Tuesday 11 September 2018

BBC drama accused of 'Islamophobia'



So a BBC drama - BBC One's The Bodyguard - has been accused of 'Islamophobia'. 

The opening episode included a scene in which a would-be suicide bomber appeared to act under the influence of her jihadist husband. Sergeant David Budd, a police protection officer played by Richard Madden, tells the woman that she has been brainwashed. 
Some viewers criticised the writers for depicting Muslims as terrorists and said the plot perpetuated the trope that Muslim women were controlled by their husbands.
 The show's creator Jed Mercurio has put up the following defence:
You need to watch the whole drama for a comprehensive idea of who is plotting to do harm. 
Unfortunately the reality of our situation is that the principal terror threats in the UK do originate from Islamist sympathisers. 
I do understand that’s different from the religion of Islam, but it’s the reality of who the perpetrators are of the majority of the offences. If the show were set in the recent British past, the attackers might be Irish Republicans.
The comments below the article at the Times give the BBC's critics short shrift but, perhaps picking up on Jed saying, "You need to watch the whole drama for a comprehensive idea of who is plotting to do harm", one posits an idea that wouldn't surprise me in the least if it turned out to be correct:
Oh come on, we know perfectly well that it will turn out that the poor, innocent Muslims will turn out to have been manipulated into it by the sinister combination of the devious head of the security services and Big Business.
Now that's something you would expect from a BBC drama.

2 comments:

  1. Yep, as with most drama these days,you can say with certainty "can't be the guy with the long beard" or "can't be the woman in the Hijab" who "dunnit"...or if they did it's because of American foreign policy, so that's OK.

    ...there's also a long list of others who can never do it...Kinda takes the suspense out of things. :)

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  2. Cis-gendered white male did it; if Christian, did it with demonic intent. That is how crime works now, other than in reality, that is.

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