Plan B - ill manors music video: a criminological review

Plan B - ill Manors. from Rokkit on Vimeo.

A couple of days ago, The Guardian reported on Plan B's TEDx speech and how the UK state has failed to look after its children from deprived backgrounds. Based on his own experiences, he recounts the problems with society at large as he sees it. 


He talks of a "folk deviling" of young men and women from deprived areas, and the derogatory association with the word "chav". For him, this word is akin to a racist or homphobic slur, but the media and the public at large use it to categorise these young men and women often and openly.  Often depicted in the media as benefits claimants, unemployed, and petty criminals, this term only marginalises these young people more. 


Plan B seeks to highlight deprivation and disadvantage as issues that led to the UK riots in 2011. They are not inborn, and are not characteristics specific to a person. They stem from state indifference to the social and economic inequalities that exist in different areas. Especially in a society such as the UK, which champions consumerism over its people.


Plan B's lyrics, delivered with passion and fire, highlight many of these issues. He concludes: 

We’ve had it with you politicians 

you bloody rich kids never listen  

There’s no such thing as broken Britain 

we’re just bloody broke in Britain 

What needs fixing is the system 

not shop windows down in Brixton 

Riots on the television 

you can’t put us all in prison! 

The video commences by showing Plan B as a Conductor, lording it over a seemingly burning, riot-torn, London. This depicts a shift in power from those that have to those that have not. Stereotypically, the act of conducting, and by association, classical music, is seen  as something that is the preserve of the more wealthy. See also A Clockwork Orange.

Artistic Urban Graffiti under the A73 (c) Robert Murray 

However, the main focus of the video is on the disenfranchised. What do we see? They wear hoodies, they cover their faces, they smash windows, they loot. In other words, all the stereotypes that they are associated with. 

Think you know how life on a council estate is

from everything you’ve ever read about it or heard 

Well it’s all true, so stay where you’re safest 

there’s no need to step foot out the ‘burbs 

Truth is here, we’re all disturbed 

we cheat and lie its so absurd 

Feed the fear that’s what we’ve learned 

Fuel the fire 

Let it burn. 

These images may well have been there to reinforce these lyrics. Indeed, there is another part of the video that covers violence; it shows a symmetry between some "hoodies" kicking someone laid on the floor whilst a girl films it before joining in, and John Prescott and a policeman punching members of  the public, also caught on film.


However, I feel that the video has missed an opportunity. It could have captured the disadvantage that people living in these areas face. Equally, it could have told a different story about the challenges that young people in these areas face, being that they are the predominant victims of violent crime.  


Besides, violence is not all that there is in these communities. There is family, there is art (see above), there is laughter. Whilst I understand the need to frame the video within ideas of anger and alienation, the representations are too one-dimensional and not as human as they might have been. 


It is not me that the video has to convince of the issues that the more excluded face. It is the people who read, listen and watch the mainstream media which already portrays them in a negative light, that I am afraid will pick up on this video as evidence of who "chavs" are and what they do. 


It's criminal (sorry) that this was an opportunity missed. 

Putin and the stereotyping of Russia

Kremlin Wall (c) Mark Gee

Latest article re-published from The Pryer. 

The Hindustani Times reports that Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, has appeared on three national television stations refuting suggestions that he is reviving the Soviet Union. Recent articles on the BBC and The Guardian have noted Putin’s designs on establishing a Eurasian union from amongst former Soviet Union republics.

Notions of a re-constructed ‘Soviet Union’ are evident in the stories. Lazily, western critics have submitted to it and the negative stereotyping associated with it. Must we always refer to Putin as ‘former KGB agent’? For the west, ideas of a re-constructed Soviet Union represent a threat. Whereas the threat once emanated from diffuse ideological philosophies and nuclear war, now it comes from the west’s need for energy to fuel its economy, and by default, its way of life.

For Putin, the stereotyping has positive connotations. As my time in Russia drew to a close in 1998, many Russians decried the end of the Soviet Union; pensioners knew that they would receive their pensions, the general public knew that they could afford food, even if they had to wait in line for several years, and crime, in its local context, was non-existent. For the Russian people, ideas of the Soviet Union represented stability and security, after the mid-90s free market chaos that former President Boris Yeltsin and the oligarchs had wrought upon them. Consequently, they became disillusioned with perceptions of the west, and its way of life. Putin brought stability and order to their lives when he succeeded Yeltsin.

(c) Ivan Vasilyevich Simakov

At the end of last month, Putin confirmed that he will be standing for the presidential elections again in 2012. The recent announcements on the Eurasian union are the first that he has made on foreign policy since declaring his intentions to run for president. Although the context of this succession is markedly different to the last, I think that the use of stereotyping works on two levels. There is the western view, as highlighted above, that affects international affairs, and there is the local stereotype, which I think that Putin is using in terms of national security. More than that, I think that Putin is playing with this stereotype. His pre-empting of criticism of a ‘new’ Soviet Union was meant to concern us, as much as it is meant to reassure and order the Russian populace.

The Eurasian union is currently based around a customs agreement between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan expected to join shortly after. This is a far distant cry from the original formation of the Soviet Union. As the editor of Russian Global Affairs, Fyodor Lukyanov, points out:

"The logic behind it is primarily economic, and in this sense it is different from previous attempts, which were political or just decorative, to show Russian leadership."

Russia faces its own economic problems. Russian blogger, Alexey Navalny, believes that the current Russian political system is unsustainable and will collapse at some point in the future. Moreover, Putin has noted the Occupy Wall Street movement. Unlike his western counterparts, he will use public funds to maintain the Russian economy and internal security. Hence, his use of a ‘Soviet Union’ that brings order and stability, at least in the short-term.

Whilst the west fears a future ‘Soviet Union’, modern Russia is a unique geopolitical space that we have to learn to interact with on its own terms. As the western media remind us, there are civil and political human rights concerns, but we have always prioritised these rights over economic, social and cultural rights that the likes of Russia and other countries put first. I am not dismissing these problems, but it would be contradictory not to engage with modern Russia, when we interact with other oppressive regimes with scant regard for the same issues.  

Terrorism in Norway: Did Breivik commit a terrorist act?

Self-portrait (c) Anders Breivik

I am a little confused.

Whilst reading through my news reader, in the pursuit of blogging manna that was my last post, I noted that many major UK media outlets are now referring to the Norwegian tragedy as an attack or massacre. Breivik is now described as a gunman, killer or attacker.

Is there a particular reason why this tragedy is now being referred to as anything but terrorism, and why Breivik is not a terrorist, as originally reported?

Further to my post yesterday, I hope that this change in media reporting is not tied to the construction of the modern folk devil, that is the stereotypical “terrorist” i.e. Muslim.


Anyone have any thoughts on this?