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One meaning of the word 'chav', as now used, is as a derogatory label for a superficial person addicted to clothes with designer labels. A way to slag someone off. A superficial label in its own right which says more about the user than the person they are slagging off. By their own definition, people who use chav in its new, malicious sense, are therefore a bit of a 'chav' themselves - not to mention being a monumental slag.
Originally a gypsy word for child or youth, chav was commonly used as a term of endearment and greeting among the working classes. As a synonym for 'mate', as in a dozen regional dialect equivalents. 'Butt' and 'wuss' and 'man', for instance. It is there in the Only Fools and Horses dvd box set - from Boycie, if I remember, and it must be somewhere in the collected scripts of Galton & Simpson, and Croft & Perry. It was a real, helpful, social word, available to all to ease the flow of conversation and make a working relationship easier to maintain. And now it has been kidnapped, subjected to a garish media makeover, and turned into an insult. Now it is a slur whose only purpose is to generate the emotions of hate and contempt. All it can ever do is cause trouble - and for what? Why do we need to sacrifice a perfectly innocent, useful word to make way for this term of abuse? It's an act of vandalism far worse than anything any chav would spraypaint on a concrete wall in Walthamstow. Why does New Grub Street need it?
'Chav' also means a person with a blinkered or ignorant frame of mind, susceptible to loud aggressive behaviour in public, and a generally instinctive, hedonistic lifestyle. (Again like the Daily Mail and The Sun) But in fact it is now a term so wide as to be meaningless, other than in terms of its one true reference point, social class. However the Hackocracy likes to spin it, chavs are the working classes on their day out. On Epsom Downs in their funny hats, singing their raucous rude songs about winkles and puddings and beer. The same sneers can be heard in every Servant - Master gag in human history. They are a reflex defence mechanism of a middle class under threat from below. In this case from a working class with more spending power than ever and the historic new ability of co-ordination and communication. It is therefore more necessary than ever to control the language as well as to convey the message that the lower orders are simply not capable of dealing with money or success or fame - that they are simply too vulgar. As the Daily Mail calls the Beckhams: "The celebrities that taste forgot." As if The Mail was an arbiter of taste.
Farcically enough, by calling them 'chavs' the Mail is patronising the working class with a word which does in fact mean 'child'. But that is no excuse for giving hate such a word to use. In this case, one which enables the user to feel innately superior to a vast sector of humanity, and also to feel horror at the prospect of any possible bond or common purpose with these 'Yahoos' - another example of a universal term of alienation. A word which reinforces the notion of inequality; that some people are simply more human than others, and therefore more deserving of the good things of life. And some people are just animals who deserve to be herded and bred and driven and eventually culled like cattle .
From being the first word a baby heard, 'chav' is now a hate word. Another way of dividing people from each other rather than bringing them closer together. That is a little linguistic tragedy, but as part of the greater ruthless swindle of Consumerism, it is as much a babykiller as the girl who oils the spring that turns the thing that winds the nob, that makes the thingumybob - that's going to win the war!
Poor old chavvy is just another victim of this need. Another Rose Cottage in the path of the motorway. It's a shame the Fabian Society still seems to think it can have the motorway and the cottage. That it can eradicate the symptoms of class conflict without removing the causes. But what else can you expect from people in straw hats who travel by punt? Why can't they just say what they mean? People who use chav as an insult are just slags.
Already, entire towns are being labelled Chav Towns. The hunger of the media for stereotypes is insatiable.
And now the hate sites have started up, inciting violence against these new sub-humans.
One particularly raving lunatic claims of Stourbridge:
But beware, anyone not drinking Stella will be immediately glassed by some footballer’s jumper wearing try-hard and then kicked around the floor via his Rockport’s for being ‘a gayer’.
Immediately.
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3/11/08 John Prescott on Class
'The white working class feels alienated, threatened and voiceless,' And when were they anything else - especially if you leave out the word 'white'?
Except under the dreadful tyranny of those ghastly trade unions, of course.
But that source of empowerment and self-defence was finally crushed. And everyone from BBC bosses to rabid radio shock jocks and newspaper editors and company directors were very pleased. How much wider a cross section of society do you need to please?
The despicable image of the white face being systematically defaced to a black minstrel mask of alien language and culture is one of the worst cases of graphic hypocrisy seen on TV. The BBC should be ashamed. It totally ignores the reality of class identity and status, which is that the 'working class' now being courted has hardly ever been acknowledged or examined in British literature, art or journalism. And when it has been, the establishement has either attacked or ignored the result.
This theory that the White Working Class is being systematically abused and stripped of its identity by the mere existence of non-native working class cultures - and not by the demands of the marketplace - is yet another distraction from the political realities of the class system, and will only have the effect of further alienating people from those with whom they share a common cause. Which is the only reason for it.
The thing which really grates is the assumption that this 'alienation' is something new, and therefore can be blamed on immigration. This is clearly the unavoidable message of the trailer.
The face is not smothered in the logos of MacDonalds and Coke and Nike and all the other corporate vultures who are actually stripping the corpse of British identity and alienating British people from their culture. Instead the face is smothered in script - Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Cyrillic - all written by the human hand.
In other words, the human beings who come here to improve their lives are to blame for this assault on the working class. Not the economic system they obey, and even less the corporate giants who are making the real money. So to solve the problem, the solution is obviously to get rid of the people and their alien, defacing cultures. Which is the ultimate act of alienation by the BBC, and of appeasement to the BNP and their fellow-travellers at The Daily Tits and other rags who try to keep working class aspirations as low and animal as possible.
There were lots of choices to be made when planning this preview. The choice of handwritten script in black sends a clear message that white British culture is being de-faced by alien cultures of different races. Not by impersonal, mercenary decisions in boardrooms, not by the great cycles of economic growth and decline or inevitable advances in technology or transport, but by the mere proximity in the same country of different kinds of human beings.
This is despicable, and I hope is not representative of the remit of the series.
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March 7th.
Last night's Newsnight, with Margaret Hodge, Bob Crowe, Jon Grunt and a befuddled teenage apprentice tory MP showed exactly why this series will be a complete waste of time - unless the intention is to divide the working class even further and distract them from their common problems.
Amid all the futile mudslinging there was not a single word about the economic system which demands the homogenisation of ethnic cultures, wage-cutting immigration, and general insecurity among the people. Bob Crowe was just able to squueze in the point that Thatcherite de-unionisation was a factor in undercutting British wages. But was not able to make the point that the likes of Jon Gaunt, who smirked the loudest over the destruction of the main representative body for working class interests are now the ones whingeing loudest over the effects.
But apart from that, nobody had anything to say. The exploitative, divisive, dog-eat-dog, warmongering, planet-destroying capitalist system got off scot-free. Again. No surprises there, then.
10/3/08
And so it drags on.
BBC2 controller Roly Keating offers perhaps the feeblest, off-the-peg excuse for an excuse in the history of television. According to him, the infamous trailer is Only Doing It's Job:
"I absolutely refute that it is racist. It's clearly arresting, It denotes to audiences that they will find certain elements of this season challenging. Part of the point odf the series is to stimulate public debate."
Is that so? In that case why broadcast a trailer designed to stimulate fear and irrational hostility? And while we're being picky, what Roly Poly actually did to the accusation of racism was 'reject' it. As one of his commissions, the admirable Q.I. tells us, 'refutation' involves a lot more work that merely proclaiming: 'Je Refute', like some be-ruffed aristocrat. Perhaps he should watch his own programmes from time to time. He might learn something.
In the meantime, sensible people across the country have been outraged by this piece of racist trash. In the same edition of G2 as Keaton's double page spread was this from a little letter in English.
"This trailer is offensive, misleading and extremely divisive and is more typical of the attention-grabbing headlines we see in the tabloids...
it should be removed from our screens because it does nothing to promote understanding of or empathy for the white working class (as it pretends to do) or understanding of those whom this group considers, unjustifiably, a threat to their heritage."
Also:
BBC’s White Season is founded on racist lies
'Wise Words'
Crooked Timber
Challenging the Whitewash
