• Contact
  • About
  • Authors
DONATE
NEWSLETTER SIGN UP
  • Login
Yorkshire Bylines
  • Home
  • News
    • All
    • Brexit
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Health
    • Home Affairs
    • Transport
    • World
    Emmanuel Macron

    French parliamentary elections 2022: shockwaves across the Channel

    Rail strikes

    Millions affected by biggest rail strike action in 30 years

    cost of living march london

    Trade union movement marches to demand better

    European Union

    After the seismic shocks of Brexit and Covid, what next for the European Union?

    Eurovision 2022 stage - photo by Michael Doherty on Wikimedia Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0

    What does Ukraine’s Eurovision win tell us about the politics of solidarity?

    Refugee Week

    Refugee week: a chance to celebrate refugees

    Yorkshire cows

    British farmers are being offered a lump sum payment to leave the industry – but at what cost to agriculture?

    Julian Assange

    Julian Assange’s extradition given the green light by the UK home secretary

    RSPB heritage event

    RSPB heritage event to tell the story of the Dearne Valley, from coal face to wild place

    Trending Tags

    • Johnson
    • Coronavirus
    • Labour
    • Starmer
    • NI Protocol
    • Brexit
    • Culture
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Home Affairs
    • Transport
    • World
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Culture
    • Dance
    • Food
    • Music
    • Poetry
    • Recipes
    • Sport
    Headingley Cricket Stadium

    A view from the Roses match: is everything ‘rosey’ in English cricket?

    Bettys' Fat Rascals

    Scallywags, scoundrels and rascals abound in Yorkshire (we do like our scones)

    'Woke' beliefs

    Woke and proud: Compassion must never be allowed to go out of fashion

    Eurovision 2022 stage - photo by Michael Doherty on Wikimedia Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0

    What does Ukraine’s Eurovision win tell us about the politics of solidarity?

    Red Ladder

    Climbing the Red Ladder – bringing theatre to the community

    Kaiser Chiefs in Doncaster

    Kaiser Chiefs never miss a beat in Doncaster

    Bradford Council leader Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, second from right, is joined by Keighley Creative representatives, from left, Georgina Webster, Jan Smithies and Gemma Hobbs.

    Bradford announced as City of Culture 2025

    Queen cakes fit for a Queen

    Queen Cakes fit for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

    Opera North's artist in residence Jasdeep Singh Degun

    Jasdeep Singh Degun announced as Opera North’s artist in residence

    • Food
    • Music
    • Poetry
    • Sport
  • Business
    • All
    • Economy
    • Technology
    • Trade
    Freya Osment from Northern Gas Networks

    International Women in Engineering Day 2022

    Rail strikes

    Millions affected by biggest rail strike action in 30 years

    conservative party

    The Conservative Party: fiscally irresponsible and ideologically incapable of addressing the current crises

    Yorkshire cows

    British farmers are being offered a lump sum payment to leave the industry – but at what cost to agriculture?

    cost-of-living-crisis-in-voluntary-sector

    Cost-of-living crisis looming for the voluntary sector

    Money on the floor - £20 notes

    The huge cost of Brexit is being seriously understated

    Financial problems

    Surge in bad debt and late payments indicate mounting business distress in Yorkshire

    An evening photo tour of Drax power station near Selby, North Yorkshire, with excellent light towards sunset.

    Winter blackouts and rationing for six million homes as government plans for disruption to energy supply

    Jar with money cascading out of it

    Boosterism doesn’t put food on the table

    Trending Tags

      • Economy
      • Technology
      • Trade
    • Region
    No Result
    View All Result
    • Home
    • News
      • All
      • Brexit
      • Education
      • Environment
      • Health
      • Home Affairs
      • Transport
      • World
      Emmanuel Macron

      French parliamentary elections 2022: shockwaves across the Channel

      Rail strikes

      Millions affected by biggest rail strike action in 30 years

      cost of living march london

      Trade union movement marches to demand better

      European Union

      After the seismic shocks of Brexit and Covid, what next for the European Union?

      Eurovision 2022 stage - photo by Michael Doherty on Wikimedia Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0

      What does Ukraine’s Eurovision win tell us about the politics of solidarity?

      Refugee Week

      Refugee week: a chance to celebrate refugees

      Yorkshire cows

      British farmers are being offered a lump sum payment to leave the industry – but at what cost to agriculture?

