"shoot The Messenger" Aka "f*** Black People"

[meagan22]

I found out about this film through the archive at MixedMediaWatch.Com (which is a very informative blog, imo), but the whole article about this filmcan be found here.

Blatant racism, or painful truth?

A BBC film is raising a storm with its portrayal of black people as their own worst enemies, says David Smith

Sunday August 20, 2006
The Observer


'It's going to be the flagship programme for racism. If you're a racist, and you want something to beat black people over the head with, here comes Shoot the Messenger. It's the BNP's calling card.'
This is the verdict of Toyin Agbetu, of the media campaign group Ligali, on the 90-minute BBC drama Shoot the Messenger. Originally entitled **** Black People, it has already provoked an angry reaction from some within the black community. David Oyelowo of Spooks fame stars as a black teacher on a mission whose career and life go off the rails because of a black pupil's deceit, causing him to reflect bitterly: 'Whenever I think about it, everything bad that has ever happened to me has involved a black person.' Consumed by paranoia and self-loathing, Oyelowo's character confronts topical issues such as gun crime and broken families. He berates his girlfriend for using hair extensions and shocks cocktail party guests by challenging assumptions that the legacy of slavery excuses black underachievement.

The film has been shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and won its writer, Sharon Foster, the Dennis Potter Screenwriting Award. But at a recent screening in London Agbetu and other audience members denounced it as an 'unremittingly negative' stereotype of black people and called it 'the most racist programme' in the corporation's history.

Foster insists these critics are in a minority. She says: 'I don't think you write a piece like that and then feel surprise when someone stands up and goes, "We don't like this." I'm hoping that there are enough people who like it and are on my wavelength to get what I'm about. This thing is a hot potato but it's something that is faced every week in every black home.'

The hot potato is her belief that Britain's black community should stop blaming crime, broken homes and poor educational achievement on typical liberal whipping boys such as the government, lack of gun control or racism. 'I think it's to do with the fact we're not grabbing the bull by the horns; we're still pointing the finger and saying, "It's somebody else's fault." I'm very concerned about the next generation: they should be battling for their futures, getting in the fray as opposed to standing on the sidelines and saying, "The government needs to do this." We need to take charge.'

Foster, 41, grew up in Hackney as one of eight children of Jamaican parents, and says Shoot the Messenger draws on her own conversations. 'The drama is informed by a consciousness in the black community,' she explains. 'It's not about me - it's reflecting something I grew up with. It's dramatising a polemic that is often discussed by my family or friends or if I'm at a party, which can be entitled, "Why are black people not progressing in the way we would ideally like to?" When the actors came for the audition, apparently they asked two questions: Who wrote it? Is she black? Then when they were told, they said there were things in here only a black person could know.'

After graduating from Bournemouth University, Foster didn't know what to do next until, at the age of 25, she was watching TV one day and decided: 'I want to do that. I really felt like I was asking for the moon. Here was I, a working-class black girl from Hackney, and I didn't have any links. It's like being on one side of a mountain range wanting to get to the other side. How am I going to get over there?'

She started work as a private tutor and wrote scripts in her own time, finally winning an introduction to the producer Nadine Marsh-Edwards (Bhaji on the Beach) and work on the controversial series Babyfather. Foster then worked on EastEnders and Holby City; she sent off her Shoot the Messenger script in the same week that she was sacked from the latter.

But what if Ligali and others are right, and the drama will be a recruiting sergeant for the BNP? 'I think if I was racist I would just leave the black community to its own devices, because we do pretty badly by ourselves without anybody else's intervention. What I am saying is that there's something we're doing that's not working, and not talking about it - for fear that racists will take the fact we have acknowledged there's something we're doing that's not working - doesn't sound like a good plan to me. I'm a big believer that the truth sets you free.'

· Shoot the Messenger premieres at the Edinburgh Film Festival on Tuesday and is on BBC2 on 30 August at 9pm.
___________________________________________

Did any members in the UK watch this film when it aired? What did you think of it?

