Jade Goody

[poliphilo]

You don't see it on TV very often because TV is prurient when it comes to the pettier human vices,  but Jade's behaviour- gathering her homies in a corner to play with her grievance and big it up, skirting round forbidden words and phrases-is something I''ve done- and you'll have done it too.  It wasn't  nice to watch, and we 'd rather not be reminded of how close we are to the chimps (the rage of Caliban seeing himself in a mirror) but it doesn't merit the horrid overkill of the tabloids. "BIGOT AND FAKE" yelled one of them this morning. Oh come off it, she didn't take the country to war on a false prospectus, she didn't drop bombs from a great height on women and children...

She's damaged, she's ignorant, she's chippy; you diss her and she'll have you.  But for all that she was out of control, she mainly minded her lip. Racist? Perhaps, but you can hear far worse on the British high street any day of the week from people who are smarter and better educated than she is. Bully? If you say so, but it looked like bluster to me- and  Shilpa seems perfectly capable of fighting her corner. 

I hear Debenhams has/have (are these big corporations singular or plural?) taken her perfume off the shelves. How petty is that? And who's doing the ganging up now?

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I do think the racism is largely a red herring. It's much more complicated than that and class and background is a bigger factor than race -- at least as I see it. If you'd put Jade in with a nicely brought up, very beautiful, middle-class actress from say France or even the UK, the personality clash would be just as great, the bullying just as likely.

The really sad thing is that Channel 4 and Big Brother made Jade into a "celebrity" and they can just as easily break her. Her "career", such as it is, must only be doing celebrity appearances for a fee. I think all that will dry up now after the furore.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I agree. I think the race thing was peripheral. The only explicitly racist statement came from Danielle- who for some reason has avoided the media flak.

It's all been rather grubby and sad.