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Australian multicultural policy and television drama in comparative contexts
Harvey May
BA (Comm), BA, B Bus (Hons)(Comm),
Post Grad Dip Ed
A thesis submitted in 2003 for the award of Doctor of
Philosophy
Creative Industries Research and Applications Centre
Creative Industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
ii
Key Words
Multiculturalism, Cultural Diversity, Television, Drama, Casting, Minorities,
Australia, United Kingdom, New Zealand, United States.
Abstract This thesis examines changes which have occurred since the late 1980s and
early 1990s with respect to the representation of cultural diversity on Australian
popular drama programming. The thesis finds that a significant number of
actors of diverse cultural and linguistic background have negotiated the
television industry employment process to obtain acting roles in a lead
capacity. The majority of these actors are from the second generation of
immigrants, who increasingly make up a significant component of Australia’s
multicultural population. The way in which these actors are portrayed on-
screen has also shifted from one of a ‘performed’ ethnicity, to an ‘everyday’
portrayal. The thesis develops an analysis which connects the development
and broad political support for multicultural policy as expressed in the National
Agenda for a Multicultural Australia to the changes in both employment and
representation practices in popular television programming in the late 1990s
and early 2000s. The thesis addresses multicultural debates by arguing for a
mainstreaming position. The thesis makes detailed comparison of cultural
diversity and television in the jurisdictions of the United States, the United
Kingdom and New Zealand to support the broad argument that cultural
diversity policy measures produce observable outcomes in television
programming.
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Contents
Glossary of Abbreviations ……………………………………………………… vii Statement of Original Authorship ……………………………………………… ix Acknowledgements …………………………………………….……………….. x Introduction ……………………………………………………………………... 1 Chapter One Theory, terms and methodology
Introduction ………………………………………………………………. 6 Multiculturalism ………………………………………………………….. 10 White ……………………………………………………………………… 14 The second generation …………………………………………. ……... 16 Representational anxieties ……………………………………………... 19 Television and policy studies …………………………………………... 22 Classifying populations …………………………………………………. 24
PART ONE AUSTRALIAN POLICY ENVIRONMENTS Chapter Two The multicultural project
Introduction ………………………………………………………………. 27 Pre-war and post-war immigration …………………………………….. 30 Fathering multiculturalism and Fraser ………………………………… 34 Multiculturalism under Labor …………………………………… ……... 37 The Agenda ……………………………………………………………… 41 1996: back to the future? ……………………………………………….. 45 Multicultural and strategic hybridity ……………………………………. 52 Conclusion: assimilation revisited …………………………….……….. 56
Chapter Three Cultural diversity, television and policy
Introduction ………………………………………………………………. 61 Liberal multiculturalism and ethnic TV ………………………………… 62 An Australian look ……………………………………………………….. 63 The ABA, the BSA and cultural diversity ……………………………… 66 Casting, policy and the cultural diversity debate 1992-1996 ……….. 68 Creative Nation case studies: SBS Independent and the Commercial Television Production Fund ………………………………74 SBS Independent (SBSI) ……………………………………………….. 75 The Commercial Television Production Fund (CTPF) ………………. 77 Conclusion: cultural diversity policy discourse and television ……… 80
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PART TWO INTERNATIONAL POLICY AND PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENTS
Introduction ………………………………………………………………. 84 Chapter Four The United States: affirmative action, 'quotas' and diversity rights
Policy and industry contexts ……………………………………………. 87 Television broadcasting overview: USA ………………………………. 89 Power to the people: multiculturalism in the USA ……………………. 90 Policy contexts …………………………………………………………… 93 Network programming and production: historical contexts …………. 99 Racial narrowcasting ……………………………………………………. 102 Changing times ………………………………………………………….. 105 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………….. 110
Chapter Five The United Kingdom: policy remits for diversity and an 'everyday' multiculturalism
Introduction ………………………………………………………………. 113 Television broadcasting overview: the UK ……………………………. 114 Race relations in the United Kingdom ………………………………… 115 Policy contexts …………………………………………………………… 118 Programming contexts ………………………………………………….. 125 Production contexts ……………………………………………………... 131 Conclusion: a remit for everyday multiculturalism …………………… 133
Chapter Six New Zealand: biculturalism and targeted subsidies
Television broadcasting overview ……………………………………... 137 Bicultural New Zealand …………………………………………………. 138 Policy contexts …………………………………………………………… 142 New Zealand on Air ……………………………………………………... 146 Audiences, programming and production……………………………... 149 Conclusion………………………………………………………………… 156
PART THREE AUSTRALIAN POPULAR DRAMA: MAINSTREAMING THE MULTICULTURAL Chapter Seven Australian drama casting and production perspectives
Introduction ………………………………………………………………. 159 Casting survey: method ………………………………………………… 162 Casting survey: results…………………………………………………... 163 Self-Identification of ethnicity…………………………………………… 165
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Industry perspectives: Indigenous casting ……………………………. 167 Industry perspectives: the acting profession and casting …………… 168 Industry perspectives: writing ………………………………………….. 181 Industry perspectives: producing ………………………………………. 187 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………….. 191
Chapter Eight Australian television programs: texts and contexts
Introduction ………………………………………………………………. 194
Breakers: cosmopolitan serial television The financing …………………………………………………………….. 197 The set-up………………………………………………………………… 201 ‘Have you visited the world lately?’: cultural diversity and Breakers……………………………………………………………… 202 Breakers’ limits…………………………………………………………… 205 Findings from the six week recording period………………………….. 208 Breaking into the mainstream…………………………………………... 211
Pizza ‘chocko comedy’………………………………………………………….. 210 A slice of Pizza…………………………………………………………… 220 Cultural diversity and Pizza: series one……………………………….. 221
Six weeks, popular programming and cultural diversity……………… 225 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………….. 238
Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………… 240 Appendix One …………………………………………………………………... 247 Appendix Two ……………………………………………………………………251 References ………………………………………………………………………. 253
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List of Figures Figure 7.1 Ethnicity of Actors ……………………………………….. 161
Figure 7.2 Comparison of Studies ………………………………….. 162
Figure 7.3 Family Background by Region …………………………. 163
Figure 7.4 Self Identification ………………………………………… 163
Figure 8.1 Program Recording Chart ………………………………. 193
List of Appendices Appendix One: Casting Survey Questionnaire …………………………. 245
Appendix Two: List of interviewees who consented
to be identified …………………………………………… 249
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Glossary of Abbreviations
ABA ………. Australian Broadcasting Authority
ABC ………. Australian Broadcasting Corporation
ABCB …….. Australian Broadcasting Control Board
ABS ………. Australian Bureau of Statistics
ABT ………. Australian Broadcasting Tribunal
AFC ………. Australian Film Commission
AFTRS …… Australian Film Television & Radio School
ASDA …….. Australian Screen Directors Association
AWG ……… Australian Writers Guild
BBC ………. British Broadcasting Service
BSC ……….. Broadcasting Standards Commission
BSA ………. Broadcasting Services Act 1992
CLC ………. Communications Law Centre
CTPF ……... Commercial Television Production Fund
DCALB …… Diverse Cultural and Linguistic Background
DCITA ……. Department of Communication, Information Technology and the
Arts
DIMA …….. Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs
DOCA ……. Department of Communication and the Arts
FACTS …… Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations
FCC ………. Federal Communications Commission
ITC ………… Independent Television Commission
ITV ………… Independent Television Network
MEAA ……. Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance
NAACP …… National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NAB ……….. National Association of Broadcasters
NES ………. Non-English Speaking
NMAC ……. National Multicultural Advisory Council
NZOA ……. New Zealand on Air
OMA ……… Office of Multicultural Affairs
SAG ……… Screen Actors Guild
SBS ………. Special Broadcasting Service
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SBSI ……… SBS Independent
SPAA …….. Screen Producers Association of Australia
TPS ………. Television Programme Standard
UPN ………. United Paramount Network
VCA ……….. Victorian College of the Arts
WB ………… Warner Brothers
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Statement of Original Authorship
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a
degree or diploma in any other higher education institution. To the best of my
knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or
written by another person except where due reference is made.
Signed __________________________________
Date ____________________________________
x
Acknowledgements
I thank both supervisors, Professor Stuart Cunningham and Dr Terry Flew, for
their guidance, insight and support.
I also acknowledge the support of family and friends during the candidature.
This thesis would not have been possible without the appreciative contribution
of actors and others in the television industry, who were interviewed in 1999
and 2000.
1
Introduction During the early 1990s, a number of studies exploring multiculturalism and the
media found representation of cultural diversity on Australian commercial
television drama programs was both minimal in quantity and limited in its
portrayal (Goodall, Jakubowicz, Martin, Mitchell, Randall, and Senerirante,
1990; Cope, Jakubowicz and Randall, 1992; CLC, 1992a; Bell, 1993; Nugent,
Loncar, and Aisbett, 1993; Bostock, 1993; Jakubowicz, Goodall, Martin,
Mitchell, Randall, and Senevirante, 1994). In combination with these studies,
the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), the Communications Law Centre
(CLC) and the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA – formerly
Actors Equity) conducted seminars1 on the topic of multiculturalism and the
media in order to raise awareness of the issue with broadcasting regulators
and within the television industry. By 1998, the MEAA’s federal secretary,
Anne Britton (1998), agreed with comments made in a discussion paper by
Appleton (1995) that since the early 1990s there had been an improvement in
both the number of diverse cultural and linguistic background (DCALB)2 actors
appearing in drama programs and the way in which cultural diversity was
being represented in popular programming. Australian drama programming in
the late 1990s strongly suggested that the criticism made by Bell (1993) and
Jakubowicz et al (1994) that Australian drama was overwhelmingly
anglocentric was no longer sustainable.
