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Racial on Primetime: and

Abbey Marra

University of Bristol Faculty of Arts Department of Film and Television

Ushering in a new era for the situation comedy, ’s Till Death Us Do Part (BBC, 1965-1975) and ’s American remake, All in the Family (CBS, 1970- 1979) introduced two protagonists who would become some of the first anti-heroes in television: () and (Carroll O’Connor). Both working-class patriarchs with adult children living at home, they were stubborn, intolerant, and unabashed bigots who spewed racial slurs in nearly every episode. Alf and the Garnetts were Cockneys living in a run-down tenement of ’s East End, while Archie and the Bunkers were loud-mouthed “New Yawkers” residing in a working-class borough of Queens. Speight and Lear hoped Alf/Archie’s diatribes would give public domain to debates concerning prejudice apparent across Britain and the during the late 1960s and early . Maintaining the traditional premise of family life and generational conflicts, the programs attempted to expand the genre by exploring content previously deemed inappropriate for popular television. The bonds of family contrasted with the conflicts of politics in a succession of arguments which made up a large portion of plotlines, allowing the two shows to use offensive, and particularly racist, terms on primetime television. While ratings soared on both sides of the Atlantic, the also received a considerable amount of criticism for their offensive nature and possible contribution towards, and justification of, prevalent racist attitudes. Till Death was accused of failing to give a voice to the minorities it claimed to support, and critics warned that audiences often leaned toward agreement with the anti-hero’s political beliefs instead of mocking his bigotry. Although the programs were often steeped in controversy, they offered insight into the political and social understanding of race relations in Britain and the United States, opening up a public dialogue about racism in contemporary society that had largely been kept quiet. When Till Death first aired on BBC in 1965, audiences were introduced to a new situation comedy anti-hero with Mitchell’s embodiment of Alf Garnett (Figure 1). A Tory- voting, ill-educated, working-class monarchist with a vile temper, he refused to hear a bad word about the wealthy and loathed the growing population of Black and Asian immigrants. Living in a run-down tenement with dim-witted wife Else (), he was also accompanied by his adult daughter, Rita () and her “lazy-leftie” liberal husband, Mike (). The children represented everything Alf opposed, and many storylines centered around rows and debates over political and generational differences.

Figure 1. The Garnett family in Till Death Us Do Part, 1965

Alf’s racial prejudice remained one of the program’s central themes, and he regularly used offensive terms when referring to the growing immigrant population, including “wops,” “blackies,” “Pakis,” and “micks.” Speight’s aim was to present a realistic portrait of Britain’s racial prejudice at the time, attempting to expose Alf’s bigotry and ignorance as a way to deflate racism in the UK. Racial storylines in a number of episodes focused on the rising Asian and Black immigrant population, which Alf considered detrimental to the “natives” in Britain. He believed immigrants were different to the English both biologically and culturally, consistently proposing that they were ultimately inassimilable within British society. Voicing the prevalent racist view that Black Britons were sexually different from whites, he argued that Black men had an innate desire to lust over white women. Using the example of Shakespeare’s Othello, he attempts to convince his family that Shakespeare “understood yer coon…he knew that if you let yer coon marry a white woman it don’t work … ‘cause a white woman can drive yer coon mad, see.” (Alf Makes the Address at Southwark Cathedral, 1974). He also repeatedly accused immigrants of coming to Britain for the sole reason of taking advantage of the NHS:

“As crafty as a bloody wagonload of monkeys they are. Come over here they do an’ get all the false teeth an’ bloody false eyeballs they need; wooden legs, everything! Cop two thousand pounds an’ go home again, start up a business new men!” (Thou Shalt Not Steal, 1974).

