Rust and Ruin

I do think part of this is the writing as well, which is something I keep grappling with. Admittedly, I haven’t watched in a while and so am not familiar with Nate, but I do have issues with how both Ellis and Billy were introduced, wherein they immediately had beef with arguably two of the most beloved and sympathetic queer men on the show. (Matty and Ellis’ altercation was literally on the heels of his extremely sympathetic introduction in which the audience is primed to take his side.) 

This then frames Ellis and Billy in terrible lights: Ellis for being violent towards Matty, and Billy for having been part of Aaron’s torture in prison, something we saw in much detail, and then Aaron recounted for us in the moment and in subsequent episodes. Neither is great, and automatically feeds into the stereotype of black men being violent. 

Now, you can argue that white characters have been introduced in similar ways, and that’s fine and fair (mostly because I cannot remember any similar/recent introductions). But to do so is to ignore the implications that come with being a person of colour, which in turn brings me back to my main point: hire writers of colour. Because more often than not, we’re more than aware of the dynamics at play and we know how to write and avoid pitfalls. 

A lot of the race-based stuff that Emmerdale has tackled has been average at best, and as felt like a primer on issues that most people of colour are more than familiar with. (There is no way in hell that Ellis did not grow up already knowing that part of Jessie’s implicit defence of Billy is because she knows the world has already given him an unfair shake as a young black man. But I do appreciate and commend the effort of trying to educate a larger audience.) 

Tl;dr: Are you allowed to dislike characters of colour? Yes. Absolutely! But also examine where your hate is coming from, and also look at the context in which the show might be framing them. (Also, maybe why you have a problem with them, when you’re fine with similar traits and behaviours from a white character.) Jessie defending Billy, while annoyingly repetitive at this point, is not unlike Chas vowing to do whatever it takes to defend Aaron, because he’s her child and she loves him. 

Seconding the writing. One of my frustrations with Emmerdale is the way that (with the exception of Billy) race tends to be ignored except when needed for a plot point or set dressing. I mean, the Sharmas could all be replaced by white actors tomorrow and it wouldn’t change a single thing about the way they’re written, because them having brown skin is literally never acknowledged or reflected in the scripts. Like Rishi and Manpreet’s party - lovely Indian outfits all round, but not a single mention of their cultural heritage or what all of it means to them.

Ditto Jessie and the Caribbean wedding. It felt like the show was going ‘ooh, steel drums and rum cake, isn’t that exotic and fun?’ without ever acknowledging in the script what all of that actually means to Jessie. Were her grandparents immigrants? Does she have family in the Caribbean? Given that both of her previous husbands were black, did she have any concerns about marrying Marlon or frustration with the fact that he can’t relate to or fully understand a lot of what she and her sons experience?

For me, there’s a lack of lived/embedded reality in the way race is written on Emmerdale that almost certainly reflects the lack of diversity in the writers room. It feels like most of the time the writers are choosing to write in a completely colour-blind way (I’d bet money the fact that Nate isn’t white will never be mentioned), which undercuts the writing for non-white characters. I mean, I find it massively unrealistic that, say, Rodney hasn’t made an assumption about what sports Ellis is good at, or Bear Wolf hasn’t asked Priya where she comes from (‘no, originally’).

I remember when Jessie first made a comment about Billy facing prejudice because he was black, and my first reaction was shock because holy shit, someone actually said it! Lots of people had written meta by that point about what Billy’s experience in prison would have been like as a black man, but I genuinely expected Emmerdale to just ignore it.

(Full disclosure - I don’t like Billy very much, in the sense that I don’t think he’s a very nice person. But I think that he’s interesting, nuanced and well-developed, with both sympathetic and unsympathetic qualities, and I think all of that is much more important for a soap character than being likeable. Jessie I like well enough, although I’m a little frustrated at how shallow she feels after 2 years on the soap - give her a friend! Nate just reminds me of Ross, who I couldn’t stand.)

Really good points on the absence of colour/culture aware writing! 

The whole point of having diverse characters is to show different perspectives. A difference in skin colour alone is not gonna do shit. Instead, for the Sharmas, they could explore what it means to be one of the few non-white families in the village, or before last year, what it meant to be the only non-white family in the village (were there others??). What does it mean for them as minorities that they’re one of the major employers in there too? Do people make comments? 

