On the 12th of October we were asked to write a blog report on one of the Dramas we had watched in the creative media seminar I chose the drama Skin Deep.

Skin Deep is a Drama from 2001 that explores the themes of racism, conflict of identity and the difficulty of helping family, This starts by showing a quick introduction of the main character Romo's family history as it turns out he is mixed race with his father being pakistani and his mother white british (he has inherited her white skin), he also has a sister with darker skin closer to their fathers. Unfortunately for Romo he lives in an area that is a deeply racist part of Britain in 1982. The main focus of the piece is Romo hiding his family history in the hope working with deeply racist workers at a garage. The drama is about Romo's decision to hide his ethnicity, the conflict he feels and the fear of discovery.


The drama takes a clear negative view of racism portraying the racists as moronic thugs with no redeemable qualities while at the same time showing all non racists as decent people struggling to cope with discrimination in the area. Although the film does show several scenes of Romo enjoying himself with his new co-workers and shows that he has easily won their respect the ending shows that this is tearing romo apart even causing him to self harm with little to no attempt to stop. This is clearly the intention of filmmaker Yousaf Ali Khan as someone who is not of white british heritage he would most likely find this topic easy to identify with and pick a clear side. It is clear that Yousaf succeeded in getting his point across as I find it difficult to believe anyone with a basic understanding of race and racism would not understand his intention.


Personally I did not enjoy the film as although I agree with the principles of the film and sympathies with the protagonist the way the story is told makes me feel very uncomfortable and made me have fear that Romo would be discovered at any moment, Though giving the audience this fear is most likely on purpose, very commendable and clearly a tone that fits in well with the film it did not make me want to keep watching to see if romo was discovered but rather made me want to stop watching or have it suddenly end with everything suddenly being ok, Something that no decent filmmaker would do. I do feel  though that the acting was excellent particularly from Darren Sheppard who played Romo he was able to excellently show us his pain while at the same time convincingly masking it from those around him.  


One element that particularly stood out for me was the way all characters felt well rounded and written as even characters that appeared with little screen time seemed very real with different likes and dislikes to others around them. Another element that stood out for me was the slow reveal that Romo was using racist abuse from his childhood to help prepare himself for hiding his identity as well as being a metaphor for romo's self loathing and hatred of what he has forced himself to become the scared and angry boy he is.