David Alusoga speaks about his role as ‘talking head’ in the Documentary.
From The Guardian
What was quietly and purposefully revelatory about the documentary went largely uncommented upon. The more open-minded of the 2.4 million people who clicked through to the first episode experienced a simple but central revelation: they heard the voices of a young woman of colour and her husband, who have been subjected of an unprecedented campaign of abuse and vilification, telling us what that all felt like.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...ry-has-hit-the-raw-nerve-of-tabloid-prejudice
As I appear as one of its talking-head interviewees, I have found the past few days revelatory in a different way. Being caught in the series’ blowback is to be shown – in bleak and granular detail – how a six-year campaign of tabloid abuse has left huge numbers of otherwise reasonable people both obsessed with and contemptuous towards a young couple they have never met.
My Twitter feed is rarely pretty, but recent days have been particularly unappealing; a primordial soup of defensiveness, racism, misogyny, jingoism and whataboutery, garnished yesterday with an antisemitic conspiracy theory, as the documentary’s producer comes from a Jewish family.
While i think the documentary nor the Oprah interview didn't strengthen their claim about the tabloids by not being able to produce headlines that actually had to do with Harry and Meghan, if i zoom out from that detail, this discussion reminds me somehow of the 'Zwarte Piet' (Black Pete, the helper of 'Sinterklaas' the traditional dutch december bringer of presents and joy to especially kids), you might be familiar with it:
Very few (if any) dutch kids thought of Black Pete as a 'person of color' but more of a jolly and fun character (next to the stern and serious old Sinterklaas). but when people from outside the NL commented on the skincolor of the character, to my surprise quite a number of comments from 'the average dutch person' indeed did border (or cross the line) to racism...at best people argued Pete was black because he's the one who climbs down the chimney to bring the gifts to the kids and gets loads of soot on his face, at worst...well, i'll not repeat that.
I can imagine it is similar in this case, many commented on Meghan (and the kids)not in any way different than they would comment on other royals (the ones who called Camilla a horse weren't being very nice either, were they), and many may not have intended anything race-related, but loads of the comments that are dropped now, like described above, certainly can be described as racist.
Personally i don't think there is any culture on the planet that doesn't discriminate 'others' to some extent, and skincolor, haircolor, gender are often easy targets unfortunately.
It is very good that the topic is discussed and people are made aware (like with Black Pete) because awareness is the start of change.
This is exactly why, as i've mentioned earlier, it would be such a good message if Harry looked back on his own racist slurs against people from Pakistan (racism is not only directed at people from african ancestry..), how he learned, and how he looks back on it.
That would be an awesome message for the couple to share and would have been even stronger if they had stayed in the royal fold.
Why they felt the need to leave royal life i understand, they only wanted to do that if they could change a lot, and changes like that don't happen in the 18 months they gave it.
I'm hoping for some level of self-reflection in the remainder of the series or in the book, i think if there's a shred of awareness from H&M's side they could have done things differently (because you always can), I think the door to civil relationships with the family is still open..