Q: Is Faulty Towers racist or anti-racist? What I find interesting is that it shows quite drastically the difficulties people whos English is their second language gets abused by employers. So there is a very strong class analysis (i.e. the John Cleese character is essentially petit-bourgeosie and hes completely abusive to Manual (because english is his second language). If we bring in a class analysis we can more clearly understand what the parody is actually about. (Class domination is anti-immigrant, xenophobic etc.) I remember when I was grading a paper at McMaster, I recognized based on her grammar that English was her second language, and I felt uncomfortable giving her a relatively low grade Isnt that being racist? I thought. (it is simply not her fault that English isnt her mother tongue). So my constructive comment simply suggested she get her work proofread before she hands in future papers (get a native English speaker to read the paper before she submits it for class). So I suspect I was influenced by Faulty Towers (i.e. I recognized unconsciously that Manuels difficulties with English is similar to this persons difficulties with English. Hence, I didnt get moralistic on her (Terrible spelling/grammar (and NOT giving her a failing grade), i.e. not recognizing the reason for the difficulty (and I think I gave her paper somewhere the 70s (spelling and grammar was only small proportion of the rubric). But the grade was far less important than my comment (I think I might (I dont remember however) have asked her on the paper, whether I was correct (i.e. my deduction) in thinking that English was her second-language. I was being constructive rather than adopt the Basil Faulty approach to Manuel. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawlty_Towers
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 22:34:30 +0000