Prejudices

I have started on the new play. Looks like I’ll be permanently chained to the kitchen sink from now on (in the drama scene that is… although HM rarely does the washing up).

My play is shaping up to have another element. It’s something that has cropped up over the weekend. I'd never really been exposed to the far middle class left until I started going out with HM. His entire family are all leftie hippy types that sound great in theory and are pretty good if you meet them. From my personal view it looks as screwy as a mixed race family who have elements of working class Britain and other cultures.

You see, we’ll start with what I’m utterly familiar with. I’m from a working class and foreign background. Singapore has no class system amongst the Chinese. Overall It has an implicit colour based one with is blatant and unchallenged. Its nothing like what you read in essays on Orientalism. It’s nothing implicit, its very, very real, openly talked about and followed by all. It goes Chinese and white at the top, Malay and Indian near the bottom, black at the very bottom. Chinese Singaporeans are also the most racist people you will ever meet. They will blatantly say things that you probably never would hear in England, especially not if you are middle class and leftie. They have an un-knockable belief that everyone else is mentally subnormal to them based on profession and an almost arrogant snobbery towards other Chinese from other places (China, Hong Kong, Vietnam etc).

Working class Britain is my home, really. I don’t mean really rough estates, just a kind of lower middle class / borderline working class type area. The type of people who would read the red topped tabloids and be a skilled tradesman like builders, plumbers and butchers. Its informal, its roast dinner on a Sunday, it votes conservative, it hates the polish, it’s the Royal Family. I think this is to be the physical world of the play.

On the other side we have the leftie middle class. This is the strangest, most alien part for me to write. It’s overtly relaxed and happy but has an overindulgence and spoiltness about it. Its hypocritical in nature, it’s biased towards males although it professes that it is not. To be honest in a lot of ways it is balanced towards the Singaporean, but has none of the obvious. One question that rises up is “is it better to be hypocritical about your prejudices or speak your mind?” at the moment I feel weighted that in theory its better to speak your mind… although in practice it rarely happens.