Saturday 21 February 2015

What’s Your Preference: Tokenism Or Talent..?

The ‘Indy’ clearly favours tokenism:
The shadow minister for the arts, Chris Bryant, has criticised the “disturbing” lack of diversity in British film-making, after no black or ethnic minority performers were honoured at the Baftas. The almost total absence of black actors and directors at the top of the industry “feels like an insulting throwback to a bygone era”,
Mr Bryant wrote. “A British film without any ethnic diversity can hardly portray the full richness of modern Britain,” he said.
I suppose the fact that the films in question were mostly set in a time and place when there wasn’t so much of the ethnic diversity of ‘modern Britain’ Mr Bryant seems to love has no bearing on anything? I expect the introduction of a black Guinevere in BBC’s ‘Merlin’ was greeted with delight in the Bryant household.

The ‘Telegraph’, however, clearly favours talent:
Let’s hear it for the awkward Brits. On Sunday, two British stars scooped major entertainment awards on either side of the Atlantic, and yet, on the face of it, neither is obvious star material. Sam Smith is a plump, gay soul singer. Eddie Redmayne is a geeky, weedy, freckle-faced actor. Yet both are representatives of some distinctly British entertainment values in which talent supersedes glamour, a capacity for making a virtue of ordinary humanity that may be Britain’s greatest export strength in an over-polished, Americanised entertainment market.
And a great antidote to the ‘quota’ system clearly favoured by the likes of Bryant.
It shouldn’t really matter how you look. It’s not important how cool you are, or how cutting edge. It matters how talented you are, and how you use that talent to make people feel something.
Quite so. You might also say that it’s better to be a nation where people are not judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character…

5 comments:

Lord T said...

Isn't it funny that when you measure people on anything but the skin colour then there are clear winners among groups. No matter what it is you can analyse the colour after and see certain trends.

Just saying.

Check out :
Nobel winners (Although ignore the last decade or so where they went political)
Innovators
Self made millionaires
Murders
Countries that are hell holes

Anonymous said...

Blacks are going to have a heck of a time when people start judging them by the content of their character, instead of skin colour.

A black Annie film just flopped horribly. So did Selma, despite giving free tickets to blacks. Blacks seem not to realise that they need the whites far more than the whites need them.

I think white people generally are getting fed up of ethnics dictating terms.

Anonymous said...

What they on abaht? No one seen the greatest living actor of his day in the long running 'Premier Inn'? I refer to of course, Mr Lenny Henry

Anonymous said...

The colour of their skin??
Are you going to ban lipstick and other feminine make up?

JuliaM said...

"Isn't it funny that when you measure people on anything but the skin colour then there are clear winners among groups. "

Nature finds a way, as a wise man once said... ;)

"No one seen the greatest living actor of his day in the long running 'Premier Inn'? I refer to of course, Mr Lenny Henry"

SNORK!




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