VERBATIM NO.1
Joss Whedon Why are his strong women characters still so unusual?
The writer and director is about to be honoured for his track record in creating strong roles for women. But listen to a speech he gave seven years ago, and ask yourself why so little has changed in the entertainment industry.
You may love Joss Whedon for creating the vampire-slaying kick-ass female hero Buffy, or maybe for his film Marvel Avengers Assemble just last year, but I became one of the screenwriter, director and producer’s biggest fans when I first heard this thank-you speech, made after campaign group Equality Now honoured him for his work in 2006.
In his speech, Whedon imagines himself at an imaginary press conference answering the same “dumb question” he is asked “400” times” by reporters – to whit, why does he write strong women characters?
Starting off with the anodyne answer that it was due to his “strong mother”, his “engaged father”, the fact that female characters are allowed emotions or just “Equality is not a concept” because “women are hot”, Whedon finally shouts: “Why aren’t you asking You may say that the fact that he is the 100 other guys why they don’t write about to be honoured again at next strong female characters?” week’s inaugural Make Equality Reality event in Beverly Hills is a slim pretext He goes on, in a speech that should act for airing a seven-year-old speech. And as a rebuff to every Seth MacFarlane you would be right. But the fact that he boob “gag” at awards ceremonies, to could plausibly make the same speech point out: “Equality is not a concept, again seems a good enough reason to not something we should be striving run it again. For, really, which one of for, equality is like gravity … misogyny the points he makes is no longer valid? is life out of balance and it sucks something out of the soul of every man This is obviously the same thinking and women confronted with it.” that led Upworthy.com, to post the His final answer to why he writes about video this weekend. Since then the strong women? “Because you are still YouTube video has started to trend . asking me the question.”
And we journalists are still asking the same question, lauding the rare case of a male writer writing strong and supporting women characters. We still marvel at Carrie Mathison in Homeland, say Birgitte Nyborg could only be written by a Dane and idolise DCI Jane Tennison. They are remarkable partly because they are women and not simply interesting characters. It is so bad now that author Sophia McDougall recently railed against the notion of “strong female characters” altogether. “No one ever asks if a male character is “strong”. Nor if he’s “feisty,” or “kickass” come to that,” The time when there are just as many strong, opinionated, multi-faceted, complex, serious women on our screens as there are men, a point where no one even discusses how refreshing, unusual, odd or marvellous such a writer as Whedon is will be the right moment for Whedon’s speech to be left to gather dust in an archive somewhere.
The Life Of A Former London Gang Leader
CUTTING EDGE The Life Of A Former London Gang Leader When Adam Patterson began photographing London gang leader Vipoh, he was looking for a way to understand knife culture. Instead, he gained a unique insight into a man desperate to escape a life of violence.
Jean-Claude Dagrou sits in his living room, changes his baby’s nappy, and explains why he became a gang member: “I wanted people to be scared of me. That’s the only reason I got involved, to tell you the truth.” Dagrou is built like a wardrobe, with huge, scarred arms, a deep voice and a disarming smile. The curtains are closed and the room is dark and empty except for a television and scores of secondhand toy cars. Sometimes, Dagrou says, he’d see people fighting and it frustrated him, because he knew he was tougher than them. “I’d think, I can fight better than that. Somehow that person who’s weaker than me has got more respect than me, and this is a kind of violation.”
“A lot of people have a family name that is big. Our family name was not big, so I wanted to make our family name live on.” Life is a competition, Dagrou says, and one he has always been determined to win. He admits that it leads to irrational behaviour. “If I see someone in nice clothes, I’ll say, ‘Ah those clothes are rubbish.’ I’ve always liked to show off. It just comes naturally.”
At 24, he is talking as an ex-gangster. Five years ago, he met the Irish photographer Adam Patterson, who had just moved to London. Patterson was fascinated by knife culture in gangs – he had grown up in Belfast among violence, but this was something altogether The more he talks, the more obvious it becomes different. that his ambition, and subsequent history in gangs, extended beyond terrifying people.
