This week we were introduced to the latest Channel 4 finger-in-the-eye of p.c. Britain - The much anticipated Jewish Mum of the Year Award. Along with many other Jewish twenty somethings, I sat and fumed at the screen, and struggled to keep down my dinner each time ‘yummy mummy Emma, from Radlett’ spouted something about how her role in life was to uphold and continue 3000 years of human tradition. God help us.
Like many others I turned to Twitter and vented my fury at Channel 4, reminding everyone that this was unrepresentative, mass-broadcast stereotyping. Bravo Channel 4, I clapped, yet again your ‘minocumentary’ has achieved all the subtlety and insight of a Little Miss America beauty pageant. Jewish mums are just the latest in a train of high-heeled eight-year-olds to totter stupidly down your runway. Excuse me whilst I go ahead and vomit up said dinner.
It was Gypsy Wedding all over again. Or as one person eloquently tweeted “Jews everywhere are praying that colleagues aren’t watching whilst planning their ‘you know we’re not all like that’ speech.”
But I’m not here for liberal outrage. There’s enough of that in the Guardian comments. And I’m not here for Jewish outrage - Though I will just say that my Grandma, who practically recycled every toenail clipping, would not have thought much of Jewish-mum Emma’s boastings that she throws a cake away if it hasn’t risen to perfection. (And BTW if that’s true Emma you’d never have made it out of Egypt).
Anyway, sometime between Tuesday night and this morning, I had a change of heart (and stomach). Which came after looking at the web trends for search terms (yes I do do this in my spare time) for Jewish Mums.
If, two weeks ago, you did a Google search for “Jewish mother”, (and by the way about 26,000 people a year do) you’d have found a Wikipedia page, a few humourous blogs, some funny videos, and a couple of silly images. Today there are news pieces, reams of Tweets, outraged bloggers, and can you believe it, a lot of genuinely intrigued viewers, many of them from minority communities, drawing humorous parallels with their own experiences. Like (é accented) Sean, the gay blogger from wimbledon.
This week jewishmother trended on Twitter, and more numbers of people searched for the term than ever before. Well, that’s not quite true, there was a similar surge in 2007 when Emily Bazelon, a Jewish-mum-journalist published this great piece on the Jewish Mother for Slate Magazine. Which I’m sure loads of Jews enjoyed reading.
So no-one can argue that Channel 4 doesn’t put people on the map.
That’s all very well but of course, many of Channel 4s minocumentaries aren’t so playful. We only had to watch 5 minutes of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, no sorry, only had to hear the title of the show, to know this programme was more of a ‘head up the skirt’ than a ‘fly on the wall’ of the Gypsy community.
I’m not an expert on Gypsy and Irish traveller communities (though I’m enough of one to know that they’re two separate groups of people, with two different histories and languages) but I have been lucky enough to spend some time with Irish travellers. I found them to be an amazingly welcoming, fun-loving, tight-knit, on-the-ball group of people, with a lot of pride in their history, and a deep sensitivity to what they saw as the willful ignorance and blatant racism directed towards their community. For them Channel 4 was a kick in the teeth, plain and simple.
But let's pan out a sec - what was the real legacy of the show? Since that series ended, my overriding memories are not of watching girls getting fingered at weddings, but of arguing with friends in front of the telly, reading with sadness about events unfolding at Dale Farm, following the MBFGW twitter storm which erupted, and perhaps best of all, driving past posters like this one...
I’ve never worked for channel 4, but I did work for the digital agency who Channel 4 hired to create the Paralympic website. After winning the pitch, we were invited to submit ideas for the slogan for the Channel 4 Paralympics. Something edgy, which fitted with their brand of breaking taboos and embracing controversy. There were some pretty dodgy submissions, but all with the earnest intention of getting disability sport looking cool. And this summer Channel 4 did that. And they didn’t do it with patronising slogans like Samsung’s ‘Everyone can take part’, or through stories about overcoming adversity. They did it with big fuck-off billboards showing bared amputations and naked torsos.
Just like they’re now baring to us the yummy mummy Jewish shoulder pads and gold earrings, or the three-metre diameter gypsy wedding dresses. These images are reductive, they conceal more than they show. But Channel 4 is not about nuance and insight, it’s about leading with the ugly and leaving the protestations of beauty to the general public.
----
I hope one day to be a Jewish mother. I don’t give a fuck about baking cakes or about getting One Direction to sing at my son’s barmitzvah. And I don’t really see myself living in Radlett.
But I can hand-on-heart say, that if the children I’m going to be Jewish-mothering are disabled, or if they are gay, or if they are at school with someone from a Romany Gypsy background, I would much much rather they grew up in a world which has Channel 4 ‘minocumentaries’ in it, than one without.