This research seeks to quantify the changes in Australian drama and casting
with regard to cultural diversity and looks for clarification as to why change
took place. The thesis examines the development of broad multicultural policy,
focusing on 1980s onwards. It finds that a convergence of discourses began
to emerge between the mainstreaming policy approach of Labor’s 1989
National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia, with language and policy
1 The main seminars were - 1991: Seeing is Believing: Scriptwriting for a Multicultural Society held at The Australian Film, Television and Radio School; 1993: The Media and Indigenous Australians Conference held in Brisbane; 1993: Self-Regulation and Cultural Diversity held in Sydney; 1995: Television and the Multicultural Audience held in Sydney. 2 The term DCALB designates people born overseas in non-English speaking countries, their children, as well as Indigenous Australians.
2
debates circulating within the broadcasting policy community. By the late
1990s, the discourse of multiculturalism as an embedded sense of social
reality and the Agenda ‘s equity discourse began to be reflected in the
professional practice of creative stakeholders, which is then expressed in
drama programming output. In an analysis of the representation of AIDS on
Australian drama in the 1990s, Wilding (1998, pp 363 - 364) found that ‘key
creative personnel’ working in television drama had been influenced by the
‘social field’ of AIDS policy and education, and that Commonwealth policy on
AIDS provided a ‘way in’ to think about the topic. Wilding’s notion that
Commonwealth AIDS policy directed a number of policy communities in
dealing with AIDS, which then influenced the creative force of television
representation can also be applied to the representation of multiculturalism.
This is supported by comparative research in Part Two of the thesis which
examines cultural diversity and drama in the USA, the UK and New Zealand.
A review of policy and academic literature in the three countries bears out the
idea that a nation’s development and approach to multicultural policy impinges
on discourses of cultural diversity and broadcasting policy, which then
influences program making.
Chapter One introduces theoretical and methodological concerns. In
particular, I argue that second generation migrants have become a significant
and sizable factor in discussing multiculturalism and representation in
Australia, which affects the terms of multicultural debate. This discussion is
informed by an examination of Whiteness, as South East Asian3 migrants and
other more recent immigrants take on a particular importance for the research
in Part Three, where their inclusion in a multicultural mainstream is shown to
be unrealised. An examination of multiculturalism and the second generation
is also important because they make up a sizeable number of DCALB actors
appearing on drama programs in recent years. Chapter One also examines
representational analysis as a research approach, finding past research into
3 Throughout the thesis, I use the term South East Asian when referring to populations predominantly from the South East Asia region in a wider sense. This has been done to avoid confusion with terminology used in the chapter on the United Kingdom, where Asian refers to populations from India and Pakistan for example. When referring to a particular person or group, an effort is made to identify and refer to their cultural origin more specifically.
3
ethnicity and the media over-determined in its search for either ‘good’ or ‘bad’
portrayals of cultural diversity on Australian drama. The chapter sets out how
this research will employ a cultural studies policy approach as well as making
textual analyses of programming, in order to explore the connections between
broad multicultural policy, broadcasting policy, professional practice and how
programming engaged with cultural diversity up to the year 2001.
The thesis is then divided into three parts. Part One, Australian Policy
Environments, contains Chapters Two and Three. Chapter Two re-evaluates
Australian multicultural policy to argue that the Agenda in particular, as official
multicultural policy, has a greater relationship to the creation of a multicultural
mainstream than critical multicultural analyses permit. The chapter also
examines in greater detail, the significance of the second generation in the
analysis and conception of a multicultural mainstream. Chapter Three
provides an historical analysis of the debates and issues surrounding cultural
diversity and television as a site of policy discourse and intervention. Included
are two case studies in ‘governmental television’: SBS Independent and The
Commercial Television Production Fund, both Creative Nation initiatives from
the second half of the 1990s. The chapter establishes a convergence of
multicultural policy discourse.
Part Two of the thesis is divided into three chapters and examines cultural
diversity and television in three countries: the United States, the United
Kingdom and New Zealand. These three countries were chosen because of
access to a sizable body of existing research and familiarity with their
programming. When viewing television from the United States and the United
Kingdom in particular, there is the tendency to see their programs as
presenting a more comprehensive portrayal of cultural diversity as compared
with Australia. This can be attributed for example to the historical prominence
of Black actors in US police shows, the wide diversity of medical staff in ER,
the clear presence of non-Anglo actors in The Bill, and a range of Maori
performers in the New Zealand serial Shortland Street. In non-fiction
programming one also observes a level of culturally diverse news anchors
4
and TV presenters in the USA and the UK not seen on Australian television
outside of SBS.
The choice of the USA, the UK and New Zealand for comparison is also
based on the particular achievements of each country with regard to cultural
diversity and television. The three countries demonstrate a variety of explicit
policy measures aimed at developing a mainstream approach in casting,
writing and producing programs in culturally diverse territories. When
examined with the purpose to underscore Australian practices, policy and
programming, the changes and current status for cultural diversity and popular
television in the three countries offer worthwhile insights for the Australian
context.
The complexities and intersections of broadcasting, cultural diversity and
program production in the three countries is also considered in the historical
context of multicultural policy in each country. An examination of each
nation’s particular approach to multiculturalism (or biculturalism in the case of
New Zealand), provides opportunities for examining the ways in which broad
multicultural policy discourse influences both broadcasting policy and program
production with respect to cultural diversity and drama in particular.
Chapter Four examines the USA, where a history of civil rights action has had
a profound influence on the establishment of equal opportunity policies in the
broadcasting sector. Chapter Five focuses on how in the United Kingdom, a
policy remit for an everyday representation of multiculturalism has permeated
through to management and commissioning program editors in broadcasting
organisations. In Chapter Six, an established social and cultural policy of
biculturalism in New Zealand is combined with state support for culturally
diverse programming in a heavily de-regulated television broadcasting
environment.
Part Three presents original primary research into cultural diversity and drama
programming in the Australian context. Chapter Seven presents a
comprehensive survey of acting, casting practices and production
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perspectives, while Chapter Eight analyses drama programming over a two-
year period. Part Three provides primary research material which supports the
argument that the portrayal of cultural diversity has changed considerably
since the early 1990s. The representation has changed from a minimal and
limited representation to one more aligned with an everyday multiculturalism,
and that this can be attributed in part to a convergence of discourses,
emanating from the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia.
6
Chapter One Theory, terms and methodology1
Introduction This research finds that changes have occurred since the late 1980s and
early 1990s with respect to the representation of cultural diversity on popular
drama programming. Firstly, since the early 1990s, a greater number of
DCALB actors have negotiated the complex and often capricious employment
process for obtaining acting roles in a lead capacity compared to the early
1990s. The majority of these actors are from the second generation2 of
migrants and have a post-secondary school acting education. Second, the
way in which these actors are portrayed on-screen has shifted from one of a
‘performed’ ethnicity, where ethnicity is the primary purpose of the role, to an
everyday portrayal. By this, I mean that DCALB actors are now likely to play
roles which make no or very little reference to the cultural background of the
actor. DCALB lead actors, including Indigenous actors, now appear in a
variety of roles not available to them in drama programs during the late 1980s
and early 1990s. I maintain that the formulation and broad political support for
multicultural policy, brought to its fullest policy expression in the National
Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (OMA, 1989), played a key role in the
changes to both employment and representation practices in popular
television programming. The release of the Agenda and the possibility to carry
out comparisons in multicultural representation on TV with a collection of
previous research from the early 1990s provides the motivation for limiting the
years under study from 1989 to 2001. In effect, the Agenda assisted to embed
a sense of cultural diversity as an everyday experience in the Australian
1 Parts of this thesis have been published in the following publications: May, H., Flew, T. and Spurgeon, C. (2000) Report on Casting in Australian Television Drama, Centre for Media Policy and Practice, QUT, Brisbane., May, H. (2000) ‘Cultural Diversity, Casting and Australian Commercial Television Drama’, Published Conference Papers, Ethics, Events, Entertainment, Ballina July 2000, Australian and New Zealand Communication Association, pp 227 – 236., May, H. (2001) Cultural Diversity and Australian Commercial Television Drama: Policy, Industry and Recent Research Contexts’, Prometheus, vol 19, no 2, pp 161 – 170., May, H. (2002) Broadcast in Colour: Cultural Diversity and Television Programming in Four Countries, Screen Industry, Culture and Culture Policy Series, Australian Key Centre for Culture and Media Policy and Australian Film Commission, Sydney. 2 Second generation in this research refers to Australian-born people who have at least one parent born overseas in a non-English speaking country.
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community, as well as to promote equity measures and influence other areas
of policy such as broadcasting, to take account of a culturally diverse
Australia.
One of the contested objectives of multicultural policy in the Agenda has been
the educative role of the state in promoting tolerance in the wider community.
