A
BBC film is raising a storm with its portrayal of black
people as their own worst enemies, says David Smith
'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 Fuck
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.
Return to Press
Cuttings index
|