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Knife crime was at a high. A freedom of information request to the Metropolitan police revealed that there had been 14,192 knife crimes in London in 2007-8, a figure that fell to 11,376 for 2012-13; nevertheless, the fallout from gang warfare continues to be huge. A 2011 Home Office report found that gang members were responsible for 22% of serious violence in London, and 17% of all stabbings. In 2012, Scotland Yard estimated that the number of gang members in London had risen to 5,000, distributed among 435 gangs, while a recent British Crime Survey estimated that young men aged 16 to 24 are more than four times as likely to become the victim of violent crime as the general population.
and balaclavas, but he felt it was all rather superficial; they weren’t letting him in on their lives. Then he met Dagrou and took his portrait. Dagrou told him to pop round to his house and bring the photos. It was the first time that Patterson had got near a gang member’s home. They’ve been working together ever since.
But this is more than the story of a photographer and his subject. Patterson and Dagrou now regard each other as collaborators – Dagrou writes short pieces to go with the pictures – and both feel they have transformed each other’s lives. Since they started working together, Dagrou has left London and gangs for Doncaster, where he now lives with his partner, Mo, and son, Curtis. Patterson, who is Curtis’s godfather, Back in 2008, Patterson began to hang out with says the ongoing project has led him to reassess the London’s gangs, who would pose for him in hoodies nature of his work.
“ I wanted people to be scared of me. That's the only reason I got involved, to tell you the truth. ” Dagrou was born in Ivory Coast and moved to London via Paris when he was seven. His few memories of Ivory Coast revolve around his grandmother, who brought him up while his parents headed for Europe to start a new life – she was the most beautiful woman in the world, he says, in every way.
he had started to hang around with gangs, battering his way to respect. The strange thing is, he says, he never even liked fighting. It was just something he was good at.
He had ambitions of playing football professionally and had trials for Fulham and Charlton, but nothing He joined his father, a chef, and mother in London, but came of them. Heading up a gang was a more certain felt lost. He had no English and no sense of belonging. way of realising his ambitions. “I wanted to run In his first years at primary school in south London, he around with the local boys. I see them riding bikes was quiet and restrained. But he quickly grew bigger and smoking weed. Running around with the local and stronger. By the time he was at secondary school, boys was a quicker way to make money than football.”
The Life Of A Former London Gang Leader
Ironically, to make his name he had to change it. By the age of 14 he was known by the nom de guerre Vipoh. A local tough guy, five years older than him and calling himself Viper, didn’t like the name. Dagrou was advised by friends that Viper was dangerous and that he should change his moniker, but he wasn’t having any of it. One day he was told Viper was coming for him. He went home and took his mother’s chopping knife from the kitchen. Viper approached him in front of school friends and tried to humiliate him. “So I pulled out my knife and I said, ‘You carry on like this and I will stab you. I’m not scared.’”
What would he have done if Viper had not backed down? “I knew he was going to back down.” He repeats the sentence three times. i tell Dagrou I don’t understand knife culture. Is it regarded as a badge of honour to have stabbed somebody? “Think about it: if I know you’ve got a big name, then I know you’ve got a lot of people who will back you. What’s the point of me and you fighting face to face? You might be stronger than me, you might knock me out. But if I’ve got a knife boom! No matter how big you are, you’re going to become very small.
That was the first time he’d carried a knife? “Yes. This It can’t have a happy ending, can it? “Yes, because if guy’s big. I’m only young. What am I going to do? I threaten you with a knife, you’ll never come back And once I did that, the guy backed down. After that, after me.” he always saluted me, respected me. if you don’t put people in their place, they won’t know.”
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He soon became known as King Vipoh. I ask where Vipoh came from. He smiles and says it is a unique name. “It was modified. You will never find the meaning of Vipoh. I made it up myself at school.”
