Peter Andre’s Jafaican: Satire or Sickening?
Peter Andre recently unveiled the trailer for his new comedy movie “Jafaican”; the movie follows Andre’s character Gazza, as he travels to Jamaica and poses as a gangster to try and raise £35,000 to pay for his nan's care home. Sounds like an interesting and potentially funny concept right? It would be if he wasn’t wearing a fake dreadlock wig and blackface.
As far as I was awar the era of blackface and race swapping in media was over long ago. Movies. like Tropic Thunder in which Robert Downey Jr. donned blackface are still recovering from the scathing criticism about it. Andre, 52, is of Greek Cypriot descent and relocated to Australia when he was 6, thus has no Caribbean ties. So who approved painting Peter Andre brown and slapping a wig and fake accent on top?
The film is due to premiere on 9 May at the Gold Coast Film Festival (GCFF) in Australia and the festival has faced serious backlash. One of the worst parts of this whole debacle in my opinion is GCFF’s defence of the film. In a statement, GCFF said Andre’s 1995 hit song Mysterious Girl had “strong reggae influences”. They continued saying: “Peter Andre has a long history of music collaboration with Jamaican musicians… and co-stars with prominent Caribbean musician Sizzla in the film.”
“The film is set out to showcase Jamaican culture, not to mock it.” Which I think is an insane take on the situation. Just because someone has previously taken inspiration from another culture does not then give them the right to cosplay as someone from there for comedic effect. Another shocking revelation is that the director and writer of this film is not even Jamaican. Fredi Nwaka is of Nigerian heritage and reportedly grew up in Brixton.
Of course, not everyone sees this way, many people and Jamaicans themselves have said that the movie seems hilarious, with the comment section of his Instagram post announcing the movie flooded with positive comments (but this could potentially be because they are deleting negative comments, but who knows?). But maybe we all need to learn how to take a joke and engage with more satirical works. I mean, I love White Chicks, and that's a movie about two black men pretending to be white Valley girls, and some people were offended by that, so maybe I should give Andre and Nwaka some grace?
The main issue for me here is that this movie comes at a particularly scary time in society, where we are seeing a serious rise in the far right, racism and discrimination. Reinforcing the harmful stereotypes that Jamaican and Caribbean people are violent gang members and drug lords in 2025 is completely inappropriate and tone-deaf. If Nwaka truly wanted to appreciate and showcase Jamaican culture, why did he not hire actual Jamaica and Caribbean actors for the movie? Instead of putting on a modern minstrel show.
Unfortunately, I feel as if this is a sign that people truly see the Caribbean diaspora as a joke or a caricature. Jamaican accents have long been mocked and imitated, and still are, but to see a significant UK figure putting on a caricature of a Jamaican man is downright racist and insulting. Cultures and accents are costumes, especially not by a white man on the silver screen.
