[ SECRET POST #4978 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4978 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 40 secrets from Secret Submission Post #713.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

would you be okay with people of Irish or Polish or French descent playing the roles of the English villagers or must they be 100% English? would a DNA test be required to confirm the actors' Englishness? and what would be considered English enough? 50% English? 90%? or must it be 100%?

[(Anonymous)]

If you can do a convincing English accent then great. Don't care where they come from.

[(Anonymous)]

So it's accents that bother you?

[(Anonymous)]

If you're depicting a typical English rural setting then most of the residents are going to be actually English. Especially true of MM where the location is based on a real life county whose population is 97.6% English white. It's not rocket science.

[(Anonymous)]

Seriously.

If you want a cute little mystery series set in the rural UK, 99% of people are going to be white. Especially if it's pre-war up to the 2010s.

If you want a diverse cast of characters with different ethnic backgrounds, religions and heritage, in a big multicultural melting pot, set it in Birmingham. Leicester. Leeds. And that's not counting London and Manchester.

There are loads of these places. Force-diversifying areas that lack diversity is ridiculous, because there are so many places to choose from that hardly get looked at.

However if you want that quaint village look? It's going to be white. Closest you can get to that and move away from the primary white village demographic is going to be like... Oldham and that's less "quaint rural" and more "hollow ex-mining/mill region 60 years behind the rest of the country".

[(Anonymous)]

There's at least 2 different levels of conversation here that are getting actively mixed up. On the one hand, we're talking about rural villages as they actually exist; on the other hand, we're talking about rural villages as they are represented in popular culture and as they should be represented in popular culture. And people are switching back and forth between those things - we've gone from a conversation about how the actual lived culture of rural villages is threatened, to a conversation about what depictions of rural villages on the TV should look like.

I think those two things are related, but they're not identical to each other. In other words, a TV show that depicted rural villages as being multicultural in the same way London is would not directly threaten the rural way of life. The depiction does have broader effects, and to the extent that it created an incorrect image of what rural villages are actually like, that would be bad. But when OP comes in talking about preserving English rural village culture, having Asian characters on Midsomer Murder is not a direct threat to English rural village culture.

I do think that there is an argument that you can make that depicting rural England should be done in at least a semi-realistic way. But, as far as I am aware, what was at stake in the Midsomer Murder controversy was not that Midsomer should have exactly the same racial demographics as Birmingham. It was about whether there should be effectively any sympathetic non-white characters cast on the show; and it was about the specific things that the producer said.

Personally, I think it's reasonable that there should be some non-white characters on the show - rural areas are overwhelmingly white, but not 100% white. And also, it's not like Midsomer Murders is some kind of exemplar of social realism to begin with. It's a ridiculous, corny show with an often unrealistic background and overly complex, lurid crimes. It's good fun but it's in no way realistic. I think that what the producer said was wrong. And I don't think that anything about it is really related to OP's arguments about the preservation of rural village culture, as it actually exists and not as it exists in Midsomer Murders.

[(Anonymous)]

If they're playing the role of an English person from an English village ... yes?

Having a non-English accent, or even the *wrong* English accent, would bother me and a lot of other people, for certain.

Like having somebody with a thick Southern drawl claiming to have lived all their life in, like, Oregon or New Jersey. It just wouldn't fly.

You can't have a character that claims to be from a little village in Herefordshire whose family has lived there for generations talking with a Newcastle or Cockney accent, let alone a Polish one.

English people are funny about accents.

An American might not be able to distinguish London from the Midlands from Liverpool, but you can bet English people will.

It gets worse if they're from the region in question.

You speak with a Black Country accent and claim to be from Birmingham and the Brummies will get pissed off. Somebody with a Yorkshire accent saying they're from Lancashire will reaaaaally annoy people from both places.

People outside of the regions might not be able to tell. The above distinctions might well be lost on somebody from the West Country, or the Greater London area, but those from there will know.

Accents are important.

Especially if you're aiming for realism.

That's why all the classic British multicultural media is set in the big, multicultural cities and not a little village of 2000 people called Henley-over-Wode or some shit.

[(Anonymous)]

Have you watched Midsomer Murders?

It's definitely not aiming for realism.

[(Anonymous)]

Nayrt: it's a series where people get killed by cheese ffs.

[(Anonymous)]

The plots may not be aiming for realism but the setting is aiming to be typical rural England.