Not Our Kind of People Dear

The representation of Asians in the media is something that causes me sleepless nights, strobe like migraines and twisted ankles. Well that may have something to do with my choice of shoes. With the proposed axing of the flaming Ferreiras off East Enders and the impending marriage of Dev and Sunita on Corrie, the brown folk are coming soon to a screen in your living room soon.

But how much is the representation of Asians on TV a reflection of Asians in life? Although there must be some allowance for social stereotyping and artistic liberty or screenwriters burning the midnight incense, none of the Asians who appear on TV in either the factual or the fictional programs represent.

The Ferreiras and their troubled son, played by Ray Panthaki (for whom I admit I do have a soft spot, he was on the first front cover of Indobrit, the magazine I edit) were doomed for failure. The story lines woven around that family are boring, a taxi business? Any self respecting entrepreneurial Asian would have set up a souped up stretch limo company and would own most of Albert Square by now. The stories played out were the ones a white viewing audience would want to see, and not tailored to the reality of living in multi cultural Britain today. Where there was an opportunity to showcase some of the angst and the dilemmas faced by Asian families in the UK trying to reconcile their Asian-ness with their British ness it was politely ignored. Issues such as the wearing of hijab, arranged marriage, prejudice, the often difficult relationship between fathers and daughters were not even touched upon. Dilip Tahil, the Bollywood star brought in to play the father figure faced his own real life drams with the Home Office trying to deport him alleging that he had overstayed his visa.

How many Asian friends do you have? I’m not talking colleagues in the accounts department or the little man that sells you your morning fags and rags but how many Asians families do you actively interact with? If Asian elements in soaps are going to be successful and draw in audience numbers then the families on screen have to portray the public’s experience of Asian families in the real world.

The twists and turns of the Dev Sunita Maya love triangle could be the subject of the next Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Bombay Bunny Boilers. There’s a huge wedding planned next week on Corrie, when Dev and Sunita finally tie the knot. The cost of the TV marriage is £50 000 with a temple built on set and a £1000 wedding cake. An Indian ceremony expert (based in the UK) was brought in to consult on the finer points. In the wake of passport hunting steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal’s daughter’s wedding which cost £30 million last summer and was held at the Palace of Versailles, this is negligible. This excess was shrugged of by the newlyweds’ parents as “wanting to make their kids happy.” This is not normal behaviour and although it is Mittal’s money to spend, it would have gone a lot further if he had thought about the philanthropic value that such an enormous amount of money represents. How many cultural centres would that have opened. The bride wore a tiara.

The Anglos have this distorted impression of Asians in the UK because we bolster it with these un-media savvy forays. People who claim to represent, such as the Yazzmonster , Meera Sayal even the new generation such as Monica Ali really don’t. Alibhai-Brown laments that after she published her largely unsuccessful and highly imaginative “autobiography” most of her family stopped speaking to her. As part of that family, I confirm that none of us wanted anything to do with her. It was painful to read the lies she had committed to paper and some consolation was the fact that the bio bombed. Monica Ali refused to be interviewed by veteran author Maya Jaggi, claiming that she needed to speak to a more mainstream interviewer, i e not a fellow Asian. Meera Sayal’s Goodness Gracious Me and the Kumars at No 42 might have been sold onto the US for multi million dollar deals but Sayal has done nothing to improve the public’s perception of how real Asians live in the real world. That’s the one you and I inhabit, anyway. The irritating and embarrassing Granny deserves a one way ticket to the local taxidermist. Modern Asian families don’t obsess about when / who their offspring are going to marry and subject phoreners to this sort of grilling in the front room. I have managed to sit through one lonely episode of No 42,. Because I was in a hotel in another city and couldn’t sleep. It did the trick, once I had been consumed by boredom. It’s simply unfunny and Sayal has made an awful lot of money and somewhat of a name for herself as the social commentator of life in Asian Britain.

