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sallyjessyrofl:

According to this article, and others the reason for the complaints on the “Gypsy Blood” documentary was due to scenes of animal cruelty. OK, this is obviously shit and gross and I can understand this. But why exactly does this make up the core of the complaints? Aren’t we missing the bigger picture?

Also worryingly, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding was Ch4’s most watched programme in 2011. Which has attracted shittons of complaints among the Travelling community. If you think this hasn’t affected Travellers at all, Travellers Times now offers a media training course. So it seems that, in spite of its claims to try and offer a view into a “secret world”, Ch4 is simply harming relations between Travellers and non-Travellers. Rightly so, this course aims to equip Travellers with the skills to make and edit films of their own, how to be interviewed etc.

Channel 4 is profiting out of this heteroginization of an entire culture and peoples. There’s even a book out.

What I fail to understand is that, despite this whole talk of “secret worlds” (which has some basis in reality), there’s a variety of media created by Travellers about Travellers out there. There are theatre groups, historians, books and magazines.

But what point is there in watching it if you’re not able to laugh at a culture not your own, to rationalise and legitimise your own racism and to perpetuate ‘funny’ and inflated stereotypes?

/angry blog day

OMG so much THIS.