[dyamanti]

I found out about this film through the archive at MixedMediaWatch.Com (which is a very informative blog, imo), but the whole article about this filmcan be found here.

Blatant racism, or painful truth?

A BBC film is raising a storm with its portrayal of black people as their own worst enemies, says David Smith

Sunday August 20, 2006
The Observer
'It's going to be the flagship programme for racism. If you're a racist, and you want something to beat black people over the head with, here comes Shoot the Messenger. It's the BNP's calling card.'
This is the verdict of Toyin Agbetu, of the media campaign group Ligali, on the 90-minute BBC drama Shoot the Messenger. Originally entitled **** Black People, it has already provoked an angry reaction from some within the black community. David Oyelowo of Spooks fame stars as a black teacher on a mission whose career and life go off the rails because of a black pupil's deceit, causing him to reflect bitterly: 'Whenever I think about it, everything bad that has ever happened to me has involved a black person.' Consumed by paranoia and self-loathing, Oyelowo's character confronts topical issues such as gun crime and broken families. He berates his girlfriend for using hair extensions and shocks cocktail party guests by challenging assumptions that the legacy of slavery excuses black underachievement.

The film has been shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and won its writer, Sharon Foster, the Dennis Potter Screenwriting Award. But at a recent screening in London Agbetu and other audience members denounced it as an 'unremittingly negative' stereotype of black people and called it 'the most racist programme' in the corporation's history.

Foster insists these critics are in a minority. She says: 'I don't think you write a piece like that and then feel surprise when someone stands up and goes, "We don't like this." I'm hoping that there are enough people who like it and are on my wavelength to get what I'm about. This thing is a hot potato but it's something that is faced every week in every black home.'

The hot potato is her belief that Britain's black community should stop blaming crime, broken homes and poor educational achievement on typical liberal whipping boys such as the government, lack of gun control or racism. 'I think it's to do with the fact we're not grabbing the bull by the horns; we're still pointing the finger and saying, "It's somebody else's fault." I'm very concerned about the next generation: they should be battling for their futures, getting in the fray as opposed to standing on the sidelines and saying, "The government needs to do this." We need to take charge.'

Foster, 41, grew up in Hackney as one of eight children of Jamaican parents, and says Shoot the Messenger draws on her own conversations. 'The drama is informed by a consciousness in the black community,' she explains. 'It's not about me - it's reflecting something I grew up with. It's dramatising a polemic that is often discussed by my family or friends or if I'm at a party, which can be entitled, "Why are black people not progressing in the way we would ideally like to?" When the actors came for the audition, apparently they asked two questions: Who wrote it? Is she black? Then when they were told, they said there were things in here only a black person could know.'

After graduating from Bournemouth University, Foster didn't know what to do next until, at the age of 25, she was watching TV one day and decided: 'I want to do that. I really felt like I was asking for the moon. Here was I, a working-class black girl from Hackney, and I didn't have any links. It's like being on one side of a mountain range wanting to get to the other side. How am I going to get over there?'

She started work as a private tutor and wrote scripts in her own time, finally winning an introduction to the producer Nadine Marsh-Edwards (Bhaji on the Beach) and work on the controversial series Babyfather. Foster then worked on EastEnders and Holby City; she sent off her Shoot the Messenger script in the same week that she was sacked from the latter.

But what if Ligali and others are right, and the drama will be a recruiting sergeant for the BNP? 'I think if I was racist I would just leave the black community to its own devices, because we do pretty badly by ourselves without anybody else's intervention. What I am saying is that there's something we're doing that's not working, and not talking about it - for fear that racists will take the fact we have acknowledged there's something we're doing that's not working - doesn't sound like a good plan to me. I'm a big believer that the truth sets you free.'

· Shoot the Messenger premieres at the Edinburgh Film Festival on Tuesday and is on BBC2 on 30 August at 9pm.
___________________________________________

Did any members in the UK watch this film when it aired? What did you think of it?
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How do you go about getting topics moved? This thread should definitely be moved here rather than other topics...