critical investigation and linked production

C.I. = An investigation into the on-screen gangster. How have traditional representation changed to reflect the shifting nature of masculinity? 

L.P. = Opening to a contemporary British gangster film. Also, maybe an article to support the opening to the film. 

The right ethnic mix

Monday 22 June 2009

The director shouts "Cut!" - and wardrobe, props and make-up people swarm the set. One of the principal actors beckons me over and asks: "Can you pronounce it for us again?" As I say "Alhumdulillah" (praise to God) the rest of the cast repeat it over and over until they are satisfied it sounds right.

In the meantime, I am pulled into a discussion about the Indian sweets on set: are they the right ones; by tradition, which character would give them to whom?

I am not on the set of a British Asian film, but rather at the studios ofEastEnders. For six months I have been working as one of a group of occasional consultants: looking over scripts, sometimes being on set, and advising on aspects of British Asian culture relating to the Masoods.

Playing unsafe

Albert Square's previous Asian family, the Ferreiras, were criticised as boring and unrealistic - their first names were a mixture of Muslim and Hindu, their surname was Portuguese. "We admittedly came under the spotlight with the Ferreiras," says John Yorke, the BBC's controller of drama production. "We played safe with them and ultimately didn't give them good story lines. We're certainly not doing that with the Masoods, but the devil is in the detail and now pretty much everything we write for them that has a cultural or religious aspect is checked."

While the Ferreiras were "safe", the Masoods' current story line is at the other end of the scale - with the elder son, Syed, embarking on a gay affair. "Part of the reason we chose the Masoods is that it does present us with a whole new set of taboos," admits Yorke. However, he says merely being able to feature such an issue is a positive sign. "Post 9/11, Muslim characters in drama became either saint or terrorist - there was no middle ground.

But the fact that we can now actually do a gay Muslim story line is testament to exactly how much we've moved on."

EastEnders is the third most popular series among ethnic minorities,according to Barb, the audience ratings body, behind The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent: on average 43% of the non-white TV viewing audience watch the programme. It also has a long history of featuring black and Asian characters: the first episode included a Turkish cafe owner.

And although cliched roles in soaps and primetime drama s also still exist, ethnic minority representation in drama has advanced across the board over the last decade or so with dramas such as the recent Moses Jones, which focused on issues in London's Ugandan community, and characters such as Anwar in Skins.

But Coronation Street's key Asian character, Dev, is rarely seen through the prism of his religion, and Channel 4's Hollyoaks takes a similar approach with its black and Asian characters. Does that make characters less realistic? Lucy Allan, series producer on Hollyoaks, says the show is keen not to hammer home ethnicity. "We recently had a skin bleaching story line around one of our female Asian characters, and obviously that is a culturally specific issue and it had a big reaction; some viewers were shocked, others identified with it. But as a rule we don't look at any of our ethnic minority characters in terms of just their ethnicity, and if the online viewer forums are anything to go by, we've got it right."

Research and consultation are employed by most broadcasters when it comes to black and Asian characters. But while this is a short cut to accuracy, it would perhaps not be necessary if there were more off-screen talent diversity.

Ade Rawcliffe, diversity and talent manager for Channel 4, believes there is still not enough representation behind the camera. "We're trying hard to make it easier to get in, to make it not about who your dad is, but there is still a way to go. There is no shortage of people from minorities looking to get into the industry, but finding and nurturing that talent is key."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/22/masoods-eastenders-bbc

 Joking Aside, Racism Lives.

                                                       Sunday 11 October 2009

What's the difference between good family entertainment and racism? The answer: time. The latest "race rows" (where white people argue over how offended they are by a bigot, with barely a black or Asian voice to be heard) have highlighted above all how attitudes change over the years.

American musician Harry Connick Jr slates a blacked-up white group performing a "tribute" to Michael Jackson on Australian TV, and explains how his own country has struggled to end the portrayal of black people as buffoons. Neither the programme producers nor the studio audience, it seems, had even considered this thought. They probably have now.

And in Britain, our own race controversy involves a white Strictly Come Dancing performer calling his partner a "Paki", with veteran entertainer Bruce Forsyth at first claiming that it's a shame people have lost their sense of humour. He later retracted, but still couldn't help making a dig at "political correctness".

Most British people watching these shows would be shocked to see the dancer utter those words, or the "Jackson Jive" promote that imagery. But turn the clock back three decades and the opposite would be true. On a Saturday night they'd be settling down to watch the peak-time Black and White Minstrel show. After that they might tune in to Till Death Us Do Part, to hear the racist rantings of Alf Garnett. Over on ITV they could be watching Mind Your Language, in which an English teacher struggles with his class of overseas students, filling every cultural stereotype from headswinging Sikhs to camera-obsessive Japanese, all "hilariously" failing to grasp the language. Or even tune in to the popular series The Comedians, starring that hero of the race equality struggle, Bernard Manning.

All of these shows were, at the time, good family fun. And if we could go back, Life on Mars-style, to any of those involved, they'd be sure to say they weren't being racist; it was only a bit of fun. And, of course, "Some of my best friends ..."
Brucie's formative years were, as we know, well before even this era, so it is maybe a bit harsh to blame him totally for carrying his views forward into this millennium.

Twenty years ago you couldn't go to a football game without hearing a mass of monkey chants whenever a black player kicked the ball. TV and radio match commentators would make no mention of it. It took a microphone malfunction by Ron Atkinson for the rest of us to realise that bigoted comments were also being voiced, and tolerated, within the commentary box itself. That was in 2004. Again, Atkinson denied he was a racist and called his comments an aberration.
So, many things have changed with the passage of time, but many others haven't. Now, as then, no one is racist, it seems. Not Prince Charles, who calls his friend "Sooty"; nor Prince Harry, who refers to his army chum as "Paki"; nor even Carol Thatcher, who dismissively refers to a tennis player on the TV as "golliwog". The remark was "in jest", she said. "I just happen to have the opinions of a normal person."

