A rant about the racism of my childhood

Amidst all the hoo-hah about “racist” Jade Goody on Big Brother (who was clearly put into the house by the goverment so that they could point at her and say “look, we really need to keep kids in school until they’re eighteen”), a far worse case of mass-broadcast racism has slipped by unnoticed.

For my sins I watched Hackers last night. This is a terrible film and is only worth watching because - and I’m quoting my flatmate here - “huh, Angelina Jolie is quite cute with short hair”.

The villain of the piece is played, quite whitely, by one Fisher Stevens. He’s an annoying man with a beard. He once appeared in Friends as one of Monica’s many many boyfriends (I believe the episode was “The One With The Annoying Man With A Beard”).

As soon as I recognised his annoying, bearded face I did the customary looking-up-on-IMDB (it’s hard to turn this into a verb, a la “to Google”. IMDBing just doesn’t roll off the tongue, does it?) and soon discovered that he played Benjamin in Short Circuit.

Comedy Indian Benjamin.

For the last twenty or so years of my life I have forgiven the comedy Indian-ness of Short Circuit becuase I assumed he was played by an actual Indian. Apparently this is not the case. I now feel quite dirty when I think about Short Circuit (and not for the right reason - i.e. Ally Sheedy).

Maybe I’m mistaken and Fisher Stevens is in fact trans-nationality (or what the correct term is). I await to be corrected and humbled.

Until that time, I’m calling for an immediate ban on all light-hearted science fiction romps starring Fisher Stevens and/or Steve Gutenberg.