Funny, but not in the way they intended…

There is an advert currently running on UK TV that I thought it might be amusing to look at closely. It’s an advert for a brand of tofu called Tofoo featuring a black drag queen in various outfits eating tofu cooked in different ways. At the end he looks at the camera and says “What? Never seen Tofoo before?”. The joke being of course the idea that we are assumed to be looking askance at the flamboyant drag queen, rather than the bland bean curds masquerading as meat.

It’s rather like the old joke about the Irish lass who confesses to her priest that she’s become a prostitute, at which he faints. When he comes round, she says “I’m sorry Father, I didn’t know me being a prostitute would shock you so much.” To which he replies. “Prostitute? Oh thank GOD! I thought ye said ye’d become a protestant.” .

Here’s the advert should you wish to see it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYPA_TtmSus

Well, the little joke did make me smile the first time I saw the advert, but there is something else about it which I find amusing and annoying in equal measure.

The joke (such as it is) relies on the assumption that seeing a black drag queen on screen is shocking for a British audience. You can just see the little group of advertising creatives in their office in Soho. “A drag queen, that’ll get Middle England worked up, wait, a Black drag queen, yeah! Take that bigots.”. Well, here’s where they’re showing their own bigotry.

For all of my five decades there have been plenty of black comedians, actors, presenters and sports stars on TV and in our public life. Arguably the most respected and loved newsreader of my lifetime is Sir Trevor McDonald, born in Trinidad. He first appeared on our news programmes in 1973 and continued to do so until November 2008. Sir Lenny Henry was a very popular comedian in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Frank Bruno was a hugely popular boxer, and the decathlete Daly Thompson was a real role model. Floella Benjamin was a kid’s TV presenter in my youth. Black stars from the US have been popular too. In my teens watching stand up on VHS with my mates two of our favourites were Richard Prior and Eddie Murphy. We also enjoyed Different Stokes and Fresh Prince. Recently the tributes paid here to Sidney Poitier were both moving and heartfelt. Morgan Freeman is hugely respected and, of course, Samuel L Jackson is officially the coolest mother lover in the universe. That’s just off the top of my head and without evening mentioning music.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, and I believe is happening in the States too, our adverts are stuffed full of black folk at the moment. Indeed, given that black and mixed white/black folk are less than 5% of the UK population, then at this rate pretty much every black person will have been in an advert by 2024. This deliberate over-representation is starting to aggravate folk, but that doesn’t mean they’re shocked at the sight of or dislike black people themselves.

We’re not in the least upset by drag either. I know the new generations seem to be unaware of (and easily surprised by) anything that occurred before they were born; but drag is very much part of 20^th century British culture, especially working-class culture (possibly why the young upper middle class muppets making adverts are unaware of it). On TV from the ‘60s to the ‘90s there was Danny La Rue, a full on drag act who was everywhere in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. Comedians Less Dawson, Ronny Barker and Ronny Corbet often dragged up for sketches, as did the Pythons of course. And you couldn’t keep Stanley Baxter out of a frock. In the ‘90s Lilly Savage took up La Rue’s drag baton and Julian Clary camped it up outrageously, although was never really a drag act. These days, RuPaul’s Drag Race (and its spin offs) is very popular, and the BBC/RTÉ comedy Mrs Brown’s Boys stars married man Brendan O’Carroll as the matriarch Mrs Brown. Out in the pubs and clubs drag acts were not just confined to the gay scene. In the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s I saw drag acts in working men’s cubs and holiday camps as well as pubs, both gay and straight. Add to that the long-established tradition of pantomime with the pantomime dame played by an older man.

So no, we poor, pale, uninteresting white folks out here in the howling cultural wastes beyond the bright lights of central London are not freaked out by the sight of a black lad in a frock.

In fact, the advert says far more about the narrow-minded attitudes and ignorance of its makers. The artsy, self-consciously “open minded”, metropolitan tribe that make our ads and TV shows. These “citizens of the world” who like to talk of New York, Paris, Berlin and San Fran’ as if they know them intimately, but seem unaware of life beyond the Circle Line. They really do seem to think a large part of the British people are puritanical troglodytes longing for a return to a mythical 1950s. Well, they’re wrong. Very very few of us are upset by black people, or gay people, trans people, or any of the other differences from basic b—- straight white person. What people ARE starting to get annoyed and upset by is the constant insinuation that they are indeed narrow-minded bigots who need to be re-educated. 

While writing this I found out that the writer and director of the advert is a young woman called Jade Ang Jackman. Her bio describes her as…“Having come up through the industry interviewing noteworthy female leaders, such as Nadya of Pussy Riot.” ‘Nuff said.