Stage Hand 18

Campetition Logo

If it’s racist? You are asking me, the black guy on the minimum wage – and wish it was payed on time and matching the real hours for once! – if Campetition is racist?

Any kind of idea how much how back breaking work is involved to make this big b*shit of a show happen? Do the fences go up by themselves? Does the bloody pool for the f*cking paddle boat race fill by magic? Does the splashed water mop itself up? Ever asked yourself who does the dishes after the all-cooked-zero-waste food package challenge?

Give you a hint: It’s not the camera fodder getting themselves exploited here, dawn to dusk, with barely a lunch break and no canteen. It’s us, the workforce, a.k.a the proletariat, the toiling masses, the idiots of the day.

That said – and it really needs saying more often, even if it puts me at risk of getting the sack – of course it’s racist, Campetition. The whole world order is one big fat bloody racism, why and how should prime time family entertainment be the one exception?

The camera fodder is darker skinned, on average, than management and the audience. No one needs to explain how one more young man from the Middle East or Africa ended up in a refugee camp and desperate enough to apply to compete in this b*shit. But an Oxbridge-educated blonde, he would look and sound out of place, right?

Thought you’d agree. Now guess who has a master in Sociology from Imperial College London and still needs to toil as a stage hand, because no career opportunities forthcoming, always invited, for diversity, never hired? You didn’t guess, did you? And now you feel awkward? Why not blame me, my oh so fragile friend?

Yes, sarcasm. What else?