Because British SS control C4 and wish for racial tensions leading up to 2010. -Craig

Why did C4 twist my words to claim black women ARE angrier than whites, asks presenter

Last updated at 03:04am on 31.08.08
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/arti...nter/article.do


Ava Vidal believes her words were twisted round by the producerr
Television, we're told, has cleaned up its act. Following the BBC's so-called Queengate scandal last year, constant charges of fakery and too many phone-in rip-offs to mention, broadcasters have pulled out all the stops to win back viewers' trust. What appears on screen is a fair and accurate representation of what happened.

Why, then, have I just found myself presenting a documentary that completely misrepresents my point of view? Because meddling TV producers can't help but twist the truth to fit their idea of what the story should be, regardless of what actually happened.

The programme was one of the shorts made for Channel 4's Bright New Wonders season.

Despite being a comedian, I've long wanted to make a serious film about the media stereotype of the 'angry black woman'. I believe there is a tendency in the media to promote an image of black women as difficult, high-maintenance and liable to fly off the handle.

Consider how Naomi Campbell and even Michelle Obama are portrayed, for example.

My point is that temper has nothing to do with skin colour. After all, if Bjork or Jade Goody lose their rag, it's not immediately assumed that all white women are angry.

During a lengthy filming process, we went out on to the streets to test this, and sought the opinion of experts. By and large, they supported my point of view.

Unsurprisingly, to my mind at least, we interviewed many black women who said they didn't get angry and many white women who admitted they did.

But the three-minute film that was screened on Wednesday night, with my name above the credits, bore no relation to the evidence we found.

Somehow the producer had got it into his head that black women WERE angry, and were driven to it by a potent combination of poverty and pride.

Splicing together out-of-context clips and voice-overs, he made his argument clear, and it looked like I - and everyone we spoke to - supported him. What nonsense.


All the rage: Naomi Campbell may have a short fuse, but black women should not be stereotyped

We often hear complaints that there are not enough black people on television, but given my experience, is it any wonder? Many producers seem hell-bent on showing a one-dimensional view of the black community that fits their own preconceptions.

The intention of the documentary, as far as I was concerned, was to explain that although different cultures have different ways of expressing themselves, this should not necessarily be interpreted as anger.

Being assertive is not the same as having a short temper. I've often experienced this misconception. Colleagues and acquaintances have admitted they are scared of me, without any justification.

There's something about a confident black woman that means they assume I'll fly into a rage over nothing. It's a subtle form of racism, propagated by media images such as the feisty studio audiences in American talk shows such as Ricki Lake.

In one unused scene from the programme we set up an experiment when a white friend cut in front of me in the queue at a bar and insisted she had been there first.

The barmaid assumed I was in the wrong, and begged me to calm down, even though I hadn't raised my voice.

All this I explained to producer Christian Watt, of Wildcard Productions, but the way the film was edited it could almost be used as a party political broadcast for the BNP.

The final cut bore little resemblance to any reality I would recognise. Of all the people we spoke to in the streets of Hackney, East London, only black women were shown, and mainly those who did admit to being short-tempered.

As it happens, we did speak to far more black women, but only because they were happy to talk to me.

Most of the white women we approached did not want to be interviewed - and, ironically enough, were quite aggressive in telling us so.

One person we spoke to was anger management consultant Antoinette Niles, who we interviewed in a grim sink estate. She said black women might be angry because they lived in such conditions, survived on benefits and had been abandoned by the fathers of their children.

I strongly registered my unhappiness at this scene because I believed it represented a stereotype that did not need reiterating.

Ms Niles said she had experience of growing up on a similar estate, telling how she, like me, was a single mother and had raised her children in this type of environment. However, since neither of the fathers of her children is black, this is one thing for which black men cannot be held responsible.

As luck would have it, as we filmed her talking about absent fathers, you could clearly see a black man chatting and playing with his children in the background. Needless to say, this scene was reshot once the happy family had gone.

It would have been fair to include Ms Niles's point of view as a counterbalance to the argument I was making; but, in fact, this one comment that black women are angry because of their environment became the focus of the whole documentary - and it is a point I passionately disagree with.

After all, lots of white families live in the same conditions on these estates, so why are these women not assumed to be seething with anger, too?

Every scrap of footage to support my assertion that black women are unfairly portrayed - including my conclusion vehemently disagreeing with Ms Niles - was left on the cutting-room floor. I looked as if I supported a point of view at odds with my own.

Christian Watt clearly had his predetermined opinion of what this documentary was to depict.

My suspicions were raised when he asked me to record my links in the ungrammatical language of the street, nothing like the way I actually speak, presumably to support his vision of what a black single mother should sound like.

Those suspicions were heightened when he refused to show me a copy of the film before transmission and, having watched it alongside everyone else, I can understand his reluctance.

There is, I suppose, a certain irony to this whole sorry experience; that in making a film to challenge the stereotype of an angry black woman, I have been left very angry indeed.

'We are surprised she feels this way'

Last night, a Channel 4 spokesman said: 'We are surprised that to hear Ava feels this way about the film as she did not raise any issues with us during production or after broadcast.'

Christian Watt of Wildcard added: 'Ava was closely involved throughout the production, in the scripting and editing process and recorded the final commentary on August 6 which she was very happy with. She did not raise any concerns and was offered the opportunity to view the film before broadcast, but chose not to.'