When Radiohead's "Burn the Witch"video surfaced earlier today, the UK press was quick to note its similarity to 1960s British children's television. The Evening Standard called the Chris Hopewell-directed clip "'Trumpton'-themed." The Guardian reported that the video features "animation in the style of Bob Bura and John Hardwick, the creators of 'Trumpton,' 'Chigley,' and 'Camberwick Green.'" The Mirrorasked, "Is the video for Radiohead's new single 'Burn the Witch' inspired by kids TV classic 'Trumpton'?"
Collectively known as the "Trumptonshire Trilogy," the three aforementioned stop-motion series were created by Gordon Murray and began airing in 1966. Murray is 96 years old now, according to his son-in-law William Mollett, who told me over the phone when asked if he was aware of the Radiohead video, "I'm not aware of anything, no." (Hopewell wasn't immediately available for comment, and neither were Radiohead's publicists, when asked if the band sought permission from rights holders.)
However, it's not clear that Radiohead would've actually wanted Murray's blessing for the "Burn the Witch" video, which ends up resembling a bit of vintage UK cinema far more familiar to non-British viewers: '70s horror film The Wicker Man. Teased since the mid-'00s, the song finds Thom Yorke intoning ominous commands like "Stay in the shadows/Cheer at the gallows" and "Abandon all reason/Avoid all eye contact." Arriving at the current chaotic moment in global politics, though, and set in the quaint visual context of "Trumpton," the "Burn the Witch" video plays as a pointed critique of nativism-embracing leaders across the UK and Europe, perhaps even the show's near-namesake stateside (Donald Trump, anyone?).
Like "Sesame Street" in the states, "Trumpton" has continued to resonate across UK culture, aided by VHS/DVD releases and a 2011 digital restoration. Pitchfork's London-based contributing editor Laura Snapes tells me the "Trumpton" fire brigade's roll call—"Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub"—is "like a little British poem that everyone knows." Noel Gallagher has even credited one "Trumptonshire Trilogy" character with inspiring the "slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball" line from Oasis's "Champagne Supernova." Unlike the proudly urban and diverse "Sesame Street," though, "Trumpton" mostly portrayed a quaint village life that was already a halcyon idyll in austere post-war Britain. "There's no crime, you know, in Trumptonshire," Murray recently told the Sunday Post. "It's a happy world."
In that sense, "Trumpton" reflects the mythical small-town "family values" often championed by the sort of right-wing politicians who, let it be said, have never exactly been Radiohead's cup of tea. The connection between "Trumpton"and far-right politics became explicit in 2014, when a Twitter user with the handle @Trumpton_UKIP began poking fun at the right-wing, populist UK Independence Party—and a UKIP politician called for a ban on the spoof account. Sad!
The outcome of all the gallows-cheering and reason-abandonment in Radiohead's "Burn the Witch" is foreshadowed in the song's title. It's no coincidence a witch hunt was also at the crux of Arthur Miller's English-teacher favorite The Crucible, a play that emerged during another moment of paranoid demagoguery (McCarthyism and the Red Scare). Paranoid demagoguery, you probably won't be surprised to hear, is having a bit of a moment. In the UK, "Trumpton" might embody the bucolic vision of UKIP, the party that has found success in recent years opposing immigration and the European Union. Over in France, the anti-immigrant, anti-Europe National Front—led by Marine Le Pen—has forced unusual alliances between the mainstream parties in order to defeat her historically controversial party. Whether the country is Germany or Sweden, Denmark or Hungary, anti-immigrant populists are resurgent throughout Europe.
Which brings us back to America's own mayor of Trumpton, a certain Donald Trump, who surely is wondering whom he could sue right now for putting his name on a town he doesn't own (and how much it would cost to put a wall around it). With the "Burn the Witch" video, Radiohead use pastoral English imagery to confront a global phenomenon, and inject their characteristically iconoclastic voice in the U.S. presidential election season (something they've done before). "We know where you live," Yorke sings. For all of Trump's protestations about size, he speaks from a small place—one that doesn't exist, and never really did, but is dreadfully hard to escape. In the video, once the villagers' ritualistic frenzy is over, a serene calm returns, but it's not guaranteed to last.