There's a song that's stirring up a little bit of controversy in the US at the moment, sung by country-western singer Brad Paisley and rapper LLCoolJ. It's about the racism that's inherent in everyone, black and white, and how it impinges upon the images we have of one another. Listen to the words:-
Now, some might say this doesn't apply to Britain, and certainly not EastEnders (some would also say), but in the aftermath of the Wigan-Millwall game on Saturday evening, witnessing the appalling display of violence amongst the Millwall fans, John Barnes made a very prescient remark.
When another commentator expressed surprise at the outbreak of violence, Barnes quipped that it's never really gone away. Like racism, he observed. You still see flashes of it from time to time, but that doesn't mean it's gone away. It's still there.
I know EastEnders would be the first to deny intentional racism, but the fact is that they are guilty of that sort of accidental racism known as white privilege. It's evident in the stereotyping they've done, especially with the current Afro-Caribbean characters resident on the show. As one long-time commentator on Walford Web remarked sometime ago, if people can't see that the black characters on the programme are both token and stereotypical, they aren't really looking.
For any mimic who's ever parodied a West Indian, you'll probably hear Patrick Truman, and there he is on the show, waxing lyrical in the laid-back fashion most white people imagine to be indicative of Caribbean folk about rum, cricket, good times and the ladies, each sentence punctuated by an exaggerated cackle and a "y-eeeeee-aaaaahhhh man."
Kim is the sassy urban black woman, the natural lovechild of the late Flip Wilson, a cross-dressing US comic of the 70s era, and Prissy, of Gone With the Wind infamy.
If you want an example ....
This:-
Plus this:-
Equals this:-
Denise has ceded her prize epithet of Angry Black Woman to Ava the Rava, who's doubling as the Magic Negro, a street-suss teacher who never seems to be in the classroom or at school, but who wanders the streets of Walford, popping up indiscriminately to offer sage words of wisdom, whilst ignoring the pickles in which she finds herself. Ava started out a well-spoken, well-educated professional, but since being made a permanent character, she's acquired the diction of a barrowboy and the grammar of a guttersnipe.
She is less this:-
And more this:-
Her son Dexter is EastEnders' classic depiction of the bling-infested, entitled urban youth, complete with incomprehensible diction and vocabulary. The actor portraying him has clearly been told to pattern his behaviour on that of the very young Will Smith as The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, but with what they describe as an edge. In short, Dexter is exactly the way the white, middle-class, suburban-bred writers of the show imagine a black, street-suss urban youth to be, ne'mind that his mother is supposedly an woman educated to degree standard and in a position of professional trust, both he and she still live on a run-down, scumy sink estate, and he - of course - has been part of a gang culture.
That leaves us with Ray Dixon and the news broken yesterday about Cornell S John joining the cast as - guess what? - Ava's long-lost partner (husband? lover? incestuous adopted sibling? who knows?), yet another long-lost daddy to show up and infuriate Dexter, exposing the fact that he has - yep, you guessed it - DADDY ISSUES.
Well, who doesn't, in EastEnders? There's Phil, Max, Janine, Joey, Michael ... did I miss anyone? And when was the last time we had a long-lost daddy reunited with his son? Wait, that would have been last year with Derek and Joey - Toad and Little Toad. Does that mean that Dexter's dad becomes Big Cock to his Little Cock?
I'm not familiar with the actor, but I hear he is experienced and that his forte is ... yes, urban black male. In other words, another stereotype. A father who popped out for a pint of milk and never returned. (Mike Swann, father of Dawn and Mickey, popped out for a packet of ciggies and didn't return; conversely, Lucas Johnson, in his original stint with Denise, popped out for a pint of milk and didn't come back - what is it with black males and milk?)
Adding to the unintentional insult, John's character name is Sam. Now, the common reference to black males amongst a certain tranche of Englishman of a certain age is "sambo" shortened to "Sam." As politically correct and aware as EastEnders purports to be, you'd have thought this name would have raised alarm bells. Really ... what's wrong with Roger or Steve or Charles or Malcolm? They clearly must think "Dexter" is a common name amongst the Afro-Caribbean community, because Kim's ex was named Dexter also.
And as if repetition for emphasis isn't enough, he's being billed as "a master manipulator and a charmer". Now, where have we heard those words before? Oh yes, they were the same words used to describe Alfie, Max, Vinnie Monks, Callum Monks, Deano Wicks, Derek Branning and Joey Branning. In other words, same shit, different day.