Alf’s wife Else echoed his racist opinions on occasion, such as one instance in which she will not allow a Black doctor to examine her: “My Alf was out there once, an’ he said if they ever see a white woman, you know, with no clothes on, like naked, some of ‘em can’t control themselves” (Intolerance, 1966). In the same episode, Alf loses his voice yelling racist abuse at a football match, and is later forced to see a Black doctor. He brags about his willingness to be treated by the man, although he calls Black people “Sambos” in front of him, and in a conversation with his family declares, “Well of course he’s a coon, of course he’s a Sambo. I got nothing against the man, but you got to face up to facts.” For Alf, the doctor’s skin color marks him as innately primitive, regardless of social position or educational background. The remaining minutes in the episode unfold as a generational conversation about immigration, with Alf and Else declaring migrants’ alien nature and lack of education, while Rita and Mike counter with liberal arguments reflecting the more progressive position of British youth. When analyzing Till Death, it is important to note that Speight did not necessarily conceive the series with a particularly racial agenda. Rather, he aimed to utilize race as one of the mechanisms with which to offer social commentary and criticism of the generational and class differences in Britain (Jones 64). Indeed, many reports saw the program not as a race comedy, but as a social and generational battlefield. However, race has since become the lens through which the show is remembered, and remained a recurring theme throughout the program’s run. Both the BBC and Speight argued that by allowing Alf Garnett to voice racist opinions, ordinary viewing audiences would be forced to laugh at his bigotry, thus serving an educational purpose. In a 1975 interview, Speight verbalized his views on the matter of race: “There is still deep-seated racial prejudice in this country, based on ignorance and fear. But my show brings it out in the open and tries to make people realize how silly it is” (Schaffer 470). This anti-racist agenda matched BBC policy on racial prejudice—in a memorandum on race relations, it was noted that the BBC shared the basic moral attitude that underpinned the Race Relations Act; they aimed to promote race relations while condemning racial prejudice (471). Alf’s diatribes throughout the show are not only aimed at Black individuals. In another episode, he accuses Asian immigrants of bringing disease to Britain, suggesting that they be quarantined upon arrival, “the same as they do with animals…put ‘em in quarantine an’ squirt ‘em with carbolic an’ things!” (Alf’s Dilemma, 1967). Alf later becomes convinced that immigrants are responsible for his stomach virus: “It’s your bloomin’ Lascars bring it in with ‘em. Listen, they’re not English bugs, they’re foreign bugs, they are!” Tying into a wider discourse concerning Asian primitivism, Alf comments on immigrant hygiene throughout the episode, telling his daughter Rita that if she “want[s] to go out there, to their own countries and see ‘em, most of ‘em, blimey, most of ‘em are sittin’ on the pavement with flies crawling all over ‘em!” Soon after the program aired on BBC, debates began to circulate about whether Alf was being presented as an object of ridicule or sympathy, the former positioning the show as a critique of small-minded bigotry, while the latter allowed audiences to identify with Alf’s racism, their justification apparent by their broadcast. With an increasing number of racially motivated storylines, the BBC soon realized that audience reactions to the racial humor were unpredictable and diverse. During an episode entitled, “The Blood Donor,” Alf sits with Mike in a hospital waiting room about to give blood when he notices a Black man seated a few feet away. He then lectures his son regarding the need to separate donated Black blood from white blood, causing a number of audience members to write opinionated letters to the show. One viewer wrote in to add weight to a negative response to a broadcast from a Black viewer on the BBC’s Talkback program, informing Controller of Programs Hugh Wheldon that “it was a very sad reflection to hear a colored fellow human being say that the immigrants thought we had something to offer them in Great Britain, but this was not so after seeing the disgusting behavior and comments by Garnett during the “Blood Donor” session” (Schaffer 466). Wheldon promptly sent a reply: “To say that Alf Garnett’s view of “coons” and giving blood donation to colored people confirms that Britain has nothing to offer immigrants is like seeing The Merchants of Venice and concluding that anti-Semitism is rife in the Home Counties” (467). Commenting on the same episode, another viewer praised the BBC for challenging racist theories in such an original way. Enid Hutchinson’s letter to the Director General reads: “I thought last night’s program of the Garnett family did more to root out false unscientific ideas about blood, race and heredity than any number of earnest biology programs” (467). These conflicting viewpoints were evident for the duration of the program’s run on the BBC, resulting in a seemingly endless debate surrounding audience reception. While the show’s aim was to expose the absurdity of racial prejudice in Britain, many academics disagreed with Speight’s proposed premise, criticizing the program’s approach toward tackling racial issues. The most common criticism of the show was that Speight had created a genuinely popular character in Alf, one who elicited support from audiences as well as affection, rather than disdain. Arguing that Till Death had the opposite desired impact on audiences, Angela Barry argued that “far from disparaging racism, the public airing of Alf’s prejudices gave them a real legitimacy” (485). Upon the show’s return in 1972, the Board of Governors requested that Head of Audience Research, Brian Emmett investigate whether Till Death “had tended to modify or reinforce viewers’ prejudice.” The findings of the report were published in 1973, indicating that the program had an insignificant effect on British race relations:

“There was no evidence that viewing of the series has much (if any) direct effect on relevant attitudes and prejudices, in either direction—despite the conviction of about one person in five that it can do harm. Viewers of the series are no more likely to be authoritarian in outlook or to be prejudiced against colored people, it seems, than they were before viewing; nor is there any evidence that the series has rendered prejudices risible to those who were not disposed to laugh at them already” (470).

Despite the overall conclusion, the report also showed evidence that the program tended to make viewers slightly more prejudiced. Although changes in attitude were “likely to be slight,” only occurring among “small minorities,” they were also likely to “be in the direction of agreement with Alf Garnett” (471). The report showed that regular viewers were split down the middle over the statement that Alf was “right more often than he is wrong,” with 84 percent agreeing that “some of the things he says are true” if a little “too extreme.” Audiences were shown to be more likely to view Black people as inferior to whites and more frequently in favor of stricter immigration laws. These conclusions quietly undermined the idea that Till Death served an effective anti-racist function, but the BBC chose instead to focus on the overall conclusion of the report, most likely due to the program’s resounding success (475). Following Till Death’s popular run, various incarnations of Alf’s character on television enjoyed considerable success. The popular spinoff, In Sickness and in Health ran for over six years between 1985 and 1992, and Alf periodically made appearances on British screens until Speight’s death in 1998. The character’s extraordinary longevity speaks to the quality of writing as well as the willingness of the public to embrace a figure whose purpose was to offer a voice of protest against the changing composition of Britain and its values. He represented a generation of white natives who vehemently opposed the creation of a multi-ethnic Commonwealth that they believed threatened post-war national prominence. For the white working-class conservatives whom Alf represented, an increasing Black population threatened white workers homogeneity in labor markets, as well as representing unclear boundaries between imperial power and imperial subject (Bebber 253). The growing anxieties about Black migrants as well as the declining national economy added to the entrenchment of white conservatism. Scholars of both race and television often view the small screen’s journey into race and immigration as a way for society to develop an understanding and articulation of racial consciousness (260). Television representations of Black and Asian people during this time period were almost exclusively in the hands of white showrunners, which has led to a “cementing of racial categorization and the institutionalization via mass media of specific images, representation of blackness that support and maintain the oppression, exploitation and overall domination of all black people” (Schaffer 463). Portrayals of Asian characters by famous white comedy actors seemed to support the notion that the white media dominated the representation of blackness on television. Although Till Death attempted to bring racial prejudice to the forefront of public consciousness, the program failed to offer any effective central voices for characters from racially diverse groups. Making the omission worse was the cringe-worthy introduction of the half Irish, half Pakistani character, Kevin O’Grady played by famous British comedian , who donned brownface for the role and spoke with broken English in a Pakistani accent (Figure 1). In one episode, O’Grady sits at the bar while Alf drunkenly jokes with a friend about his odd appearance: “He’s got more English features doesn’t he? If it wasn’t for the color, you wouldn’t know the difference would you?” He also comments on his attire: “In the old days they used to walk ‘round with their shirt towels hangin’ out! See but now, they try to copy our ways and dress like us…don’t suit ‘em though does it? I mean he’d look better in a fez wouldn’t he?!” O’Grady’s lines offer little in the way of pushing against immigrant stereotypes, even airing on the side of reinforcing them. He asks Alf, “Would you like to have some champ-ag-nee with me?” before proceeding to pour it directly into a beer glass. When Alf discovers that the foreigner is soon to become his new neighbor, O’Grady replies that the landlord has banned him from “beating tom-toms, cooking curry, or keeping chickens under the bed…and I must not sub-let wardrobe to Pakistani families.” He also explains how he exploits British unemployment benefits, reaffirming Alf’s prejudice: “I have good job here, suit me fine. Sign my name…very good money. No complaint” (Paki-Paddy, 1974). Milligan’s brownface portrayal of O’Grady, although an attempt at offering minorities a central voice, had the opposite effect, reinforcing rather than undermining stereotypes about Asian immigrants.

