#44

The same could be said of many places, but you can’t make a blanket statement like “people in NI are horrifically racist” is pretty extreme. And it’s not like he’s a brainwashed ordinary man living in ballymena with no exposure to a life outside his narrow sphere of reference, which might explain his thinking.

I can only guess that he was trying to “own” his awful reaction while acknowledging the tricks that trauma (albeit by proxy in his case) can play on the mind. The two issues to me are:

  1. He seems to have owned his violently-intentioned reaction without explaining why it was a black man he felt like going after (I have only skimmed the article- was the rapist a black man and even if so, is that an acceptable thought process? If the attacker had been a short ginger man, would he have gone out looking for one of them?) and
  2. It’s all a bit feral caveman behaviour, avenging the wrongs exacted on the poor defenceless woman.

I think maybe his movie roles have gone right to his head. I suspect the things he said in the interview came from a well intentioned place but the light it casts on his thought processes is pretty hairy.

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#45

I dont think it’s necessarily extreme to say that a state founded on two exclusionary nationalisms (Irish & Ulster nationalism) would become a place where racism is endemic and not properly tackled by legislation or any unifying policy.

I agree he’s not a regular Ballymena man. His reaction in this instance is strange to say the least (and I’m not sure what to say, I should have kept my mouth shut to start with)

#46

I think you could have said “many people in NI are…”, but I am being pedantic. I know what you mean and sorry for picking at your words.

#47

It’s ok :slightly_smiling_face:. I should really be more careful not to make dumb statements like the one above, or to write two sentence posts without context

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#48

it’s also an overwhelmingly white place tbf. Belfast not so much but back home in the more rural north west there are so few non-white faces that it’s definitely not uncommon to hear racist jokes etc quite openly. not usually from particularly malicious intentions in my experience (well, as far as any racism can be described as ‘non malicious’) but from ignorance and a sense of ‘other’.

not sure how it compares to other places on the whole though. i think the last couple of years have shown racism is alive and well in a lot of places.

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#49

Yeah the whiteness of many rural areas lead to the idea that ‘theres no racism here because there’s no black people here’. Early race relations legislation was also resisted by 1960s Stormont government because they feared it would be used by Catholics/Irish.

You can hear some vintage NI racism on the clubsound single ‘Belfast Belfast’. Won’t link it here because it’s quite bad and you could imagine many people still enjoying it here today

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#50

Where I live, people still use terminology that would make your hair stand on end. Names for Chinese takeaways (ending in ‘ie’), convenience stores run by Pakistani people and so on. I suspect coastal west of Scotland is not dissimilar to towns and villages in NI.
Thankfully Liam and I (yeah we are so similar :rofl:) have lives and careers that have taken us out of these insular environments and so any childhood brainwashing is hopefully overridden by adult life experience (although I’m not dismissing what either of you are saying at all- I do wonder how much is subconsciously ingrained from a very young age into your brain’s wiring).

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#51

I’ve really noticed this since moving back to South Devon. Its just dropped into everyday convsrsation with no thought that it might not be ok to use certain words and phrases. Once you’ve moved away and experienced somewhere with ‘normal’ values it just seems so ridiculous that it still exists.

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#52

I’m not trying to score indie points here but I’ve genuinely not seen Taken. However I do remember my dad telling me after he’d seen it that he couldn’t quite believe what he was watching, that it was a completely unveiled white male power fantasy of a guy murdering scores of anonymous foreigners who were all presented by the film as bad and wanting only to kidnap and rape white women.

As above, I’ve not actually seen the film, but if that’s an accurate assessment of it, then it’s pretty fucking galling that he’d go off and make that film if he recognises and supposedly regrets the horrible tendancies it’s appealing to.

#54

I think my main issue with it (I grew up with it so I think I’ve just resigned myself a long time ago to the fact it’s so common) is how people just assume you have the same attitude and views and act really surprised when you challenge it.

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#55

it is accurate

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#57

I’m about 20 miles out of Plymouth so can’t really tell. We lived there for a bit last year and yeah, it does seem a bit more diverse etc but I think that it’s hard to judge cause in my experience, students in university cities tend to mainly exist in a separate bubble apart from the overall population. Certainly the South Hams must still be one of the least multicultural regions in the country, so its still really prevalent here in the rural community.

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#58

He’s only been doing the sort of hard action roles that appeal strongly to old white guys who think the younger generation are all snowflakes and they’d show them if they had to suddenly deal with a loved one being in danger.

As confessions go it’s nailed on to get him even more fans I’d say.

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#59

Excalibur
Schindler’s List
Batman Begins

Mostly nothing though. That said he’s good in stuff regardless of that. I mean I don’t think Angelina Jolie has ever been in a good film but she’s always good in films no matter how bad they are.

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#61

Darkman.
Star wars (yes he was good!)
Michael Collins
Lamb
A monster calls
Ponyo
Narnia films

He’s done well for someone who never changes his accent regardless of role.

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#62

oh yes, moving from Hackney to Buckfastleigh was quite a culture shock!

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#63

LN: “and I understand that need for revenge, but it just leads to more revenge, to more killing and more killing”

I can only assume that him continuing to make macho revenge fantasies means that he considers the above to be a good thing?

#64

That place is a a law unto itself at the best of times!

#65

It’s an anagram of Fuck Shit Bagels - we just refer to it as Bagels in our house. Hated living there.

Makes me laugh the people of South Brent(!) call it Bugs n Fleas

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#66

My sister lived there for a bit. All I really remember is there used to be an awful Chinese restaurant in an old petrol station under the bypass.