It also goes without saying that the character of Ray Dixon will, undoubtedly, be sacrificed at the new altar of Sam-Ava's-Long-Lost-Partner, in a desperate attempt to write a backstory and a forestory for Ava, who still hasn't shaken the mantle of the incidental character she was ever intended to be. She's still a relatively new character, and totally random in her depiction (because she was never intended to be permanent), so it's difficult to invest any sort of emotion in her character. She's not very likeable nor is her son. In fact, she's downright prickly, although I can understand her attitude to Cora. Either they should have introduced her with a family unit intact (why am I thinking we are being conned into the idea of a new family when this is it?) or they should have given us time to decide whether the character was worth having her family expanded. Anyone shipping the Ava-Dexter motif at the moment is grasping at the dwindling lifelines of a sinking ship.
As for Ray, he's toast. In fact, I highly suspect Chucky Venn has left the building, judging by the fact that he's removed all reference to EastEnders from his Twitter blurb. One year ago, Ray was a promising character. Since then, he's gone from being a fresh, positive male character, happy in his job as a cook/barman at the Vic, to being the long-lost retconned father of Mowgan Le Fat, to the less than comic love interest to the unfunny Kim, then devolved into being the Angry Black Man in a one-minute social statement about stop-and-search by the Met Police, further degenerating to a suspect, Theophilas B Wildebeeste-style, in the Shaggerman mystery, further lowering himself to becoming a love cheat, commitment-shy misogynist and coward in his break-up with Kim, throwing Denise under the bus of unwitting blame whilst eyeing Kirsty's departing arse. He was last seen attempting to be a male role model to gangabanga Liam, only succeeding in telling him that if he'd been his son and skipped school, he'd have got a smack.
Ray's gone. He's been Big Mowed, quietly told his contract wouldn't be renewed, but on the horizon we have Ava's long-lost man, Sam.
And we'd be well advised to remember the words of Angely Wynter, who played Yolande Truman. When Wynter was axed, she sang like a canary about the ethinic quota system tacitly employed by TPTB at EastEnders.
"At the end of the day," Wynter said, "everything operates on a quota system."
Think about it. Wynter was axed to make way for Don Gilet, who played Lucas Johnson. In other words, there's a certain amount of ethnic characters the show seeks to maintain, never going above or below a number. Zainab's left, and Ava and Dexter have joined; now Sam's on the horizon. Ray seems to have disappeared, never frequenting his place of employment, the pub kitchen, anymore; and Kim's appearances have been drastically reduced. She's probably on the list to be Big Mowed, if she hasn't already.
And in a conscious move to rainbow-build, Cora the Bora will get a black family whilst Denise will be the doyenne of a white family, complete with a cute-as-a-button nine year-old son and a lilywhite daughter. Turnabout is fair play, and TPTB are clearly white privilegists.
Poor Ray ...
Now, some might say this doesn't apply to Britain, and certainly not EastEnders (some would also say), but in the aftermath of the Wigan-Millwall game on Saturday evening, witnessing the appalling display of violence amongst the Millwall fans, John Barnes made a very prescient remark.
When another commentator expressed surprise at the outbreak of violence, Barnes quipped that it's never really gone away. Like racism, he observed. You still see flashes of it from time to time, but that doesn't mean it's gone away. It's still there.
I know EastEnders would be the first to deny intentional racism, but the fact is that they are guilty of that sort of accidental racism known as white privilege. It's evident in the stereotyping they've done, especially with the current Afro-Caribbean characters resident on the show. As one long-time commentator on Walford Web remarked sometime ago, if people can't see that the black characters on the programme are both token and stereotypical, they aren't really looking.
For any mimic who's ever parodied a West Indian, you'll probably hear Patrick Truman, and there he is on the show, waxing lyrical in the laid-back fashion most white people imagine to be indicative of Caribbean folk about rum, cricket, good times and the ladies, each sentence punctuated by an exaggerated cackle and a "y-eeeeee-aaaaahhhh man."
Kim is the sassy urban black woman, the natural lovechild of the late Flip Wilson, a cross-dressing US comic of the 70s era, and Prissy, of Gone With the Wind infamy.
If you want an example ....
This:-
Plus this:-
Equals this:-
Denise has ceded her prize epithet of Angry Black Woman to Ava the Rava, who's doubling as the Magic Negro, a street-suss teacher who never seems to be in the classroom or at school, but who wanders the streets of Walford, popping up indiscriminately to offer sage words of wisdom, whilst ignoring the pickles in which she finds herself. Ava started out a well-spoken, well-educated professional, but since being made a permanent character, she's acquired the diction of a barrowboy and the grammar of a guttersnipe.
She is less this:-
And more this:-
Her son Dexter is EastEnders' classic depiction of the bling-infested, entitled urban youth, complete with incomprehensible diction and vocabulary. The actor portraying him has clearly been told to pattern his behaviour on that of the very young Will Smith as The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, but with what they describe as an edge. In short, Dexter is exactly the way the white, middle-class, suburban-bred writers of the show imagine a black, street-suss urban youth to be, ne'mind that his mother is supposedly an woman educated to degree standard and in a position of professional trust, both he and she still live on a run-down, scumy sink estate, and he - of course - has been part of a gang culture.
