Mar 06 2025 39 mins 2
On this episode Ellen E. Jones speaks to us about Screen Deep, How Film and TV can Solve Racism and Save the World. Many of you will know Ellen from Radio 4’s Screen Shot, in which, alongside her co-host Mark Kermode, she enters the various worlds of Doris Day, jobbing hitmen and the longest running video shop in the world.
Screen Deep is written with the same insight, encyclopaedic knowledge and social consciousness that Ellen brings to her broadcasting. (She also does a fantastic line in knowing asides.) It is a reiteration of the power of story telling; both for good and for bad. From the overt racism of early Hollywood to the deft brilliance of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series, Ellen chronicles the struggle for representation, dismantles reconciliation fantasies and questions the invisibility of whiteness. She also argues that Martin Goodman of Friday Night Dinners is in fact the TV dad our times demand.
‘Jones navigates a history of cultural racism assiduously, ranging from The Birth of a Nation to blackface in sharp, brisk prose.’
Kevin Harley, TOTAL FILM
Screen Deep is published by Faber and is available in your nearest independent book shop.
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