      Julian Assange

      Julian Assange’s extradition given the green light by the UK home secretary

      RSPB heritage event

      RSPB heritage event to tell the story of the Dearne Valley, from coal face to wild place

      Trending Tags

      • Johnson
      • Coronavirus
      • Labour
      • Starmer
      • NI Protocol
      • Brexit
      • Culture
      • Education
      • Environment
      • Home Affairs
      • Transport
      • World
    • Politics
    • Opinion
    • Lifestyle
      • All
      • Culture
      • Dance
      • Food
      • Music
      • Poetry
      • Recipes
      • Sport
      Headingley Cricket Stadium

      A view from the Roses match: is everything ‘rosey’ in English cricket?

      Bettys' Fat Rascals

      Scallywags, scoundrels and rascals abound in Yorkshire (we do like our scones)

      'Woke' beliefs

      Woke and proud: Compassion must never be allowed to go out of fashion

      Eurovision 2022 stage - photo by Michael Doherty on Wikimedia Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0

      What does Ukraine’s Eurovision win tell us about the politics of solidarity?

      Red Ladder

      Climbing the Red Ladder – bringing theatre to the community

      Kaiser Chiefs in Doncaster

      Kaiser Chiefs never miss a beat in Doncaster

      Bradford Council leader Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, second from right, is joined by Keighley Creative representatives, from left, Georgina Webster, Jan Smithies and Gemma Hobbs.

      Bradford announced as City of Culture 2025

      Queen cakes fit for a Queen

      Queen Cakes fit for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

      Opera North's artist in residence Jasdeep Singh Degun

      Jasdeep Singh Degun announced as Opera North’s artist in residence

      • Food
      • Music
      • Poetry
      • Sport
    • Business
      • All
      • Economy
      • Technology
      • Trade
      Freya Osment from Northern Gas Networks

      International Women in Engineering Day 2022

      Rail strikes

      Millions affected by biggest rail strike action in 30 years

      conservative party

      The Conservative Party: fiscally irresponsible and ideologically incapable of addressing the current crises

      Yorkshire cows

      British farmers are being offered a lump sum payment to leave the industry – but at what cost to agriculture?

      cost-of-living-crisis-in-voluntary-sector

      Cost-of-living crisis looming for the voluntary sector

      Money on the floor - £20 notes

      The huge cost of Brexit is being seriously understated

      Financial problems

      Surge in bad debt and late payments indicate mounting business distress in Yorkshire

      An evening photo tour of Drax power station near Selby, North Yorkshire, with excellent light towards sunset.

      Winter blackouts and rationing for six million homes as government plans for disruption to energy supply

      Jar with money cascading out of it

      Boosterism doesn’t put food on the table

      Trending Tags

        • Economy
        • Technology
        • Trade
      • Region
      No Result
      View All Result
      Yorkshire Bylines
      No Result
      View All Result
      Home Lifestyle

      Little Fires Everywhere: a successful, relevant production and an introduction to modern racism

      Little Fires Everywhere 2020 Hulu exclusive now on Amazon Prime, is a crafted tale about the intersection of race and motherhood.

      Séamus O’HanlonbySéamus O’Hanlon
      18-06-2020 13:32
      in Lifestyle, World
      Known as a “suburban utopia where all races can live in harmony”. Jews and African Americans “poured in for utopia”. Non-Jewish white residents fled. Shaker innovated the policy of using financial incentives to encourage white families to remain. The high school is half African American and half white, but the first episode makes it clear that racial codifiers like neighbourhood predetermines academic performance.

      Known as a “suburban utopia where all races can live in harmony”. Jews and African Americans “poured in for utopia”. Non-Jewish white residents fled. Shaker innovated the policy of using financial incentives to encourage white families to remain. The high school is half African American and half white, but the first episode makes it clear that racial codifiers like neighbourhood predetermines academic performance.

      7
      VIEWS
      Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
      ADVERTISEMENT

      Little Fires Everywhere 2020 Hulu exclusive now on Amazon Prime, is a crafted tale about the intersection of race and motherhood. The series was pioneered by the lovable Reese Witherspoon who stars as its joint lead alongside the formidable Kerry Washington. Quality wise, it is not as good as the critically acclaimed first season of Big Little Lies, but despite its occasional missteps, it is on par with its second season. The theme of subconscious racism escalating to overt bigotry resonates more than ever as worldwide citizens are protesting the horrific police killing of George Floyd. To understand why race relations are still so fractured, watch this miniseries set in 1997, which perfectly explains how America stumbled in its dream of integration.

