Racism In Celebrity Big Brother

The row about racism in the cur­rent series of Celebrity Big Brother is turn­ing into a bit of a brouhaha: there have been 14,500 thou­sand com­plaints about racism and bul­ly­ing to Ofcom, plus a fur­ther 2,000 directly to Chan­nel 4, and Keith Vaz, MP has tabled an early day motion call­ing on the pro­gramme to ‘take urgent action to remind house­mates that racist behav­iour is unacceptable’.

I’m inclined to think that what we’re seeing is a mix­ture of racism, stu­pid­ity, xeno­pho­bia and class con­flict, rather than simple delib­er­ate, con­scious, out­right racism. It’s worth noting that we haven’t heard a racist peep from the racist con­tin­gent directed at Jer­maine Jack­son—he’s not per­ceived as ‘foreign’ because his accent is Amer­i­can, and the three women have felt no dis­com­fort about the class gulf between them, because, unlike Shilpa, he doesn’t treat them like uppity servants.

Ger­maine Greer nails it, I think, in today’s Guardian:

The prob­lem is that most of the house­mates are too dim to convey what a pain in the ass Shilpa is with­out appear­ing to per­se­cute her.

Not that I’m defend­ing Jade Goody, Jo S Club and the Scouse one—the latter two in par­tic­u­lar have made some pretty grisly com­ments—I just think that the issue is per­haps a little more com­plex than ‘OMG! They’re total racists!’.

Inter­est­ing, too, to com­pare this scan­dal to the first time Big Brother con­tes­tants, and the view­ing public, faced accu­sa­tions of racism. Back then, it was over Jade Goody, who is mixed race, and her ‘piggy’ nose.

Update, the next day:

Last night’s episode made great viewing.

Chan­nel Four and Ende­mol cov­ered their backs by includ­ing a seg­ment in which Danielle What­sit was con­fronted in the diary room about her opin­ion that Shilpa should ‘go back home’. Bizarrely, she seemed unaware that she’d been caught making a stock racist state­ment, instead dwelling on the uncon­scionable awful­ness of sug­gest­ing that some­one should leave the Big Brother house.

Jade’s spat with Shilpa was pretty ugly, but in the after­math, it was clear that Jade couldn’t give a toss that her neme­sis is Indian, homing in on the fact that Shilpa had said she needed elo­cu­tion lessons, and that she looks down on her for being work­ing class, and acci­den­tally rather than deservedly famous. Jade also, with unusual elo­quence, sug­gested that Shilpa should con­sider the posi­tion of her fan­base before she turns on people for being poor (for­merly, in Jade’s case) and une­d­u­cated. Jo S Club’s ‘[Shilpa] can’t even speak Eng­lish herself’ remark did rather make me wonder, though.

So, where does that leave us? Danielle What­sit is a dim bulb, and a nasty little play­ground bitch, but unaware of how her com­ments will be per­ceived; Jade Goody is not nearly as thick as she appears, realises that a pro­longed bout of bel­low­ing will net her screen­time, and has, under­stand­ably, a hefty chip on her shoul­der about mock­ery from snooty, edu­cated, middle-​class people for her lack of edu­ca­tion and, to quote Shilpa, ‘gutter’ ways. When it comes to the last, and least, member of the coven, I’m inclined to think that Jo S Club is just a racist little gobshite.

Posted at 1pm on 17/01/07 by Jack Mottram to the news, politics category.
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