The thing is, Dagrou says, he rarely had to break the law because people did it for him. If he saw something he liked, others would take it for him. “Money would just come to me. I don’t know how it came to me, it just did. I’d walk down the road, and I’d see a guy Why did he need a new name? “I thought, I can’t with something, and one of my young ones would say, call myself Jean Claude, you know what I’m saying? ‘Do you want me to take that off him?’ and I’d say, Because when you’re young, a teenager, you want to ‘I’ll give you half of what I make.’” He grins. “I’m not do a lot of bad stuff, but if people know you as Jean committing the crime. People would do stuff for me.” Claude, the police know who you are. So I made up my own name and had fun with it.” So he was the leader of the gang? Dagrou says it’s not as simple as that. “People ask if I’ve ever been a leader. He became involved in crime. He doesn’t like to go I let others talk for me. Personally, I don’t like saying into details, he says, particularly not now that he’s a I’m a leader, because I don’t like giving instructions father. Did he get into much trouble? “I got into a lot to people.” of trouble.” But he claims that he knew people both in the underworld and the police who would help him What did others think? “A lot of people thought I was get out of it. “I never got charged for big things, and I the leader because my face was always the main face.” don’t intend to. Because I’ve got a kid now.” He never called himself the leader.
The Life Of A Former London Gang Leader
Anyway, he says, he was unusual – he didn’t stick with the one group, he’d hang out with different gangs, accepted by one and all.
Sure enough, he made a name for himself in London’s ganglands. He had money, status, everything he wanted. “When you’ve got a big name, it’s easier to get girls.” Wouldn’t he have been able to get them without “One day I’d be with the Brixton boys, tomorrow that name? He laughs. “I’m beautiful anyway, so I I’d roll with the Croydon boys, then I’d roll with the don’t know.” Gipsy Hill boys, then I’d roll with a couple of east London boys.” But he got cocky, overestimated his ability to juggle different gangs. One day, he was out with friends when Why didn’t they hate him for that? He shakes his head. a stranger became abusive. “He was giving mouth to “That’s why I’m King Vipoh. The reason why, you see? one of my people and I said, ‘If you’re giving mouth to Because I can go from gang to gang, and they can’t say others, come and give mouth to me.’ nothing. Nobody I know could do that.”
“She put her life on the line for me.” At times he portrays himself as the Kofi Annan of London gang culture, often acting as a mediator or peace broker when friends got into trouble. There were so many rival gangs, known largely by initials and, confusingly, often sharing the same initials – RBC, Rare Brew Crew and Royal Black Criminals; LS, Loughborough Soldiers and Loughborough Stars; DSN, Don’t Say Nothing; BG, Brown Gang. Most confusing of all, even though rival gang members were prepared to stab each other, sometimes they were also friends.
I said, ‘Me and you are the same age, let’s fight it out and I’ll knock you out right now.’ First the guy was all quiet and I thought, why’s he all quiet?” A few minutes later, Dagrou, now by himself, saw a gang walk past him. “There were 15 of them, ballied-up, with baseball bats, dogs, all looking angry. When I saw the group pass, I went, ‘Wow!’ I knew what it was capable of. I thought, someone’s going to get killed.” He continued towards the car park. “The next minute I hear, ‘Yo! Yo!’ I’m like, ‘Who’s that?’ and I look back and someone says, ‘They’re saying you’re the bad one here’ and I’m like, ‘I am the bad one, what are you saying?’” He still couldn’t believe they had come for him. “I turned around and one hit me with a baseball bat that opened my head. You know when someone hits you, you get an energy and you don’t know where you get it, so I grabbed it off him, hit him, then they let off their dogs and I got stabbed.”
Dagrou’s parents were church-going people, good people, he says, and he never told them about what he was up to. Because he was ashamed? “No, not because I was ashamed. Parents can’t be stressed all the time. You can’t tell them, ‘Yes, I’m a gangbanger’ because they’ll think the worst. When they watch movies, they’ll think you’re going to get killed because of drugs and stuff. Too much worry is no good for your Dagrou didn’t know he’d been stabbed. He lifts his parents. I was trying to protect them from that. But, sleeve to show me his arm – a patchwork of scars apart from my parents, everybody knew.” that looks like dried superglue, covered with tattooed names of close friends and family. He tried to get Dagrou insists he never wanted to be known merely home, but was stopped by a woman who happened as a gangster. “I was trying to use the street to pull me to be a nurse, “She put her life on the line for me. up.” Much of the time, he’d try to keep on the relatively When I become famous, I’m going to go back to the straight and narrow, buying boxes of trainers and hospital and ask who was the woman who called selling them on at a profit. the ambulance.
