Shoot the Messenger

Published: 24/08/2006

‘Shoot the Messenger’ is the title of a new BBC drama to be broadcast next week, a good title capturing the theme of the film and prescient. Originally called Fuck Black People ( you see where this is going) it tells the story of a successful, educated black man who becomes a teacher in a tough school with nihilistic, self destructive black kids. The pupils and their families, and anti-racists bring him down from his do-gooding perch. They break him and all his hopes, his complacency too. The story is relentlessly negative – full to choking with characters who are psychologically wounded, inept, morally dubious, violent. Some parts are not at all credible. For example, the hero loses his job after being falsely accused of hitting a black boy, so he goes psychotic and cowers on top of a cupboard. But there is a redemptive ending and there are unforgettably moving episodes. The searing fictional tale asks whose fault it is that so many young black men fail themselves and society. Sharon Foster, black herself wrote the script which won her the Dennis Potter Award; the protagonist is played by the superb, nuanced actor David Oyelowo.

I went to the screening and left fast at the end sensing that tempers were boiling over. A black broadsheet journalist near me, usually serene and contemplative was apoplectic. The Controller of BBC2 had introduced the evening with terrific enthusiasm. Much of the audience begged to differ. For many weeks now there have been blazing disagreements, much hyperbole and genuine concern within black British circles about the programme, its impact and the motives of the Corporation. One media campaign group says it is ‘racist and a calling card for the BNP’. I do understand the disquiet. When people feel besieged they become intolerant. That doesn’t mean they have the right to be intolerant. Witness the way some obdurate Bangladeshis are obstructing the filming of Brick Lane by Monica Ali. They don’t like the book. I don’t much like the book, so what? That shouldn’t give us control over the author or the filmmakers.
Why should writers and journalists be only positive in what they say about ‘ethnic’ life? We are not PR agents. Nor should we be because that is both oppressive and patronising. If powerful gatekeepers ensured a flow of films, books, articles, programmes by Britons of colour, there wouldn’t there be such impossible expectations placed on the few who break in. They who want to shoot the messenger who made Shoot the Messenger are picking the wrong target.

Published in The Evening Standard