Critical analyses by Jaukubowicz et al (1994), Stratton (1998) and Hage
(1997a, 1998) tend to reduce multiculturalism’s central rationale to that of
government programs for promoting community tolerance. These analyses
position multiculturalism as cultural enrichment which enhances the Anglo
communities’ cultural and culinary lifestyle. According to such analysis,
multicultural policy acts to obscure multiculturalism’s implicit function of
maintaining the superior economic and cultural position of Anglo or ‘white’
Australia. Hage (1998, p 121) offers a succinct statement on this position:
While the dominant white culture merely and unquestionably exists, migrant cultures exist for the latter [white cultures]. Their value [migrant cultures], or the viability of their preservation as far as White Australians are concerned, lies in their function as enriching cultures. It is in this sense that the discourse of enrichment contributes to the positioning of non-White Australians within the White Nation fantasy.
While the promotion of tolerance and cultural enrichment has been an
important feature of multicultural policy, I do not accept that these are its only
actual outcomes along with the maintenance of the dominant class.
Cowlishaw (2000, p 244) notes that Hage is ‘interested only in the discourse
of tolerance’ and while it is true that multiculturalism continues to be
understood and at times promoted as cultural enrichment and tolerance, it can
also be understood as a policy which has contributed in making
multiculturalism part of everyday life in mainstream locations in work, media
and culture.
Hage (1997a) on the other hand considers an everyday multicultural
mainstream to be located mostly in the home life of ‘third world’ migrants in
Sydney’s Southwest. An SBS commissioned study into multiculturalism by
Ang, Brand, Noble and Wilding (2002, p 6) provides robust survey research
8
which demonstrates that ‘most Australians live and breathe cultural diversity’
and that ‘Australians from all backgrounds experience everyday
cosmopolitanism’. Ang et al’s research also advocates that cultural diversity
experienced by most Australians is not confined to a superficial
cosmopolitanism but is a lived mainstream experience. While their survey
shows this is especially so with young people and the second generation, I
demonstrate in the thesis that Australia’s demographic is increasingly
composed of second generation DCALB migrants, who demonstrate very high
cultural mixing in relationships and marriage.
While transformations to cultural diversity and drama programming became
evident after the early 1990s, the portrayal of and employment prospects for
actors of South East Asian backgrounds in the late 1990s did not reflect
changes made by other DCALB actors in the same period. However by 2000,
there were noticeable changes in the area of South East Asian casting which
became more aligned with improvements in other DCALB groups. This trend
continued into the early 2000s (Jacka, 2002, pp 13 - 14). The thesis provides
an examination of and explanation for the delayed involvement of actors from
South East Asian backgrounds in drama programming, as well as exploring
the near total absence of actors with an accent or actors from first generation
migrant groups. In examining these issues, the thesis develops the premise
that the second generation has become a sizable and important location for
exploring contemporary understandings of multiculturalism and the
representation of that multiculturalism in Australia.
There is little research focusing on second generation migrants,
multiculturalism and television drama programming, the exception being
Aquilia’s (2000) doctoral dissertation, ‘‘Wog Babes’: the representation of the
second generation Italian-Australian female protagonist in film and television
drama’. Bertone, Keating, and Mullaly (2000) provide theatre-focused
research on the representation of people from culturally diverse backgrounds
which incorporates a section on television, however the section mostly
reviews previous research from the early 1990s. O’Regan’s (1993, pp 111 -
114) analysis of multiculturalism and television drama representation in his
9
book, Australian Television Culture, suggested the importance of the second
generation and cultural intermixing and proposed that drama programming
would necessarily begin to reflect such demographic change. This study then
extends analyses into cultural diversity and television carried out in the 1990s
in Australia in the following respects.
The first of these involves the analysis of cultural diversity and television in the
United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Previous research,
such as Nugent et al’s (1993) study included a comparative survey of British
audiences with Australian audiences’ attitudes to the portrayal of cultural
diversity on television. Communication Law Centre research (1992a) also
examined the regulatory policies of the US with regard to casting and cultural
diversity. Aside from these two smaller comparative studies, no Australian
television research has examined cultural diversity, multicultural policy and
television programming in a comparative frame. My examination of the USA,
the UK and New Zealand does not attempt to provide an in-depth analysis of
multiculturalism or television broadcasting in each country, as this is outside
the scope of the thesis. Rather, the purpose of the studies is to highlight
particular similarities and divergences compared with the Australian context.
The second aspect is a comprehensive survey of lead actors appearing on
Australian commercial television drama programs in 1999 and their portrayal
in the programs in which they appear. This primary research is presented in
Part Three. This actor survey provides a quantification of the cultural
background of actors working in commercial television drama. The research
also involved an interview program with 21 actors, seven writers, Australia’s
four leading casting directors and eight producer-creators and two directors.
These stakeholders were chosen as they represent a major component of the
creative and producer gatekeeping for Australian drama. Lastly, drama
programs over a two-year period in three blocks of programming were
analysed for the textual representation of cultural diversity. Such an in-depth
and inclusive analysis of drama programming and cultural diversity has not
been undertaken to date, the only other study being Bell’s (1993) smaller
survey of three two-week blocks of drama in the early 1990s.
10
Multiculturalism Multicultural policies in Australia began with the emergence in the late 1970s
of government programs to aid in the settlement of recently arrived migrants
and an acknowledgment of the contribution that migrant cultures made to
Australian life. In contemporary research and policy contexts (including
broadcasting policy), the term multiculturalism is replaced or combined with
the term cultural diversity to take account of groups such as Indigenous
Australians, the gay community and the disabled. In this study, I use the term
multiculturalism when discussing the outcomes of multicultural policy and the
ideology of multiculturalism. The term migrant multiculturalism is used when
explicitly referring to immigrant Australia, and cultural diversity is used when
referring to a wider diversity within the community. Although Australian
multicultural policy itself has incorporated the term cultural diversity since the
late 1980s the inclusion of Indigenous Australians within multicultural policy is
not unproblematic. This study recognises that the requirements of Indigenous
Australians cannot simply be incorporated into multicultural policies and
programs alone, which have historically related to migrant Australia. However,
I preserve the use of the term cultural diversity in signifying both migrant and
Indigenous Australians.
While the next chapter examines Australian multiculturalism in detail, I wish to
explore multiculturalism as a concept in broader terms in this introductory
chapter. At a fundamental level, Hall (2000, p 209) defines multiculturalism as
referencing ‘the strategies and policies adopted to govern or manage the
problems of diversity and multiplicity which multi-cultural societies throw up’.
Taking the policy articulation further, Lopez (2000, p 446) defines
multiculturalism as ‘an ideology promoted by a policy community’, with the
state supporting and implementing that ideology through legislation and
programs. However as Hall (2000, p 210) goes on to add, multiculturalism ‘is
not a single doctrine, does not characterize one political strategy, and does
not represent an already achieved state of affairs’. As Hesse (1997, p 377)
states, ‘it [multiculturalism] has become a floating signifier’. Both Lopez (2000)
and Hall (2000) construct a number of multiculturalisms which are based to a
11
large degree on the historical development of multiculturalism from the mid
20th century.
Prior to the late 1970s, a conservative assimilationist model was common to
Australia, the UK and the US. However, Stratton and Ang (1994, p 145) make
an important distinction between US assimilation and Australia’s version, in
that the US ‘melting pot’ signifies the creation of a new society from many
cultures, with a shared set of core values. In Australia, the aim of assimilation
was to ensure the ‘preservation’ of Anglo culture at the expense of others,
particularly the Indigenous culture. Replacing assimilation, both Hall (2000)
and Lopez (2000) identify cultural pluralism, or pluralist multiculturalism, as
incorporating notions of cultural maintenance, the promotion of tolerance and
what Hall (2000, p 210) calls a ‘communitarian political order’. Borowski
(2000) maintains that Australian multiculturalism of the cultural pluralist
approach engendered and reinforced virtues, which sustain peaceful and
liberal democracies, providing a local application of Hall’s communitarianism.
While Lopez (2000) posits liberal pluralism as the dominant form of
multiculturalism in Australian politics since the late 1970s, running alongside it
in the late 1970s to early 1990s is a critical multiculturalism, or what Hall
labels ‘revolutionary multiculturalism’. This focuses on a structural and class
based interrogation of power, which seeks to transform the power base for the
betterment of migrants and other ‘minority’ groups. More recently though, Hall
(2000, p 210) defines the terms commercial and corporate multiculturalism, to
describe how culturally diverse communities contribute both as consumers
and producers of global capital and social goods. In the era of global media
proliferation, the contested concept of hybrid identities becomes bound up in
issues of media representation and media use, by intercultural youth in
particular.
In this study, I wish to connect hybridity with multiculturalism in a number of
ways. I concur with Anthias (2001) that hybridity theory has usefully assisted
in overcoming essentialist notions of culture and ethnicity. Anthias supports
hybridity theory’s desire to ‘overcome the victimology’ of the migrant
experience, as well as noting hybridity’s valuable objective to invoke non-
12
unitary identities which go beyond the binary of the hyphenated intercultural
migrant (such as the ‘Italian-Australian’). However, Anthias (2001, p 630) also
poses dilemmas for hybridity’s intercultural power, making the point that:
The acid test of hybridity lies in the response of culturally dominant groups, not only in terms of incorporating (or coopting) cultural products … but in being open to transforming and abandoning some of their own central cultural symbols.
