The BBC is on and some official in Austria is speaking of the case of captivity. The interpreter is speaking calmly and evenly as the official describes the prison. It is a flat depiction of the terrible. It becomes horrific as the official goes on to talk about the improvements that the captor had made over the decades: he had enlarged the rooms; he had made more rooms; he had given them colour TV. It is the last one which stuns me.
It is one that is common when people speak of prisons, and one of the lines in Fincher’s Se7en: “Hell, even my wife doesn’t have cable TV.” Colour TV is the measurement of civilisation, of the basic level of luxury, where life goes past mere subsistence.
It is a Herzog moment.
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