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Incognito
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Posted: Tuesday August 15th, 2006 20:08 |
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| Anyone else read todays Evening Standard?
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conscious sistah
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Posted: Tuesday August 15th, 2006 21:57 |
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can you post a link, or give a summary please.
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Prince Hakeem
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Posted: Tuesday August 15th, 2006 23:18 |
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I made a brief summary here:
http://www.ligali.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=1799&st=40
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Incognito
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Posted: Wednesday August 16th, 2006 20:37 |
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Damn!! I was hoping someone else would type it up and post it
I know Ligali had a say a while back now (checkout http://www.ligali.org) but my initial opinion is I remember the last time something like this came along, we all voiced our anger and wrote letters of protest but how much did we really achieve in denying stuff like this the unbalanced air time it gets…nothing!, because as the author says, the problem is with the black community and one of the biggest problems is the BBC can always rely on ambitious negro’s looking for career launch pads!
Ok, here goes!!
A controversial new TV drama, shoot the Messenger, has provoked accusations of racism because of its negative portrayal of black people. It’s just the reaction she expected, says writer Sharon Foster.
Veronica Lee
Her new drama for BBC2, Shoot the Messenger has been labelled “�the most racist programme in [the Corporation’s] history��, and writer Sharon Foster is relishing it.
The angry criticisms erupted after an industry screening last month, when Ligali, a monitoring group for racial equality, also called the film �perfect BNP propaganda�. Others were only slightly more restrained, describing it as “unremittingly negative� and “demeaning� to black people.
What has upset everyone so much is Foster’s main character, a black schoolteacher played by David Oyelowo, whose opening line is, “Whenever I think about it, everything bad that has ever happened to me has involved a black person.
Joe Pascale is a priggish young teacher who is determined to save the black boys at his school from a life of gangs, crime and underachievement – whether they like it or not. But when one of the boys falsely accuses him of assault, Joe descends into a paranoid depression and his life hits rock bottom. He makes a series of self-hating statements, such as “I hate being black�, “what is it with black people….� and, most shocking, “F*** black people�.
Foster, a neat, petite 41 year old, is forthright and talkative. Far from being on the defensive, she welcomes the controversy that Shoot the Messenger has caused.
“As a black community we are constantly having these conversations about why we are not doing well, why other communities come in and they do better. But normally these discussions stay within the community, and I want to broaden the debate,� she says, firmly. “The challenge for me was how I could take an issue – what I consider to be the propensity for black people to blame everybody but ourselves – and turn it into a story.
The 90 minute drama is beautifully written, performed and directed, funny and discomfiting by turns, but hard-hitting throughout. Foster’s screenplay has already won the prestigious Dennis Potter award and is nominated for the Michael Powell award at the Edinburgh Television Festival later this month.
“No one can say I am a liar,“ Foster continues. “They can say I shouldn’t have written it, that I shouldn’t have aired our dirty laundry in public, but they cannot say that it’s not true. I obviously wanted Joe to be as extreme as possible, and that’s where madness helps you as a writer – I could go over the edge, where he would be lost in an abyss of his own making�.
“My anger is that we constantly blame others. Nobody can deny that slavery existed, that somebody did us a great wrong for a long time, that racism and prejudice still exist. But we have a choice as to how we deal with those things, and how we move on from the trauma.
“I think we have taken on other people’s hatred as our own. The most depressing thing for me at screenings is that the biggest laugh comes when the mother figure says: ‘Black people too t’ief [they are not to be trusted].’ Now, as a writer, that’s validation because they recognise it, but as a black person, it tells me that we are inculcating our youth with that nonsense; we are being fed this stuff with our mothers’ milk. Let’s forget about where this negativity originated, and accept we are now the originators.
“When a black woman puts extensions in her five-year-old’s hair, I have a problem with that. I say, what are you doing to that child’s self-image?
