From the start, the client made it well known that he felt portraying a situation whereby people from the Middle-East or third world countries are portrayed in acts of violence would be against the cause of the video, if anything potentially promoting more racist or extremist views in local people. We decided to think about it from the perspective of people of white backgrounds, and look into and find out about extremist views in people that may be in the local area, raising awareness of an extremism that many people are unaware of among people not knowing of the ethical considerations regarding equality.
The first part of researching was trying to figure out what kind of research could be performed regarding extremism. There are two types of research, primary and secondary. Primary research is typically performed by performing interviews, surveys and questionnaires within the local area. The problem with this is that there would be a distinct lack of people willing to discuss verbally or even written if they have extremist views, and going to public with questions that may offend people like that seemed like a poor idea for a simple research assignment. Secondary research was more practical for us, involving using the research gathered from other people previously. A simple google search can provide secondary research results that, while it may not be as representative of a local area, will typically provide easy to understand statistics (i.e. quantitative research) or extensive research paper (i.e. qualitative research) regarding the topic.
By googling "Teesside Election Results 2015" you can find several articles going into what party got what amount of votes. Without making stereotypes, you can see that UKIP received a large number of votes in Middlesbrough, Redcar and Stockton, mostly coming 2nd and 3rd to other parties (typically Labour of Conservative), showcasing that a lot of people in the local area have the UKIP ideals of removing immigrants, which is a lower form of starting extremist right-wing views. (http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/general-election-results-2015-how-13139769) Using this, the logical assumption is that borderline extremism is potentially very prominent in the area, being in the top 3 views, leading me to wonder how popular more extreme views may be.
A good example of this white-extremism in the UK is BNP (British National Party), who have been considered "the most successful party in the history of the extreme right in Britain" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party). Their website has very plainly stated their views on immigration, fighting extremism and a general disdain for the Labour party (who are typically considered the more socialist, left-wing party in the UK), and you can see a post by them giving their thanks to the people of Bishop Auckland for voting for them in the 2017 election, very local to the Teesside area, showing that not only UKIP, but BNP (an actively considered extremist group) has a lasting popularity in the local area based on a quick look at their research. It can be seen that they have a total of 0 seats, but looking through the membership section of the Wikipedia page, while it won't show how many members the group has precisely, it heavily suggests that it is within the 10,000 range across the country, which could very easily gain a seat in parliament if it was concentrated to an area, showing that there is that chance of BNP being popular enough to get into parliament.
The most interesting aspect of the Wikipedia article was the following quote paragraph:
Goodwin noted that few of those he interviewed "conformed to the popular
stereotypes of them being irrational and uninformed crude racists".
He noted that most strongly identified with the working-class and
claimed to have either been former Labour voters or from a Labour-voting
family. None of those interviewed claimed a family background in the ethnic nationalist movement.
Instead, he noted that members claimed that they joined the party as a
result of a "profound sense of anxiety over immigration and rising
ethno-cultural diversity" in Britain, along with its concomitant impact
on "British culture and society".
He noted that among these members, the perceived cultural threat of
immigrants and ethnic minorities was given greater prominence than the
perceived economic threat that they posed to white Britons.
He noted that in his interviews with them, members often framed Islam
in particular as a threat to British values and society, expressing the
fear that British Muslims wanted to Islamicise the country and
eventually impose law on its population.
What is most interesting about this, is the reference to Labour voters. The 2017 election showed that Teesside was one of the most popular Labour areas, with only one seat in the whole Teesside area being Conservative, and the rest being Labour seats. What this means is that Teesside could be a hotbed for white extremism, being near present extremist locations, and being a Labour area, as well as a high likelihood for UKIP to get votes in this area, suggesting that Teesside would certainly need an anti-extremist video targetted at young, white people, to try and help guide them towards the ideals of equality promoted by the college.
I looked at some existing examples of anti-extremism in white people. A large example is outdated from the 30s and 40s, regarding the Second World War, talking about anti-Fascist and anti-Communist policies but more recent examples regard anti-racism in the 60s, anti-apartheid in the 90s, and in recent times with anti-KKK, anti-BNP and anti-racist documentaries and advertisements. A lot of them take on more documentary or factual styles, and creative pieces regarding anti-fascism is difficult to find via Google and YouTube, with myself being unable to find any. This suggests that it's the sort of market area that needs to be capitalised upon to spread awareness to people who struggle to find interest in adverts or documentaries. That said, information from these can be interesting to use, such as looking at what kind of activities are performed. Perhaps most interesting for this is the Louis Theroux documentary on white extremists in Texas, which shows them being confident that their views are how things should be, but not all are unintelligent, showing some of them to, in fact, be exceptionally intelligent, which gives the idea that intelligence doesn't lead to logic of what's right or wrong, necessarily. This gives a lot to work with in terms of showing that the character doesn't need to be unintelligent, just susceptible to the extremist behaviour.
After looking into why the local area might need a video like this, the next plan was to decide on the content of the video. I worked with another member of Ufilms, and we started thinking of ideas for the project. First on the agenda was how to make a very short story that incorporated white extremism, so we figured that it would have to be about a young, college aged person who gets involved with the wrong people via manipulation. It had to be powerful, so we looked at ways to make it powerful, and we decided to go with a silent movie style where the only spoken words are at the end to give a more hard hitting feeling behind the words (along the lines of 'talking about problems') to try and counter the argument that speaking to people of different political views to you can broaden your views and prevent you being manipulated into extremist views. We were dead set on this idea early on, and so unfortunately, we made no mind-mapping of ideas, as we wanted to develop this idea to make it as good as we could, but we did make scripts and paperwork evidence as seen in the following pictures:
We had notes, planned out ideas and a completed script for the film, and we felt confidence enough to present what we had to the client. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-VrANZJlGEpvIF-J_7FtzCDXbhjCRKivhfzOgfMmja0/edit?usp=sharing)
He liked the idea, but it didn't fit what he was thinking of. He suggested changing it to make it more about two different people splitting on different ideals, to show that it doesn't necessarily stem from strangers, but can stem from friends in your surroundings, and can lead to falling out. He suggested the incorporation of interracial relationships (although this wasn't a necessity), and perhaps, to make it more recognisably fiction to people who struggle to disillusion fact from fiction, to show the fact it's a film at the end, by showing a director speak to the actors. After this feedback, I revised the script and looked at incorporating these ideas, before deciding to scrap the silence idea entirely and make it a much simpler, straight forward story. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aY7mgQSeIZRpe_85-FyOIfhIT6UGhwcwhBiilbaNbLA/edit?usp=sharing).
Unfortunately, this project was never completed, as other assignments arose, and the lack of time to complete an in-college project was too limited. The script is still readily available, and I've considered providing it to the first year students to complete for their Social Action assignment in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment