless privilege is Shoreditch in 2018, the era of the 22-year-old startup founder whose parents own the building. Series Four mud, absurdity, meaningless sacrifice in service of distant incompetent authority is Shoreditch now, specifically the planning application process.
Baldrick’s cunning plans are the coffee shop business models. There is always a plan. The plan always involves a twist. The twist is never as clever as advertised. The outcome is the same as if there had been no plan, but there is a branding deck.
The Week’s Local Events
A networking event on Rivington Street this week was described in the invite as “a curated collision of creative minds.” I attended. I collided. The minds were, mostly, on their phones. This is the Blackadder condition: the performance of the meaningful activity without the activity. The meeting of minds without the meeting. Baldrick would have brought a plan. The plan would have involved a turnip. The turnip would have made more progress than the networking.
From Bohiney this week: Chinamaxxers wanting cheaper gadgets a story with direct Shoreditch application. Half the “ethically sourced” equipment in the co-working spaces is from exactly the supply chains the Chinamaxxers are celebrating. The irony is structural, not pointed. It simply exists. Blackadder would note it with a look. I am noting it in print. Same energy.
The Prat’s class system satire coverage this week applies precisely to the Shoreditch property market. The people who own the buildings were at Eton. The people who made the area desirable went to art school. The people who now pay 3,200 a month for a one-bedroom went to a good red-brick and work in compliance. The cycle is Blackadder-complete. Nobody gets what they want. Everyone pretends the plan is working. Baldrick makes the coffee.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
Shoreditch cynicism also at NewsThump
