Hello my lovelies!
Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water, I’m back with another panto blog. My apologies for keeping you waiting. I’ve reached the point in my research where I’ve collected my data, built my models, produced my pantomimes and am in the process of writing it up... OH DEAR GOD, there is so much writing up!
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| Pied Piper of Hamelin A play wot I writ ’n’ directed this season. Too late, you missed it! |
However, as there are times as an academic studying identity in entertainment, that life throws you something so wonderfully thought provoking, you have to put down your literature review and blog about it.
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| Official logo: Barnsley Amateur Formica Tabletop Assemblers |
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from hours of interviewing professional panto makers about how our industry needs to change, it’s that there are almost as many opinions out there as there are people to hold them. Is Aladdin offensive? Should you cast dwarfs in Snow White? Can you have a man playing dame anymore? Trying to work out exactly what is offensive, or even who gets to be offended by it is (literally in my case) a full time job.
However, even in amongst these diverse opinions, there was one thing on which we could all surely agree. A bedrock, if you will, of ethical consensus. That is: if someone shouts the N-word at two black celebrities, live(ish) on the BBC, we all get to be offended.
SURELY WE CAN ALL AGREE ON THAT?
CAN’T WE?
CAN’T WE?!!!
No. We can’t. Let me explain.
THE BAFTA AFFAIR
| One of these men has Tourette’s and two are from the global majority. Can you guess who’s who? |
For anyone who’s been living in a cave for the past fortnight, you may want to be sitting down when you read this.
On Feb 22nd, in the Royal Festival Hall, London, John Davidson sat in the audience at the BAFTA Film Awards. He had every reason to be there. He was an executive producer on I Swear, a Bafta-nominated film about his own life with Tourette's syndrome.
The audience had been briefed. They knew he might tic. They had consented to share a room with him. What the audience had not consented to, and what Davidson could not control, was a microphone.
As Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo took the stage, Davidson's Tourette's produced a racial slur... a bad one... THE bad one (depending on who you ask)... considering Jordon and Lindo are both black, arguably the WORST one.
Not ginger!
(… an anagram of.)
In the room, it was heard, contextualised, and absorbed. The audience had been prepared. The room held it.
The BBC had not been prepared. The BBC did not hold it…
In fact, despite having two hours to edit it out, the BBC broadcast it into the front rooms of SEVERAL MILLION PEOPLE!
- Jamie Foxx called it unacceptable on Instagram.
- Production designer Hannah Beachler revealed it had happened to her personally, on the way to dinner after the show.
- Labour MP Dawn Butler wrote to the BBC demanding an urgent explanation.
- Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy called it "completely unacceptable and harmful.”
- The BBC apologised.
- The BBC apologised again.
- BAFTA launched a review.
- The BBC's Executive Complaints Unit was fast-tracked.
In the comment sections, the old arguments resurfaced with new ammunition.
💬 "He must be able to stop himself.”
💬 "He must be racist, otherwise he wouldn't even be thinking of that word.”
Film director Kirk Jones didn't sleep for two nights.
"It just suddenly felt," he said, "like I'd gone back 20 years.”
The film about what it means to live with Tourette's had just become a test case for something much larger. And everybody, it seemed, had something to say about it.
But WHO were we supposed to listen to?
Positioning
In my modelling, I’ve built upon the work of Rom Harré, a man who (amongst other things) has inspired me to learn the keyboard shortcut for é.
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| Rom Harré: Acclaimed philosopher and runner-up Pontin's saddest clown 2004 |
Harré argues that all of us, all the time, make sense of the world through narrative. In essence we are all our own story tellers, but exactly what story we’re telling (and who gets to tell it) are socially negotiated.
There’s a big difference in writing an autobiography and appearing as a character in somebody else’s. The word Harré uses for who gets to decide who’s who is “positioning”. If you’re in the driving seat, you have position. If someone else comes along and establishes position over you, you may find you’re suddenly just along for the ride.
Harré (and a whole bunch of theorists who come after him) identify all kinds of mechanisms and factors by which position is socially negotiated in practice – but one which I think is particularly interesting in this case is scale.
You see, when a story unfolds, it may do so simultaneously over a number of scales, from private and interpersonal all the way up to national and beyond! Someone who might have position right here, right now, amongst these people, may find themselves out of position as the story scale shifts to another forum.
A black performer with a great deal to say about racism in entertainment, may suddenly find themselves out of position if the conversation becomes one about how society accommodates people with disabilities.
Pantomime
“Theory’s all very nice and everything,” I hear you silently asking, "but what in Widow Twankey’s laundromat has any of this got to do with pantomime?”
Well, it turns out, quite a lot. According to my reckoning, in most of the “panto-crises” I’ve analysed, exactly the same dynamics are at play: positioning, social negotiation, scale shift. (Huge teaser alert for my upcoming published analysis!)
It may be the case that who gets to be offended by what is less about who they are, and more about at the scale at which the conversation ends up occurring… and this is something the industry has an awful lot of control over.
I’ll leave you with that thought for a moment. If it does spark any interesting ideas, let me know quick so I can get it into my PhD!
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| A tittilating blast from the past |