“There’s this weird thing of internal racism, where West Indians feel superior to Africans, or where paler skin is considered better than dark, which is about empowering yourself through disempowering others.�
While Foster talks passionately about serious issues affecting black people, she punctuates our conversation with belts of laughter. She is a warm and open person, and talks with great affection about her mother, who died a few years ago. She inspired one of the Shoot the Messenger characters, whose Christian faith dictates she must rescue Joe from a life on the streets, and those scenes provide the film’s light relief.
Fosters mother was a Seventh-Day Adventist – “Or she was mostly. She went from church to church and then she’d start her own, where my family would sit in a room and form half the congregation.�
Foster, who is single and has no children, was brought up in Hackney (where she still lives), one of eight parents of her Jamaican parents (her father was a disabled factory worker, her mother a seamstress). She graduated in Communications and Media from Bournemouth University and went on to take a director’s course at City Lit. But she has been a writer for most of her adult life. She scripted three episodes of the BBC2 series Baby-father, in 2002, which also attracted criticism for what some said was a negative portrayal of modern Black Britons. She has written for the Channel 4 sketch show Get Up Stand Up, and directed a short film, Home Sweet Home (2004), but Messenger is her first major TV film.
ALTHOUGH her main characters are male, Foster is anxious that she is not seen to be blaming black men over women in Shoot the Messenger.
“No, no, not at all,� she reiterates. “It’s just the black community is still very patriarchal and I felt that black men would have found it very difficult to hear a woman constantly berating their culture�.
But why, I wonder, did she choose not to address the tensions between those of West Indian descent and more recent African immigrants? “Oh, that’s a whole other issue,� she says. “I had enough to deal with in this.�
“The BBC insisted that Foster’s original title – F*** Black People – was changed, but she says they did not ask her to tone down the script. “If anything they made me braver,� she says. “They suggested I was holding back in the first draft and they were right. I rewrote it, and it was more authentic.�
But the BBC will undoubtedly come under fire for broadcasting the film. While the Corporation has been fairly criticised for it’s lack of black and Asian representation both on screen and behind the scenes, some will be disappointed that a major work by a black British writer will attract such controversy. Is it a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t?
“Of course the BBC should encourage more black writers,� Foster responds, “but the BBC is not the problem. My problems come from within my own community. Babyfather was not negative, but my community still to this day criticises it.
“I can guarantee the only coverage we’ll get in the black media [about Messenger] will be negative about what we’ve done, rather than using the opportunity to take the debate further.�
And what is Foster’s contribution to the debate? “I’m saying we need a different strategy in our community, because the one we have at the moment is not working. We finally have to talk about the bloody great elephant in the room.�
Whether it’s the right people or not, Shoot the Messenger will at least get some people talking about that elephant. After that, Foster has to move on to other “projects in the pipeline�, also dealing, she says, with black issues – “And I suppose that’ll upset people, too.�
Shoot The Messenger is on BBC2, at 9pm on 30 August.
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Amin
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Posted: Wednesday August 16th, 2006 20:58 |
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| Wenting to a screening and Q+ A on this film. Very controversial but I think people need to watch it and make up their own mind, it will spark debate on a lot of levels.
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Prince Hakeem
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Posted: Wednesday August 16th, 2006 21:09 |
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| I sent Ligali a hard copy earlier today so I'm sure they'll run an article on this soon.
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Backatya
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Posted: Thursday August 17th, 2006 12:19 |
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Amin wrote: Wenting to a screening and Q+ A on this film. Very controversial but I think people need to watch it and make up their own mind, it will spark debate on a lot of levels.
Actually, I pass. No desire to watch it whatsoever or to even bother commenting on Ms Foster. She is doing her 'thing' to make money and carve out her living.....so be it. Slagging her off would have about as much affect on what she does as slagging off drug dealers has on what they do. Let her stay. The day will come when the truth of her 'convictions' will be revealed to her. Me? I am not going to sweat it.......too much crap to deal with to survive in this place, as it is.
Complaining to the BBC? Well I know from experience how effective that is in furthering our 'cause'.
INDIFFERENCE? Yeah you can call it that.
Respect
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