Bengali in Platforms without the fringe

[Skylarker]

His autobiography mentions growing up with black & Asian people. He went to black clubs as a teenager.

Recording 1960s Manchester's buzzing Caribbean scene

Volunteers are recording the 'living' memories of West Indian immigrants who lived in Moss Side and Hulme from the 1950s to the 1980s

www.theguardian.com

BBC - Manchester - History - The making of 'Curry Mile'

Wilmslow Road in Rusholme has been known as Manchester's 'Curry Mile' since the 80s, but it's been the home of South Asian cuisine for much longer.

www.bbc.co.uk

Manchester, 1964:

View attachment 98038

OK so there were four black kids wow

 

[Malarkey]

OK so there were four black kids wow

It was more than that.

 

[bhops]

His autobiography mentions growing up with black & Asian people. He went to black clubs as a teenager.

Recording 1960s Manchester's buzzing Caribbean scene

Volunteers are recording the 'living' memories of West Indian immigrants who lived in Moss Side and Hulme from the 1950s to the 1980s

www.theguardian.com

BBC - Manchester - History - The making of 'Curry Mile'

Wilmslow Road in Rusholme has been known as Manchester's 'Curry Mile' since the 80s, but it's been the home of South Asian cuisine for much longer.

www.bbc.co.uk

Manchester, 1964:

View attachment 98038

Yep one photograph, that seals it!

 

[Malarkey]

He is preternaturally obsessed with the mid 20th century version of England and anything that exists to preserve that way of life. Including skinheads. It isn't that he actually sides with skinheads. It's that he likes what they seek to preserve. That's why his support of them was so superficial and sloppy in the 90s. Read between the lines.

Mass immigration from the Commonwealth started in 1945. His parents arrived in the late 50s. Irish immigrants lived in the same areas of Manchester as black & Asian immigrants.

Skinheads were a hybrid of Jamaican rude boys & mods. The fascist faction didn't evolve until later.

By the 80s it was also part of the gay scene. Which Morrissey was connected to.

He even sent a postcard of a gay skinhead to lead singer of Bradford.

 

[Malarkey]

Yep one photograph, that seals it!

You can read the links - or a British history book. It's not some unknown thing.

 

[Skylarker]

You can read the links - or a British history book. It's not some unknown thing.

Reading is gross. So are gay skinheads. Yuck. Let's keep this clean, sicko.

 

[Malarkey]

Reading is gross. So are gay skinheads. Yuck. Let's keep this clean, sicko.

Morrissey's work is incredibly gay.

 

[Skylarker]

Morrissey's work is incredibly gay.

Yes. And I love it. But I also think it does not need to be seen through that lens (with a few explicit exceptions) and it still works.

 

[Malarkey]

Yes. And I love it. But I also think it does not need to be seen through that lens (with a few explicit exceptions) and it still works.

I'd agree with that.

He was quite open in his early years about wanting to normalise gay culture & being gay - so people could take what they wanted from it.

 

[Skylarker]

I'd agree with that.

He was quite open in his early years about wanting to normalise gay culture & being gay - so people could take what they wanted from it.

Yeah but I wouldn't relegate that opinion of his to his early years; only that he was maybe more vocal about it back then. The more normalized gay culture became, the less he felt the need to herald it.

 

[Skylarker]

But really, even saying he was trying say he was trying to normalize gay culture implies he had an agenda, and I don't think he had an agenda with regard to gay culture. I think he just didn't like being pigeonholed as someone who only liked getting cornholed.

I think if he was trying to "normalize" anything it was himself.

 

[Amy]

I think if he was trying to "normalize" anything it was himself.

This. He was trying to 'normalise' people being whatever they were, whether through embracing their LGBT identity or just being a straight boy who loved Motown and makeup. When he said labels were confusing and made people feel bad about themselves, he was including himself in that. And it makes sense because he didn't fit in the mainstream gay culture of the 80s ('I hate this festive f***** thing') and maybe there wasn't an obvious cultural 'space' for someone whose true label might be more like "conflicted-bisexual-with-Catholic-guilt-complex". He just struggled - he was nearly 40 when he wrote about having been brainwashed in I Can Have Both - and he obviously still struggles. Everyone wants to feel that they are normal.

