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My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding has given Channel 4 its highest ratings (nearly 9 million people) since Celebrity Big Brother in 2007, and like that show, there have been cries of racism. Traveller communities have claimed the show is too narrow a portrayal of their lives, and they’re not the only ones. Racism is a thorny issue and one I’ll come to later.
But the main focus of the show must be the extravagant weddings and celebrations that take place. Women are wedged into dresses that would look out of place in Alice in Wonderland – typically they feature huge white or pink monstrosities that reminded me of the teacup ride at Disneyland. Even getting into a car requires a major military operation while, conversely, many of the men attend weddings in jeans and a vest. Children’s communions are no less extravagant affairs – children as young as 6 are dolled up in make up and clothes and then gyrate to Lady Gaga on the dance floor afterwards. It’s all rather bizarre.
One reason the weddings are so extravagant is that the communities shown within the film still portray an astounding level of sexism. There is no hope of any of these women getting a decent set of qualifications and going to university – they are engaged young, some as early as 15, and married usually before they are 20 to begin a life of domestic servitude. They accept it with a shrug of the shoulders and the phrase ‘It’s a way of life’. It seemed an awful waste and I was wondering what would happen if a person didn’t want to be married while they were still a teenager.
The last episode, titled ‘Bride and Prejudice’ tried to work in a narrative of prejudice and racism against the gypsy community. The programme was also complicit in this, conflating Romany gypsies and Irish travellers (though differences were mentioned in the final episode). All that was given as example of prejudice was some graffiti, anecdotes about cancelled weddings and a closed pub at a gypsy fair last year because there had been violence. Personally it didn’t look like racism to me – I’m not going to deny that it exists but it did seem overblown out of proportion in light of how little of it there actually was.
The documentary seemed desperate to paint “settled” people as the root of all gypsy problems yet they barely allowed the other side of the story to be heard – all we had was a barman who gave a (quite reasonable) explanation for putting wire mesh on his pub windows. The people on screen seemed to almost wallow in their victimhood. Narrative clichés of a ‘proud community’ were trotted out so many times they became part of the scenery.
My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding was a TV programme that wanted to have its cake and eat it. The music and the wedding dresses portrayed were in such a manner to inspire obvious mirth and mockery, yet also it seemed to go down the Dances With Wolves angle of a proud people whose way of living was under threat and that this was a very bad thing. I’m not going to deny that a sense of wonder was had watching a tradition that seemed very alien – yet Channel 4 seemed to whitewash the whole affair. I’m not asking for an incisive shock-doc, but a little more probing wouldn’t have gone amiss.
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