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It took him a while to understand he had befriended a young man desperate to escape that life. She grabbed me and said, ‘You can’t go home, you’re bleeding badly, you’re cold.’ I tried to run. And she ran after me and held me down and made a phone call. Two minutes later, the ambulance was there, and that saved my life. I didn’t recognise my hand. You could see in deep into my arm. I was close to losing my arm.” Dagrou believes that while his name helped make his reputation on the streets, it also came very close to breaking him; he claims he was stabbed simply because he was King Vipoh. “In south London, my name was well known.” He was like a trophy stabbing, I suggest. He nods. He had already seen gang members die, but he says he was nonchalant about that. “People might think I’m heartless, but I see it as if you’re gone, you’re gone. Rest in peace, but you’re gone.” It was seeing his mother weeping over him in hospital that made him realise he had to get out. “I thought, I can’t see my mum crying. I didn’t want it to be like this.” A few months later, his cousin and best friend Steve was stabbed, almost fatally. “He was just in the wrong place. They put the knife up his belly. He was in a coma for ages. There’s only so many people you can care about when you’re on the street, and Steve was the person I cared most about.” At 18, Dagrou had a crisis. He felt he was past it. “You look around and you see the world and you think you’re getting too old for this.” And this is where Patterson came in. Dagrou was rapping at Code 7, a recording studio supported by Lambeth council, designed to help youngsters off the streets, when Patterson visited looking for subjects for his project on youth gang culture.
“I thank God that Adam came,” Dagrou tells me. “Everything’s got a reason. When he came in, I thought, this world is yours, take that opportunity. I didn’t want to see the people who were stoking the hype on the street, I didn’t want those people around me.
The Life Of A Former London Gang Leader
Often, rival gangs would fight at house parties, so Dagrou decided to avoid them. He’d tell friends that he couldn’t go because he was working on his project with Patterson. It was a means of escape without losing face – after all, what could be more impressive for a young man who aspired to renown than having his own personal photographer? “I was an excuse for him stepping away from that life,” Patterson says.
to a new domesticity in Doncaster; playing Monopoly; lying in the snow; relaxing in a bubble bath that looks like a mink stole.
Patterson, who is working in the jungles of Peru when I speak to him, says he has learned so much from Dagrou. “I guess it shaped my professional approach. This project taught me I could take pictures that are as powerful, even more powerful, without being as The photographer was baffled by Dagrou. He’d been obviously dramatic or sensationalist. It came at a time told he was one of the most fearsome gangsters, yet when I was myself maturing.” here he was inviting him into his life. Two weeks after first meeting, they were taking a bus to Paris Back in Doncaster on a miserable day, Curtis is for Dagrou’s aunt’s wedding. Patterson had started sniffling and spluttering with a winter cold, and the project hoping to understand and document the Dagrou says he hopes to travel back to Ivory Coast bloody violence, and he thought Dagrou was his way with the photographer to document the life he was in. It took him a while to understand he had befriended born into and to take pictures of his grandmother. a young man desperate to escape that life. Did it disappoint him when he realised that Dagrou wanted out? “I’ll be honest with you, I was more interested in a fully active gang member. It’s a more sensational, dramatic thing to photograph. I don’t know if I would have admitted it at the time, but I was picturing in my head the guy with the smoking gun, rather than the guy who’s trying to step out of a lifestyle. In the While Mo is out working, he stays at home to look end, I think I found something more powerful with after Curtis. The couple recently discovered Mo is Jean Claude’s journey. I didn’t end up photographing expecting again. Dagrou proudly shows me round the the guys who were stabbing each other to death, but I house: three bedrooms, front and back garden, peace ended up encapsulating that through his story.” and quiet. “This represents the new me; new house, new person.” He says he’d reached a point where he The photograph that means most to him is the portrait knew he had to leave London. of Dagrou topless with his scarred arm raised to his cheek. “After we got back from the trip to France, he For his own safety? “Curtis, move from there please… asked, ‘Do you want to see the scars on my body?’ Mo would have become the target. They’d go for That was quite a moment: him showing his vulnerable someone you love.” Was Mo ever in a gang? “No, Mo is side to me.” one clean girl. She works at BT in customer services.”