And I'm sure, if we asked them, the denials would come from the Spanish motor-racing fans who did their own black-up when goading Lewis Hamilton at the Formula One circuit in Barcelona; or the European football crowds which still abuse black players; or Australian singing doctors.
And in case anyone thinks that here, in the enlightened west, such attitudes and beliefs are now the preserve of a beyond-the-pale minority: what about the media, which gives out a daily dose of Muslims-as-terrorists propaganda (instead of giving the true picture, that al-Qaida is a crackpot group with a tiny number of fanatical followers and no base in the community)?

Yes, of course things have changed, and mostly for the better, since the 1970s. And I'd like to think that in another 30 years we could be looking back, for example, at today's xenophobic attitudes towards migrants with disbelief. Or in an era when "political correctness" is no longer a term of abuse against those who wish to treat minorities with respect.

But with the ongoing rise of the far right, and the infiltration of both casual and organised bigotry into the popular discourse, we might just as easily be living in a nation where the Black and White Minstrels are back in their old slot on Saturday night peak-time TV.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/11/racism-strictly-come-dancing

Too many black and Asian faces on TV, says BBC director Samir Shah

Broadcasters have overcompensated for their lack of executives from ethnic minorities by putting too many black and Asian faces on screen, a leading television industry figure said last night.

Samir Shah, a member of the BBC's board of directors, said this had led to a "world of deracinated coloured people flickering across our screens - to the irritation of many viewers and the embarrassment of the very people such actions are meant to appease".

Shah, a former BBC head of current affairs who now runs an independent production company, Juniper, as well as being a non-executive director of the corporation, used a speech to the Royal Television Society to call for current TV industry diversity policies to be ditched because they were not working.

In an echo of the speech earlier this year by comedian Lenny Henry, who bemoaned the lack of diversity in British broadcasting, Shah said UK television had to go back to the drawing board to increase the number of black and Asian executives.

Speaking to an audience of television insiders, Shah said: "The difficult truth I want you to accept is this: the equal opportunity policies we have followed over the last 30 years simply have not worked.

"Despite 30 years of trying, the upper reaches of our industry, the positions of real creative power in British broadcasting, are still controlled by a metropolitan, largely liberal, white, middle-class, cultural elite - and, until recently, largely male and largely Oxbridge.

"The fine intentions of equal opportunities - and they are fine intentions - have produced a forest of initiatives, schemes and action plans. But they have not resulted in real change.

"The result has been a growing resentment and irritation at the straitjacket on freedom such policies impose and, paradoxically, the occasionally embarrassing over-compensation in an effort to do the right thing."

Shah said that instead of dealing with the issues surrounding why greater numbers of people from ethnic minorities had not made it to the executive level of British television, broadcasters had instead put more black and Asian faces on screen, regardless of whether they were cultural fits to the programmes they were in.

"I don't think that such over-representation is a brilliant idea. Another thing that's not real is some of the casting of non-whites in fiction," he added.

He pointed to the casting of the Ferreira family in EastEnders as an example. "If you were to cast an Asian family in the East End, it should have been Bangladeshi. Instead we had a family of Goan descent," Shah said.

"The plain fact is that this tick-box approach to equal opportunities has led to an inauthentic representation of who we are: a world of deracinated coloured people flickering across our screens - to the irritation of many viewers and the embarrassment of the very people such actions are meant to appease."

Shah said the reason there were so few executives from ethnic minority backgrounds in broadcasting was not because of institutional racism, but because managers liked to "clone" themselves when picking other senior staff.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/26/bbc.television

Representation off and on screen

The representation of women on screen in gangster films is very scarce and often women play a passive role in the movie. For example, the main protagonist is male and the whole film is based around the daily events or problems faced by him trying to run the city. The typical role of women is to stay home and take care of the children, while their husband the gangster is out involved in mass crime. The women are probably aware of this, but their say will not stop the gangster from being involved in criminal activity. Therefore, patriarchal values are often portrayed in gangster films. 

After researching throughly, i found that no women directed or played a key role in the development of a gangster film. If a women did play a significant role, in making or help produce a gangster film, then i do believe their representation would be far more positive than they are currently. Saying this, there are some films where female characters act as helpers and are involved in criminal activity. For example pulp fiction. 

Critical Investigation- Theory

The theory that I will be investigating is audience theory which includes uses of gratification, the hypodermic needle, two step flows and reception theory.
From researching the hypodermic needle I found out that it suggests that the audience receive information through the media passively.

The link that can be drawn to my critical investigation is that the violence and drug dealing etc shown in gangster films could increase and promote the tendency for children to be involved in criminal activity. This could link back to the social aspect of SHEP, which demonstrates my wider knowledge of surrounding issues.

For the two-step flow theory, I can suggest that information provided by the gangster films, is passed on to opinion leaders unmediated, who then communicate it with the less active members of society. Therefore, the opinion leaders can mediate information to create their own meanings, as a result inaccurate information is passed on which creates a moral panic.

The reception theory affects the way many audiences receive the text. For example, men are more likely to respond to a gangster film, as all gangster films main protagonist is a male. Therefore they can use this as a form of identification, which links the receptions theory with uses and gratification.

Also, the older generation of audience will not really identify or cannot really relate to a younger protagonist. As a result, they will not be interested in consuming a text, which shows this.