- How a wholesome gardener’s pants became a symbol of imperialist oppression.
Are you aware of Alan Titchmarsh? He’s a British gardener who has hosted a whole slew of gardening-related TV shows.
One of them is Alan Titchmarsh’s Garden Secrets from 2010. The series is pretty much the definition of a feel-good show, with Titchmarsh touring beautiful gardens and explaining their history.
In fact, Garden Secrets is so wholesome that even North Korea has deemed it appropriate for its citizens.
That’s right — the show radiates such positive energy that even the world’s most repressive country, where anything Western is a big no-no, is okay with it.
Well, for the most part.
Even Titchmarsh hasn’t been able to escape North Korea’s draconic censorship. It’s not because he’s expressing views distasteful to the Kim regime, though.
It’s because he wears jeans, which must be blurred on North Korean TV. And that’s too much for the country’s sensitive citizens.
What’s With the Jeans?
Garden Secrets might be broadcast in North Korea, but the show can’t escape the long, brutal fingers of the country’s censorship machine. To begin with, the North Korean versions of the episodes are much longer.
In their original format, each Garden Secrets episode fills a one-hour time slot. The North Korean cut, however, lasts barely 15 minutes.
The reason for the shortened runtime is fairly predictable. The censored version keeps the action strictly in the garden to make sure citizens viewing the program don’t see any capitalist decadence.
Any product logos and Western advertisements are similarly forbidden in North Korea and consequently blurred.
And so are Titchmarsh’s trademark pair of blue jeans.
You see, the Kim regime doesn’t like jeans. To them, they represent “bourgeois culture” and “anti-socialist behavior” (in Kim Jong Un’s words) and such symbols of imperialism cannot be allowed in North Korea.
So, the country’s state broadcaster blurs the jeans in the same manner that a U.S. or British TV channel might blur, say, bare buttocks.
Only, North Korean TV doesn’t do a very good job with it. You can still absolutely tell Titchmarsh is wearing jeans through the half-assed blur effect.
State-sanctioned Piracy
But how on earth did Garden Secrets get shown in North Korea in the first place? Bizarre as it is, the show may have been officially licensed to the country.
In 2014, three years into Kim Jong Un’s reign, North Korea was playing relatively nice with the rest of the world and even showing signs of opening up — just a little bit. As a result, the BBC reached a deal to deliver some British TV shows to the country.
These programs, however, had to be extremely inoffensive and not showcase anything political that the Kim regime might take issue with. TV shows that made the shortlist included stuff like Mr. Bean, Miss Marple, and Teletubbies.
Garden Secrets may have been on the list as well, but there are no official records of whether it (or any other show for that matter) was ever actually delivered. Another — and perhaps more likely — option is that North Korea simply pirated the show.
North Korean TV has a habit of broadcasting some Western programming, such as soccer games, in the country. These approved programs are typically smuggled into North Korea across the Chinese border on memory sticks, hard drives, and DVDs.
The problem with “importing” TV programming like this is that it’s riddled with capitalist filth. Therefore, the shows need some doctoring before they can be shown, such as blurring Titchmarsh’s pants.
Boost in Street Cred
Mr. Titchmarsh certainly didn’t plan to appear on North Korean TV. In fact, he told the BBC that he was “surprised” when he heard his show had been broadcast in the country.
At the same time, though, he can’t help feeling a bit flattered.
“It’s taken me to reach the age of 74 to be regarded in the same sort of breath as Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Rod Stewart,” said Titchmarsh.
The whole thing has given the otherwise wholesome gardener some notoriety. He’s not necessarily upset about that.
“I’ve never seen myself as a dangerous subversive imperialist. I’m generally regarded as rather cozy and pretty harmless, so actually, it’s given me a bit of street cred really, hasn’t it?” Titchmarsh mused.