Why Writers (But Also Everyone) Should Avoid Stereotyping
Last week I was back home in London, and one morning I accompanied my mother to the chemist (pharmacy) as she needed to sort out a snafu in my father's latest prescription. (My father is 90 years old, so I don't think I'm meaningfully violating any medical privacy in revealing that there are a certain number of pills involved in keeping him in this world, rather than the next).
"Hello Cathy!" my mother said to the woman at the desk.
"Hello [security answer #3]," the woman replied. "What's up? Have they screwed up [security answer #4]'s prescription again?"
A little while later, while we were waiting, a bloke my age with spiky hair arrived in a mobility scooter. "Hello Cathy!" he said.
"Hello Tony!" she replied. While he was waiting in turn, we all had quite a conversation, her, him, my mum, me, and another family who were waiting. I think I probably would have joined in even if my mother hadn't have been there. It was that sort of chat. I should say that my mother didn't know Tony and he didn't know her.
And this was in London.
I moved to the North eight years ago. In all that time, I've never heard anyone greet the pharmacist by name, let alone the pharmacist greet them by name. Everyone just stands, or sits, waiting in silence. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it hasn't happened anytime I've been there.
And yet, when I first moved to the North I was constantly told by people how happy I should be given that "we're so much friendlier than you lot". Personally, if upon meeting a complete stranger from somewhere else, your instinct is to tell them that your people are better than their people and, by extension, your family are better than their family and you're better than them... well I'd personally not call that friendly.
But what would I know? I'm a Londoner, and apparently we don't talk to people.
Some Northerners seem to go further, erasing the existence of working class Southerners by assuming that everyone south of Watford Gap is posh. That's just not true. To pick just one random example, I loved Thomas Skinner in the Apprentice (see picture above). He's a shining example of a working-class, Southern, diamond geezer, albeit one who's done well for himself.
My favourite example of an inversion of North-South stereotypes is the early 1980s pairing / rivalry of the British middle-distance runners Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett.
Now traditionally, there were two stereotypes of middle-distance running in the UK, based on the two traditions of track running and fell running.
You had the posh Southern track athlete, epitomised by the semi-fictional character of Lord Andrew Lindsay, played by Nigel Havers, in Chariots of Fire. And then you had the gritty, Northern working-class runner, long illustrated by Alf Tupper, from Victor comic's Tough of the Track strip.
Smooth, charismatic Sebastian Coe, or to give him his full title, Sebastian Newbold Coe, Baron Coe CH KBE Hon FRIBA (he got a knighthood before being made a Lord) is the epitome of the posh Southern runner, following up his athletics career with a move into politics for the Conservative party, first as an MP and then as a peer. Meanwhile, outspoken and controversial Steve Ovett, who had to make do with a mere OBE, two ranks below Coe's knighthood, is the epitome of the gritty, Northern, working-class runner (and a socialist to boot).
Except that Coe's a Yorkshireman, from Sheffield, and Ovett's from Brighton (and if you try to get more Southern than that, you'll be getting your feet wet).
Characters, as with people, shouldn't be pigeon-holed. They're not supposed to feel to the reader like a familiar pair of shoes. Art should challenge prejudice and bias, not reinforce it. Got yourself two characters, protagonists perhaps, antagonists maybe? One's a middle-class Conservative and the other's a working-class socialist? Well, try making the posh boy a Northerner and the socialist a Southerner. Honest-to-God, it will be more interesting that way.
Stereotyping's lazy, both in writing and in life. Do better.
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