Module: HST4605 Race and the Desire for Difference
By Cristina Mascia
On account of the rising population of immigrants throughout the 20th century, there was a credible fear from white Britons that they would begin to challenge their cultural norms. With contradictory views on what to do and how to feel about these new members of society, television and popular culture played a pivotal role in providing people with ideas to both embrace and reject such groups. The airing of these television shows is important when relating to social context and the immigrants that had arrived in Britain. Looking closely at television shows, sitcoms like Till Death Do Us Part and Love Thy Neighbour were controversial as while some deemed their contents inappropriate, others accepted the shows as the comedic forms of medias they were intended to be. By including racial comments in the shows, some believed the writers were justifying and promoting a similar use of racism in society. Similarly, the prevalence of crude racial images in music and theatre in Britain further encouraged their use in wider society. There were some responsive social movements that used music to try to bridge the gap between the 'Whites and the Other' in Britain, and thus challenge the falsely negative ideas of race that were present in Britain in the 20th century. The wide distribution and access of various forms of popular culture throughout the century undeniably led such media to influence ideas of race in Britain; both forming and challenging these racial concepts. However, one should not neglect the idea that these concepts of race were already present in society, and popular culture merely displayed them in a more public way.
The influx of immigration in 20th century Britain lead to mixed attitudes towards the newly arrived citizens. In Darrell Newton’s article entitled Shifting Sentiment, he depicts the utilisation and appropriate timing by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) when airing programmes about race and immigration. Newton praises the BBC on their timely production of such programmes as they came at a time when ‘Britons were concerned about the impact these settlers would have upon notions of national identity’.[1] By acknowledging the contemporary issues of the time, these programmes did well to elaborate upon current matters, while simultaneously calming the public fears of such issues. In this way, the broadcasting companies clearly played a vital role in forming potentially positive concepts of race in Britain in the 20th century.
When focusing on television shows, specifically sitcoms, their crude contents caused controversy; debating whether the comedy that they included was harmless, or seriously offensive. In Representing Black Britain, Sarita Malik promotes the use of satire as being central to ‘a healthy democracy – … [diffusing] social tension and [functioning] as a harmless catharsis’.[1] By accepting the potentially offensive nature of such television genres, Malik confirms that there is no intended attack by these programmes, and therefore the contents should not be taken seriously. However, Malik goes on to explain how ‘race’ is a more serious topic. When comedies were about race, they were often actually about ‘Blacks signifying trouble’ and thus ‘if white characters did display prejudice, this was deemed as funny or understandable given the ‘difficulty of the situation’’.[2] Therefore, for less controversial topics, satires seem more appropriate forms of media used to entertain; however, when a topic that can lead to prejudice and discrimination is discussed, even in a light-hearted manner, issues can arise. Malik does not condemn the use of satires completely, but in the context of race, she implies that a factual representation of all races should be presented. In this way, television had created justified prejudice against Black people in response to their negative depiction in television.
In complete contrast to this, David Christopher describes in his book British Culture: An Introduction that later in the half of the 20th century, programmes that depicted different cultures became more typical and popular, and how, ‘at the same time, [such programmes] also became acceptable materials for satire’.[4] While the threat that immigrants posed became less, comedic and mocking representations clearly became more acceptable, as they were less likely to lead to discrimination. Therefore, as attitudes towards race evolved, the influence of the media was less – the depiction of other races played a smaller role in social opinions.
The role that the media played in forming concepts of race is reiterated by Stuart Hall in his article The Whites of Their Eyes. Hall explains that the media is ‘not only a powerful source of ideas about race’, but a space where concepts are ‘articulated, worked on, transformed and elaborated’.[5] Viewers were constantly bombarded with programmes about race, thus inevitably keeping such issues at the forefront of public minds. The issue with this however is that people would have been greatly influenced by and believed the opinions and representations shown to them in the media, and when they were negative towards a certain group, they led to discrimination. Sarita Malik explained that in the 1970s and 1980s, stereotypes were becoming central to representations of race, and they were ‘criticised for being crude simplifications that select, reduce and essentialize the definition of a type of person … fixing the difference of the original ‘type’’.[6] Such representations placed emphasis on the negative elements and made false generalisations. Such depictions were prevalent in the media, and as Hall explained, this is where concepts of race evolved. Therefore, the impact of media on concepts of race, explicitly in forming and reinforcing negative ones, was great.
