The rush to condemn the Celebrity Big Brotherbullies as racists is motivated by virulent classism, writes Róisín Ingle.
The broadly accepted notion that Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty was the victim of race-motivated bullying while locked in the Celebrity Big Brotherhouse has caused consternation this week, from Mullingar to Mumbai. Here is what Shetty herself had to say when asked whether tabloid favourite Jade Goody's blazing row with her over, of all things, stock cubes was racially motivated.
"No, I take it back," Shetty said when quizzed on the matter by Big Brother in the Diary Room on Thursday night. "I don't think that is true now. People say things in a fit of anger. But I stand corrected. I don't want people to think I feel that way. In fact, I'd like you to please clarify . . . Put this as a statement from my side, if you can: I don't feel there was any racial discrimination happening from Jade's end. I don't think that's true. I think there's lots of insecurities from Jade, but it's definitely not racial." Lots of insecurities. Definitely not racial. She'd like Big Brother to please clarify.
Perhaps all those people, from Putney to Patna, who were burning effigies of Channel 4 executives, withdrawing sponsorship from the programme, removing "racist" Jade's perfume from the shelves and expressing disgust in the House of Commons imagine Shetty only feels this way because she isn't aware of the extent of the abuse.
As in: "Ah, if only poor Shilpa Shetty knew what Jade Goody and her coven - footballer's girlfriend and model Danielle Lloyd and ex-pop star Jo O'Meara - have been saying behind her back, then she would definitely cry racism." This argument goes that if Shetty knew the Gang of Three had opined that Indian people are thin because they "undercook their food and then throw it up" or that one of them said Shetty makes "my skin crawl", then she would see this is a race issue.
It would be different if Shetty knew one of the gang said the actress "wants to be white" when they witnessed her bleaching her facial hair. (It's a depressing fact that lighter-skinned Bollywood stars get more work in India.) Surely Shetty would feel discriminated against if she knew that one of them called her a "dog" and yet another mimicked her accent behind her back. And if she knew one of them had said she should "f*** off home", then before you could say chicken stock cubes Shetty would have been running to the diary room branding them all racists and demanding Channel 4 take action immediately.
Or would she? What if, though, knowing all of the above, Shetty still insisted that the bullying - there's no doubting she has been cruelly bullied this past week - was more about a clash of class and of culture than any full-on race war. This theory is harder to quantify than racism, definitely not as headline-worthy, and it probably wouldn't lead to random effigy burning. But looking at the Gang of Three and the Bollywood Princess it's not hard to see race as a symptom of this row, rather than the root cause.
GOODY'S MOTHER, THEgravel-voiced Jackiey, got the ball rolling before she was evicted last week, simply because she genuinely couldn't pronounce Shilpa in her cockney burr. Instead she started calling her "princess" and then "the Indian" and when the relationship soured, "Oi you". When Jackiey left, the resentment between Shetty and the Gang of Three simmered on because of, for one thing, the Indian woman's tendency to cook for the group all the time, adding as much spice as she liked and rarely consulting anyone else about the meals. This tendency to look after number one earned her the darkly muttered label of "controlling" and "fake" by gang-leader Goody.
But the real cause of resentment is this: Shilpa Shetty, while at times unbearably condescending and infuriatingly princess-like with her talk of her maids and her "Man Friday", represents everything that the Gang of Three are not. She is a genuine celebrity adored by millions. She is well-educated and well-spoken. She has a natural beauty, enviably glossy hair and an elegant bearing. She has a deep sense of self-respect, doesn't do sex talk and wouldn't be caught dead farting or burping in public. At home in India, Shetty has a 2am curfew and can't go anywhere without her mother's approval. In fact, her time in the Big Brother house is the first time she has gone anywhere without her mother. She is 31.
Conflict arose, as the clever Big Brother bosses knew it would, not because Goody, Lloyd and O'Meara are racist, but because they were deeply threatened by being in such close proximity to somebody so alien to them. In the face of Shetty's unwavering sense of self-worth, every scrap of self-loathing rose like bile from the Gang of Three and spewed out in the crudest, most obvious, most predictable way. At that point, whatever her differences - a big nose, say, sticky out ears or dodgy hair extensions - they would all have been highlighted by the gang in a bid to lash out and diminish the object of their resentment.
Jermaine Jackson, a Shetty ally and fellow housemate, was spot on when he attempted to answer his housemate's bleating cries of "why do they hate me?" on the night of the big row. He said it was because Shetty wouldn't talk about the colour of her underwear with them, or reveal when she had lost her virginity. He said it was because Shetty wouldn't sit "passing gas" on the sofa with them all day. "They don't like you for that," he said. And he was right.
BUT NOBODY SHOULDworry about Shilpa Shetty. She will make pots of money from all the post-Big Brother interviews and modelling assignments. She will then fly back home to her high-caste life in India with an enhanced international profile and some shocking stories for her friends about the uncivilised bunch of English low-lifes she had for housemates. The experience will make her, not break her.
The others can look forward to a very different fate. Back in England, Jade Goody and Danielle Lloyd and Jo O'Meara will be booed and demonised when they leave the house and called all sorts of names across every strand of media. Careers will crumble as they are forced, ad nauseum, to explain themselves and their behaviour until the public feel they have been sufficiently punished. They will be excoriated for their working class backgrounds, for their perceived racism, their lack of education, for their ignorance, for their laddishness and most of all for being what Jackson called Goody's mother: "white trash". Film director Ken Russell called Goody and her family "slum dwellers" before leaving the house. Jo O'Meara has been called a hatchet-faced hag and worse by commentators this week. Few eyebrows have been raised by either comment and there's no reason to think anyone is about to start caring now.
In the weeks to come this virulent classism will be deemed an appropriate response to what's gone on in the house. It's unlikely to provoke an international or even domestic controversy. In a world where almost every community needs to be treated with politically correct kid gloves, working class English people are still fair game, as seen in Little Britain, the Catherine Tate Showand Shameless. As this bizarre week in the history of reality TV comes to an end, it's worth remembering that when this saga is over the indomitable Shilpa Shetty will be fine. It's the bullies I feel sorry for.