WITH ROBE AND BOWL

I stumbled on a great post the other day while doing some link-hopping. With Robes and Bowl on the Cotswold Way: My First English Tudong is a piece by Ajahn Manapo, an English Buddhist monk, recounting his tudong in the English countryside.

I could go tudong – that’s what I could do. But where would I go? Would I get fed? Where would I sleep? How would I be treated? These are precisely the questions that are meant to remain unanswered as a tudong monk hauls his alms-bowl and robes onto his shoulders, and – carrying neither food nor money – steps out of his monastery and into uncertainty.

I really like the very reflective but also very present account of the journey - how the obstacles and frustrations he encounters serve as seeds from which his reflections on his mind, body and spirituality grow and bloom. (I also like that he's the same age as me!)

The second reason [to go tudong] concerns a particular characteristic which pervades the tudong experience: uncertainty. I didn’t know if I would eat, where I would sleep, what dangers I might encounter on the journey. Living in this way not only sharpens your faculties, it brings you face to face with a reality that is ever-present but towards which we are usually blind when living a settled life. That reality is uncertainty. Although we presume things will continue as they always have: that we will eat tomorrow, that we will work tomorrow, and even that we will wake up tomorrow, there is no guarantee that these things will happen. Ensnared by the delusion of certainty we live at odds with the true nature of things, whereby we form attachments – creating a constant source of tension – and set ourselves up just to fall. To open up to uncertainty; to confront it; to live it, is another reason why I went tudong.

Anyway, I thought I would share the link in case anyone else was interested.

MIDSOMER MURDERS, RACISM AND THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE

so, midsomer murders is not racist (and homophobic) by default or by accident. it's racist (and homophobic) by design. click for article.

Brian True-May, the producer and co-creator of ITV1 drama series Midsomer Murders, has been suspended by production company All3Media following controversial comments made about the show in the latest issue of Radio Times.

True-May told RT, "We don't have ethnic minorities involved. Because it wouldn't be the English village with them. It just wouldn't work. Suddenly we might be in Slough… And if you went in to Slough you wouldn't see a white face there. We're the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way."

this is depressing, but also unsurprising to me as someone who has watched almost every episode of the show. most of the people i know who watch midsomer murders have commented on the overwhelming whiteness of it . i mean, i can remember maybe two people of colour (both women) in the whole thing? a writer in a competition who didn't have a speaking part, and a barrister/QC who did a great job but was "wrong" about the defendant. and as for queers - he compared it to incest and blackmail, but i note is not mentioned in the linked article - i am also unsurprised. i've often been amused by how many gays there are in the villages of midsomer - even though most of them end up dead/charged with murder.

i'm posting this here because i think it's a great demonstration of how "the countryside" in england is actively constructed as a white (straight) space. i've noted this before with regard to walking, and it's something that continues to frustrate/intrigue me (i guess that the intrigue might be more a sign of privilege, though, since i'm not having to contend with racism on a personal level when i go out walking). the construction of the countryside in this fashion is not only material in terms of who has the time, energy, money, transport, family inheritance to get there and/or live there - it is also a product of popular culture and representation. if you don't see PoC/BME people in the english countryside in films, on TV, in books, in travel writing, then that is a space that's being constructed as white, unwelcoming, a space that such people are not meant to occupy, and this is so for white and PoC/BME viewers and readers.

often when such things are pointed out, people (often the privileged ones - white if we're talking about issues of race and ethnicity, straight if we're talking about issues of sexuality, male if we're discussing sexism, cis if we're discussing trans stuff) will claim that this is just "a reflection of reality" - that "those sort of people" simply aren't there, that's why they're not represented. and that's why this story is so interesting and important - it demonstrates absolutely that this is not just a reflection of reality, but rather a deliberate construction.

"I'm trying to make something that appeals to a certain audience, which seems to succeed," said True-May. "And I don't want to change it."

it's a fantasy that has very real effects. consistently portraying "the countryside" as a white space (or as a straight space) means that non-white (non-straight) viewers/readers have fewer options for relating to that space, are less able to envisage themselves as being welcome in that space, and are maybe less likely to actually go out into that space. in this way, i think true-may's claim that midsomer is "the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way" is not just about a nostalgic (?) attempt to (re)write the countryside as white-on-screen (straight-on-screen), it's about actually trying to keep non-white (non-straight) people out of the countryside.

i also want to note that the producers of midsomer murders have obviously been pursuing this racist/homophobic agenda for the entire length of the series, but true-may wasn't suspended until he made it explicit. it's an interesting situation. him making that agenda public doesn't change the 'actual' content of the series up to now (though it does change people's readings of that content, which probably amounts to the same thing). so why didn't ITV do something about it before? the racism (and homophobia) of midsomer murders is so very, very clear without true-may's comments. that it takes an interview like this for anything to be done about it is indicative of how acceptable racism actually is - so long as it's passive (they're just not there, rather than being evil), unspoken (nobody mentions it onscreen), weasel-out-of-able (it's a reflection of reality). [ETA: i guess what i'm trying to say here is that, before true-may's comments, it was probably pretty easy for a lot of (white) people to think the whiteness of midsomer murders was accidental or incidental. but that kind of "accident" can only happen and/or go unremarked or unrebuked in a racist society.]

i've typed this all up before breakfast, and i'm quite hungry so i'll leave it there.
do you have any thoughts on the matter?

