28 Years Later viral trend where Americans dress as Jimmy Savile is disturbing and needs to stop
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple features Jack O’Connell as the leader of ‘The Jimmies’, a cult in which all its members are forced to go by ‘Jimmy’ and dress up as Jimmy Savile.
The film is full of references to the notorious late paedophile, but the costumes are the most obvious and clear nod to Savile in the film.
This has unsurprisingly led to a new viral online trend in which people dress up as the character, but doing so without the knowledge of who Savile was is making things very uncomfortable for British fans.
The vast majority of those posting themselves dressed as ‘Sir Jimmy Crystal’ or others within the Jimmies have been Americans and Canadians, leading to a bizarre online dynamic between British and American fans of the 28 Years Later sequel.
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One viral tweet on the topic saw a British fan post: “guys please do not dress up as Sir Jimmy Crystal i’m begging you.”
Another said: “why the actual f*ck am i seeing americans on tik tok going to the cinema dressed up as Jimmy Savile to see the 28 Years Later sequel?”
One of the most viral examples of this was a post on Reddit in which a fan attended an early screening of the film dressed as Sir Jimmy Crystal, posting a picture of themselves on the 28 Years Later subreddit. One popular comment said: "I cannot stress enough how unhinged wearing that is, from a British perspective."
They were, unsurprisingly, slammed for this online, but speaking to LADbible admitted they had no ill intent behind it.
Ronan, who saw the screening in Toronto, said that they are ‘aware of the controversy’, but stated that they didn’t ‘mean any offence’ by dressing as the character.
Claiming to be a huge fan, they said: “I was just simply dressing up for my most anticipated movie of the year, as I often get invited to other movie premieres. I’ve always been a massive Jack O’Connell fan and Jimmy Crystal is iconic.”
Whilst Brits are mind boggled by the whole thing, it is not surprising that the controversy simply has not translated to the US and Canada where Savile is not the infamous household name he is in the UK. Even O’Connell himself has sounded, if jokingly, broadly supportive of people dressing up as him saying in an interview with EW: “It's a great feeling to be in that attire. Don't even just limit it to Halloween. Whenever you want, you know?!"
Ronan mentioned receiving a great deal of hate for dressing up as Sir Jimmy, which is, of course, the wrong way to go about things, but the whole trend does perhaps expose a bizarre gap in The Bone Temple.
Non-British audiences watching may simply think that he dresses up in bizarre fashion and want to emulate this, whilst only British viewers get the pure horror that is seeing Sir Jimmy Crystal bully a child into wearing the attire of Savile.
For generations of Brits, Savile is not just an example of a paedophile but the symbolic example of a paedophile.
This was both due to his unique look and the fact that, prior to the allegations against him becoming public, he was a household name.
Having earned a Knighthood for his charitable work, it was discovered upon his death in 2011 that Savile had sexually abused 100s of people over the course of six decades, many of whom were children.
Ultimately, it is not overly surprising that this is happening. Savile is not a well-known name outside the UK and dressing up as unique looking characters has been a staple of film and TV fandom for years.
As a Brit though, now it’s been explained… could we not?
Topics: 28 Years Later, Jimmy Savile, TV and Film, Film, UK News, US News
Michael Slavin