Asian Invasion was aired on Channel 4 as a made for TV documentary. Jupiter TV was originally commissioned to write a two - three part series on this subject but after it was delayed considerably it was shown in its shortened version. It got dismal audience figures and writer presenter Safraz Mansoor fails to ignite any serious debate on the issue. The documentary contained input from Meera Sayal (again) Lord Bikku Parekh and one half of a successful Radio 1 DJ team, Nihal. Two hours is not a long time in TV land but given the neutral response to the show, it’s unlikely that anything similar will be repeated in the near future. Could it be because the same olds get wheeled out for anything even vaguely related to ethnic / Asian content for comment or participation? There’s a whole new generation of young Asian talent out there who see the white mainstream as part of their multi coloured world. These are the voices that need to be heard, at the expense of sidelining others who really don’t have anything new to say. They have become the Nigella Lawson (Marilyn Monroe, she would like to have us believe) and Alan Titchmarsh, those bland voices of middle England that don’t represent anyone I know, white green or brown who live here.

Whilst grass roots support for Asian acts might begin within the Asian community, in order for anything to succeed commercially that has to then transpose onto the mainstream cd / book / film / bindi buying public. Music seems to be leading the way with the launch of two new acts Raghav and Jay Sean. Both gorgeous and suitably sonorous they are set to attack these emerald shores with their version of British Asian music. Prophet - poet Nitin Sawhney said recently, “I don’t get up thinking hey, I’m Asian I’m going to eat Asian food and wear Asian clothes today.” Music is a great equaliser, perhaps by charting their success and rise through the pop ranks, the representation of Asians in the media will undergo a long awaited nip and tuck. Gurinder Chadha is guilty of it too. Although Bhaji on the Beach and Bend it like Beckham hit the spot thanks to the desi zeitgeist she fails quite miserably in her latest venture Bride and Prejudice. Whilst the Asian press have been fairly positive about it (she is one of us so we have to support her no matter how boring the film was, goes the argument) the Times critic claimed it was about four weddings in the film and a funeral: Chadha’s career as a filmmaker. The British Asian family in the film live in a mansion with an imported Indian servant behind electric gates. There aren’t many Asians that live in the UK on that scale.

There’s a lot of noise about the so-called Brown Pound in certain media buying and selling circles. Certain brands have been hip to how much wealth and influence is wielded by desi money but in reality it’s still a nascent market with huge potential waiting to be addressed. The COI, Lloyds, Mercedes in particular have successfully targeted the Asian market with specific campaigns in the ethnic press. Whilst most Asians read the mainstream papers, from the Torygraph to the Scum, they also pick up the Asian press on a regularly basis, to keep a finger on the pulse... It’s a long time since the Daily Jang, an Urdu paper for the Pakistani community began here some 30 years ago. By advertising within respected and interesting ethnic media, brands and businesses position themselves cleverly as being aware of this intelligent and high earning market sector with great spending capacity. Recent research shows that the digital radio boom, which rolled out two years ago is a huge hit with the Asian youth and this, in part might account for the success of the BBC’s Asian Network Radio.

The days when the Asian market could be catered for exclusively within mainstream media are numbered. Steve Goodman, the forward thinking Press Director of Mediacom UK states that by early 05 Mediacom will have a team actively advising this media buying monolith’s existing clients on the ethnic sector. Currently Mediacom are spending about £935 000 on all ethnic titles, so this includes the Jewish Chronicle and the Irish Times, of a total press spend of over £200 000 000. Without becoming tokenistic or patronising, it’s a time the whole UK media industry from controllers and programmers, to account handlers within the agencies took a long hard look at the way Asians are presented in the media. They need to redefine their role in this struggle on shifting sands of whether to extend the agony of the existing stereotypes or to create something new and powerful and accurate about the way the Asian community in the UK lives today.

For real representation of Asian lifestyle in the UK

Magazines:
Snoop
Another Generation

Fashion
Asian Woman
Asiana

Bollywood
Desi

Newpapers
Gurvi Gujarat

www.asiansinmedia.net

www.Limelassi.co.uk

www.redhotcurry.com