While it is doubtful that ‘central’ cultural symbols would rapidly be replaced in
any society through the conception of hybrid identities, a transformation of
dominant or mainstream culture nevertheless takes place as hybrid identities
becomes more prevalent3. Shohat and Stam (1994, p 237) propose that
‘cultural syncretism’, as a result of ever-increasing hybridity, generates a
‘conflictual yet creative intermingling of culture [which] takes place both at the
margins and between the margins and [within] a changing mainstream’. In
American society, this syncretism has led to the creation of a cultural ‘non-
finalized polyphony’. The changes in Australian mainstream popular
programming explored in Part Three of the thesis supports such a proposition
in a local context.
Anthias (2001, p 637) then calls into question hybridity’s ability to construct
difference not contained within an homogenous, globalised media. She
explores the way in which global images of women in magazines for example
include an ample cultural diversity, but on the other hand, still promote a
singular conception of beauty utilised for commercial purposes. Hage (2003,
pp 108-119)) describes global multiculturalism as a shift in multiculturalism’s
focus from a critical interrogation of working class minority equity issues to
issues of identity which concentrate on the middle class. He refers to the way
in which a ‘neat, middle class, aestheticised multiculturalism’ is concerned
with a global corporatised cultural diversity which moves little beyond the
spheres of ‘leisure, entertainment and consumption’ (Hage, 2003, p 111). Hall
(2000, p 217) notes an homogenizing tendency in globalisation, but at the
3 In the Australian context, Stratton (1999) argues that the preservation of Christmas and Easter holidays represents the privileging of dominant Anglo culture over that of Muslim or Buddhist culture and that this reflects a form of White Australia policy for holidays.
13
same time, he locates a paradox in globalisation. While things may appear the
same, a ‘proliferation of difference’ at local levels means sameness and
difference cannot be viewed as simple binaries. People are ‘obliged to adopt
shifting, multiple or hyphenated positions’. In the British context, Hall (2000, p
227) gives the example of the ‘besuited Asian accountant … who lives in
suburbia, sends his children to private school and reads Readers Digest and
the Bhagavad-Gita’. While this example illustrates Hage’s concerns for placing
questions of multiculturalism within the professional classes, Hall’s account is
useful in highlighting the shifting associations migrants make in their day to
day lives, particularly amongst those of the second generation.
In the Australian context, I employ the term strategic hybridity, to identify how
second generation migrant young people in particular call upon a range of
cultural identity alliances for a range of purposes. Australian research
examined in Chapter Two from Noble and Tabar (2002) and Luke and Luke
(1998, 1999, 2000), suggest that second generation and hybrid Australians
operate in ways which destabilize traditional conceptions of binary migrant
identity, while also displaying an assimilatory predisposition when useful or
necessary to do so. Luke and Luke (2000, p 47) explain the blending of
influences in the creation of such strategic hybrid identities as:
a work in progress, rather than a ‘role’ or a ‘sense of self’ given by cultures, constructed by individuals, or secured unproblematically from the passing down of residual cultural resources. Identity, then, is a dynamic process by and through which increasingly diverse and commodified texts, cultural and discourse resources are brought to bear.
Strategic hybrid identities challenge overly celebratory accounts of hybridity
and stress agency over identity. Strategies utilised by hybrid subjects in
reaction to ongoing discrimination point to unresolved issues regarding their
contested place within society. However, such strategies may also involve
discriminatory tendencies and socially undesirable behaviours within a
subject’s own cultural community and in the wider community. I assert that
multiculturalism at the end of the 1990s includes the notion of strategic
hybridity and that second generation and intercultural families are its key
14
location. The thesis also provides support for O’Regan’s (1993, p 106)
statement that Australian multiculturalism, considered as a ‘family of projects’,
has provided the following:
a state-sponsored cultural hybridisation program promising a new culture in which the Anglo-Celtic … would become decentred and attenuated so that Australian culture could be more readily and easily defined through a mix of other cultural elements (first Southern and Central European and then Middle Eastern and Asian).
The staggered timeframe by which non-European migrants (and for that
matter Indigenous Australians) have contributed in transforming the
mainstream later than their European cohort is explored in the next chapter
and in Part Three. This delay for some groups relates to the incrementalism of
multicultural policy (Lopez, 2000), and significant though gradual demographic
changes in Australian society. While such change has been measured over
time, I agree with Hesse (2000, p 10) when he cites Bhattacharyya, stating
that ‘multicultural thinking has seeped in as common sense’. In spite of this
‘seeping in’ of a mainstream multicultural reality in the late 1990s, the question
posed by Hage (1997a, 1998) of ‘third world looking migrants’ and the limits of
multiculturalism requires an examination of ‘whiteness’, and any de-centring of
the mainstream and popular television programming.
White Like Hage (1997a, 1998) and Stratton (1998) in Australia, theorists such as
Nagel (2002) in the UK, and Johnson (1999a) in the US, point out that
‘whiteness’ is an unstable category. In the US, fair skinned Hispanics and
Blacks display closer economic and social parity with European migrants
compared to the darker skinned (Johnson, 1999a, p 24). According to such
analyses, second generation Northern and Southern European migrants in
most immigrant nations have ‘re-fashioned themselves as part of the
mainstream’ (Nagel, 2002, p 265). At a policy level in Australia, ‘whiteness’ as
an official immigration category changed from initially being only migrants of
Anglo origin, to later include Northern, and then Southern Europeans with the
15
application of the White Australia Policy4. While the White Australia Policy was
phased out in the 1960s, theorists such as Hage (1997a, 1998), Stratton
(1998, 1999), Larbalestier (1999) and Schech and Haggis (2001) maintain
that ‘white’ Australians, including those from previous ‘non-white’ categories
such as Continental Europeans, continue to signal ‘superiority, cultural
compatibility and privilege’ (Larbalestier, 1999, p 150).
Schech and Haggis (2002, p 146) provide a familiar argument among critical
multicultural theorists, stating Australian multiculturalism is ‘concerned with
maintaining a cultural hegemony as monocultural visions of the Australian
nation’. Like Hage and Stratton, Schech and Haggis (2001, p 151) maintain
that Asian Australians in particular have been unable to ‘read themselves’ into
a ‘surrogate whiteness’ of dominant Anglo Australia (‘surrogate whites’
predominantly meaning Southern European migrants now included in the
Australian mainstream). I accept that the opportunities for South East Asian
groups to contribute to mainstream Australian culture (and drama
programming) have been more complex and uneven compared to other
groups. However, I demonstrate that the reasons for a less significant South
East Asian presence in mainstream programming are not exclusively due to
multicultural policy, as stipulated by Stratton for example. I maintain that such
critical multiculturalist analyses are over-determined in their uncoupling of
official multiculturalism from any relation to the lived experience of ‘everyday
multiculturalism’, which Stratton and Hage resolutely argue, is the faithful
location and foundation of a transformative and hybrid ‘everyday
multiculturalism’ among ‘non-white’ migrants. These theorists reject the
prospect that the spaces available to migrants (including ‘non-white’), which
they suggest lead to transgression and transformation, could be related to 4 The end of the White Australia Policy was not a clean break in any one year with the restriction of migrants based on racial criteria. Linden (1996) situates 1956 as the beginning of a relaxation for mixed descent applicants. 1958 saw the abolition of the dictation test – a test able to be given in any language to a migrant in order to exclude certain applicants. The official end to the White Australia Policy is cited as 1966 by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA, 1997), when ‘well qualified’ rather than ‘distinguished’ non-European migrants were considered. However, Linden (1996) places the official end at 1963, with migration then based on an individual applicant’s merit, rather than racial origin. One can also argue that in 1973, Whitlam further removed implicit barriers to non-European immigration with citizenship reform. The growth in Asian immigration under Fraser showed that the White Australia Policy had ended.
16
O’Regan’s idea of official multiculturalism’s ‘family of projects’ – including the
project of transforming the mainstream. Ultimately, in the discussion of
‘whiteness’ and multiculturalism, Nagel (2001, p 266) provides a more open-
ended supposition:
It cannot be presupposed that contemporary ‘non-white’ immigrants do not or cannot engage in a politics of sameness when the very notions ‘white’ or ‘non-white’, and the institutions, discourses and social practices used to sustain all kinds of racial categories, have changed so radically over time. Racialized hierarchies … are fluid, reflecting the constant negotiation of the terms of membership and exclusion.
What Nagel is stressing, is that care should be taken when assuming that
‘non-whites’ are at the mercy of a powerful, traditional assimilatory project
which dictates the occurrence of inclusion or exclusion. I contend in Chapter
Two and Part Three of the thesis that strategic hybridity also includes the
possibility for instances of a ‘strategic assimilation’. This builds on recent
studies based predominantly in America (Gans, 1992a, 1992b; Portes and
Zhou, 1993; Alba and Nee, 1997; Zhou, 1997; Boyd, 2002; Farley and Alba,
2002), which utilise a new assimilation theory to suggest that contemporary
second generation multicultural identities are involved in the transformation of
the mainstream, with assimilation becoming a two-way street.