      The slightly varying episode lengths fitted content, not scheduling. Three-quarters of the way through, after an absolute cliff-hanger in episode five, there was a 55-minute flashback episode with dual casting. A mini film in its own right. US race tensions in the late 20th century is revealed in the strong opening episode. There is glossy hair, muted cute outfits, and wide-open spaces of 1997 midwestern America that superbly conveys the artificial innocence of Shaker Heights, a real-life scrutinised model of attempted racial integration.

      The history of Shaker is fully realised in the last episode, when the clues of this engineered integration is revealed, how “the town’s utopian image was shattered”. This was foreshadowed in the 1980s flashback episode when the roots of Shaker’s obsession with uniformity, greed and exclusivity was sown. The sheer homogeneity of Shaker’s perfectly picketed mansions also symbolises the repression in America’s nearly all white upper-middle class. The show enables learning about how integration was largely mishandled between the civil rights era and the turn of the millennium.

      The story centres on Witherspoon’s prim and perfectionist Elena Richardson, her handsome, commercial lawyer husband, two boys and two girls and, fundamental to the plot, an executive late nineties kitchen. At first, I really enjoyed Witherspoon’s almost hammy Elena, a great delight, but the character’s slowly growing maturity and then sudden regression was muddled. Elena tries to use her white suburban mom influence for some good, as a provincial reporter, family friend and out-of-touch mom, but then towards the end of the show becomes an unrecognisable person. This was a downside to the show’s unique structure; to go from discovering about a sympathetic twenty-something Elena to then just being dropped with this now unravelling woman, destructive and unjustified in awful actions, needed more writing and complete precision. It was instead jarring, and sometimes melodramatic, undermining previous pivotal moments.


      Other reviews by Séamus O’Hanlon:

      • State of Happiness: A confident, clean break from Scandi noir
      • Lockdown viewing: Our Friends in the North

      Mia Warren is a mystery, often dressed all in black as though in mourning, and much of the drama is us trying to guess what exactly her trauma is. Mia has travelled across the States, a few months here and a few months there, with her only child Pearl. Mia’s sheer unlikableness as a parent – emotionally stunted nature, and recurring snarling lips – is central to the theme of motherhood. Mia is the most complex character as she is used to represent bad parenting choices which are not always justified by poor circumstances. The fact that Kerry Washington was believable in this complex role is a testament to her as an actor. Crucially, the character never becomes a stereotype. Mia reluctantly accepts a menial job working for the Richardson household to supplement her other jobs, and her daughter becomes enamoured with this privileged lifestyle. Offended by her lack of stability, she becomes inquisitive about her strange upbringing. Pearl is beautiful and naturally thoughtful, a pot of honey to the four Richardson teens – all together in high school, all spoilt and all noisy.

      Lingering on the tongue of eldest Richardson daughter, Yale-bound Lexie, is the idea that she will be disadvantaged herself by reverse racism. This persuasive and popular point of view is amplified through the late-nineties setting, so the Richardson family embodies the middle-class fear that even the hallmark of collegiate education will be made a free-for-all by positive discrimination. Lexie may treat Pearl as a shiny possession, but her life is complex. This generational mirroring is excessively done so the audience sees how ‘systemic racism’ is a result of child copying parent. Strikingly, the two boys are the least developed and this again mirrors their father, played by Joshua Jackson, who is not given enough time for us to determine whether he is dreamy and moral, or a jerk. Absent fathers, it is arguing, are found even in the family home.


      A court case occurs that imitates Big Little Lies. Pictured Reese Witherspoon as Elena (left) and Kerry Washington as Mia (right), in a heated courtroom break.

      The direction is smart enough so that just when a point is settled, there will be a flash back to a character’s formative moment that will make you rethink everything. Exactly halfway through the episodes, Mia spits back to Elena in furious retort that “You didn’t make good choices. You had good choices.” At this powerful, summarising comment, I found myself ready to check out, feeling that this verbal confrontation between the two leads was the show’s peak. However, I was pleased that series further improved, peaking in another masterful flashback episode. The final two episodes were still engaging, darker, but it was an anti-climactic ending where forced mystery was favoured over a quiet but powerful conclusion. To create a bold, dramatic ending, realism was sacrificed, and this detracted from the quiet triumph of the show – how Mia and Elena were shown to have experienced similar hardships that they never realised due to their different races.

