Olympics opening ceremony show

I chucked in the St George reference to counter the argument that we've only recently become 'multicultural'. The English flag (not the union flag) is the cross of St George.

We should also remember that until relatively recently, Britain was widely held to be the British empire. The British flag flew in much of the Carribean region, India, much of Africa, parts of north America, Polynesia, the far east, and in fact pretty much everywhere. During our wars we have been dependent on support from soldiers from all over the world, most well known example perhaps the Ghurkas. After WW2 when Britain was dust and many of our able bodied men were either dead or injured, we relied on the influx of Indian immigrants to help us rebuild the country.

So you see if there's to be any attempt to represent British history, then you have to include all colours and creeds otherwise its not an accurate representation.

 

But not in great numbers - pre The Industrial revolution. Vary rarely seen in Agricultural Britain I would say,
earlier #78 refers

 

I dont think invading and enslaving other countries really counts as multi-culturism but i respect your opinion.

 

He's a legend in his own mind!!!!!!!!!!

Val

 

If we rewind British history a bit further, we get to the fact that Britain was conquered and annexed from several different sources in Europe. Likewise as long as our ancestors have been able to travel, they went out and colonised other places. So our entire history is multicultural.

Besides, it was just a show. If it was meant to be accurate, I'm sure they wouldn't have had Mary Poppins flying in on a brolly.

 

No, that's Prince Philip.

 

You mean ... Mary Poppins can't fly??

 

That's why she was bushed for the rest of the evening, silly.

 

That looked really effective

 

Of course she can. She just doesn't really use a brolly. They did that in the film to avoid freaking kids out, because if they knew the truth about how she did it, they would be psychologically scarred for life.

 

But in any case, Boyle was working with the here and now: 750 volunteer British citizens of all sorts. It would have been dreadful if he'd said 'in the interests of strict historical accuracy, we're not going to include any black people until the show gets to the 1950s.' It was a performance and people were acting out roles. Should we prevent black actors from doing Shakespeare, on the basis that The Bard only worked with pasty people? (Come to think of it, that would rule out women as well, since men played the female roles.)

 

My point is, not that black and Asian volunteers featured prominently in the performance, but rather that the Director felt he needed to make quite such an overt point of including them in every possible shot, almost as though he'd been hauled before the Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport and told 'For heaven's sake, make sure you get as much ethnicity on those TV screens as possible.' Only about 1 in 6 people in the UK are black or Asian, if you judged it solely on Friday night's coverage, you could be forgiven for thinking that figure was nearer 40%

 

Well, I don't know whether the cameraman was on a mission to pick out black faces. What I do know is that many of the volunteers were from the Stratford area where the ethnic mix is very different from the provinces.

 

PS Can't find Stratford but in the poorer areas of London the ethnic mix varies from around 60/40 white to black to around 50/50. So, given the catchment area of the volunteers, I'd say that was what the coverage was reflecting.

 

Some of the the asian faces i seen in the performance during the industrial revolution were wearing top hats and coats, that is entirely a europian thing and very much English. If they were portrayed as slaves i would not have an issue what so ever. The performance could have been played out by 90% black or asian people for all i care but only if they portray them as they would have been during that era otherwise i just think its silly. I didnt see any white people in slumdog millionaire playing Indians