Johnny Speight’s television sitcom Till Death Do Us Part (1965-1975) followed a white working-class man, Alf Garnett, who frequently projected his racist and prejudice views. Airing at a time when there was much social anxiety about the influx of immigration, Till Death played an important role in shaping public attitudes towards the new citizens. John Twitchin highlights in The Black and White Media Book that, while Speight planned to ‘ridicule the bigotry’ expressed by Alf Garnett in the show, the programme did not have this effect, and in fact the ‘airing of Alf Garnett’s prejudices gave them a real legitimacy’.[7] In making these ideas so public, Speight unintentionally normalised the racist views held by Garnett, making them more accepted. Sarita Malik supports this concept when she explains that, to the public, Alf’s views ‘inevitably appeared logical … and validated their racist opinion’.[8] As such, Speight’s sitcom clearly encouraged racism to flourish in British society, while simultaneously desensitising viewers to racism. In this way, the media played a key role in the acceptance of racism and the normalisation of it within society.
Love Thy Neighbour, a similarly popular television sitcom of the 1970s, also dealt with racial issues, depicting a couple of white and black next-door neighbours and their interactions with each other. This show however also encouraged the use of racist language within society. John Twitchin explained that, due to the great dependence that children placed upon television and reading materials, these shows were ingraining racist views into children from a young age. A headteacher in Scotland confirmed that ‘children in his school had made a coloured worker’s life a misery, calling him names like ‘c**n’ and ‘sambo’, having picked them up from the programme Love Thy Neighbour’.[9] This strengthens the belief that popular culture of the time was having an influence upon public attitudes of race. By displaying racism, these shows were allowing such behaviour to occur in society, and thus were reinstating racism within 20th century Britain. However, total responsibility for negative social attitudes towards foreigners cannot be put down to the airing and publicising of them through televisions sitcom. Regarding Till Death, Milton Shulman wrote in the London Evening Standard in 1968 that, although few possessed all of the prejudices that Garnett illustrated, ‘it is only the saint … who does not share at least one’.[10] Here, Shulman accepts that while Speight’s show did hold some striking views, he only reflected those already prevalent in the mind of British people.
Similarly, Johnny Speight himself argued that he ‘never created Alf Garnett, society created him. He’s a lout; a loutish, ignorant, raucous pea-brain … politically correct people can’t see the joke’.[11] In saying this, Speight implies that by understanding the satire in his show, it proves that British people held equally racist opinions, and all Speight did was display these views in a light-hearted manner. Therefore, when recalling Till Death from a retrospective lens, it seems like publicising negative racial attitude through the show helped form similar ideas in society. However, contemporaries at the time argue that these ideas were already present, and the show just publicised them. Thus, perhaps television in 20th century Britain did not form new ideas of race, but in fact echoed the views already held by Britons.
The television industry was not the only one that had an influence upon the ever-changing concepts of race within British society in the 20th century. Michael Pickering, in Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain, corroborates that popular music and theatre at the time similarly led to ‘‘high’ imperialist racism’.[12] When looking specifically at the ‘c**n’ song – a genre of music containing racial stereotypes of Black people – Pickering found that the ‘popularity of the ‘c**n’ craze in Britain coincided with the period of ‘high’ imperialism’.[13] The popularisation and acceptance of such music meant that these attitudes were mirrored in society, once again, giving them justification. In his article Anti-Black Racism in British Popular Music, John Mullen explains that the use of the ‘c**n’ song diminishing in the 20th century and was replaced by the ‘Dixie song’ which was a new genre often presented by actors in blackface, and was equally racially crude.[14] The influence of such music on society clearly helped in forming negative racial concepts, reinforced the threat that foreigners placed upon British culture, and thus reinstated strong ideas of racial imperialism.
