Thursday 11 July 2013

If you're allergic to black people...

This post isn't so much about media representations as the ongoing consequences of negative representations of race. Many today will argue that we no longer live in a racist society; Britain has moved on. There may be some truth in that, but clearly the UK hasn't become an utterly idyllic society, as the following example sharply demonstrates - one taken from a West Yorkshire town...

'If you are allergic to black people, don't come in' – at first I balked …

Cafe owner Martha-Renee Kolleh's defiant response to insidious racism is preferable to constantly doubting your own experience
Martha-Renee Kolleh cafe owner
Martha-Renee Kolleh, who owns a cafe in the town of Ossett, Yorkshire, has put up a sign telling customers she is black because she is fed up with people walking out when they see the colour of her skin. Photograph: Gabriel Szabo/Guzelian
Increasingly in today's Britain, the word racism conjures up two very differing images for white and black people (I use black here in the political sense). When I explain to white friends that certain things that I have had said or done to me are racist, it is more often that not met with incredulity. How can that be racist?

Thursday 9 May 2013

House of Saddam

This makes for an interesting clip to tackle - its British produced (actually a BBC/HBO co-production) and with a largely British cast, but set in Iraq, so taking the questions of ethnicity to some degree beyond British expectations and stereotypes. Nonetheless, its those British stereotypes and conventions we're using as a framework for reference.
What are the binaries present here? What stereo/countertypes are at play? Is there a clear sense of some character/s as "the other"? Is there any sense of a journey; of character development - moving further towards or away from narrow stereotypical roles/expectations?
The embed below features Arabic subtitles not present on the BBC transmission.
The clip we're addressing runs from 2:58:13 to 3:03:11.

Note details such as the use of angles and shot variation to strongly signify (anchor) the moving, fluid power relations at play.