Representation and the media

The average family represented in ads looks and sounds no different from the archetype Nepalis in pre-1990 films.

A little storm erupted recently in the United Kingdom when a sitting member of parliament declared during a TV phone-in that “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”. She complained that non-whites do not reflect British society and rued that the “average white person, average white family” does not feature any more on TV. Following the expected furore, the MP, Sarah Pochin of the anti-immigrant Reform UK party, has since said that her comment was “ phrased poorly ” even as she insisted that the TV ads were indeed “unrepresentative of British society”.