The second generation
For the purpose of this study, the second generation are predominantly
people born in Australia with one or both parents born in a non-English
speaking country as well as young ‘third world looking migrants’ and young
South East Asian Australians from the third generation. Aquilia’s (2000, p 36)
study makes a valid point, that research into multiculturalism and drama
carried out in the early 1990s failed to ‘make clear distinctions between first
and second generation non-Anglo representation’. And more generally,
research and analysis on multiculturalism tends to address a broad
conception of migrant multiculturalism (however Chapter Two explores some
exceptions to this). Aquilia thus makes a constructive addition to analysis on
17
the theme of cultural diversity and drama programming at the end of the
1990s.
Aquilia continues the argument advocated by Stratton (1998) that official
multiculturalism is at odds with a hybrid everyday multicultural reality.
However, she rejects Hage’s (1997a, 1998) deterministic position regarding
the centrality of an Anglo white national imagery fostered by ‘white
multiculturalists’. Aquilia (2000) cites recent films such as Head On and
multidimensional second generation female characters found in texts such as
Looking for Alibrandi and Heartbreak High, as an indication of a trend away
from marginalised, exotic or binary representations of ethnicity, towards an
‘exuberant mainstream’, which displays ‘social fluidity’ and female ethnic
characters with ‘cultural savvy’ (hence the term ‘Wog Babes’ in her thesis
title). A weakness in her argument regarding television drama, which she
criticises for lagging behind cinematic representations, is that her sample of
television programming is limited to analyses of single or particular episodes
of drama programs which contain very specific stories with multicultural
themes. She also remains bound to anxieties over stereotype, claiming
Heartbreak High falls prey to an inferior representation, when in one episode
for example an Asian father is portrayed wearing a suit and reading the
Financial Review (Aquilia, 2000, p 136). This seems a tenuous criticism as
business people from all over the world mostly wear suits and read the
financial press, not to mention the established demographic trend for South
East Asian immigrants to be composed mostly of business and higher
educated migrants (Inglis, 1999). In spite of these limitations, Aquilia points to
a form of multicultural representation where cultural interaction between the
second generation migrant and Anglo Australian is no longer centred in an
Anglo ‘white’ ascendancy. While Aquilia’s focus on the second generation is
somewhat exceptional in Australia, American multicultural researchers over
the previous decade have come to focus on the second generation as a
distinctive area of study.
Due to the increasing size of the second generation in the US, Brubaker
(2001, p 531) notes how a public policy discourse and research program in
18
the US has begun to distinguish a ‘modest return’ of assimilation theory. He,
along with other social science scholars in the area (Gans, 1992a, 1992b;
Portes and Zhou, 1993; Alba and Nee, 1997; Zhou, 1997; Boyd, 2002; Farley
and Alba, 2002), make it very clear this is not to be associated with the
previous ‘analytically discredited and politically disreputable’ assimilation of
the past. The return of assimilation as a concept in US research relates to a
transformed analytical approach combined with empirical research, which
explores the status and achievements of second generation communities with
a referenced mainstream. The empirical element of such studies is most often
survey research concerned with cultural, social and economic criteria which
attempts to explain the segmented (or uneven) rates of cultural and social
proximity with other ‘minority’ groups, along with such comparisons to the
mainstream population. Intergenerational achievements in language,
schooling, occupation, and rates of intercultural marriage are frequent criteria
for comparison.
For this study however, it is the conceptual scheme of second generation
research which has application, rather than the survey methodologies . I apply
two major arguments taken mainly from the US research. First of all: ‘that
individual and structural factors are intertwined’ in the lives of migrant
offspring, which impacts upon their social life chances and cultural identity
formation (Zhou, 1997, p 993). In Australian research (Luke and Luke,1998,
1999, 2000; Noble and Tabar, 2002), the place of family and intergenerational
cultural mixing (as individual factors) are significant cultural resources in the
creation of hybrid identities. In exploring families containing first and second
generation members, Luke and Luke (2000) find a complex, contradictory and
non-essentialist identity amongst second generation migrants and culturally
intermixed families in particular. Structural factors such as schooling and the
mass media combine with individual factors of family and cultural history to
‘redefine culture and identity from fixed entities to [an] ad hoc blending of
practices and identities through interlocking systems of representation’ (Luke
and Luke, 2000, p 65). As this demographic is of such significant size and
impact in Australia, the second premise I apply from US second generation
assimilation research is that the mainstream has begun to ‘assimilate’ with a
19
culturally diverse Australia, leading towards a changed mainstream. As
Brubaker (2001, p 542) notes, such an analytical shift does not signify a return
to ‘the bad old days of assimilation’, nor conceptions of absorption. Rather, it
refers to active subjects, ambiguity, ad hoc blending, and more abstract
notions of differences and similarities within an increasingly culturally diverse
society.
Representational anxieties Like multiculturalism and media research from the 1990s, this study is
concerned with the portrayal or representation of cultural diversity in
Australian programming. Most of the early 1990s research, as well as
Aquilia’s (2000) more recent study mentioned above, spends considerable
energy in discovering ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘stereotypical’ representations. The
partiality of such analyses in assessing noticeable episodes of cultural
diversity in casting as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, acts to restrict possible
interpretations of these texts and may only contribute to the difficulties that
performers and creative stakeholders face in establishing transformative
practice. Such analyses may often be unaware of the pragmatic rationale
behind such casting or be limited by the amount, or time-frame of
programming studied. This is not to say that tangible damage is not done to
communities by portrayals which reaffirm hurtful representations which may
reinforce and contribute to ‘prejudicial social policy’ (Shohat and Stam, 1994,
p 183). However, the issue ‘bad’ or ‘token’ representations needs to be
explored further with regard to South East Asian or Indigenous portrayals in
particular. In Australia, the casting of Indigenous actors in mainstream TV
drama brought with it an avoidable and arguably unnecessary responsibility
for the actors and program producers alike. This is partly due to the lack of
Indigenous faces on commercial TV in the past and that when they did
appear, it was most often in roles which were directly related to the actor’s
cultural background.
In the daily serial Breakers (broadcast in 1998-1999), Indigenous actor Heath
Bergersen played a predominantly non-specific role, which was not initially
written or conceived of as an Indigenous character. In addition to Bergersen’s
20
role, there was a young gay character, as well as other actors of culturally
diverse backgrounds, including a young female South East Asian journalist.
Such culturally diverse casting in an Australian program was viewed as a
conspicuous multiculturalism by some audiences (see Chapter Eight). The
‘burden’ on Heath’s character manifests itself among audiences and within his
own people, who may interpret his role very differently to a European
audience. Bergersen (1999) comments on his role on the show:
With feedback, most Aboriginal people are happy that there’s an Aboriginal actor in this series. Some do say, well look you’re the only blackfella there. When I was doing Sweat, I thought and felt a little bit that I was a token blackfella – but even then it really was all right. Even Ocean Girl was OK. But with Breakers, my background is definitely not an issue. The good thing about Breakers is the different people are just there in the neighbourhood – like when you walk down the street. I remember when I’d see another Aboriginal on the screen – it makes you happy, you know ‘there’s a blackfella!’ I remember when Aaron (Pederson) was doing Gladiators in the mid-1990s and the first time I saw him I said, ‘Hey man! Shit it’s an Aboriginal’.
Bergersen’s remarks demonstrate the powerful argument of many in the
casting industry that the unambiguous presence of Indigenous actors in non-
specific roles has served as a role model for potential aspirants. In addition,
his comments give insight to the sense of community felt by Indigenous
people, made all the more intimate due to their shared sense of exclusion
from elements of the mainstream. As an individual and experienced actor,
Bergersen also expressed personal offence at the suggestion that his role
was tokenistic.
Questions of what might be an appropriate portrayal for an Aboriginal
character are also unhelpful. For example, writing roles for DCALB actors as
only positive ones, denies them opportunity for an everyday or banal
portrayal. There is also a hazard in continually seeking out assessments of
portrayals based on categories of stereotyping of ‘good’ or ‘bad’
representations. Shohat and Stam (1994, p 199) label such criticism
‘procrustean’, and illustrate their point in the context of the historical
21
representations of Blacks which led to repetitive critical analyses of Blacks in
the USA:
The critic forces diverse fictive characters into pre-established categories. Behind every Black child performer the critic discerns the ‘pickaninny’; behind every sexually attractive Black actor a ‘buck’; behind every corpulent or nurturing Black female a ‘mammy’. Such reductionist simplifications run the risk of reproducing the very racial essentialism they were designed to combat.
In addition, one could question the appropriateness of criticism aimed at a
minority performer’s role when that role is valued as significant, for the
progression of the performer’s career and as a signal of professional
possibilities in the mainstream media for others in the community.
Bergersen’s role as Rueben on a series such as Breakers allows for multiple
readings of his character. For example, Rueben goes to the gym to achieve a
better looking body with a gay friend one week (they both give up), but a few
weeks later, in a different plot, Rueben tries to help out a Koori friend having
problems with drugs. Contemporary Australian drama may at different times
ignore or explore the cultural meanings and histories of the characters in it.