Because you cannot divorce the programme from the dialogue surrounding it, the liberal outrage, the Twitter eruptions, the simple but cataclysmic fact that broadcast is now conversation. Multiculturalism is also a conversation, and it’s Channel 4 that’s got us all jabbering away :)
Like many others I turned to Twitter and vented my fury at Channel 4, reminding everyone that this was unrepresentative, mass-broadcast stereotyping. Bravo Channel 4, I clapped, yet again your ‘minocumentary’ has achieved all the subtlety and insight of a Little Miss America beauty pageant. Jewish mums are just the latest in a train of high-heeled eight-year-olds to totter stupidly down your runway. Excuse me whilst I go ahead and vomit up said dinner.
It was Gypsy Wedding all over again. Or as one person eloquently tweeted “Jews everywhere are praying that colleagues aren’t watching whilst planning their ‘you know we’re not all like that’ speech.”
But I’m not here for liberal outrage. There’s enough of that in the Guardian comments. And I’m not here for Jewish outrage - Though I will just say that my Grandma, who practically recycled every toenail clipping, would not have thought much of Jewish-mum Emma’s boastings that she throws a cake away if it hasn’t risen to perfection. (And BTW if that’s true Emma you’d never have made it out of Egypt).
Anyway, sometime between Tuesday night and this morning, I had a change of heart (and stomach). Which came after looking at the web trends for search terms (yes I do do this in my spare time) for Jewish Mums.
If, two weeks ago, you did a Google search for “Jewish mother”, (and by the way about 26,000 people a year do) you’d have found a Wikipedia page, a few humourous blogs, some funny videos, and a couple of silly images. Today there are news pieces, reams of Tweets, outraged bloggers, and can you believe it, a lot of genuinely intrigued viewers, many of them from minority communities, drawing humorous parallels with their own experiences. Like (é accented) Sean, the gay blogger from wimbledon.
This week jewishmother trended on Twitter, and more numbers of people searched for the term than ever before. Well, that’s not quite true, there was a similar surge in 2007 when Emily Bazelon, a Jewish-mum-journalist published this great piece on the Jewish Mother for Slate Magazine. Which I’m sure loads of Jews enjoyed reading.
So no-one can argue that Channel 4 doesn’t put people on the map.
That’s all very well but of course, many of Channel 4s minocumentaries aren’t so playful. We only had to watch 5 minutes of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, no sorry, only had to hear the title of the show, to know this programme was more of a ‘head up the skirt’ than a ‘fly on the wall’ of the Gypsy community.
I’m not an expert on Gypsy and Irish traveller communities (though I’m enough of one to know that they’re two separate groups of people, with two different histories and languages) but I have been lucky enough to spend some time with Irish travellers. I found them to be an amazingly welcoming, fun-loving, tight-knit, on-the-ball group of people, with a lot of pride in their history, and a deep sensitivity to what they saw as the willful ignorance and blatant racism directed towards their community. For them Channel 4 was a kick in the teeth, plain and simple.
But let's pan out a sec - what was the real legacy of the show? Since that series ended, my overriding memories are not of watching girls getting fingered at weddings, but of arguing with friends in front of the telly, reading with sadness about events unfolding at Dale Farm, following the MBFGW twitter storm which erupted, and perhaps best of all, driving past posters like this one...
And yes, Gypsy Wedding was revolting, but there was also ‘Travellers got Talent’ which The Sun, yes the Sun, praised for it’s ‘fabulous performers’. And there was a huge surge in content on the subject online, like this amazing video on multiculturalism, nomadicism & Roma identity, made by school children in Fulham.
Would we have had these without Gypsy Wedding?I’ve never worked for channel 4, but I did work for the digital agency who Channel 4 hired to create the Paralympic website. After winning the pitch, we were invited to submit ideas for the slogan for the Channel 4 Paralympics. Something edgy, which fitted with their brand of breaking taboos and embracing controversy. There were some pretty dodgy submissions, but all with the earnest intention of getting disability sport looking cool. And this summer Channel 4 did that. And they didn’t do it with patronising slogans like Samsung’s ‘Everyone can take part’, or through stories about overcoming adversity. They did it with big fuck-off billboards showing bared amputations and naked torsos.
Just like they’re now baring to us the yummy mummy Jewish shoulder pads and gold earrings, or the three-metre diameter gypsy wedding dresses. These images are reductive, they conceal more than they show. But Channel 4 is not about nuance and insight, it’s about leading with the ugly and leaving the protestations of beauty to the general public.
----
I hope one day to be a Jewish mother. I don’t give a fuck about baking cakes or about getting One Direction to sing at my son’s barmitzvah. And I don’t really see myself living in Radlett.
But I can hand-on-heart say, that if the children I’m going to be Jewish-mothering are disabled, or if they are gay, or if they are at school with someone from a Romany Gypsy background, I would much much rather they grew up in a world which has Channel 4 ‘minocumentaries’ in it, than one without.
Because you cannot divorce the programme from the dialogue surrounding it, the liberal outrage, the Twitter eruptions, the simple but cataclysmic fact that broadcast is now conversation. Multiculturalism is also a conversation, and it’s Channel 4 that’s got us all jabbering away :)
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