That leaves us with Ray Dixon and the news broken yesterday about Cornell S John joining the cast as - guess what? - Ava's long-lost partner (husband? lover? incestuous adopted sibling? who knows?), yet another long-lost daddy to show up and infuriate Dexter, exposing the fact that he has - yep, you guessed it - DADDY ISSUES.
Well, who doesn't, in EastEnders? There's Phil, Max, Janine, Joey, Michael ... did I miss anyone? And when was the last time we had a long-lost daddy reunited with his son? Wait, that would have been last year with Derek and Joey - Toad and Little Toad. Does that mean that Dexter's dad becomes Big Cock to his Little Cock?
I'm not familiar with the actor, but I hear he is experienced and that his forte is ... yes, urban black male. In other words, another stereotype. A father who popped out for a pint of milk and never returned. (Mike Swann, father of Dawn and Mickey, popped out for a packet of ciggies and didn't return; conversely, Lucas Johnson, in his original stint with Denise, popped out for a pint of milk and didn't come back - what is it with black males and milk?)
Adding to the unintentional insult, John's character name is Sam. Now, the common reference to black males amongst a certain tranche of Englishman of a certain age is "sambo" shortened to "Sam." As politically correct and aware as EastEnders purports to be, you'd have thought this name would have raised alarm bells. Really ... what's wrong with Roger or Steve or Charles or Malcolm? They clearly must think "Dexter" is a common name amongst the Afro-Caribbean community, because Kim's ex was named Dexter also.
And as if repetition for emphasis isn't enough, he's being billed as "a master manipulator and a charmer". Now, where have we heard those words before? Oh yes, they were the same words used to describe Alfie, Max, Vinnie Monks, Callum Monks, Deano Wicks, Derek Branning and Joey Branning. In other words, same shit, different day.
It also goes without saying that the character of Ray Dixon will, undoubtedly, be sacrificed at the new altar of Sam-Ava's-Long-Lost-Partner, in a desperate attempt to write a backstory and a forestory for Ava, who still hasn't shaken the mantle of the incidental character she was ever intended to be. She's still a relatively new character, and totally random in her depiction (because she was never intended to be permanent), so it's difficult to invest any sort of emotion in her character. She's not very likeable nor is her son. In fact, she's downright prickly, although I can understand her attitude to Cora. Either they should have introduced her with a family unit intact (why am I thinking we are being conned into the idea of a new family when this is it?) or they should have given us time to decide whether the character was worth having her family expanded. Anyone shipping the Ava-Dexter motif at the moment is grasping at the dwindling lifelines of a sinking ship.
As for Ray, he's toast. In fact, I highly suspect Chucky Venn has left the building, judging by the fact that he's removed all reference to EastEnders from his Twitter blurb. One year ago, Ray was a promising character. Since then, he's gone from being a fresh, positive male character, happy in his job as a cook/barman at the Vic, to being the long-lost retconned father of Mowgan Le Fat, to the less than comic love interest to the unfunny Kim, then devolved into being the Angry Black Man in a one-minute social statement about stop-and-search by the Met Police, further degenerating to a suspect, Theophilas B Wildebeeste-style, in the Shaggerman mystery, further lowering himself to becoming a love cheat, commitment-shy misogynist and coward in his break-up with Kim, throwing Denise under the bus of unwitting blame whilst eyeing Kirsty's departing arse. He was last seen attempting to be a male role model to gangabanga Liam, only succeeding in telling him that if he'd been his son and skipped school, he'd have got a smack.
Ray's gone. He's been Big Mowed, quietly told his contract wouldn't be renewed, but on the horizon we have Ava's long-lost man, Sam.
And we'd be well advised to remember the words of Angely Wynter, who played Yolande Truman. When Wynter was axed, she sang like a canary about the ethinic quota system tacitly employed by TPTB at EastEnders.
"At the end of the day," Wynter said, "everything operates on a quota system."
Think about it. Wynter was axed to make way for Don Gilet, who played Lucas Johnson. In other words, there's a certain amount of ethnic characters the show seeks to maintain, never going above or below a number. Zainab's left, and Ava and Dexter have joined; now Sam's on the horizon. Ray seems to have disappeared, never frequenting his place of employment, the pub kitchen, anymore; and Kim's appearances have been drastically reduced. She's probably on the list to be Big Mowed, if she hasn't already.
And in a conscious move to rainbow-build, Cora the Bora will get a black family whilst Denise will be the doyenne of a white family, complete with a cute-as-a-button nine year-old son and a lilywhite daughter. Turnabout is fair play, and TPTB are clearly white privilegists.
Poor Ray ...
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