The interplay between an actor’s cultural background and the attendance of
that personal cultural identity in a role is more complex than the interrogation
and labelling of portrayals as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. As McKee (2001, p 11) notes, ‘by
always seeking out the worst interpretation of texts we may be hampering our
attempts to understand how they are working in culture’. Cottle (1997, p 5)
explains how such ‘unproblematic and self-evident’ stereotype analysis ‘fails
to consider the active work of historically/politically situated audiences in
making sterotypes “mean” or mean something different … or not mean at all’.
In the US, the Black network comedy The Cosby Show (examined in Chapter
Four) has been evaluated as both a bad and good representation of Black
America. On the one hand, the show is criticised for sustaining ‘the harmful
myth of social mobility’ held among white middle class American audiences,
who see the program as affirming a successful American meritocracy. On the
other hand, it is applauded for offering a much needed alternative for Black
22
audiences, to the image of poor and crime ridden ghettos (Lewis, 1997, p 95).
Havens (2000, p 377) provides another example of how the portrayal of
Blacks on The Cosby Show can be interpreted by different audiences
resulting in contrasting assessments. In South Africa, Black audiences see the
show as exposing ‘the fallacy of Black South African inferiority’ to white South
Africans. On the other hand, white South Africans see the show as
demonstrating that the Huxtable family possess ‘values that Black South
Africans lack’.
In addition to an examination of overseas television programs in the three
comparative studies included in Part Two, Chapter Eight provides textual
analysis of all Australian television dramas broadcast over three two-week
blocks in a two-year period (1999-2000). In this research, I include comment
from creative stakeholders and industry perspectives to avoid making purely
textual based analyses of ‘bad’ or ‘good’ portrayals of cultural diversity. This
allows for an exploration of the ambiguities, contradictions and complexities of
representations of an everyday multiculturalism. Referring to Indigenous
representations in the media, Hartley and McKee (2000, p 6) cite Ray (1995)
to affirm: ‘there is a serious need to move beyond notions of ‘ideological
atrocity’ committed by all-powerful media against vulnerable populations’.
Television and policy studies While multiculturalism is a core theoretical field in this research, the study also
makes use of television and policy media studies, as well as social science
methodologies in exploring cultural diversity and television. Hartley (1999, p
21) labels as ‘useful’, the combination of ‘cultural theory, media studies and
textual research [to] answer questions posed by producers, regulators … and
audiences’. Hartley (1999, p 183) goes on to pose three important issues for
studying popular television: ‘what it does, where it fits and who it is for’. In
order to address these issues, I make use of a mixed methodology combining
theory from media studies and cultural policy studies.
The integration of policy studies with cultural studies in researching culture is
well established. Bennett (1998, pp 60 - 61) notes how cultural studies’
23
concern with power relations in the ‘production, circulation, [and] deployment’
of cultural forms was eventually complemented by a consideration of culture
as ‘increasingly governmentally organised and constructed’. Bennett (1998, p
106) formulates an argument which positions social and cultural policy as a
reforming project, where the ‘junction of the fields of culture, policy and
administration’ constitute the transformation of the ‘cultural sphere’. Related to
Hartley’s analysis of television programming, which both exceeds the textual
and esteems the popular, Bennett appeals for research which moves beyond
the repetition of audience ‘resistance’ analyses. He proposes a ‘fuller and
richer cartography of the spaces between total compliance and resistance’
and a ‘thicker description of the complex flows of culture’ (Bennett, 1998, pp
168 – 169).
The location for this cartography or thicker description lies in part with policy
studies grounded in Foucault’s theory of governmentality, which offers a
number of arguments for application to this study. McNay (1994, p 119) notes
how strategies of government (such as multiculturalism) do not necessarily
denote strategies for a centralised state power. For example, multiculturalism
was not born of a state ideology, but is a complex and contradictory process
involving ethnic community stakeholders, public service policy advisors,
academics and a relatively small number of political (or governmental) agents.
The combination of these factors is less about a unitary or ‘immanent’ state
apparatus, than about a set of ‘heterogeneous and indirect’ factors, which
constitute, rather than determine, the social and cultural sphere (McNay,
1994, p 118; Gordon, 1991). A governmentalist approach to multiculturalism
stresses that top-down policy is also and at once a response to bottom-up
pressure and activity. It is both a recognition (bottom-up) and shaping (top--
down) of social and cultural change.
In Chapter Three, I examine in detail events and processes in the early 1990s
regarding policy activity around cultural diversity and television, as the issue
became a contested focus for divergent groups. These groups and individuals
were involved in a ‘reforming’ practice, in order to transform how cultural
diversity was represented on television programming. Like multiculturalism
24
policy analysis and research, advocacy multiculturalism research of the era
made use of quantitative population data, to establish arguments about
Australia’s cultural diversity and its portrayal in popular programming.
Classifying populations The use of statistical data in the thesis leads to methodological issues when
categorising sections of the community. This commonly involves referring to
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data to classify populations along lines
of family and cultural background, into non-English speaking (NES) and
mainly English speaking (MES) populations. The use of statistics is also used
to classify first and second generation migrants. It is interesting to note that
since the early 1990s there has been a shift in the way the ABS defines and
collects data on migrant Australia. In the 2001 census, the ABS considered
second generation (NES) migrants to be Australian born with both parents
born overseas. Previously, a second generation migrant was defined as
having at least one parent born in a NES country.
The ABS’ (ABS, 2003a) motivation for this stems from the government’s
interest to focus on data which relates more closely to the needs of
immigrants who require access to migrant services. Accordingly, the
government’s position is that a DCALB person who has one parent born in
Australia will not need access to migrant services as they will possess
familiarity with English language and have an Australian education. In
addition, the 2001 census did not allow second generation migrants to identify
their overseas born parents’ country of birth. The only variable was: ‘born
overseas’. This now makes it impossible to maintain the size of the non-
English speaking second generation in Australia by parental birthplace, or
discern the regional backgrounds except by the ancestry question. As an
alternative to birthplace data in determining the NES component of the
country, the ABS has moved to the ancestry question and relies on ‘language
use at home’ questions to inform government policy on migrant services. The
ABS (2003b) decided not to adopt a ‘self perceived identification’ approach to
determine ethnicity in spite of continuing confusion and data error with the
ancestry approach.
25
The ancestry method gives people the choice of a number of ethnic groups
‘from which they and their ancestors’ descended, including Australian. The
interpretation of the question by Australians in the 2001 census resulted in a
number of contradictions. For example, the majority of subjects who identified
themselves as Indigenous in one question of the census also claimed
Australian ancestry instead of ‘Aboriginal or Torres Strait Ancestry’ at the
ancestry question. The question design also excludes the possibility of
prioritising ancestry, even though this may play an important role in policy and
help in determining other cultural information of importance for researchers.
Because the ABS only code the first two ancestries encountered on the form,
in spite of providing the ability to list several, an estimated 8.1% of the total
ancestry responses were lost, which is a noteworthy loss of data.
Luke and Luke have also raised a number of issues with a reliance on census
data in locating identity. According to Luke and Luke (1999, p 235), the use of
birthplace and language competency in census data removes questions of
race from analytic and policy scholarship. The census data restricts
interpretation of ancestries which go beyond two generations, yet such
people’s racial origins can have significant impact on their social and cultural
interactions and, as explored above, questions of racial visibility are central to
studies of cultural diversity and representation. The census data also
overlooks people in mixed-race relations, as well as their subsequent ‘multiple
heritage offspring’. Essentially, Luke and Luke (1999, p 237) consider the
census ‘tick a box’ approach to racial or ethnic identification as no longer able
to contend with the cultural complexity of second and third generation
migrants, or ‘increasingly large interracial populations’.
To address these weaknesses in future, the ABS intends to expand the
number of ancestries actually coded from two to four, and explain this on the
census form. The ABS will also provide the possibility to record ‘dual ancestry’
(ABS, 2003b). In spite of these limitations in establishing accurate figures for
DCALB groups, a combination of ABS data (2003c) provides a figure of 14.4%
of the total population being born overseas in NES countries (the first
26
generation). Figures for calculating the NES second generation depend on
definition used. If applying the pre-2001 census definition of the second
generation meaning a person with at least one parent born in a NES country,
a figure of 10.4% is achieved (ABS, 2003c; ABS, 1997). With the addition of
an Indigenous population of 2%, 26% of the Australian population can be said
to be from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. An alternative figure to
this is calculated by Jupp (2001) who, by using ancestry data from 1996, finds
28% of the population being of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
While quantitative data and reference to census statistics are a feature of this
study, I recognise Luke and Luke’s concerns over the limitations of ABS data
in being able to distinguish the ambiguities and complexity of cultural diversity
in contemporary Australia. While one of the research features of this study is
the quantification of ethnicity for lead actors appearing in Australian drama in
the late 1990s, the thesis also provides a qualitative examination of the
relationship between cultural diversity, acting and casting practices through an
interview program with actors, casting directors and actor training
professionals. This interpretive research facilitates a ‘thicker’ analysis of the
results of the quantitative data, as well as addressing Hartley’s (1999, p 183)
three issues of ‘what it does, where it fits and who it is for’, when researching
popular television.
