Over the last few weeks I’ve been watching “The Great British Bake Off” on Ch4 with the missus.
Yes, I know it contains a couple of cunt presenters in campy Matt Lucas and Goth-knob Noel Fielding, but it’s fairly harmless entertainment that has evolved – for better or worse – since its inception back in 2010 when it began life on the BBC. But what I found more interesting, for me at least, is how we inwardly judge the contestants even before they’ve started the baking challenges.
At the very beginning of this year’s series 12, we were introduced to the 12 contestants of 6 men and 6 women (presumably). My mind had already decided to support the blokes just because they were blokes, regardless of whether they were any good at baking or not.
But then my subconscious “perceived ism” moved from sexism to racism.
All 12 contestants consisted of a mix bag of whites, blacks and browns, especially the blokes with only 2 whites (if memory serves). So again, my support narrowed down towards those 2.
After racism I moved onto nationalism.
Although all contestants live in the UK it was clear that some of them were not British-British, but Asian, Indian, West Indian, German, Italian etc. And once more I went for the single indigenous (as far as I could tell) British white bloke.
Therefore, even before the contestants had started their first baking challenge, I had already made my mind up in terms of who I wanted to win – a White, British Man. And had there been another white, British bloke who was considerably older than his younger compatriot my next ism would have moved onto ageism, and siding with with the old geezer.
As it turned out my choice was eliminated in round 1. He was totally out of his depth with this baking malarkey and deserved to be booted out! (I did think this was intentional by the show’s producers: find a completely incompetent white bloke – probably a Brexit voter – and dump the cunt right from the off!)
I then moved onto my next best choice – a white, British-Italian bloke, just because he was a bloke and white. The fact that he had Italian origins trumped those contestants who had German, West Indian and Asian origins. And throughout the following rounds I was hoping he would do well against the wimminz and/or the darkies.
The final isn’t until next week (23rd November) and I’m not going to say any more about who’s left. But it is quite remarkable how our personal prejudices kick in right from the off regardless of the competence of the person in question.
And this doesn’t just apply to TV shows, but probably occurs in quite a few aspects in life where you have a collection of “different” people all competing against each other. And it doesn’t have to be about gender, age, nationality or ethnicity. But also wealth, upbringing (the well mannered vs selfish chavs), politics and a whole lot more.
The funny thing is I don’t see myself as any of these publicly – I have quite a few friends who tick the above boxes from different cultures, genders and race. And they’re all very good personable friends who in some cases I trust above the good old WASP.s
But those implied or perceived “isms” affect most people whether they publicly admit to it or not.
In essence we are probably inwardly extremely prejudiced one way or another.
Nominated by: Technocunt