Figure 2. Spike Milligan in brownface as Kevin O’Grady Till Death’s “Paki-Paddy,” 1974

Across the Atlantic in 1969, American troops were just beginning to withdraw from the Vietnam War as thousands of protestors gathered outside of Washington. The following spring President Nixon was to announce the invasion of neutral Cambodia, and the Charles Manson murder trials were underway in . However, evidence from television programming that there was anything wrong in the world was seldom to be found. The American television industry up to that point had been exceedingly careful not to offend the public, offering little to no comment on political and social issues of the day. As 1970 came to a close, popular Western melodramas including Bonanza (NBC, 1959-1973) and Gunsmoke (CBS, 1955-1975) controlled the ratings, as well as light-hearted comedies such as Bewitched (ABC, 1964-1972) and Mayberry, R.F.D. (CBS, 1968-1971). With the arrival of Norman Lear’s All in the Family in 1970, audiences experienced an abrupt departure from the bland escapist entertainment that had dominated the 60s. They were suddenly confronted with an urban setting, overtly political themes, and racial epithets never before heard in front of a live audience. Living in a working-class borough of Queens with his wife, Edith (), daughter Gloria (), and son-in-law Michael (), Archie Bunker burst onto American screens as a stubborn, unabashed bigot, giving a voice to the kinds of deep-seated prejudices that most bigots left unsaid except in the privacy of their own homes (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Archie argues with liberal son-in-law Mike in All in the Family

Grabbing an unprecedented share of the headlines for the 1970-1971 season, All in the Family catapulted to number one on the charts. It would remain the highest rated series on all of television for five consecutive years, and was also the only program to achieve a rating of over 30, a projection that imagined its audience at close to 50 million each week (Adler 12). The show found its way into the remote areas of American consciousness, quickly encouraging the development of a national dialogue over Lear’s comic drama. Archie’s racist, ethnocentric, and sexist epithets provoked numerous newspaper columns and magazine articles, but the show continued to rise in popularity. A January 1968 issue of Variety that described a public outcry over Till Death and its top rated spot on the BBC piqued the interest of producer Norman Lear, and he obtained the rights to Till Death in 1968, his Yorkin’s planning to adapt it for an American audience (Miller 141). Lear told Variety that the purchase was chiefly motivated by the social and political ferment of the day: “I became convinced that the American public is in the mood to have its social problems and shortcomings analyzed, and in comedy such probing comes over less harshly than in other TV ways” (141). The source of comic disruptions in Till Death, as Lear perceived them was not the equivalent of Samantha turning Darrin into a pig on Bewitched, nor was it the tranquility of life in small-town as portrayed by Mayberry, R.F.D. Instead, the richness of the lay in the reactions of its protagonist to contemporary social events and cultural trends he encountered on a daily basis. Filmed on videotape before a live audience, All in the Family’s pilot borrowed its central plotline directly from Till Death’s original episode, “A House with Love in It.” The American pilot was called, “Meet the Bunkers.” Archie forgets his wedding anniversary, and Mike and Gloria attempt to make Edith happy by purchasing her a gift as if it were from her husband. Returning home early from Sunday morning church because of a “socialist propaganda” sermon, Archie begins arguing with Mike about working conditions for minorities: “If your spics and your spades want their rightful piece of the American dream, let them get out there and hustle for it just like I did!” Soon to be one of Archie’s recurring nicknames for Mike, his son-in-law’s Polish descent becomes a regular target: “What do you know about it, you dumb Polack? … I didn’t think you was gonna go to college and learn how to be a subversive…I knew we had a couple of pinkos in this house, but I didn’t know we had atheists!” (Meet the Bunkers, 1970). Encapsulating his views on America, Archie launches into a speech about what he believes makes America great:

“You don’t know nothin’ about Lady Liberty…standin’ there in the harbor with her torch on high…screamin’ out to all the nations in the world: Send me your poor, your deadbeats, your filthy! And all the nations sent ‘em in here—so they come swarmin’ in like ants! Your Spanish P.R.s from the Carri-buan there, your Japs, your Chinamen, your Krauts and your Hebes and your English fags…all of ‘em come in here and they’re free to live in their own separate sections where they feel safe, and they’ll bust your head if you go in there! That’s what makes America great, buddy!”