ETA: charlie brooker has something to say.

2 THINGS

1. We're going out to the Dandenongs on the weekend for 2 days of walking (present to myself for my birthday)! Yay! Here's a map of the route we plan to walk and here's the lol!B&B where we're staying on Saturday night. Looking forward to it!

2. Here's a cool article about walking from the mainland of the Netherlands to Ameland. We stayed on Ameland with my family in early January 2009, and it was lovely, but I can't imagine doing this walk at that time of year, with all the ice we could see in the water! Maybe we'll get to Ameland again one day and do this...

WE'RE OFF TOMORROW!

And speaking of flying, they tell us: One in 10 Australian men say they have had a relationship or romance with someone they sat next to on an airline flight, a survey on inflight preferences has found.

So the deal is: We fly into London on Thursday and hang out with family for the first few days, then see some friends on Monday. On Tuesday (15/9) we take the train down to Penzance and a bus to Lands End, then begin our hike with an 8km walk to our first B&B. From the 15th to the 30th we'll be walking, with days off on Sundays 20th and 27th September. On Thursday 1st October we train from Plymouth back to London. Friday 2nd hang out with A, and maybe N will come down to London. Saturday 3rd hang out with E and perhaps N, possibly go to Borough Markets and Bushy Park. Sunday 4th, family birthday dinner. Monday 5th maybe see E again? Then on Tuesday we are training up to Cambridge and might see S there. We're staying in a B&B in Hemingford Grey until we go back to London on Friday 9th. On that weekend we might get to see C & G if they come up from Brighton, and it's M's birthday on the Sunday. We're spending the rest of the trip in London, and we fly out early on Wednesday 14th.

We've done most of the packing and cleaning, yay! Tomorrow we're catching up with a couple of people and nomming food at one of our fave Melbourne cafes. It's looking like Melbourne might be seeing us off with clouds and rain for the first time ever! Usually it breaks out the warm weather and blue sky the day (before) we leave.

RACE AND WALKING

It often strikes me that walking (and particularly long-distance walking in Australia and the UK, walking in the country, walking for leisure) seems to be a very white pastime. I've been thinking about this for a while, now. Walking gear is advertised by white models, walking trails are advertised with pictures of happy white people, the author photos at the back of guidebooks show white faces smiling out at the reader, walker-friendly B&Bs are run by friendly old white couples. I have not thought very deeply about what this means (I have the privilege of not having to think about it whenever I go walking), but I was still interested to read an article in the spring edition of Walk Magazine called Rural Minority Report.

The issues that are addressed in the article (which is about the UK, as the Ramblers is a UK organisation) include:

* The perception of the countryside being "a place for the rich, white upper classes. All the land belongs to farmers and any black man caught trespassing will be shot".
* A "real knowledge gap" within urban-dwelling PoC communities (i'm a little leary of the acronym BME used in the article) about the countryside.
* A lack of visibility of POC using or being in the countryside. "One criticism levelled at British tourism boards by racial-equality campaigners is that much of their advertising features white people enjoying the outdoors, further alienating BME groups by reinforcing the notion that certain places aren’t ‘for them’."
* Racism. "While overt racism is rare, non-white faces in some areas still provoke a reaction".
* "[R]eal physical barriers prevent[ing] people accessing the countryside" - that is, lack of public transport, the cost of public and private transport, and the difficulty of deciphering public transport timetables especially for those people for whom English is a second or third (or fourth, or fifth) language.
* No habit or family history of going to the countryside.

I think the article is slightly problematic in its approach (quoting white people telling stories about PoC is one example that sits uncomfortably with me and another is the emphasis on the 'worries' PoC have, with less acknowledgement of the actual racism they experience) but I am glad that at least the issue of racism in walking and racism in the countryside is being addressed.

It's something I have also noticed when watching walking documentaries. As much as I have enjoyed Julia Bradbury's Wainwright Walks, and have been very happy to see an active, not-dolled-up woman talking to other women in the countryside (I'm sure the show has even passed the Bechdel test a few times), I've also noticed that most (if not all) of the people featured in the interviews have been white. It was also interesting to see (and later read) Griff Rhys Jones talking to some black walkers in his show Mountain:

It was startling and dreadful to notice how incongruous black walkers seemed. I realized that I had seen so few black people out on the hills and had sort of accepted it unthinkingly.

"But that's what we believe," Donald said. "People think a black man out walking looks odd. So how do you think a black person feels? We have to get people to realize that they can get out there and walk and that's why we go together in a group." (2008:198)

~*~

I'm usually quite apolitical on this blog, I think, but it's important to recognise that travel and walking are not apolitical activities. Anyway, maybe this is some food for thought for your next walk - unless you're a PoC, in which case you probably already think about it when you're walking (much like I am very aware of being queer and trans).