“No, Mo is one clean girl. She works at BT in customer services.”
In the five years since, the nature of the photographs has changed. Initially, they documented the horror, and cliches, of gang life: injured members hobbling around on crutches, six-packs, men in hoodies blowing ganja rings, memorials for lost friends. Over time, as Dagrou made a new life for himself, the photographs became more intimate. We see him cuddled up with Mo, whom he met in 2009; the two of them at Mo’s hospital checkup after discovering they’re expecting a baby; he and Mo arguing; the move away from london
As for him, he doesn’t fancy a nine-to-five job, but there is so much to be getting on with. He’s given up on the football and the music, and is now focusing on the world of fashion. He shows me a jacket he’s designed for Curtis. Vipoh is printed on the back, along with a pair of eagle wings, three crowns to signify the king, and another signature trait, the letters WYWM in big, blocky type, as in Why You Watchin’ Me. Vipoh seems to be more of a trade name, or designer label, than anything else these days.
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“Now I see the father. It's changed me a lot. There are a lot of things I don't think I'd do, a lot of places I don't think I'd go. If a fight broke out now, I'd try to make peace. I'd say, 'You guys don't need this.” I ask him if Mo still calls him Vipoh. “When the kid’s around, she calls me Jean Claude. You know, I was going to change my name by deed poll to Vipoh, why? He doesn’t answer immediately. “I’ll tell you the meaning of Vipoh… very important prostitute; it was supposed to be VIP-ho.” You made that up? “Yeah, I made that up. I proper made that up. I used to sleep around with a lot of females. Obviously, Vipoh sounds better… Curtis, no more chocolate.”
but he’s getting there. Recently, his brother Joel joined them in Doncaster - also escaping from gangs.
What difference does he see in himself now? “Now I see the father. It’s changed me a lot. There are a lot of things I don’t think I’d do, a lot of places I don’t think I’d go. If a fight broke out now, I’d try to make peace. I’d say, ‘You guys don’t need this.’ I’d talk it out. If I get arrested, how’s that going to look to my son?” Things aren’t perfect, he says, he’s still got some way to go,
“I want to go on TV, go to different countries, talk to other gangbangers, ask people how it feels to come out of gangs.” He pauses, “I didn’t want to be known a gangster.”
It’s funny, he says, he meets people and they tell him he is so different from what they’d been told to expect. “Didier Drogba’s brother Junior is a friend of mine. He told me that the first time he saw me, he was scared to talk to me because of the way people talk about me. I said, ‘Well, you won’t get to know me if you don’t talk to me.’” It’s not surprising people were scared of him We are looking at Patterson’s photographs of him on when that’s what he spent his whole life fighting for. “I the television screen. He agrees with Patterson that the want people to get to know me before they judge me, most important portrait is the one with the scar. “This that’s all I’m saying. A lot of people are surprised. They picture is basically my story. The scar, everything, it think I’m going to be a mad man.” means a lot to me. It makes me proud when I see that picture.” Of what? “Of where I am now. Of what I’ve As well as his business plans, what Dagrou wants to become. A father. When I look at it, I can’t believe that do now is talk to teenagers who are in trouble. “I can used to be me. This scar means a lot to me, because it tell them, your life might be rough, but there’s nothing shows my life; what I’ve been through. It is a boy who’s you can tell me that I’ve not seen.” As he’s talking, his been struggling.” dreams are getting bigger by the second.
Dagrou says he can’t wait for the new baby, another boy, to be born next April.
The Life Of A Former London Gang Leader