Archie’s “Bunkerisms” have been described by Dennis Showalter as “an educated person’s image of the way someone like him ought to use words of more than two syllables” (Showalter 619). He proposed that Archie was in fact “an intellectual’s doppelgänger, an academician’s Mr. Hyde” whose degenerate diatribes “alleviate lingering guilt by indulging one’s superior learning at his expense,” thus reaffirming one’s superior moral sense (619). He also discusses Archie’s evolution from a faintly malevolent embodiment of bigotry to a more lovable character whose bark bears little relationship to his bite. In most episodes Archie is completely ineffectual in any role he tries to perform, furthered by his appearance—a pudgy body, ever-present cigar, swaggering walk, and bewildered expression. However, many critics did not take too kindly to this “lovable bigot.” As it soon became clear that the program was to become more than a short-lived social experiment, critics and scholars began to look closely at its brand of humor. One of the most prominent articles critiquing the program was Laura Z. Hobson’s “As I Listened to Archie Bunker Say ‘Hebe,’” which appeared in the September 1971 issue of the New York Times. In it, she argues that rather than satirizing and hence exorcising bigotry, the show instead legitimized and encouraged bigoted attitudes:

“I don’t think you can be a bigot and be lovable. I don’t think you can be a black- baiter and be lovable, nor an anti-Semite and be lovable. And I don’t think the millions who watch this show should be conned into thinking you can be” (Adler 2).

Although Hobson was not the first to critique the show, she was the first to do so in a precise and detailed manner, and also the first to receive a direct response from Lear himself. He replied with an article of his own entitled, “As I Read How Laura Saw Archie,” in which he rejected her notion that lovable bigots do not exist:

“Most prejudice comes not from villains motivated by irrational hatred, but from otherwise good people whose bigotry springs from ignorance and fear. It is Archie’s complexity and inconsistency that makes him recognizably human, and therefore representative. If prejudice were to disappear tomorrow from the hearts of all the good people in the world, there would be no problem” (3).

While Till Death was criticized for failing to offer a strong voice for the ethnic groups it purported to support, Lear went a step further with the inclusion of a prominent Black family who were to become the Bunker’s neighbors—. Consisting of patriarch George (), wife Louise “Weezy,” () and adult son Lionel (Mike Evans), the family became regulars on the show, and their popularity soon resulted in the wildly successful spinoff, The Jeffersons (CBS, 1975-1985). Seen regularly only in servant roles since the early 1950s, Black Americans began to return to television in the mid to late 1960s. However, almost without exception, Black characters were constructed either as subordinates to white bosses with criminal backgrounds, as inconveniently colored residents of an otherwise totally white, middle-class suburbia, or, in the case of comedian Flip Wilson, as a complex combination of signifiers that allowed him to be read as a “coon show” stereotype mocking Black society and culture as easily as he could be read as performing and celebrating that society and culture (Miller 151). Pushing against these stereotypes, the Jeffersons provided a fresh take on Black characters in primetime television. They recognized and commented on what W.E.B. Dubois termed an African American’s “twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts two unreconciled strivings” (152). In the pilot, Lionel explains to Gloria and Mike that Archie loves asking about his collegiate career, just so that he can hear him say, “I’m gon’ be a ‘lectical engineer!” When the couple reacts incredulously, wondering why he humors Archie’s prejudice Lionel responds, “Give the people what they want—how else am I going to become an electrical engineer?” (Meet the Bunkers, 1971) In an episode centered around Archie’s racial prejudice, he is horrified to discover that yet another Black family might be moving in next door. In an attempt to explain his dilemma to Edith, he says, “Don’t you see where that leaves us? With the Jeffersons on this side and the new coloreds over here, we’ll be sandwiched in between like a white meat turkey on pumpernickel!” (We’re Having a Heat Wave, 1974). Archie considers signing a petition that has been passed around the neighborhood to keep the Black family out, only to be discovered and berated by Mike and Gloria:

GLORIA: Daddy, didn’t the Jeffersons teach you anything? You were against them when they moved in, but nothing happened—the sky didn’t fall down!

ARCHIE: Well because, the Jeffersons are different!

MIKE: How are the Jeffersons different?

ARCHIE: Because one colored family is a novelty, and two is a ghetto!

