A change in stereotyping.

Today I watched an old black and white film starring Bette Davis called 'Of Human Bondage,' in which she plays a poor, ill tempered, cruel, selfish, violent waitress, who's choices lead her to a lung cancer death on a brothel floor.

Nice.

what was interesting to me, was that all the characters in the film we were supposed to like and sympathise with, were well spoken, and Bette's hateful vile character, had a strong cockney London accent.

I made a joke on facebook this week about the way all Tolkien's badies, including trolls, have cockney accents.

It was initially in jest, but today I started thinking a little deeper.

I've been reading books by Brene Brown, who is a 'shame researcher', and talks about the way what we read, see and watch in our culture, shapes the way we see ourselves and others.

I myself have always had a strong London, some might call cockney accent, and feel I have had to fight against stereotypes through out my life.

I worked in film and TV as a background artist in my 20's, sometimes accepting walk on roles. Then I auditioned for and aquired a place at drama school.  Peoples responses to me were mostly negative when I told them what I was doing, they used to say "What, are you going to be in Eastenders?"

I am not a wealthy person, I have also struggled with confidence in what I do, believing I can use my intelligence and be successful, or that I even have a right to.  I've described it to friends as a poverty mentality.

I realised that I've spent a life time of taking in messages from books, films, TV & advertising, that the only way people who speak the way I do get wealthy is through some kind of crime, and that the rest of us remain poor, struggling for money and lacking in intelligence.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a chip on my shoulder thing, this is an observational thing.  Anyone, any person at all, if they wanted to think about it, could recognise the messages society delivers to them in particular through stereotyping.

It's even accepted.  Don't go against the norm.  People expect certain kinds of things and elements to what they read.

But I feel a responsibility to go against stereotypes in my writing, surely some of us have to. It's time for  a change!

My own first novel, has a protagonist who has a cockney accent, but no academia!  In fairness she's very bright with incredible emotional intelligence.  But as a writer, I myself have been following the stereotypes I have received and understood.

On a personal level, it's an important realisation.

Working class people with my accent are depicted as dysfunctional, criminal, in possession of ASBO's, struggling for money, in debt, mouthy and loud, lacking decorum to mention a few on a very long negative list, lacking in success, up to no good of some kind, seedy, prostitutes...

Even Eliza Doolittle was only 'acceptable' as a lady when she changed the way she spoke...nothing else would 'do'.

There will of course be some exceptions, but I'm talking about the underlying messages we all receive through media.

I have struggled to be proud of being working class, cockney Londoner, and it's easy to see why, when you take a lot at the societal depiction.

I have to confess to feeling ashamed of how I speak, and I can see why.

As a actress I trained in voice, and could quite easily change the way I speak for good if I wanted to, but for some reason it's never felt right to do that, it's felt fake, or conformity, and conformity isn't freedom.

For now I will be mindful about the way in which is stereotype in the things that I write.  I can't promise not to do it, it's in my bones, the way it's in us all, but I think that awareness can bring change.