Hotel Babylon essay

Discuss the ways in which the extract constructs representations of ethnicity

In this extract of "Hotel Babylon" several workers are hiding from the authorities as to not get deported as they're all illegal immigrants. The receptionist warns a co-worker and he rushes down to the basement and tells all the workers to hide however one gets captured. They show ethnicity fairly broadly and don't conform to stereotypes.

All of the illegal immigrants are obviously not fully british. However they haven't gone with a stereotype that they are all black or all asian they have a wide variety of different ethnicities and some are white perhaps from some parts of europe. The stereotype would be that they are all black but i don't think this extract conforms to that. They also have a wide variety of gender and age, there is old people and young people who are immigrants as well as a mix of women and men. They also have a black person who's not an immigrant as well as a white person who's not an immigrant. You end up feeling very sorry for the immigrants as they are all trapped in the room together and one of them even faints. You see that they're close and they look innocent and scared. The fact that one of them faints because she has diabetes gives the audience another reason to feel sorry for the immigrants and they're on their side. The audience is taught not to like the man who takes away ibrahim. He is the archetypal character of the bad guy, who doesn't care what is right or not and is slightly power mad so he takes ibrahim in even though he doesn't have to and could turn a blind eye. Although he is slightly kind to the immigrants because he mentions he knows about the code and that he allowed them 2 to 3 minutes to hide before coming in and so he was only "following the rules" but you still can't help but be against him. They convey action through camerawork. At the start of the extract the camera is moving around a lot tracking the action and panning around quickly. For instance when the woman faints the camera quickly zooms in, also when there's a knock on the door the camera zooms into her face. There is also a soundtrack in the background to convey action as well. Most of the sound apart from that is diegetic. All of the immigrants are wearing the same sort of clothing, either a purple uniform or a white uniform showing that they are essentially all the same or all part of the same family even though they are slightly different as they all have different nationalities and backgrounds. They all also have an accent to highlight the fact they're immigrants whereas the british workers all have a very clear british accent, in some cases quite posh, like the receptionist. The immigration worker has a english accent but it's more cockney and seems harsher.