Archie soon learns that the family moving in next door will not, in fact be Black, but Puerto Rican, which is worse in his mind, and this new information unites both he and Mr. Jefferson in an effort to keep the new couple out of the neighborhood. They both eagerly sign the petition and become temporary allies for the remainder of the episode. Again, Gloria and Mike try to make Archie see reason, exposing his ignorance and lack of education in the process:

ARCHIE: All we’re sayin’ is that Puerto Ricans oughta stay in Puerto Rico! We don’t go to their country to live, why should they come to ours?

GLORIA: Puerto Rico is part of this country!

ARCHIE: No, no, no, it ain’t a state!

GLORIA: They have Commonwealth status!

ARCHIE: I bet they probably ain’t vaccinated for that.

As the show continued to climb in the ratings, critics became increasingly convinced that it was indeed having some sort of impact on public attitudes. They worried that the effects of the program lied in reinforcing existing prejudiced beliefs rather than combating them. Academics Neil Vidmar and Milton Rokeach began conducting audience research to test their “selective perception” hypothesis, which proposed that unprejudiced viewers would appreciate the show’s satirical look at bigotry, while prejudiced viewers would be more likely to admire Archie and less likely to object at his use of racial slurs, believing that he made the most sense during family arguments (Vidmar and Rokeach 38). They found support for their hypothesis in a study conducted utilizing a group of Canadian adults and American adolescents, concluding that “if high prejudiced persons do not perceive the program as a satire on bigotry, they will not experience a cathartic reduction in prejudice” (45). Important to note, however, is that the studies were based chiefly on surveys rather than experiments, providing no direct evidence that viewers had become more prejudiced because they watched the program. Perhaps Lear’s greatest accomplishment in his American adaptation was the relationship between Archie and fan-favorite (Figure 4). Pushing against traditional Black stereotypes, George was a successful business owner who was impeccably dressed, with opinions just as backward and a mouth just as loud as Archie’s. A prominent voice for Black minorities, Jefferson’s character was unique in that he was equally as racist toward whites as Archie was toward African Americans.

Figure 4. Archie Bunker and George Jefferson in All in the Family

The two men were polar opposites in almost every way, but their shared prejudices resulted in a love/hate relationship exemplified in the episode “Lionel’s Engagement.” In it, George’s son Lionel has just announced his engagement to long-time girlfriend Jenny, and their family and friends gather for a celebration. Archie discovers that Lionel’s bride-to-be has a white father and a Black mother after he runs into the father-in-law and asks, “What are you doin’ here, a white guy?” Lionel admits to Archie that George hasn’t yet learned the news, to which Archie replies, “You mean to tell me your father hasn’t met that man? Oh this I gotta see.” When George finally learns the truth, he is visibly upset, exclaiming “You’re white!” and refusing to shake the man’s hand. Archie stands behind him with a smug smile: “It’s a kick in the head, ain’t it?” George later confronts his son over the decision to marry a girl with biracial parents, warning, “Think, son, think! What about the children? What they gon’ be?” To which Lionel replies, “Boys and girls I hope!” The climax of the episode occurs when George witnesses Jenny’s mother and father arguing in a corner, and turns angrily to his wife: “See, Louise! See, that’s what happens when you mix black and white; ten more seconds and he’s gon’ call her nigger!” Following the outburst, the camera focuses on a close-up of Archie’s reaction with raised eyebrows: “Listen to that, I ain’t used that word in three years.” The episode closes with a defeated George drinking at the bar, soon joined by Archie. The men clink glasses and voice what many members of their generation felt about a number of social issues, as George asks Archie, “Bunker, what is this world coming to?” to which he replies, “Beats me, Jefferson…all I gotta say is, here’s to yesterday.” Dealing with sensitive subject matter, the episode succeeds in poking fun at both Archie and George’s prejudice, while offering a close look at race and generational conflicts. Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, both Till Death Us Do Part and All in the Family enjoyed considerable stints at the top of television rankings. Successfully running for multiple seasons, the programs proved to be polarizing for audiences and critics alike, but each refused to compromise their satirical sense of humor in an effort to transform the situation comedy. Although critics and academics questioned the intended results of each series, both succeeded in utilizing satire to open up public dialogues about prevalent racist attitudes that remained in British and American society.

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