Saturday - March 26, 2011

Letters From Littleton

Long running and “world renowned” television series [Never heard of it myself before reading the newspaper clipping Peiper mailed me] has only featured white actors for 14+ years. When asked, the show’s creator said it “wouldn’t be English” if they brought in non-Caucasians. Naturally, he got suspended for that, and now a big internal investigation is underway. I’m taking bets: future episodes will have more diversity than a “We Are The World” sing-along, and the show will be down the crapper inside a season.

For 14 years, it has found a plethora of ways to kill off unfortunate villagers while remaining remarkably unchanged in one regard: the absence of non-white faces. Now the creator of ITV1’s Midsomer Murders has landed himself in hot water after claiming that one of the reasons the drama series has been so successful is because it is entirely free of ethnic minorities.

Brian True-May said the show was “the last bastion of Englishness” and if its cultural make-up changed “it wouldn’t be the English village”.

His comments, to Radio Times, appalled ITV bosses and he was promptly suspended by All3Media, the media conglomerate that includes Mr True-May’s company, Bentley Productions.

Mr True-May gave the interview to promote the 14th series of the cosy Sunday night drama, which regularly pulls in six million viewers and has been sold around the world.

“We are a cosmopolitan society in this country, but if you watch Midsomer you wouldn’t think so. I’ve never been picked up on that, [huh? what does that mean - no one ever asked?] but quite honestly I wouldnt’ want to change it.: he said.

Asked what he meant by “cosmopolitan”, Mr. True-May, 65, replied: “Well, we just don’t have ethnic minorities involvd. Because it wouldn’t be the English village with them. It just wouldn’t work.”

“Suddenly we might be in Slough. Ironically, Causton (the town in Midsomer Murders) is supposed to be Slough. And if you went to Slough, you wouldn’t see a white face there. We’re the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way.

Slough is one of my favorite words because it can be said in three or four different ways and has half a dozen completely different meanings, from the stagnant water in a prairie sink hole to a muddy bog to the act of an old scab sliding off of a wound. By any definition “slough” is rather a dark word, certainly not a light and happy one like “rainbow”, “dolphin”, or “popcorn”. In this case Slough is a town, an industrial center just west of London proper, situated at the end of the runway at Heathrow and half a mile north of Windsor Castle. I think they say it as “slow”, another word with it’s own secondary meaning and dark aspect. East of Maidenhead, north of Runnymede, alongside places with eye-rollingly wonderful English names like Stoke Poges, Wexham Court, and Rowley Wood, you’d think Slough ought to be the absolute Mecca of white people on the planet.  Ought! Alas, aught. Mecca no longer. I gather the town has no “light” aspect to it at all these days, whether the people there are happy or not.

Mr. True-May added: “When I talk to people and other nations ... they love the premise of the show. They love the perceived English genteel eccentricity. It’s not British. It’s very English.” He conceded that many people would consider that “Englishness” in the 21st century should encompass other races. “Well, it should do, and maybe I’m not politically correct” he said, “I’m trying to make something that appeals to a certain audience, which seems to succed. And I don’t want to change it.”

And of course after such comment comes the predictable “We’re all appalled. Simply appalled!” reaction by the TV station management. But the real truth is out there somewhere, if you take off your Willful Blinders™ and open your eyes and your mind. The Independent’s resident stodgy white guy Matthew Norman (tie AND vest in his picture, no neck) probably put his own career on the line to opine:

Implanting a black face in Midsomer would be tokenism

The fact is that between town and country there is a colossal disconnect - two Englands unbridged by suburbia and divided by a common language.

A candidate to become the 252nd fatality in the fictional county of Midsomer’s 15-year life span emerged yesterday, although whether by unwitting suicide or capital punishment is debatable. Brian True-May hasn’t been hanged yet, but the co-creator and executive producer of ITV’s Midsomer Murders has been suspended by his production company, pending one of those top-level internal inquiries beloved of media outlets, over remarks concerning the ethnic make-up of his series.
...
This is not to suggest that Mr True-May, any more than the portly Plato of the putting green, is a racist. That accusation depends not on his looks but the words, as confided to the Radio Times, which have “shocked and appalled” ITV management. Referring to the enduring global popularity of Midsomer Murders, Mr True-May sourced it, in part at least, to an “English genteel eccentricity” that would be compromised by the presence in rural villages of dark-skinned people. “We just don’t have ethnic minorities involved,” he explained. “Because it wouldn’t be the English village with them. It just wouldn’t work. Suddenly we might be in Slough.”
...
Yet also buried beneath the complacent nostalgism lies the inconvenient truth that he is correct. You are more likely to come across a sex club in an English rural village than an Afro-Caribbean or Asian face. I speak on this with unwonted authority. In the tiny Dorset village where we rent a weekend cottage, we have had a swingers’ club (the sadly defunct Cleopatra’s) but never a non-Caucasian fizzog. ["fizzog"? WTH? Izzat a wog with frizzy hair, ie a black person? {no Drew, it’s UK slang for somebody’s face. Physiognomy} (Oh. Otay den.) {Wut??}]

