In the early 1990s while dinning in an African restaurant in Los Angeles, I bumped into Adewale - he'd heard my English accent as I spoke with my West African wife and struck up a conversation. We exchanged numbers and agreed to meet up again having mentioned our mutual interest in the movie industry. He was just breaking into Hollywood and I fancied myself a screenwriter.
Adewale shared the phenomenon of 'farming the children,' recounting his own experiences under that abdication of parental responsibility. Since we're both Londoners of similar age we shared stories of our youth in the late seventies. I spent that period of my life deeply immersed in the British punk rock scene, itself a hub for the skinhead and mod revivals. I have no recollection of Adewale mentioning his peculiar involvement in a gang of ultra-violent white racist skinheads during this era; perhaps shame dictated he avoid speaking of such an astonishing episode in his life.What I do know is that his movie's portrayal of nineteen-seventies white working-class English people and of the subcultures of their children is absurdly cartoonish and trite.
The neo-Nazi, psycho-skin trope has been a reliable contemporary Hammer Horror-like monster which 'Farmed' disappointingly enjoins. It's unfortunate since this era's youth is redolent with story lines worth telling - and worth telling accurately. The working-class English who lived during that time are a kaleidoscope of characters and attitudes worthy of honest examination as are their interactions with immigrants and their English-born children. To portray them as generally bigoted, oafish, humourless and hyper-aggressive is to indulge a stereotype no less insulting than the black pimp or the inscrutable Asian.
Nigerian farmed children have unique and lamentable stories, but for me this film failed to capture the emotional complexity and profundity of the arrangement due to heavy-handed poetic license of the writer/director.
Review of Farming