Talking about race happens all the time in POC circles. We get frustrated with it, we fight over it and we definitely laugh over it. It’s not really something we run away from, and it’d be so realistic and interesting to see the Sharmas have casual lighthearted conversations about race as well.

Tbh I’m glad they haven’t included any sports/nationality assumptions. These comments happen all the time in real life, yeah (🔪), but I still feel like it’s time to move on from that stuff onscreen. Of course, this might also just be me worrying that Emmerdale will turn the comment into a comedic moment where the old white man makes another innocent blunder :/ 

“Talking about race happens all the time in POC circles. We get frustrated with it, we fight over it and we definitely laugh over it. It’s not really something we run away from, and it’d be so realistic and interesting to see the Sharmas have casual lighthearted conversations about race as well.” YES

It’s a causal thing I think 100% reflects the writing team and maybe the audience watching who would maybe raise an eyebrow if a character said: “They’re all white dad” or “Yeah we’re really going to fit in here and not stick out at all” yk something tongue and cheek at best

Talking about your race and your race becoming so much more important to you has been something I have very much experienced since starting university as I have basically become “other” in a way I hadn’t felt before. From societies like ACS (AfroCarribbean Society) it’s so easy to see how race is pushed to the forefront when you don’t see people like you enough. It’s natural. Very very natural and I think it says a lot about the lack of diversity in the writing team who perhaps don’t want to push it too far or make a big differences in characters

With the Sharma’s for example, they could have very easily shown a conflict between their mixed heritage (it would have been the first time I saw a mixed race family deal with these issues on a soap) It would have been an interesting sl to show how they have dealt with religious divides, racism themselves, where exactly they feel they belong. But as @persiflager it was kept as a surface level like: oh they wear sari’s, that’s different for emmerdale!

Sometimes when I speak about race or mention things I see in media is met with: “Why is race so important to you? Why does their race matter at all?” But it does. And I think the ideas mentioned previously about colour blindness is spot on. The differences are mentioned only at a surface level. Mainly because I think people still find it uncomfortable when race or different cultures are too present in a space where it is not prevalent (such as a predominately white small yorkshire village) which allows for arguments like: it’s just not realistic for many diverse characters sitting around talking about where they are from.

Sorry to slide in again, I’d posted my reply without seeing all these amazing and very salient points! 

I completely agree with what all of you said. Especially in terms of the Sharmas! Just within the four of them (Rishi, Jai, Priya, and now Manpreet), there should be this huge wealth of experience and perspective that is simply… not there? Does Rishi care what traditions his kids follow? Did Jai, Priya, and Nikhil feel the need to assimilate amongst their peers growing up? And how do Jai and Priya relate to Indian culture? Just between my brother and I there’s a huge difference in how we approach and feel about things — and that’s within one family! (I still find it hilarious that none of them seemed to have an opinion about the pub’s curry night. Though that could be down to no one really being big on cooking.)

I appreciate the effort to bring in more inclusive characters, but it’s not enough to just represent people by the colour of their skin, you have to make an effort to depict their experiences too. Because it’s not just about the number of characters you manage to incorporate, it’s also about the quality of roles they’re written. (Are they simply wallpaper or do they have their own internal lives? Are they simply background characters or do they affect and drive plot?) For example, while I appreciate Nate being a character of colour, I don’t think it’s the smartest to have him, a black man, be introduced by successively sleeping around with a lot of female characters (this feeding in to another negative stereotype), followed by him breaking up one of the most beloved couples on the soap. On its own, it would be okay at best. But right now that’s three black men all brought in as initial antagonists to characters the audience is already rooting for, and as a pattern that’s not great! 

And to build off @littlelooneyluna‘s point at the end there, it may seem like a lot of little, largely insignificant things, but over time that stuff builds up and can affect how we think and feel about certain issues and how they map out into the real world, because it reinforces biases (negative or positive) we may not know we might have internalised. Soaps have such a wonderful reach in terms of audience, it’s a shame they’re not maximising it as best they can.