Whenever I make the drive from west London, it strikes me afresh as a journey as much through time as through space. Here in the crack- dealing tourist centre of Shepherds Bush, early 21st-century multiculturalism seems to work beautifully, whatever David Cameron, a huge Midsomer fan, may think to the contrary. If our road tends towards the lively, that is thanks to the generally white occupants of the two bail hostels opposite. Within 20 doors either side of us are Somalis, Poles, Croats, Bengalis, Lebanese, Jamaicans and doubtless another 20 nationalities. You can walk a mile along the Uxbridge road, that corner of a native land that will forever be Damascus, without seeing an indigenous white face (apart from the bail hostel boys and girls, out and about and up to no good), which is one of the area’s few charms. In 14 years we’ve not come across a scintilla of racial tension.
...
In our village, somewhere between Yeovil and Dorchester, in ethnic terms it clearly is the 1950s. In three years, the darkest face I’ve encountered is my own shtetl-swarthy Ukrainain Jewish one. In the early days I was a little fearful, what with the roof being thatched, and brought perhaps more fire extinguishers than were strictly demanded. There hasn’t been a single pogrom yet.

If a black or Asian family moved in, I imagine they would receive nothing but the welcoming warmth shown to us, albeit possibly tinged with rather more curiosity. About ten years ago, in a village shop in west Devon, my wife overheard a chat in the village shop between two elderly ladies who had heard on the grapevine that a black person had been sighted 25 miles away. It wasn’t remotely nasty. The old girls were simply fascinated, as they would have been by reports of a cheetah loose in Plymouth, by the exoticism of it all.

The fact is that between town and country, there is a colossal disconnection. As anyone who flits between them cannot fail to appreciate, there are two Englands, unbridged by suburbia and divided by a common language. Painting Mr True-May as a fictional ethnic cleanser because he portrays the villages of Berkshire, or Midsomer, as all white is no more than those who love to hunt out offence where none is meant indulging their hobby.

Great Googled Gollywogs! You mean that True-May may be right, and that folks oughtn’t go all Mau-Mau on him? That’s reason to behead him right there!

OTOH, the same online paper immediately ran out to Causton and found that the real town was at least somewhat properly diverse.

But the facts on the ground belie his vision. For one thing, is the last bastion of Englishness seriously not going to have a curry house?

“More than 100 people are from ethnic groups in Wallingford,” said Mr Rahman, a Bangladeshi who came to here in 2006. “It is a nice place to live,” he added.
...
None of the town’s restauranteurs have seen the show.

“When it is on, we are working,” pointed out Abdul Choudhury from the Wallingford Tandoori, a sentiment echoed elsewhere. [ the town eateries are “the nearby Wallingford Tandoori, ... the Turkish kebab shop, the two Chinese restaurants and the Portuguese family who run the chippy.”

Which misses the point on purpose. Blinders off, m’kay? When they film in Causton-pretending-to-be-Slough they’re filming a real town in a pretend way, portraying it along the classic English Village stereotype, fo’ shizzle my nizzle, and that means nuttin’ but White Folks. I bet the camera fill-in shots feature lots of old white guys with dried apple faces wearing funny little hats and wearing heavy tweed jackets that look like they smell of mothballs. The jackets too. The current Ethnic Line may be out past Causton at this point, but Mr. Norman argues that lands beyond the line do exist. And such remarks are beyond the pale, which is a phrase - and a punishment - Mr. Norman must be ironically familiar with.

On the third hand (OTTH), motivation for murder on this show is often rather perverse. Maybe the producers are avoiding the charge of using the old tar brush on them thar ethnics?

The producers operate a strict moral code. Hidden vices provide the opportunity for blackmail and a motive for bumping people off. Simple adultery is too suburban so it must be spiced up with incest and illicit lesbianism. S&M is also practised behind those generous drives. Drug addiction is acceptable, usually practiced by spoilt little rich girls. Midsomer has also fought off an outbreak of witchcraft, sorcery and pagan rituals.

Oh yeah, that’s what they’re doing alright, and for their own protection most likely. They’d be immediately burned at the stake if they featured any Africans doing pagan rituals and witchcraft. That never happens at all. Anywhere. Ever! Except when other Africans go on a murder spree and chop up all their pagans and witches, which happens in every sub-Saharan country in Africa and has been reason for several murders in Europe done by African immigrants. Which is only just, because those pagan witches were out there doing human sacrifices to bring good luck to taxi drivers. Nope, like portraying an actual Middle Eastern terrorist on the NCIS TV show after Season One, such things simply do not happen. It’s like islamic incest and homosexuality. It. Does. Not. Exist. But white people, especially rich ones, can be guilty of anything. Including being white, which is their worst crime. So expect this show to go PC and then to get canceled when the intolerant ethnics erupt after seeing their own portrayed as pervy murderers. Every week for 14+ years. Gosh, that’s stereotyping, that is.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/26/2011 at 02:15 PM   
Filed Under: • Politically-Incorrect • Racism and race relations • UK •  
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