March 02, 2006
Wall to Wall productions in new exciting venture
Will Francome works for a television production company called Wall to Wall productions. This is the company that brought us the entertaining TV programme Who Do You Think You Are where various celebrities traced back their family trees for our pleasure and their enlightenment. Wall to Wall have apparently been commissioned by Channel 4 to create a one off programme on what it means to be English and the company are currently looking for people who would be interested in participating in the show by explaining what it means for them to be English and by allowing similar family tree examinations to their previous programme to be performed.
All very interesting and quite likely to provide some entertaining viewing.
Except there is, in my opinion, something very wrong with Wall to Wall’s approach. You see it seems that to qualify to comment on what you feel it means to be English using their platform you need to have a very specific kind of family tree. An 'ethnically' English one (though they don't say exacly how far back counts).
I have already heard of people who have been turned down by Wall to Wall because they need ”someone who's family tree is probably all English".
One has to wonder why? Is Wall to Wall’s position that to actually qualify as English one has to consider ones self ethnically English? If so this does certainly disqualify a large number of people who consider themselves English from having the opportunity to voice their opinion on what it means to be what they consider themselves to be on Wall to Wall’s production. If that is not their position then why not provide the platform to all English people?
And what if, as is extremely likely, it turns out that the qualifying participants actually have, you know, non-English elements to their family tree? What then? Will Wall to Wall excitedly point out to the participant that he or she is no longer qualified to comment? Will they exult at the participants mongrel nature? Is this result of any examination into a pure English participants family tree actually expected by Wall to Wall productions? They would be extremely foolish not to expect this to be the outcome, certainly if they go back far enough.
Mary Jones, who I believe works for Wall to Wall confirms in an email to Gareth that the programme is to be about English identity:
Channel 4 Television are making a film about English identity and are looking for contributors willing to appear on the programme to talk about what it means to be English today.[My emphasis] And yet the programme makers are deliberately excluding large numbers of English people on the basis of obvious non-English bloodlines in recent family history.
That, to me, is deliberate exclusion of English people on the basis of ethnicity and is underhand. It would be, from my point of view, perfectly reasonable to create a programme which examines the family trees of people who consider themselves ethnicly English (whatever that means) if Wall to Wall productions are up front about that and do not represent their programme as being about anything other than an exercise in discovery with respect to pure blood lines. But to include in any shape or form any language about what it means to be English in this programme while excluding those whose recent bloodlines fail the qualifying procedure is a disgrace.
One of many expected closing lines by Wall to Wall on many, if not all participants: Oh look, a Frenchman. Can you imagine?
