Quite the best story of the day is the news that the 1964 movie Mary Poppins has had its classification raised to PG. My initial thoughts, despite never having seen it in full, was about time, too. Have you never heard Dick Van Dyke’s highly offensive cockney accent? It could traumatise adults, never mind impressionable children, so I was rather thinking that an 18 rating would be appropriate, but actually, it’s not about Dick’s accent. It’s about a word I have never heard of: hottentots.
I read that Admiral Boo, a character in the movie, uses the word twice when referring to chimney-sweep Dick’s children. Apparently, hottentots is, and I quote the BBC website, ‘a derogatory term originally used by white Europeans about nomadic peoples in southern Africa.’ The British Board of Film Classification BBFC), who did their level best to ruin my adolescence by removing scenes of naked women from some movies, decided that the use of the word, 60 years after it first appeared, meant they had raised the classification to PG. Move along, nothing to see here, was my original reaction, until I went to the BBC Facebook page where some people seemed to be exploding with rage.
‘WOKERY!’ tooted one person. ‘The world is indeed going mental’, parped another. ‘Needs an S rating…for snowflakes of course’, was another ‘hilarious’ comment. ‘But but but but….. it’s all WoKe these days….’ and so on. I could not resist joining in, winding-up the furious Gammons and got called a ‘bell end’ and a ‘snowflake’ for my troubles – all good fun, but I’m afraid that those who are dishing out the insults are the most offended group of them all.
Not that I have ever used the word hottentots, primarily because until now I had never heard of it and secondly because it’s a racist term, I won’t use it, not that there’s any reason I ever would. (God that took some explaining. What a virtuous twat I must appear to be.) But I don’t have a particular problem with the BBFC upgrading the classification from U to PG, even if I suspect no one will even notice, least of all young children. But it is also true that as time goes by attitudes change and what was acceptable 50 years ago, may not be quite as acceptable today.
In 1972, a TV show called Love Thy Neighbour was shown on ITV. In it, a black couple moved in next door to a working class white couple and the entire shtick of the show was the white man insulting the black man and the black man insulting the white man. I read that the show ran for 53 episodes over five years. Today, even your most reactionary Ukip supporter might cringe.
I’m not comparing Love Thy Neighbour with Mary Poppins because one show was deliberately and provocatively racist and the other contains a word we now see as being racist, but, as Dick Van Dyke might put it, fings ain’t wot they used to be.
The BBC Facebook group seemed collectively to be near to tears, fuming at all this political correctness, wokery and snowflakery. But here’s the thing. There is zero evidence that anyone is remotely bothered about this story, except the permanently angry, frothing at the mouth Gammons. They’re the only ones who are offended, they’re the real snowflakes. The rest of us are just meh, let’s get on with our lives.
