Kenneth
Saturday 13th June 2020 5:06am [Edited]
5,447 posts
There's a lengthy thread on the Cook'd and Bomb'd forums on the issue of recent removal from streaming services of Britcoms for potentially racist/offensive content, from Little Britain to Fawlty Towers. Much of it is just a dick-measuring contest of "I'm so cleverly woke that I was offended by Ting-Tong in Little Britain before I was born", "Well I always knew Ricky Gervais was a c**t, even before Gervais was born," and "beware the slippery slope solipsism of those who sling the term snowflake". And a strange debate about fantasy-land trading cards. (Plus, there's a lovely lynch mob thread of unrestrained vitriol against JK Rowling over a tweet about only women menstruating.)
I remember one time after The Germans episode was broadcast in Australia, there was a lot of goose-stepping/silly walks in the school playground the next day, plus quoting of "don't mention the war" and "you invaded Poland". The only quoting of the Major from that episode was "No, you hit him on the head." His cricketing anecdote about a woman getting racist terms mixed up wasn't the memorable highlight of the episode. That's partly because the senile codger character wasn't the star and partly because those terms don't have the top-level shock value they do today; but mainly because "wog" doesn't mean "Indian" in Australia.
The word nigger wasn't in wide currency in the Australian schoolyard in the 1970s and 1980s. Neither were the Love Thy Neighbour standards: nig-nog, darkie and sambo (for some reason, kids mainly quoted Jacko's "I'll ave arf" catchphrase). Instead, there would be a few pejoratives for Australian aborigines, the most common being abos. And dozens of "abo jokes", nearly all of which were nastily racist (and a few in the vein of "Irish jokes").
"Wog" was more commonly used in Australia. It referred to Greek Australians, and could also be used to describe Italian and Middle Eastern Australians. It was very popular in an Aussie version of 'Till Death Us Do Part/All In The Family, called Kingswood Country, in which the irascible main character had a Greek son-in-law, whom he referred to as "bloody wog". The term wog was even more widely used by Greek Australians "comedians" to describe themselves, especially in a stage show called Wogs Out of Work and an atrociously feeble sitcom called Acropolis Now (which featured clever dialog along the lines of "Jeez Tony, you know sometimes you're a real wog!"). That sitcom was so dreadful that it likely inspired a generation of Australians to never use the word wog.
Australia's Channel Nine television network would promote one-day cricket matches during the 1980s with the terms: Aussies, Pakis, Poms, Kiwis, and Windies. The Indian cricket team was sometimes referred to informally as "the curry munchers" but usually just as "the Indians". Hence I was puzzled by the Major's assertion that wogs are Indian cricketers. Every Aussie school kid knew that wogs are Greeks.
As for slippery slopes, I do feel that if the Major's lines about niggers and wogs are cut on the grounds of causing offense, then all scenes showing verbal and physical abuse of Manuel must also be cut, to avoid causing offense to Spaniards. Much better to leave everything intact and simply insert a prefatory warning.
Michael.
