in the realm of the senseless

Even the bad reviews of Nicholas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives made me want to see it. Dave Calhoun's one-star review in Time Out begins: 'A dread-filled electronic score, neon, zombie-like performances and violent scenes of amputation.' What's not to like?

Unfortunately, the film. The music's heavy-handed, the slow pace forced, and the dedication to director Alejandro Jodorowsky at the end makes it all too clear what the film lacks - a sense of humour. Have you seen The Holy Mountain? Jodorowsky is funny.

On the other hand you have to admire its determination to fuck with the viewer. Refn and Ryan Gosling had a big deserved hit with Drive last year, and here it's like Refn wants to do penance for that. Maybe there was something a little suspect, a little too smooth, about Drive's neon glamour after all – it works too well, our identification with Gosling's Driver is a little too easy. Well, what better way of making amends for a film that works than with one that doesn't?

The colour scheme in Only God Forgives is just as pretty as in Drive but Gosling's hero seems to have had his drive uninstalled. In fact, he's a thoroughly emasculated hero - undecided, impotent, and completely dominated by his monstrous mother (a fabulously inhuman Kristin Scott Thomas). The emasculation extends even to Refn's treatment of Gosling the actor – giving him little dialogue, shooting him from unflattering angles. Male viewers will not be queuing up to identify with him, that's for sure, and Refn's evocation of castration anxiety through severed arms and torture-by-metal-chopstick will only alienate them further.

Christopher Tookey in the Daily Mail certainly hated it. It featured in an article of his that got positioned right next to the editorial, as if it were news. It was about how poor Chris' movie-going duties have left him desensitized to violence. Sixteen years ago, you see, he witnessed the aftermath of a murder and didn't have nightmares. No, he was 'totally unaffected'. There 'can only be one explanation' for this. He's an unfeeling bastard? No of course not! It's because he's seen too many films.

Hold on, that was sixteen years ago. By now he must be really densensitized. It's a wonder he isn't beating people up in the streets. But, as far as I know, he isn't. Instead, he's writing about how Only God Forgives and Kick Ass 2 are overly violent. Which suggests that he hasn't been desensitized even to movie violence, let alone real violence – that, in fact, these films have resensitized him. Maybe he should be grateful. The violence in Only God Forgives is properly nasty, like violence ought to be - not casual and certainly not fun. Anyway, why is it only violence that people worry about being desensitized to and not, say, romantic comedy?

There isn't much in the article about the murder that (after sixteen years) prompted it – it's as if he didn't want to clutter his argument with too many facts. But we do get a description of the killers swaggering as they walk away from the scene of the crime, like 'movie heroes'. This is a cheap shot - I think swaggering predates the movies.

But luckily, there is a solution to all this. I got it from the 1972 film Cannibal Girls, which I saw on DVD recently. This features a gimmick wherein an 'alarm bell' (actually, it's more like an air horn) sounds whenever a gruesome scene is about to transpire, while a gentle chime (which sounds like it's going to introduce a tannoy announcement) plays when it's 'safe' to look at the screen again. This is exactly what Only God Forgives needs, and, applied to other films, should help prevent Christopher Tookey from turning into a raving psychopath. It may be too late for other critics. Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian gave Only God Forgives five stars. We can only pray for his soul.

the elephant in the room

Godfrey Bloom has been grabbing the media's attention by suggesting that we shouldn't be sending foreign aid to 'Bongo-Bongo Land'. 'Where is Bongo-Bongo Land?', asked Matthew Bannister, standing in for Jeremy Vine on Radio 2. Search me - within the pages of a 1948 issue of The Beano? Wherein you will also find a character called 'Godfrey Bloom', a blustering old buffer in a bowler hat, apoplectic with fury at the latest outrage perpetrated by Dennis the Menace.

Bloom does at least usefully blur the line between what people call 'common sense' and sheer barking insanity, as if they might finally be revealed as the same thing - which they are, of course.

But the main thing this debacle proved was that people in the media just love the phrase 'Bongo-Bongo Land'. All day they were bouncing it around like a rubber ball – you could hear the pleasure in their voices. Matthew Bannister even referred to the whole thing as 'the Bongo-Bongo ding-dong'.

But if you want bullshit you need to go to the experts. The Dealership is another reality show set in Essex (hooray!), focussing on a used car dealership in Rainham. The undoubted star is genius salesman Jamie, who has a superhuman ability to dispense what he refers to as 'flannel.' So effective is he that I am genuinely afraid that he will sell me a car through the TV screen. Thank God I can't drive.

But he's not the only character. Even the work experience boy, Declan, is showing signs of turning into the next Louis Theroux. And then there's Scott, a former window-fitter, who is struggling to sell anything, despite (as he puts it) 'grafting my balls off'. The problem is he can't express his personality like Jamie can – it's in there (so he maintains) but it won't come out. As a layman, I can only make a tentative suggestion – if he's troubled by self-consciousness, maybe he'd do better if cameras weren't filming him all the time. Just a thought.