27
PART ONE AUSTRALIAN POLICY ENVIRONMENTS
Chapter Two The multicultural project Introduction There are numerous texts on the subject of immigration, and its descendant -
multiculturalism1. The purpose of this chapter is not to replicate or extensively
review the various histories of immigration and multiculturalism. However, it
does reappraise particular developments in Australian multiculturalism, and
draw out a number of its subsequent effects which have been neglected in
Australian criticism and analysis. The chapter provides an examination of the
changing discourses and analyses of multiculturalism. A core assertion is that
multicultural policy has been of greater significance than previously credited
by critics in the creation of an everyday multiculturalism.
This position does not signify uncritical support for multicultural policy, as
continuing instances of racism, diminished government support for
multicultural policy development, and reduced life opportunities for some
DCALB groups underline the significant obstacles which remain. As Bennett
(1998, p 104) notes, ‘there is still a good way to go’ in social, cultural and
political negotiations surrounding cultural diversity, before it is ‘firmly secured
in “mainstream” Australia’. However I assert that official multicultural policy, in
particular the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (OMA, 1989), has
been a key constituent in the ‘reforming endeavour’ (Bennett, 1998, p 104) of
Australian multiculturalism, which has delivered a social space for a
predominantly nonviolent cultural mixing. This chapter draws on research
which demonstrates how second generation immigrants in particular engage a
1 Examples are major reports for government such as the Galbally Report (1978) the FitzGerald Report (1988), occasional papers on multicultural issues such as Castles (1992) published by the Centre for Multicultural Studies in Wollongong, and books such as Mistaken Identity by Castles et al (1992), FitzGerald’s (1997) Is Australia an Asian Country? and Stratton’s (1998) Race Daze.
28
range of complex and often strategic approaches in living everyday
multicultural lives.
The rationale behind a focus on the second generation lies in the results of
research carried out in Part Three of the thesis. In Chapter Seven, primary
research indicates anomalies between the employment status of actors from
the second generation, and those from more recent migration. The results of
the casting survey, as well as interview material presented in Part Three,
indicate a trend away from the conspicuous, problematic or celebratory
multiculturalism, to a redefined multicultural mainstream. This expanded
mainstream, while not entirely free of discrimination along lines of gender,
sex, class, status, religion, race or even appearance, does however embrace
an eclectic cultural mixing. Displaying a strategic hybridity, its members may
at times deliberately transgress mainstream boundaries in one location, while
in another situation slip back to mainstream membership when advantageous
or necessary.
Stratton (1998) and Hage (1997a) critique the official policy of multiculturalism
as unconnected to the concept of everyday multiculturalism. While I am in
agreement with Hage’s disdain of multiculturalism appreciated only as a
cosmopolitan tourist experience and I share Stratton’s view that passing
multicultural-day celebrations should not constitute the product of multicultural
policy, I assert that there is a correlation between official multicultural policy
and the representation of everyday multiculturalism - an analysis Stratton in
particular rejects. I maintain that multicultural policy objectives in the Agenda
and the language of cultural diversity began to filter through to objectives in
broadcasting policy in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was
complemented by a period of research, debate and lobbying as well as a
number of forums in the broadcasting and television community, which
attempted to transform professional practice to take account of a culturally
diverse Australia. The outcome of this activity and the influence of the Agenda
in making multiculturalism a sustained social and cultural policy discourse led
to a ‘convergence of discourses’. The Agenda’s language of cultural diversity
being ‘the reality of Australia’ (OMA, p v) and its objectives for equality of
29
opportunity and the development of skills and talent (OMA, p vii) influenced
the language of broadacsting policy and later professional practice, to
produce programming where cultural diversity became more an embedded or
everyday social and cultural attribute. This counters Stratton’s and Hage’s
view of official multicultural policy as only producing such outcomes as school
day celebrations and a conception of multiculturalism as the superficial
consumption of multicultural cuisine and culture by the middle class.
Finally, this chapter examines recent Australian research on multiculturalism,
hybridity and immigration along with recent research and theory from the
United States, focusing on the second generation. Since the 1990s, a number
of US researchers and theorists (Gans, 1992a, 1992b; Portes and Zhou,
1993; Alba and Nee, 1997; Zhou, 1997; Boyd, 2002; Farley and Alba, 2002)
have invigorated a research program particular to the United States around
the second generation and the ‘reinvention’ of assimilation theory. It is
important to clarify that ‘the return of assimilation’ in analytical terms, does not
signify as Brubaker (2001, p 533) notes, ‘a return to the normative
expectations, analytical models, public policies or informal practices
associated with the ideal of Anglo-conformity’ or what he justly describes as:
‘the bad old days of arrogant assimilation’ (Brubaker, 2001, p 542). This new
research has made useful contributions in examining how the second
generation experiences diverse social and economic outcomes compared to
their parents. While there are fewer comparable studies in Australia on the
second generation, a number of recent Australian multicultural survey studies
(Baldassar, 1997; Luke and Luke, 1998, 1999, 2000; Ang et al, 2000; Noble
and Tabar, 2002) suggest that everyday multiculturalism is widely
experienced in the Australian community, particularly amongst the second
generation. This concurs with the findings of Part Three of the thesis, which
establishes a recognisable everyday expression of multiculturalism in popular
television programming in the late 1990s to 2001, which was noticeably
lacking in earlier programming.
30
Pre and post-war immigration Our very future hinges on the success of such schemes as this (the Snowy River Project). Without water there can be no life. Without immigrant manpower there will be no water. It is as simple as that (Arthur Calwell speaking in 1949, cited in Cope & Kalantzis, 1994, p 166).
Prior to this call for migrants, Australia’s first Minister for Immigration, non-
British migration to Australia had consisted mostly of Chinese gold seekers.
Except for several abandoned attempts at restricting non-European
immigration in the period of the 1850s to the 1880s, migration to Australia was
basically unrestricted. Reasons for the eventual appearance of restrictions in
the late 1880s on immigration were rising unemployment, concerns about
ethnic conflict and fears of immigrant labour threatening wage levels and thus
reducing living standards in the new colonies (Cope & Kalantzis, 1994, p 11).
By the time of federation in 1901, the new Commonwealth Government had
introduced the Immigration Restriction Act, which was to mature into the
White Australia Policy (Linden, 1996, p 27). However, early conflicts related to
immigration in Australia were more about an ethnic division within Her
Majesty’s subjects. While the term ‘anglo-celtic’2 came to signify Australians of
white British origin, there was in the 1880s a division between the Irish and
English populations in Australia. Castles (1992, p 19) considers the anti-Irish
racism in England, later transported to Australia, to be based upon fears of
the Irish forcing down wages and conditions. Castles claims this contributed to
a ‘split in the working class’, which subsequently lasted into the 20th century,
later transferring to a split between immigrant and Anglo populations. Hirst
(1995) on the other hand, believes a lack of hostility between the Irish
Catholic and British Protestant populations in Australia, compared with the
violence in Great Britain was a reflection of an Australian capacity for the
accommodation of differences, and an early indicator of egalitarianism.
2 Inglis (1991, pp 21-22) provides a background to the term anglo-celtic, noting it was initially used by ‘the first ethnics’ – the Catholics in the late 18th century. According to Inglis, the word anglo-celtic starts to appear again in the 1980s, where it came to embrace both English and Irish descendants.
31
In the two positions on Anglo-Irish hostility above, two broad approaches are
evident. The former stresses issues of class, conflict and disadvantage in
Australia’s history of migrant settlement, while the latter concedes the benefits
and mostly non-violent nature of Australia’s immigrant history. In the late 20th
century, tensions around immigration over class have become redundant as
this growing section of the population transcend their parents’ financial and
cultural capital through education and amalgamation with the mainstream.
The focus for community agitation over immigration since the late 1990s has
conspicuously shifted to humanitarian immigration, while the larger family and
points3 immigration intakes receive much less attention. Concerns by the
dominant host culture of economic and cultural loss with the acceptance of
non-Anglo immigrants have been expressed in official and unofficial discourse
up to the recent past. Anti-Chinese sentiments of the mid to late 1800s based
upon concerns of cheap labour and social conflict have been repeated in
political comment many times since in debates about immigration:
I maintain that no class of persons should be admitted here … who cannot come amongst us, take up our rights, perform on a ground of equality all our duties, and share in our august and lofty work of founding a free nation (Sir Henry Parkes in a N.S.W parliamentary debate, 1888, cited in Cope, B., Kalantzis, M. and Castles, S. 1995, p 11)
Parkes’ comments demonstrate as early as 1888 a familiar rhetoric of
invoking the ‘good of the nation’ and fears of social cohesion coming undone
as justification for direct and indirect attacks upon certain groups of
immigrants (the Chinese in this case). Updating the political era to the late
1990s and multiculturalism, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation multicultural policy
statement could be seen as a continuation of Parkes’ speech:
… a lack of integration amongst the population [and] issues of immigration and population must be urgently addressed in the interests of our future as one people. What we are experiencing now in Australia is a threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values (Hanson, 1998).
3 Potential immigrants are awarded points based on such criteria as skills, qualifications and language competency.
32
Pauline Hanson’s implied racism in her comments on immigration, and
debates surrounding immigration in the later half of the 19th century,
demonstrate that hostility towards and racial prejudice against migrants, has
not been limited to isolated periods in the post World War II mass immigration
era. Indeed, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, which was mostly in
reaction to Chinese migration to Australia, began a continuity of race based
immigration selection across a period of 60 years through the selective criteria
of the White Australia Policy.
