Jeremy Clarkson has shared what he really thinks about cultural appropriation, spurred on by the erection of a Jane Austen statue.
The former Top Gear host, 63, dished out his opinions after discovering Winchester Cathedral was planning to erect a £100,000 Jane Austen statue.
The plans have riled up some locals, who believe it could lead to the ‘Disneyfication’ of the religious building, while others have claimed it is cultural appropriation as Austen wasn’t actually from Winchester.
Now Jeremy has weighed in on the matter whilst also explaining what he thinks about arguments surrounding appropriation.
Sharing his thoughts on the matter, Jeremy admitted he wanted to ‘shake’ those moaning about the actual birthplace and scream ‘it doesn’t f***ing matter’.
‘I can’t really get my head round all of the issues to be found in the latest social minefield: “cultural appropriation”,’ he wrote.
After referring to social restrictions surrounding fancy dress parties he went on.
‘Other things? Well, we are told that in drama, midgets must be played by midgets, and homosexuals by homosexuals, and that Peter Sellers would be sent to Coventry for ever for doing what he did in The Party,’ added in his column for The Times.
‘So, was it wrong for Robert Carlyle, who’s Scottish, to play the part of a Yorkshire person in The Full Monty? Technically I suppose it was, but as a Yorkshire person, I didn’t mind.’
He joked that if producers had chosen to go for ‘homegrown talent’, they would have ended up with Geoffrey Boycott or Patrick Stewart, who he wrote has ‘spent most of his acting life culturally appropriating Oxfordshireness and the French’.
The TV presenter then explained how cultural appropriation was ‘taking a cultural identity and pretending it is part of your background’ before detailing his perceived flaws with the idea.
‘So that means every actor is guilty, along with every social climber, every expat, every immigrant who converts to Christianity to get UK citizenship, every street busker who plays a Beatles song, every white kid with dreadlocks … and every halfwit who pulls on a pair of wellies, buys a cow and says he’s a farmer,’ he added, referring to himself at the end.
After taking aim at Austen, sharing how reading Emma as a student put him off reading and made others want to ‘take up glue-sniffing’, he made it clear he was perplexed by the appropriation comments the statue had sparked.
‘At this point I want to shake them all by the shoulders while screaming: “It doesn’t f***ing matter”,’ he wrote.
‘I’m sorry, but how can the interchanging of Basingstoke and Winchester possibly be cultural appropriation? Because there are no cultural differences.’
In recent months Jeremy has also used his columns to discuss his ongoing challenges running his Diddly Squat farm, recently explaining how getting planning permission for a restaurant from his local council had inadvertently made for a perfect storyline for Clarkson’s Farm, despite the annoyance it caused him.
Clarkson’s Farm is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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