      ADVERTISEMENT
      Previous Post

      EU considering suing China over Hong Kong’s national security law

      Next Post

      Eugenics: the Malthus Cummings delusion

      Séamus O’Hanlon

      Séamus O’Hanlon

      Séamus is a student at the University of Leeds studying philosophy, politics and economics. He grew up in Scarborough, North Yorkshire then moved to Sheffield, then Rotherham, in his teens and now resides in West Yorkshire. Séamus is a cultural writer for Yorkshire Bylines and also writes for The Gryphon.

      Related Posts

      Emmanuel Macron
      Politics

      French parliamentary elections 2022: shockwaves across the Channel

      byAnn Moody
      25 June 2022
      Headingley Cricket Stadium
      Region

      A view from the Roses match: is everything ‘rosey’ in English cricket?

      byOliver Lawrie
      24 June 2022
      Bettys' Fat Rascals
      Food

      Scallywags, scoundrels and rascals abound in Yorkshire (we do like our scones)

      byMeryl White
      23 June 2022
      European Union
      Politics

      After the seismic shocks of Brexit and Covid, what next for the European Union?

      byRichard Corbett
      21 June 2022
      'Woke' beliefs
      Culture

      Woke and proud: Compassion must never be allowed to go out of fashion

      bySue Wilson MBE
      20 June 2022
      Next Post
      A Eugenics Society poster (1930s) from the Wellcome Library Eugenics Society Archive Wellcome Library / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

      Eugenics: the Malthus Cummings delusion

      Want to support us?

      Can you help Yorkshire Bylines to grow and become more sustainable with a regular donation, no matter how small?  

      DONATE

      Sign up to our newsletter

      If you would like to receive the Yorkshire Bylines regular newsletter, straight talking direct to your inbox, click the button below.

      NEWSLETTER

      LATEST

      10/05/2022 Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the House of Commons. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street

      The country needs more than just ‘Booting Boris out of Downing Street’

      26 June 2022
      Emmanuel Macron

      French parliamentary elections 2022: shockwaves across the Channel

      25 June 2022
      March for women

      Women of Wakefield: people power only works if the people use that power

      24 June 2022
      Headingley Cricket Stadium

      A view from the Roses match: is everything ‘rosey’ in English cricket?

      24 June 2022

      MOST READ

      Vladimir Putin

      Conservative Friends of Russia group disbands with immediate effect

      8 March 2022
      Photo credit Robert Sharp / englishpenLicensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

      The Davis Downside Dossier

      1 January 2021
      Lynton Crosby and Boris Johnson

      Lynton Crosby’s return to the Conservative Party foretells an ugly general election campaign

      19 June 2022
      European Union

      After the seismic shocks of Brexit and Covid, what next for the European Union?

      21 June 2022

      BROWSE BY TAGS

      antivaxxers Charity climate change Coronavirus Cost of living Creative industries Crime Cummings Democracy Devolution education Equality Farming Fishing hgv History Immigration Johnson Journalism Labour Local Democracy Mental Health mining money NHS NI Protocol omicron Pies pollution poverty PPE Public Health Review shortage social media Starmer tax travel Ukraine Yorkshire
      Yorkshire Bylines

      Yorkshire Bylines is a regional online newspaper that supports citizen journalism. Our aim is to publish well-written, fact-based articles and opinion pieces on subjects that are of interest to people in Yorkshire and beyond.

      Learn more about us

      No Result
      View All Result
      • Contact
      • About
      • Letters
      • Donate
      • Privacy
      • Bylines network
      • Shop

      © 2022 Yorkshire Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

      No Result
      View All Result
      • Home
      • News
        • Brexit
        • Education
        • Environment
        • Health
        • Home Affairs
        • Transport
        • World
      • Politics
      • Opinion
      • Lifestyle
        • Culture
        • Dance
        • Food
        • Music
        • Poetry
        • Recipes
        • Sport
      • Business
        • Economy
        • Technology
        • Trade
      • Donate
      • The Compendium of Cabinet Codebreakers
      • The Davis Downside Dossier
      • The Digby Jones Index
      • Newsletter sign up
      • Cartoons by Stan
      • Authors

      © 2022 Yorkshire Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

      Welcome Back!

      Login to your account below

      Forgotten Password?

      Retrieve your password

      Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

      Log In