Apologies sometimes it takes 2100 words to express a complex opinion which refers to a complex situation and that such a lack of brevity should not be perceived as a failure of intellect, it’s just not a narrowing of everything, as the dumbing down of television seems to prefer. All things that appear on television are by their nature either a negative or positive promotion / reinforcement of concepts,subjects,ideas,people’s, its how people get their opinions on the world sadly. you write in your initial reply of an “An obligation to reflect the whole of UK society”. Correctly you point out the government has obliged you with laws that have been in place for sometime to deliberately go out of your way to represent all of UK society, what this ends up meaning in reality, is deliberate and artificial representation of minority groups on tv, ie the presenter scenario in which an asian or an african person is deliberately thrown into the mix to appear on tv, just so that you can appear to be fulfilling a diversity quotient of some artificially fostered multicultural remit, so the minority viewer can see himself on TV like some visual form of VOX POP media job distribution ? the problem with the idea of representation of cultural diversity on tv, is it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy from a promotional perspective, once you end up down that road you end up having to have one of each cultural type just to make it look like your fulfilling some diversity obligation, this may well not represent actual numbers, or stand up for the quality or merit of the individuals concerned.
The thing that irritated me greatly about the program was the title used and the content bait and switch relative to it, “National Treasure Live” first of all the Jamaican content wasn’t live ? Secondly populational cultural uk diversity representation, could have been said to be fulfilled by Lenny henry presence on screen itself regardless of the Jamaican content, but then to go on and represent that the Jamaican contribution to british war effort in the second world war within the context of the program was to imply this Jamaicans alliance was a “national treasure” to us all ? this may well be Lenny Henry’s view im sure, and im sure you failed to bring the polish contribution in equal weight or other displaced allies operating out of the UK at that time ? who were not doubt also defending in that process, theyre own cultures ! regardless of the meritorious actions of the Jamaican people or other allies during the second world war and their contribution as a country still within empire control, “it seemed way too much like some form of propaganda to me” ie we should all be thankful of Jamaican immigration to the mother country ? was the net implication of the least we owed the ex RAF Jamaican pensioner living in this country ? truthfully a program about Jamaica’s assistance is not what I would be classing as a “national treasure” maybe that’s just my personal opinion as a native ? surely their contribution to the defeat of classic fascism should be a “Jamaican National Treasure” maybe ? Otherwise it would be to imply, they had nothing themselves to gain or lose from not aiding us or our loss in the war ! except perhaps the inevitable loss, in being part of a greater fascist nazi german empire ? and Jamaicans perception within nazi ideology ? for if england fell then her empire would have been forfeit to germany ? and the nazi’s would have got round to the Caribbean soon enough.
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