OFF: Jerry Cornelius and TV racism (was: dr. who)

[Jon Jarrett]

On Thu, 7 Apr 2005, Ted Jackson wrote:

> >>> jasret at MINDSPRING.COM 4/7/2005 3:04:03 PM >>>
>
> The prejudice/rascism thing would probably be the most difficult thing
> to
> get on tv these days, I think (although I wonder if anyone in the US
> even
> knows that "wog" is a rascist term ... or what it originally stood
> for).
>
> Uh, is it "Westernized 'Oriental' Gentleman?"

        "Wily", originally, I think, but I get all this second-hand.

> I think there's an even more racist meaning for "wog," isn't there?

        Oh probably. I mean you could easily update the Cornelius stuff
with the terms used then that have survived, but the closest I've ever
seen anyone get to this stuff on TV was a Fawlty Towers episode where the
retired General tells of being horrified to hear someone describing the
Indian cricket team as niggers, on the grounds that "these people are
wogs!", and that was in the 80s originally, and even lampooning racism has
become a lot more dicey since then. The trouble is that it's not not done
just because no-one cares any more, in the way that for most English-
speakers Victorian frothing about "Popery" is just inaccessible and
pointless, but because it's felt to be too dangerous to discuss, and I'm
not sure that confining racists or portrayals of racism to the leaflets of
pressure groups and the wrong side of discrimination suits doesn't just
offer us a way of pretending the problem isn't real any more.

        The Cornelius stuff is interesting in this respect, and not alone
in Moorcock's writing in doing it, because it comes out of and catches the
point where you have the old and new worlds colliding, in fact I think
that's the main reason Professor Hira, wherever he crops up, is who he is,
it's so that Moorcock has a vehicle to illustrate how some of his
characters are prejudiced in terms of racism, sexuality, patriotism and
religion and others just don't care and are moving easily through the
disintegrating ethics. Of course it's two-edged because Cornelius, at
least in the books where he's most developed and not just a cut-out hero,
doesn't care a great deal too much and lots of people are always trying to
get him to care about what they do.

        Anyway. Too much tea today perhaps, sorry, yours,
                                                        Jon

ObCD: Motorhead - _Bomber_
--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)