Richard Curtis: lack of diversity in Love Actually makes me feel a bit stupid
In a TV special marking the festive romcom’s 20th anniversary the director says ‘some moments … feel out of date’
Well, yes, OK. But should we take this as a commentary on his selections then or on how the country has changed since then?
In the 2001 census we’ve about 92% white (including White Irish). In the 2021 Census we’ve about 82% White.
So, what’s the lesson here? Curtis was wrong back then or my, look at the effect of mass immigration?
I hate Love Actually.
I hate it as much as I hate Bayern Munich
I hate both of them so much that words cannot express it and I have to use the language of contemporary dance.
I will not rest until every print, every DVD, every VHS and every digital copy of that film has been obliterated.
Gurgle, froth…
Tim, some formatting thing has made this post a long story short, and the previous post a short story very long (on the front page).
Can;t see any reason for that – maybe it’ll sort itself out
Tim, looking at the source code, there appears to be a missing double quote mark at the end of the link to ons.gov.uk.
If an alien (the outer space type of alien, not some migrant from El Salvador) came down to Earth and turned on Al Beeb or any of the commercial tv stations, it/ she/ he / they / them / grug, would think the entire population of the UK was either black, mixed race or disabled.
And, similar to John Cleese’ comment on the probabilty that Monty Python would not get made these days, I can only hope that no more of the dross that Richard Curtis has dished up over his career will get made these days either.
That work then?
Looks OK now
. . . the dross that Richard Curtis has dished up over his career . . .
Not the Nine O’clock News? Blackadder?
Yes, front page fixed too.
In the 2001 census we’ve about 92% white (including White Irish). In the 2021 Census we’ve about 82% White.
When you factor in the age demographics we whities don’t have long; Mark Steyn was right.
The Guardianistas will be delighted, too stupid to realise that all their feminist, homofied transbuggeration will get swept into the dustbin of history as well.
Wogs, Actually.
The lotus eaters had an enjoyable 20 minutes discussing this yesterday.
Although I despise the film as a cloying right-on upper middle class lovefest the fact that’s it’s annoying, really annoying as it turns out, all the right people makes me marginally more sympathetic. Plus the actress playing Alan Rickman’s secretary was insanely hot.
Although I despise the film as a cloying right-on upper middle class lovefest
Curtis already paired off young, ripe Keira Knightley with a coal-black African stud in his movie. Presumably while Curtis filmed everything from his Remainer stool.
But 2002-era woke was different and less antisocial than the Current Thing in our dead, gay country.
It’s full steam ahead to a Stunning and Brave New World of impoverished eunuchs. Whee!
PJF @ I will accept that some of Blackadder was funny and some of NTNON was funny and some of Spitting Image was funny, but none of that makes up for the Vicar of Dibley, Four Weddings, Mama Mia part 2, Notting Hill, Bean, etc.
Just my humble, of course.
Wogs, Actually.
Steve, you fucking legend.
You need to look at the figures by cohort, and the figures at school age are dreadful.
in 2017/18, there were 8.1 million pupils at state-funded primary, secondary or special schools in England – of those, 67% were White British, 11% were Asian, 6% were Black, 6% were from the Other White ethnic group, 6% had Mixed ethnicity, and 0.4% were from the Chinese ethnic group.
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/
Children today genuinely believe that there have always been blacks in Britain, even though I can remember when there wasn’t. It’s genocide, actually.
The funny bits of Blackadder were written by Ben Elton. Michael Grade told the producers to get someone to rein in Curtis or he would can the show.
White British boys were in a minority in my old school back in the early 1980s
. . . but none of that makes up for the Vicar of Dibley, Four Weddings, Mama Mia part 2, Notting Hill, Bean, etc.
I couldn’t disagree with your humble, Addolff, partly because I’ve only ever seen minute long clips of those creations, and partly because those clips would incline me to agree.
Full disclosure: I had no idea who Richard Curtis was; just wiki’d him upon Tim’s post. I did know Ben Elton had something to do with Blackadder.
I quite like Love, Actually. Quite happy to watch it if I can’t find anything else. Hugh Grant’s bodyguard carol singing always raises a smile.
Children today genuinely believe that there have always been blacks in Britain, even though I can remember when there wasn’t.
It’s probably been about five years since I’ve been up there, but I used to pop into Sainsburys in Ripley (Derbyshire) from time to time. The store, and the bits of town I skimmed to get there, was all white folk, like the England of my youth. By now, the place probably has the little groups of dark skinned males wondering around when not in their free hotels, like my town does.
. . . young, ripe Keira Knightley . . .
I was told by a cameraman on the “Pirates of . . .” movies that she had terrible skin that sometimes had to be cloned out in post production. But he was a very odd character (he seemed bitterly gay with a lesbian wife) and may have just been jealous.
Funnily enough PJF. I saw Dirk Bogarde once give an interview ( was it Parkinson ?) where he was really bitchy about Marilyn Monroe : fat, terrible skin, lanky hair. But, he admitted, the camera loved her.
I hope that I never meet Keira and Jack Grealish at the same time. That’d be really embarrassing.
Is it Leicester that now has less than 50% white British. Can’t remember but think so.
This has all happened in single generation. It might be OK if people wanted to come to the UK to assimilate and adopt British values but they don’t. They want to set up enclaves where they can carry on their home country lifestyle, complete with antipathy towards their home county’s traditional enemies.
God knows what the 2031 census will look like. I hope I’m not in the UK by then.
The Vicar of Dibley was brilliant – it showed you could make a comedy where everyone in the cast was funny bar the lead.
Adolff: Yep, look at this week’s released census statistics. The map of ethnicity=black shows the entire country almost a uniform white. As somebody elsewhere commented: has anybody told the advertising agency?
The subtitle of the first “Pirates of…” sequel was “Dead Man’s Chest”, which I always thought described Keira Knightley’s physique perfectly.
(I’m being a bit unfair; she’s quite attractive, really)
@Roué le Jour – “Children today genuinely believe that there have always been blacks in Britain, even though I can remember when there wasn’t.”
I would never have guessed you were that old. We know the names of many black people in Britain in the 1700s (see https://www.history.co.uk/articles/black-britons-who-shaped-history), the first depiction of a black person was that of John Blanke, trumpeter for Henry VIII (see https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/john-blanke-henry-viii-black-trumpeter/), there were black people in Britain when the Romans were here, and it seems that the very first British people were black (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5358699/First-Brit-dark-skinned-blue-eyed.html) as they had not yet acquired the genetic mutations to make them white. So you’re not only over 10,000 years old but, presumably albino as you date from a time when there were no white people as we know them today.
Or maybe your advanced age has merely affected your memory!