Sunday, February 24, 2013

Ava the Rava: Lorraine Newman's Folly

There's a thread on Digital Spy at the moment, started by that ubiquitous Cora-shipper-in-chief, vaslav37, which wonders what the point of Ava and Cora is. In fact, it doesn't take too many replies to establish the thread as posing the question of what, indeed, is the point of Ava, herself?

The fabois and cheerleaders hailed Clare Perkins's arrival as one might expect them to look forward to an Academy Award-winning actress joining their ranks. That she had experience was beyond doubt; but she's now been a part of this programme since last autumn, and the only thing we see is Ava the Rava, late Deputy Head teacher at a junior school some fifteen minutes from Walford, no suddenly plopped in what looks curiously like the Community Centre, supervising smart-arse kids and Whitney. When she's not there, she's prowling the streets of Walford at all hours, snarling at her little Cock of a son (another useless character) and using very bad grammar, which wouldn't be tolerated amongst the educated professionals with whom she cohorts.

Ava is the ubiquitous Angry Black Woman, complete with cornrows, single parenthood and a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air-duplicate stereotypical black urban yoof son.

But what is her point?

Her point is that she has no point. Not yet, anyway, because - give her a chance - Lorraine Newman hasn't really had a chance to sit down with Simon PantsAshdown and think of a storyline involving her, much less a character arc and a backstory. Simon's too busy worrying about the diminishing Brannings even to consider a satellite, and Lorraine's busy pasting Kat and Alfie back together.

This is the honest truth: Ava was ever only supposed to be a character for five episodes.  This was a mini-storyline where Tanya finds her long-lost half-sister, we explore Cora's dilemma at giving birth to a biracial child in the 1960s, she confronts her daughter and is rejected, sadly. Maybe the original storyline was supposed to be a softening device for the brittle, old, drunken crone which Cora the Bora has become; but things changed at the casting session for Ava.

Lorraine Newman liked her on sight, cast her - a black, instead of a biracial actress - and immediately declared that Ava would be a permanent character, and she would have a son.

OK, great. But what's the purpose? What's her direction?

Both of these questions harken back to Kirkwood and his haphazard castings. From him we got the Moon Goons. They served no purpose except to attract silly young girls to their perceived testosterone. Their characters were inconsistent and they had no talent.

Ava completes a triumvirate of racially stereotypical women on the show. Denise is the sensible, hard-working, yet suffering black mum, who gets little thanks for her effort. Kim is the silly, black woman with exaggerated sexuality. Ava is the pushy, angry black woman, someone you'd see at the forefront of any protest. Even her son is a racial stereotype. If EastEnders were being truly realistic, Ava's little Cock would be a leading member of Liam's gangabanga, instead of strutting around Walford with munitions haul around his neck.

If Ava has any purpose, it's to make the Brannings multi-racial.

That leaves the question of her direction. She is supposedly a well-educated, professional in a position of trust in the community ... like Yusef ... like May ... like Stella ... like Lucas.

If Lorraine can't find anything warm and cuddly for Ava to do, she'll start wielding an axe.

No comments:

Post a Comment