Chav-tastic

[dreamer_easy]

Oh, now I get what the hell a "chav" is. They're the young people in Britain you're supposed to be afraid of and allowed to sneer at. It was a reference to "the national sport of chav-baiting" in a news item that tipped me off. The Australian equivalent at the mo would be young Lebanese-Australian men.

Comments

[infinitarian.livejournal.com]

It is a lot more inclusive than the old show, especially when it comes to class!

The portrayals may have been somewhat lacking in authenticity, but two of the first Doctor's companions, to whit Dodo and Ben, were supposed to be present-day working-class people. Admittedly it would take the show until 1987 before that happened again (unless you count Benton), but it deserves points for early effort, at least.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Think you might be using a bit of Internet mathematics there, mate. :-)

[infinitarian.livejournal.com]

Well, I wasn't trying to extrapolate a general rule -- just suggesting that, for a BBC programme in the mid-60s, mid-60s Who tried to be more class-inclusive than one might have expected. Of course it did so from a very middle-class perspective -- Dodo and Ben are clearly working-class characters written by middle-class writers. (But then so are Rose and Jackie.)

Later on, the programme wouldn't even make this effort, which I agree was a shame... and Ace on TV isn't a much more convincing working-class teenager than Dodo was, so they hadn't learned much in the interim either.