 

[Mosserray]

If you were raised Catholic, then you'd know all about the guilt, confessing your "sins", humiliation and forgiveness.

 

[Amy]

Where does Morrissey have Catholic guilt about himself?
There is no actual proof that he practices Catholicism, therefore how can it be from a religious standpoint about his sexuality.

Yes, I know he wears rosaries and incense cologne. Yes, I know he wrote “Dear God Please Help Me” etc

He has described his family background and upbringing as "absurdly" Catholic until a certain point in time where they experienced a tragedy / untimely death and turned away from the church. That kind of upbringing stays with a person even if they don't believe and shame, guilt, confession etc etc is a big thing. He's written and spoken about it a fair amount. And if you dare enjoy your body / Here tolls Hades welcome bell.

 

[gashonthenail]

I have always thought that 'Common People' by Pulp expresses a very similar sentiment to 'Bengali in Platforms'. It's about being a 'day tripper' in someone else's culture. The subject of the song doesn't belong - she's from Greece and 'everybody hates a tourist'. That song expresses much more contempt than is found in 'Bengali in Platforms', of course, although it is obvious that the singer fancies the subject of the song, so there is attraction as well as contempt. Is there maybe a whiff of sexual attraction in 'Bengali in Platforms' as well? Hard to tell. There is perhaps a mix of repulsion and attraction in the song - why is the singer so keen to 'break the news gently'?
No one would bat an eyelid if a black singer wrote a song about a white guy being a 'day tripper' into black culture - it is such a standard trope that there is even a word for it - 'wigger'. Moz is so good at turning cultural norms about what you are allowed to say on their head.

 

[Malarkey]

Morrissey’s entire family apart from him & his sister were Irish born.

He grew up in the Irish Catholic community.

They would be "tourists" in English culture.

 

[Malarkey]

There is also nothing about skin colour in the song - but Gash has to get his "it's not racism to be racist - it's just culture" grift in.

Madness wrote a song about struggling to adjust to India's heat. Being somewhere new can be difficult.

 

[gashonthenail]

The song was viewed as 'racist'. And by people on the left. Take it up with The Guardian, not me. I don't think the song is racist. And I don't think Moz is racist. The way you go on about it, you must be racist. I wonder what incipient racist urges drive your not so magnificent obsession, seeing racists under every bed?

Why this British Asian doesn't listen to Morrissey any more

His latest gaffe is probably one too many - there comes a time when you can't listen to music made by someone whose views you find repugnant

www.theguardian.com

 

[Jamie]

If Morrissey had only changed the line 'life is hard enough when you belong here' to 'life is hard enough when you born here' (which I felt was the sentiment of the original line anyway) the entire controversy would've been avoided.

See also: how the furor about "The National Front Disco" could have almost certainly been avoided by the inclusion of a lyric sheet in Your Arsenal which had "England for the English" in quotes. It's clear from the framework of the song that it's the David character spouting the misguided rhetoric he picked up from a National Front meeting, not Morrissey speaking in the first person. Anyone who does not concede the point is being unduly obstinate.

In the case of "Bengali In Platforms," there is an inferred irony in "life is hard enough when you belong here." By even that point in his career, Morrissey had sung dozens of songs about how he did not belong. I believe he was finding a fellow feeling for and point of identification with the character in the song. However, the mocking strings in the middle eight sorely undercut any generous reading. It was not a well-thought-through production choice. It's all a shame really because Vini Reilly's beautiful chorus guitar hook gets lost in the confusion.

 

[Malarkey]

The song was viewed as 'racist'. And by people on the left. Take it up with The Guardian, not me. I don't think the song is racist. And I don't think Moz is racist. The way you go on about it, you must be racist. I wonder what incipient racist urges drive your not so magnificent obsession, seeing racists under every bed?

Why this British Asian doesn't listen to Morrissey any more

His latest gaffe is probably one too many - there comes a time when you can't listen to music made by someone whose views you find repugnant

www.theguardian.com

Gash, you are without doubt a far right racist.

All you do on here is try to shoehorn a racist/far right talking point into every thread.

The "left" & the Guardian didn't start it. IPC started it & the hack who hated him the most was a Tory.

What we mostly have now is confirmation bias. People have been told so often that the song is racist that they see it through that framing.