I’m a child of the 70’s, and I remember what it was like in early 80’s, and I remember being quite disturbed to read last year that the BBC were cutting out all references to the word “paki shop” in “Only Fools and Horses.” For God’s sake, either show the episode as it was made, or don’t. Can anyone else think of a regime that cut out inconvenient parts of history books, or tried to re-write history?
Even my ultra-lefty friends, offensive as we all find the term “paki shop”, don’t think that pretending the 70’s/80’s was different is a good idea
While thinking about this, I found this blog which puts it quite well.
They quoted the BBC Programme Complaints Unit as saying “research shows that [the] perceived offensiveness [of the term "Paki"] has increased significantly over the intervening years, and, in the absence of a particular contextual justification, its use in programmes is no longer acceptable.”
In future the BBC “would try and make sure those words are edited out so they don’t cause offence to our audiences”.
So, a programme which was suitable for broadcast 40 years ago is not suitable for broadcast now because if it were produced today it would be deemed offensive. What would that policy mean if it was transferred to books in a Library? According to the BBC, should we be monitoring and winnowing catalogues to ensure that no-one reads offensive material? Or should we do what the Victorians did to Shakespeare (and what the Beeb is doing to Only Fools and Horses) and bowdlerize offending texts?
Then on Friday I heard that the BBC had edited the phrase “that sort do, don’t they”, referring to his camp cellmate Lukewarm’s ability to keep his cell clean, and apparently the phrase was taken out because it could be offensive to homosexuals.
Did anyone gay complain? Of course not. They even had the campest man alive, Christopher Biggins on the show to say it shouldn’t be edited. It’s always the case. Handwringing twats just need to shut up and stop trying to rewrite history - I’ll decided for myself if something’s offensive.
Categories: political_correctness
No Comments »
