So something has come to my attention. Prepare yourself, because for a minute, stuff's about to get real high-brow. Don't worry- I'm telling you it with the confidence that you can handle it.
It starts off with me bludgeoning out any sense of reality I have left, by watching E4's Made in Chelsea; see, I told you. One of the dead-eyed girls had an altercation with another, and it was pretty funny. Like many others, I often find half the hilarity from this kind of mind-numbing occurrence comes from the response on twitter during and after, so as I blithely cast my eye over the variously directed death-threats my attention was drawn to some twitter whining; twineing if you will. The twiners in question were musician professor green and his reality tv sort Millie Mackintosh. They've had it to the back teeth of the twittersphere taking the micheal out of the 'class divide' in their relationship.
His observation is, I believe correct, but not exactly ground-breaking. I can tell you with the utmost confidence, that this is not the first posh girl that's fallen for a boy with a neck tattoo, who grew up in a council house that cost as much as her first pony. And it won't be the last.
Nevertheless its the stuff of tabloid fodder- the heiress and her bad-boy; they lap that stuff up. In the grand scheme of things, it's nothing surprising, and in the real world it's certainly nothing new. You can't fight biology; human attraction is chemical, and their relationship is no different. In their case, their 'heritages' are bus-rides away (or a black cab ride; whichever mode of transport you favour) My parents, along with millions of other Londoners from mixed heritages, are from different continents, and I don't hear them whining. Oh right, professor Green has something to say on that too:
'If the difference were race people wouldn’t be so quick to point it out – it’s still prejudice isn’t it? I find it weird that’s it such a big thing.'
Yeah, people were quite quick to point it out until relatively recently, but your memory's short, so we'll let that one slide. But hold on Stephen; as Ms Macintosh sultrily refers to you, I think these (lets be honest; relatively light in terms of 'prejudice') jibes might not stem from your grime artist exterior and tough guy tatts, but in fact from the whole reason your lady friend is notable in the first place. Millie Macintosh, along with every other person on 'Made in Chelsea' has aligned herself with a piece of programming that directly focusses on 'class', in an era where the very notion was beginning to seem irrelevant.
The whole premise is that these people are 'made' in the royal borough, have inheritances, good pedigree, perfect lighting and unspoken (barely) superiority. The watcher buys into the fact that these people are wealthier than the average, better spoken than the average, and at a tangible advantage to the average Hackney pleb.
It's all relatively light-hearted; it's e4, not an ideology akin to the third reich. "Some scenes have been created for your entertainment" :It's not all real, its just a bit of a laugh; to club the banality out of a Monday evening. But the twitter responses to a relatively innocuous disagreement that I touched upon earlier, do show that people are aware that the viewer is very much placed at the bottom looking up. People's reaction to the social minutiae of these people is different to other reality TV. Their opinions are shaped by the fact that they present their lives as being better than theirs. The knee jerk twitter yobbo rationalises that these people have so much money that they don't deserve to have problems. Everything that goes wrong for them is self-inflicted. Down to their snobbery or snootiness. Perhaps this is prejudice, but every detail of the production encourages this way of thinking. 'Made in Chelsea' gets viewers, but not necessarily sympathisers.
The British love an underdog, and Made in Chelsea is the antithesis of this, these people pointedly portray themselves to ooze a certain brand of success and prosperity. Simply by agreeing to be on a programme like this Millie's nay-sayers, I believe see her as clambering up onto a high horse. Now she's asking to be let back down to live as the plebs live, and it won't be an easy journey.
She's caught the eye of a regular Joe, a boy from Hackney prospering from a less than favourable background, articulate and warm; ironically exactly the kind of underdog Britain loves. No wonder Millie wanted a break from the Chelsea set, but living your life on TV leaves you open to conjecture, and by doing something so far from everything you've been urging us to believe about you; you are going to come up against criticism.
I can understand that Professor Green is surprised by the reaction his new relationship is receiving from a section of the press and public. He just met a pretty girl and went through the motions, but comparing the reaction to something like mixed racial relationships, with its thickly weaved cultural and social significance I believe is misguided. I'll take my chances and say he's experiencing predjudice-lite; specifically commissioned by e4.
I've seen Millie use the word 'classist' whilst briefly commenting on the subject, in between posting pictures of her bronzed bod. I think when it comes down to it, this over-simplistic nomenclature is just her wielding a clumsy fist at a disillusioned public whom she originally hoodwinked into believing she was something she wasn't.
When it comes to her It doesn't make her a bad person, but it shows the fragility of fame for fame's sake when it comes to the public's opinion. And when it comes to him, he's a white guy from Hackney, making urban music that's making the transition into the mainstream. He probably can't believe that this is a situation in which he's coming across prejudice.
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