Kelvin Carpenter - Reception

Reception

Kelvin Carpenter has been described by author Hilary Kingsley as one of the most popular young characters in the show's early years. However, the way that EastEnders treated their black characters during the 1980s has been criticized by Robert Clyde Allen, author of the book To be Continued--: Soap Operas Around the World. He has commented that "none of the black families rivaled the Fowler/Beale position at the heart of the programme's structure, and black characters were pushed to the margins of the storylines." The author goes on to say that although the character of Kelvin Carpenter mixed with characters such as Ian, Sharon and Michelle, "his personal life got little attention and he disappeared from the programme while the other young characters able to grow up in it."

Before he was written out of the serial in May 1987, actor Oscar James, who played Kelvin's father Tony, controversially criticised EastEnders and the BBC for not promoting their black characters. He commented, "The powers that be do not think I am interesting enough. Is it because I am a member of an ethnic minority? How often do you see Paul J. Medford publicised?...It's as though the BBC are playing us down. I can't believe the white majority of the public are against blacks being stars. They don't give a damn."

Conversely, in The Black and White Media Show Book, edited by John Twitchin of BBC TV's Continuing Education Department (published in 1988), the author praises EastEnders for portraying black people on mainstream television, and for giving them "respectable, fleshed-out parts which allow them to be the most difficult of things — 'normal people'." In a school-based study (1986) examining black representation on television from 1985 to 1986, a storyline featuring Kelvin Carpenter was used to assess how the character was perceived. The aim was to measure whether Kelvin was being portrayed as "normal" as opposed to a "trouble-maker", a category black people on television were typically labelled as prior to the 1980s. For the study, a storyline was used in which Kelvin began behaving like a "newly-converted revolutionary". Both groups, white students and black/Asian students, felt that Kelvin was not a trouble-maker, or menace, but was being portrayed as an eccentric, and both groups agreed that the Carpenter family were seen as having troubles as opposed to causing trouble, akin to the white families in the serial. However, the black/Asian group felt that the Carpenter family's problems were "less subtlety explored than those of their white counterparts, giving rise to possible racist misinterpretations."