Make the G8 History Blog: Girl in a Cafe my arse. This was Imperialism in a Hotel

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Girl in a Cafe my arse. This was Imperialism in a Hotel

Stuart Hodkinson. For those unfortunate enough to have just sat through Richard Curtis's (a.k.a. 'Bob with a brain') ridiculous BBC TV film, The Girl in the Cafe, about a pretend G8 summit in a Reykjavik hotel, I'm afraid I have some bad news. Yes, you really did just watch a jingoistic political broadcast on behalf of New Labour. Yes, she really did interrupt the PM's speech at the G8 dinner by clicking her fingers every 3 seconds to mark a child dying of extreme poverty in Africa. And no, you really didn't learn a single thing about the causes of that poverty, the culpability of the present UK government and the destructive role of the G8 in the world.

What a load of self-indulgent, hand-wringing, revisionist crap. Girl in a Cafe? This was 'Imperialism in a Hotel', jam-packed with appalling stereotypes, cliched script-writing and an unapologetic exposition of Africa as the 'dark continent', plagued by hunger, poverty, disease and corruption, but 'saveable' by 8 men in a room if they were to only dare to cleanse their consciences and 'make poverty history' (and in so doing secure their own place in history). At least we now know who writes Bono and Geldof's speeches. No doubt a knighthood will soon follow, although the only gong Curtis should be getting is the honorary Rudyard Kipling 'White Man's Burden' award.

You think I'm going a tad overboard, don't you? Well, I am prone to the odd hyperbolised rant, but not this time, no way. This film epitomised everything wrong with the star-fucking Celebdaq world of the Make Poverty History and Live 8 campaigns. On Planet Hollywood, it is the world's leaders who eliminate poverty and hunger - ordinary people mobilised in mass movements from below is not in the script. As for Africa, its sole problem - and the only thing we should be interested in - is lots of people just dying from poverty. The 'history of poverty' mustn't be discussed. Oh no, don't bore yourself with that one, implies Curtis. After all, as William, the Gordon Brown-style Chancellor in the film says, "these issues are very complex". Instead, just accept that poverty exists in Africa on a huge scale and that G8 leaders can fix it by changing trade rules, or giving more aid in return for better governance. Because in the Curtis world of development economics, it's as easy as 'A' 'D' 'T' - 'aid', 'trade' and debt'.

But shorn of their interrelationship with power and class relations under global capitalism, these three concepts are utterly meaningless. The reality, as even a star-gazing Oxfam campaigner will tell you, is that Bush and Blair will never simply re-write trade rules or drop debt or boost aid in a moment of guilt-wracked weakness. These structures exist to perpetuate and augment the wealth of global elites. And even if they thought about doing it, multinational corporations would veto such changes anyway. To change the world, you have to challenge the very ideological and material structures of the system itself, something that campaigns led by millionaire rock and film stars whose status and power comes from that system will never do.

Some people are going to look a little bit silly now, like the normally astute Madelaine Bunting. Writing in the Grauniad last week, Bunting implied Curtis was going to make "the cynics and sceptics" eat their words because The Girl in the Cafe would explain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to "a primetime audience in a way that decades of campaigning have failed to do". Madelaine, did you actually watch the film or just read the press release? We got about 20 seconds on the MDGs before the sickly and totally improbable love story took over. The only thing we learned was that the goals include "halving extreme world poverty by 2015". Wow - thanks Rich for that. And how are they going to achieve this goal? Why only half? Why by 2015? Predictably, there was no answer to these more probing questions, probably because they require explanations beyond the clicking of fingers.

Curtis could have weaved into the script the beginnings of colonialism and the slave trade, through to the decades following independence when the ex-colonial powers reasserted their control through creating the debt slavery system, and to the present day with G8 countries and their corporations queuing up to benefit from what Yao Graham has called in this month's Red Pepper, "the new scramble for Africa". But that would have involved knowing about this in the first place. However, I'm being too hard on Curtis. I mean, c'mon, the BBC was competing with Big Brother for primetime viewing and the truth about the West's looting and burning of Africa just doesn't make good saturday night telly, now does it.

