Ooooh Yoko.

I am enjoying Get Back, the new version of the 1971 movie Let It Be that showed the Beatles breaking up. It shows how we are affected by communication. Since 1971 the story has been of bitter interactions, a break-up as vitriolic as the most vicious divorce. Watching the new edit, we see young men, all still in their twenties, enjoying each other, with a few tense moments. Even Paul McCartney says that his memories were tainted by the original movie.

I have also been struck by how our understanding of what is going on in our daily lives is driven by the media. With a career in advertising, you might think I should know this, but it is more than that. It is not just about persuading people to buy one thing rather than another.

And here is what the big thought is.

Yoko Ono is a beautiful woman.

I know that beauty is not a priority but stick with me.

When I was younger, the media, and therefore our opinion was that she was almost sub-human. She was unattractive. Why would John want to spend a moment with such an ugly woman? What spell had she woven? It had to be the drugs, it could not have been that he was attracted to her physically as well as intellectually. We all knew this because we were told. We were told that she was the cause of the break-up. That her being in the studio was the last straw for the others. Except that there, on film, is Paul saying, in 1970, imagine in 50 years people saying they broke up because Yoko sat on an amp. And laughing, while saying if John wanted to be with Yoko that was his business. Meanwhile John and Paul exchange jokes, lyrics, guitar licks and personal feelings.

Yoko was Japanese.

That was her crime. She was foreign. She was not caucasian. She was Asian. In 1966 when John and Yoko met it was only twenty years after WW2. The Japanese were still the enemy. The press started from disdain and moved to disgust. Add in the challenging creativity that she delivered and the mix now includes weird. The only Japanese we saw on TV were in Bridge Over the River Kwai.

So we believed it. We believed that she was all that the press and media said she was. That woman. She was a woman, that a man took seriously as a partner. An equal, even though he was a Beatle! How could a woman be an equal? Lennon had lost it.

At the same time, we were watching television shows like the Black and White Minstrels, Love Thy Neighbour, The Comedians (where racist jokes were the meat and drink of the funny men, all men.) The idea that there were other ethnicities in the UK was hidden. On Top of the Pops we heard music that was all, all based on the blues. Motown groups appeared and we loved the music, but that was it. No stories in the press, no chat show appearances for Smokey Robinson, or Marvin Gaye, or Diana Ross…

Yet in Get Back we see this young woman, sitting beside her man, knitting, painting, having fun, laughing. The others are creating songs, trying out melodies and more. Yoko is chatting to Linda, to Pattie. Being Yoko.

In 2021 we are now in a different country. My children cannot imagine thinking like I did, about people, about jokes being funny, about Yoko. And as we see more integration we see less need for Rock Against Racism. Less need to demand that black and other ethnic groups should be represented because that is what our lives are like. In Northern Ireland we see more and more people arriving, bringing new ideas, food, art, culture and adding to our lives.

My mind has changed. I see Yoko the person. Not Yoko the media image. I see her and John giving each other the happiness that I have with my wife.

My mind has been changed by growing up, by society, by seeing and hearing more people from different places, from travelling, and by the media.

Thank goodness. We do evolve.