"Everyone Needs To Have Something They Can Feel Good About Hating" (Cully Barnaby)

The Barnaby family: Joyce (Jane Wymark), DCI Tom (John Nettles), and Cully (Laura Howard)

"Witch hunts never are [concluded]. You burn
one, you have to find another. . . .
"Everyone needs to have something they can feel
good about hating." -- Cully Barnaby

by Ken

Among the luxuries I've been allowing myself during an already-perhaps-nervously-long period of, er, transition is a slowly ongoing traversal, via Netflix, of the whole of the British mystery series Midsomer Murders (1997-present) -- for my money (in this case literally) the best thing Netflix has to offer, with the whole of the first 19 series already available and Series 20, which just aired in 2018, presumably to follow. (According to Wikipedia, Series 21 is scheduled to begin shooting sometime this year.)

While watching the 34th episode (out of 122 to date, including Series 20), I was stopped in my tracks by an exchange near the start of the final scene, which finds the Barnabys -- DCI Tom (John Nettles), his long-suffering wife Joyce (Jane Wymark), and adult daughter Cully (Laura Howard) -- at home in the kitchen, in various stages of sitting down to family dinner. At this point Tom is nearing wit's end over his seemingly stalled investigation of a series of ostensibly witchcraft-related murders-by-fire in the village of Midsomer Parva -- the first in an actual bonfire on the village green, the others custom-created "individual" mini-bonfires.

Passing the torch of hate

I was so taken by Cully's insight that the, um, logic of witch hunts dictates that they don't end, can't end -- "You burn one, you have to find another" -- that I paused the proceedings in order to undertake the ever-so-laborious process of transcription and then the additional labor of trying to do something about the need I hope you'll understand I felt to do something with the result of those labors. For me this all resonates wildly in the Age of Trump, who himself (we need to remember) is less a cause than a symptom of the social malignancy afflicting us here and now in the year 2019, though of course Trump has spent his whole life doing everything in his malignant powers, in the spirit of his mentor Roy Cohn, to accelerate the malignancy. What Cully is describing is a habit of mind generally found in in right-wing movements and autocracies, and positively beloved of both masters and subjects in right-wing autocracies.

As the scene began, poor Tom Barnaby -- so restless that he's unable to sit or stand still -- has been poring over some sort of old bound book, clearly not getting the answer(s) he's looking for.

CULLY BARNABY [to her father]: So, how's the witch hunt?
DCI TOM BARNABY: The witch hunt is not concluded.
CULLY: Witch hunts never are. You burn one, you have to find another.
JOYCE BARNABY: That's horrible, Cully!
CULLY: It's true! Everyone needs to have something they can feel good about hating. Plus, everyone loves a bonfire.

-- from "The Straw Woman," Episode 6 of
Series 7 (2004) of Midsomer Murders

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