Sunday, 26 June 2005 in Africa, Debt, G8, Make Poverty History, Media | Permalink

Comments

After 35 years and 300 billion pounds worth of compound debt and struggle, and with not a single black African in its cast; scripted by Mrs and Mr Richard Curtis, famed for roles in manifesting Comic Relief; Curtis who spent 6 months working at Bob Geldof to do the Live 8 Aid bashes: "The girl in the cafe", made by BBC Wales, was the lowest piece of BBC toadying to our already far too politicised TV screens, and the worst piece of BBC propaganda since WW2 when we Brits were all, and soon to be again at Gleneagles G8, confronting the dreaded Hun and a lacklustre "What took you so long?" USA.

This was not a drama that introduced any decency of debate, this was a bilateral brainwashing with no third party. Deep at the roots of this shameful piece of arrogant rubbish was the struggle between what would be "good" for Africa and what would be "bad", and which kind of large handout was acceptable and how only a G8 "little" was not. With a fictional Chancellor and PM "taken aback" at the opinions of the female romantic lead, and the lonely and confused civil servant trailing her behind. "The girl in the cafe" made one think that the UK Establishment high on celebrity spin on Africa had got so contempable, one was now being offered jollies from watching the "absolute truth" about the absence of non corrupted trade and African debt relief with added sex and satisfaction

Geldof, Schmeldolf.

Roger Bunn
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Posted by: Roger Bunn | Monday, 27 June 2005 at 00:00

The protesters were mentioned in the script. There was at least three or four seconds of footage of them, and 'the girl' was under direct suspicion of being part of them because she thought it might be bad if kids died of starvation. Clearly a communist.

As a show i thought it was quite good actually - but you are absolutely 100% right that this was New Labour propaganda. Plucky Britain fighting against all these greedy foreigners who simply don't care if children have no clean water to drink.

But there are two sides to this. I don't believe this kind of programme would have been shown during the Thatcher years and it is a sign of how far the campaigners have brought on public consciousness of these issues that a significant section of the population DO now care about global issues and the BBC thinks there's a market for it.

Also, I believe, that this programme will help get people to Scotland for the G8 summit, particularly for the Edinburgh demonstration. There is not a single person who saw this show who was going to go and has now been put off - but i suspect it has pushed some people from thinking about going to actually getting on transport and making the trip.

The thing that worries me about attacks on people like Curtis and Geldof, who fall way short of my political ideal (and this is a real understatement) is they feed into a council of despair... oh this won't change anything... it's politcially niave... it's just stars giving themselves easy publicity... it's letting governments off the hook.

The fact is that by protesting, by fighting for a better world people learn lessons. They can learn that the G8 is a bunch of imperialists who have not changed their spots, they can learn that more radical action is needed if we are going to make real changes in society - from the bottom to the top of society, but only if they take this first modest step.

The girl in the cafe is part of this process - terribly flawed, politically, in places, but never the less a call for people to come in their tens of thousands to tell the G8 that global poverty kills and that they, the world leaders, are responsible.

I'm with that message - whatever the problems with the detail.

Jim

Posted by: Jim J | Monday, 27 June 2005 at 17:15

This is controversial point. In common, it was already discussed on many forums.

--------------------------

John. [craps (http://www.craps4u.com) ]

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I agree with what I have read so far on your web site, that not enough has been said about the underlying cause of poverty in Africa and elsewhere. I write “cause” in the singular in hopes that the socialist body might consider Land as the underlying cause. Our imperialists do want control over populations as well as resources and there are many methods employed, debt, hate, propaganda, but it was control over land that gave birth to the first empires and today Private ownership over rent via private ownership of land that gives the elite their power as it drains the working class. Just as ownership of land may or may not give ownership over air rights or minerals below, land ownership need not imply ownership over rent unless approved by the political body. I hope the well intentioned in the socialist movement might consider the role of rent in our society and the feasibility of collecting it as a public resource for the good of all humanity. Thank you, Charles Ellinger, New York, USA

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Girl in a Cafe my arse. This was Imperialism in a Hotel

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