That Great British Documentary

 The BLM group I belong to discussed That Great British Documentary yesterday. 

Opinions on it were more divided than we generally find when we discuss a topic. For me this is a clue that the film touches on something that is seldom discussed or thought about in our society.

So, what was the film about? After a few days' reflection I've decided that it is about three things, all of which are signposted by the film's title.

Who gets to decide what is and what is not great?

Who gets to decide what is and what is not British?

Who gets to decide what is and what is not a documentary?

Throughout, the film maker, JoanJoan, refers to her film as Bafta award winning. Of course, it is no such thing. Her point is: nobody will ever consider it for a Bafta. But why not?

Our group discussed the often chaotic way that the film was shot and edited. Some felt that this undermined the message of the film, while others felt that this was an important part of the story that it was telling; the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan famously said.

The story it was telling was autobiographical: JoanJoan's attempts to understand her place in British society. JoanJoan is a film maker. Who gets to decide if her films are great? If she herself is British? And if the films that she makes are documentaries?

JoanJoan leaves the viewer to try to answer these questions. My answer to all three is that, in British society, whiteness decides.

Whiteness is a slippery concept to grasp. It is not determined by the colour of your skin. Whiteness is a way of being in the world, a set of priorities, particular choices about what is worthy of attention and what deserves to be ignored. Whiteness is about what is inside your head, not the surface of your skin. Whiteness is inside all our heads, whether we want it there or not. Whiteness is, among many things, racist because whiteness asserts in a host of different ways that the fiction of race is worthy of our attention.

And so, as she was growing up, whiteness told JoanJoan what she was: mixed race, ethnic, BAME and along with various racial slurs the overall message: not white. 

Whiteness is the gatekeeper. Whiteness says what is and what is not allowed, what is good and what is bad.

Does whiteness being racist mean that whiteness is always wrong? Whiteness, if asked to suggest a Great British Documentary, might say David Attenborough's Life On Earth. What's wrong with that?

Picture me sighing as I reply: nothing is wrong with that. David Attenborough documentaries are among the finest flowerings of humanity, maybe even up there with Shakespeare plays and the music of Bach. Yet they are all also products of whiteness. And as whiteness is the gatekeeper, that is why we Britons get to hear more Bach than we do, say, ragas.

Whiteness is not the only way of being in the world. Nor is it the best way of being in the world. Indeed, many of the things that whiteness values are catastrophically harmful to the world. Global warming is a problem of whiteness' making, a consequence of things whiteness values such as consumerism and capitalism. While it is not the only way of being in the world, whiteness is, however, a way of being in the world that has steadily gained power over the past millennium, at the same time driving into obscurity or extinction countless other ways of being in the world. It is not so much that whiteness is a terrible way of being in the world, rather that it takes up the space that would allow other ways of being in the world to have more of our attention. Whiteness is fast becoming the only way we have to be in the world, the only tool we have in our toolkit.

Whiteness frames the world. It gatekeeps by telling us what to attend to and what to ignore. JoanJoan is asking us: why does her documentary fall into the latter category, and what would it take for it not to?

Her documentary also shows us, at times with excruciating poignancy, the devastating human consequences of being ignored by society. Even the unjust and arbitrary roles that the fiction of race confers on society's members are denied those whom this fiction deems to be of mixed race. Not only are you ignored, there is no place for you - no race that will welcome you as their own. 

JoanJoan's documentary does not work by polemic: she shows, rather than tells. The most precious thing she has to show is her own embodiment of a person racialized as mixed race. Yes, she is chaotic. Yes, she is unedited. But to collude in the fiction that these qualities make her unworthy of our attention is to collude in racism. 

If people like JoanJoan are rarities in your life then that is all the more reason to attend to them when you meet them. They are a signal that you, not they, may well be the problem.