Stereotyping has been tackled in other art forms There's a generation that came over from foreign parts, which includes me, and then there's the generation that was brought up here, which has slightly different ideas about things."Mr Kwouk said he hoped the new series would question the stereotypes used in the past to portray people of Oriental descent, adding: "I've faced all of them. When I started as an actor 50 years ago every Chinese character had to say 'flied lice'. Now, thankfully, that's finally changing and we are allowed to say 'fried rice' like in real life."David Yip, who played the BBC's Chinese Detective in the 1980s, said he was convinced there was such a thing as an Oriental sense of humour. However, he added: "Unfortunately, the establishments in both TV and the media tend to generalise about Oriental people and be very stereotypical: it's always Triads and Chinese businessmen."I was born in Liverpool and I don't speak Chinese, but people sometimes just assume that I do."Satay Night Live is a collaboration between Baby Cow, the TV production company owned by I'm Alan Partridge star Steve Coogan, and the UK's only British-Oriental theatre group, Mu-Lan. Paul Courtenay Hyu, Mu-Lan's artistic director, said: "I hope that the show will be a great success for our community in much the same way as Goodness Gracious Me has been for the Asian community."Stereotyping has been tackled in other art forms. Most famously, the Hong Kong-born writer Timothy Mo broached the issue in Sour Sweet, his 1982 Booker Prize-nominated novel about a Chinese family living in London.While some might cringe at the pun in Satay Night Live, it is at least an improvement on "Groping for Trout in the Yangtze River" - the original title of the series.. Just before he became the most employable writer-producer in British television, I sat down with Russell T Davies at the sticky bar of a Mancunian pub to discuss his future. We were meant to be talking about Queer as Folk, then three weeks from transmission. Fortunately, as the hero of the series was a man who liked to sit in front of his VCR declaiming, "I bring Sutekh's gift of death to all humanity!", it wasn't difficult to chivvy Davies towards another subject in which I knew he had a pressing interest.
If the BBC brought back Doctor Who, would he take the job? "Sure," he said, and four years later, they've finally popped him the right question. The committee, which is investigating health and obesity, heard that £600m is spent annually persuading us to buy commercially produced food - I use the word "food" loosely - while only £2m is spent on encouraging children to eat healthily. There has never been an advertising budget promoting the consumption of vegetables - although there have been a handful of public health campaigns.How advertising chiefs sleep at night is an interesting question. But turn on the television and you will see time and time again how these guidelines are being openly flouted.The use of famous sporting stars is just another way for ruthless producers of junk food to get their message across to a valuable and expanding market - the young. There is a strict code allegedly operated by the advertising industry which controls the wording in ads aimed at children. It's obvious they place the well-being of their offspring high on their list of priorities. So how do they square accepting thousands of pounds from advertising agencies to appear on television and billboards promoting foods that clearly have little or no nutritional value? At a time when Britain's children are fatter and more unfit than ever before, is it too much to ask that sporting heroes I am absolutely sure that David Beckham and Gary Lineker are model dads, spending hours of quality time with their children. I am absolutely sure that David Beckham and Gary Lineker are model dads, spending hours of quality time with their children. She is right: look at poor Kylie, berating herself over degrading images of women that appear in videos devised, styled and shot by men. Frannie is the polar opposite of those male constructs and Ryan is that rare species, an actress who had to take her clothes off to prove she has grown up More from Joan Smith. |
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