In response to such high-profile racial music, a social and political movement emerged in the latter half of the 20th century: Rock Against Racism (RAR). In order to combat rising racism within society, equally popular music needed to emerge to challenge the false ideas of race that were forming – Ian Goodyer does well to explain the movement in his book The Cultural Politics of Rock Against Racism. RAR attempted to bring White and Black people together through the utilisation of their equivalent music genres; ‘punk (being almost entirely ‘white’) and reggae (being almost entirely ‘black’) became emblematic of the racial solidarity promoted by RAR’ as these genres ‘explored issues such as personal and group identity, alienation, oppression and exploitation’.[15] Through this movement, music was being produced that not only promoted racial harmony, but also publicised the issues of discrimination facing Blacks in Britain. As such, the music industry made some effort to combat prevailing concepts of race that had emerged in the 20th century Britain.
It is therefore evident in some cases that television and popular culture in 20th century Britain helped form and promote negative ideas of race. The airing of sitcoms like Till Death Do Us Part and Love Thy Neighbour legitimised these crude concepts. While some acknowledge that the views displayed in the sitcoms were already present in society, others used the shows to form and strengthen their own prejudices against Black people. Equally, the evolution of racially offensive songs genres played a similar role in justifying racial prejudices. The social movement of Rock Against Racism made great effort to elicit change by promoting racial unity and exposing the discrimination occurring. However, once again, it should be recognised that the racial prejudices being opposed by such movements were already present in the minds of British society, and the publicising of such beliefs simply validated them by granting real-life legitimacy. As such, while there were some notable attempts made to challenge negative ideas of race, there was a greater effort by television and popular culture to form and strengthen negative ideas of race and prejudice in 20th century Britain.
Footnotes
[1] Darrell Newton, ‘Shifting Sentiments: BBC Television, West Indian Immigrants and Cultural Production’, in Re-viewing Television History: Critical Issues in Television History, ed. Helen Wheatley (New York: I.B.Tauris, 2007), pp. 113-114. [2] Sarita Malik, Representing Black Britain: Black and Asia Images on Television (London: Sage, 2002), p.91. [3] Ibid, p. 97. [4] David Christopher, British Culture: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 186. [5] Stuart Hall, ‘The Whites of Their Eyes’, in Gender, Race and Class in Media, eds. Gale Dines and Jean Humez (London: Sage, 1995), p. 20. [6] Sarita Malik, Representing Black Britain, p. 28. [7] John Twitchin (ed.), The Black and White Media Book (London: Trentham Books, 1992), p. 89. [8] Sarita Malik, Representing Black Britain, p. 93. [9] John Twitchin (ed.), The Black and White Media Book, p. 124. [10] Milton Shulman, London Evening Standard, 21 February 1968, in The Colour Black: Black Images in British Television, eds. Therese Daniels and Jane Gerson (London: BFI Publishing, 1990), p. 24.
[11] Johnny Speight quoted in Sarita Malik, Representing Black Britain, p. 93. [12] Michael Pickering, Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 162. [13] Ibid, p. 162. [14] John Mullen, ‘Anti-Black Racism in British Popular Music (1880-1920)’, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, 17:2 (2012), pp. 61-80. [15] Ian Goodyer, Crisis Music: The Cultural Politics of Rock Against Racism (Manchester University Press, 2009), p. 84.; Ibid, p. 85.
Bibliography
Christopher, David, British Culture: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999).
Daniels, Therese and Gerson, Jane (eds.), The Colour Black: Black Images in British Television (London: BFI Publishing, 1990).
Ian Goodyer, Crisis Music: The Cultural Politics of Rock Against Racism (Manchester University Press, 2009).
Hall, Stuart, ‘The Whites of Their Eyes’, in Gender, Race and Class in Media, eds. Gale Dines and Jean Humez (London: Sage, 1995).
Malik, Sarita, Representing Black Britain: Black and Asia Images on Television (London: Sage, 2002).
Mullen, John, ‘Anti-Black Racism in British Popular Music (1880-1920)’, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, 17:2 (2012), pp. 61-80.
Newton, Darrell, ‘Shifting Sentiments: BBC Television, West Indian Immigrants and Cultural Production’, in Re-viewing Television History: Critical Issues in Television History, ed. Helen Wheatley (New York: I.B.Tauris, 2007).
Pickering, Michael, Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain (London: Routledge, 2008).
Twitchin, John (ed.), The Black and White Media Book (London: Trentham Books, 1992).