As part of ERA’s commitment to helping licence holders make best use of the material available to them, we have decided to start highlighting our ‘top pick’ each week. We’re hoping to reveal multiple educational uses for a single episode, series, or film with enough time to act as a ‘heads up’ for teachers to be able to record, or access the material.
This Monday (7th of December, 9pm) marks the start of a three part documentary strand on BBC Three. Reggie Yeates’s Extreme UK, which will look at the pressures facing British men in the 21st century. The first episode of Reggie Yeates’s Extreme UK, titled Gay and Under Attack looks at the realities of being gay for young Black and Asian men in Britain.
From the BBC:
Being a British guy in 2015 is not easy, and in this series Reggie Yates travels to the extreme edge of modern British masculinity, to discover that 21st-century pressures are changing the way we live, the way we love, and even the way we look.
In the first film, Reggie is shocked to discover that, for young black and Asian gays and transsexuals, their harshest critics – and persecutors – often come from their own communities, or even their own families. Whether it’s young Muslims threatened with exorcism, or West African Christian parents ostracising their own gay kids, religion plays a part in the story. But Reggie also wants to find out why so few gay men of colour are visible at events like Gay Pride, given the special cultural problems they already face.
This programme, or extracts from it, would be of use in a PSHE sessions looking at discrimination and prejudice in modern Britain. It may also be useful in Sociology lessons as an example of inequalities that exist in our society.
Follow the hashtag #TVforTeachers or @EraResources for more lesson ideas.
Related links:
Why do some believe that people choose to be gay? (From Reggie Yeates’s Extreme UK: Gay and Attack)
Is Britain Facing a Crisis of Masculinity? (Segment from Channel 4 News)
Britain’s Changing Attitude to Gay Rights (Channel 4 News)
Woman’s Hour Late Night: Being a Man in 2015 (BBC Radio 4)
Photo Credit: Programme Name: Reggie Yates’s Extreme UK – TX: n/a – Episode: n/a (No. n/a) – Picture Shows: Reggie Yates – (C) Phill Taylor – Photographer: Phill Taylor