After World War II, Australia’s overseas-born population grew from 9.8 per
cent in 1947 to remain around 24 percent from the 1990s onwards (ABS,
2003c). That the transition from a profoundly homogeneous Anglo population
to a multi-racial one was without significant turmoil is in some ways related to
what Davidson (1997) notes as a weak national identity in the first half of the
20th century. However, this does not mean that government was not
concerned about public response to immigration. Acceptance of mass
immigration was promoted to the mainstream through the policy of
assimilation.
The first aspect of assimilation led to the selection of, initially, those migrants
whose ‘absorption’ into Australian society would be easiest. Castles,
Kalantzis, Cope and Morrissey (1992, p 45) make the wry observation that it
seems improbable that Calwell’s hopes for migrant ‘invisibility’ could be taken
seriously, in light of the sheer numbers of immigrants from diverse
backgrounds. As a consequence, Calwell saw the need to create a consensus
among Australians for the acceptance of immigrants and so assimilationist
programs for migrants were put in place. This consensus was in itself
appropriated in two ways. First, non-English speaking immigrants were
afforded a number of programs to aid in their integration. Castles (1995, p 14)
lists a number of educative processes for the ‘new Australian’: a pre-
embarkation program in the refugee camp; upon arrival instruction in utilitarian
English and social conditions; the showing of films dealing with Australia, and
then continuing evening classes to facilitate the transformation of ‘aliens‘ into
33
‘good Australians’. The second element in achieving a consensus was the
appeasement of the host culture in regards to the new arrivals. In some ways,
this was accomplished by making it well known that the above filtering and
subsequent induction of migrants was taking place.
In the assimilationist period, the Anglo majority’s support was also
accomplished by the use of media and education to assist in the compliance
of mainstream Australia to the introduction of migrants from diverse European
backgrounds4. As assimilation became untenable in the 1960s and 1970s, the
Galbally report (1978, p 103) developed the first official expression of
multiculturalism as a program of education and services, aimed at promoting
a ‘multicultural society (which) will benefit all Australians’. One of the aims of
Galbally’s multiculturalism was to counter previous racist elements inherent in
the ideology of assimilation. But the use of promotion, education and media
with respect to ‘conditioning’ the Australian public about cultural diversity has
been part of a socialising process with a long history.
In the years leading up to Galbally’s report, the Whitlam government
implemented a broad social justice agenda which included particular
assistance for disadvantaged immigrants. This reflected a philosophy which
recognised that disadvantage was evident across society, rather than existing
in small self contained pockets. In addition, Davidson (1997, p 254) notes the
conferral of citizenship rights in the 1970s became ‘ever more inclusive, partly
because it had to and partly because it did not matter’. This correlates to
Davidson’s premise that pre-Whitlam, national identity was weak in Australia.
However, with the emergence of culturally based nation-building projects
under Whitlam (such as the film industry), a sense of Australian identity began
to develop5. This began a critical engagement with what constituted
4 Such media strategies consisted of the creation of the magazines The New Australian and The Good Neighbour. The film No Strangers Here, which screened as a cinema short, and the use of an Advisory Council to influence the reporting of immigration issues was also employed to influence acceptance (Castles, 1995, p 16). 5 Such films as Stork (1971), The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972), and Alvin Purple (1973), belong to the arrival of the ‘Ocker’ as a grotesque though recognisable Australian identity, while the early output supported by the Australian Film Commission emphasised colonial dramas with settler and rural themes.
34
Australian identity, though mostly male and Anglo, which would later progress
to examining multicultural Australia. What early multicultural policy achieved,
was a significant break with the previous era of making the immigrant either
invisible through imposed assimilatory programs, or simply undesirable as a
threat to the Anglo-Australian identity.
Fathering multiculturalism and Fraser The 1978 the Galbally Report (Migrant Services and Programs: Report of the
Review of Post-Arrival Programs and Services for Migrants) focused on the
provision of services and programs for post-arrival migrants in order to
compensate for generic disadvantages migrants were enduring. Key
recommendations focused on migrant education, translation services,
implementation of ethnic and community help agencies, creating an ethnic
media and an explicit articulation of what multiculturalism meant in 1978 and
how it should advance in the coming years. Under Fraser, the migrant
services of Whitlam’s welfare state model were transferred to an ethnic self-
help strategy. The handing over of responsibilities for immigrant welfare from
centralised government to ethnic communities and agencies, could be seen at
the time as a government keen to give immigrants a voice in defining their
needs and identity which was in sharp contrast to the overt influence
government enacted in assimilationist times. The Galbally Report also began
to define multiculturalism for the first time as an inherent component of
Australian society, though the initial expression of multiculturalism was based
on a concept of primordialist ethnicity.
A primordialist account of ethnicity is concerned with the preservation of
traditions and predicates ethnic difference as a principal element in social
identity. Galbally (1978, p 104) embodies the conservative approach to
multiculturalism in the late 1970s and early 1980s:
We are convinced that migrants have the right to maintain their cultural and racial identity and that it is clearly in the best interests of our nation that they should be encouraged and assisted to do so if they wish. Provided that ethnic identity is not stressed at the expense of society at large, but is interwoven into the fabric of our
35
nationhood by the process of multicultural interaction, then the community as a whole will benefit substantially and its democratic nature will be reinforced.
Critics of early multiculturalism, such as Kalantzis and Cope (1984, p 86), saw
the Fraser years as the co-option of a burgeoning ethnic politics. They
maintain Fraser’s multiculturalism provided a response to conservative ethnic
political interests with a ‘do-nothing-except-be-nice solution’. Using a critical
Marxist analysis, Rizvi (1986) describes early multiculturalism as a state
vehicle for diffusing migrant unrest in the late 1970s. Rizvi argues that migrant
labour was closely connected to industrial manufacturing and so the
containment of possibly disruptive ethnic politics allowed the necessary
structures for the reproduction of the capitalist industry to proceed unheeded.
Castles et al (1992), saw Fraser’s approach to multiculturalism as part of a
general dismantling of Labour-led initiatives in big government and social
justice. Analysis by Jakubowicz, Morrisey and Palsar (1984) of early
multicultural policy as an instrument of class maintenance designed by the
dominant class was later to develop into a critical analysis of multiculturalism
and the media (Jakubowicz et al, 1994). The core assertion in these early
analyses of multicultural policy as a conservative state apparatus is reflected
in later critical multicultural analysis by Hage and Stratton and require further
examination.
In an historical study into the origins of multiculturalism, Lopez (2000)
undertook an extensive primary research program involving interviews with
politicians (including Fraser), senior public servants, ethnic group leaders,
activists and academics on both sides of Australian politics. This was
complemented by a review of documentation (research, policy,
correspondence, parliamentary records, and personal papers) on a scale not
previously attempted. Lopez (2000, p 380) explains how he could find no
evidence ‘to corroborate a Marxist account and analysis’, asserting that such
an interpretation of multiculturalism under Fraser’s to be ‘seriously flawed’.
Lopez asserts that it was ALP left wing ethnic leaders (George Papadopoulos
and Spiro Moraitis) who had the ‘most profound influence’ on Liberal party
policy in these early days. Lopez also finds that Fraser relied most upon the
36
advice of the ‘multiculturalist left’ for a number of years in formulating
multicultural policy. In addition, Lopez (2000, p 39) claims as few in number
the key actors (academics, activists and social policy advisors) in the
development of early multiculturalism. As a consequence, he argues that their
influence was greater than previously recognized.
However critics of Fraser’s multiculturalism sought a deeper sense of social
pluralism, one which would see structural and organisational changes to core
institutions of power, allowing for a more equitable distribution of social
resources. Aside from Lopez’s claims of ‘flawed’ critical analyses, entirely
unfavorable assessments of the Fraser period appear harsh, when one
reflects upon the lasting gains made in the years after the Galbally report’s
release. Essential and highly worthwhile ESL teaching is a case in point, as
well as the establishment of ethnic media, which has evolved into SBS radio
and television. The entry of significant numbers of Indochinese refugees in the
Fraser era is also an enduring symbol of change in Australian society,
regardless of claims of political expediency or external pressures on
government to accept such change6. The combination of explicit multicultural
policy and the influx of non-European migrants and refugees was, however, to
awaken debate surrounding notions of culture and national identity. These
concerns were to come to the fore in the latter half of the 1980s, which
coincides with the arrival of the enduring policy approach contained in the
Agenda for a Multicultural Australia.
6 Castles et al (1992, p 71) cite research by Viviani (1984) to fortify their argument that Asian refugee immigration was forced upon the Fraser government by diplomatic pressure from the United States. In addition they claim that Fraser thought it better to implement an increased, though controlled intake of Asian immigrants, to ‘stem the tide’ and ‘offset the political effects of a divided public opinion’. While there may be some credibility to this claim, Mackie (1997) on the other hand also relies on Vivani’s research but comes to a more generous conclusion of the Fraser government’s handling of the refugee crisis and the direction in which it took immigration policy.
37
Multiculturalism under Labor In 1983, the Federal Labor Government came to power and remained in office
until 1996. In the initial years of government, the Hawke ministry left the
Galbally program ‘virtually intact’ (Cope et al, 1995, p 30). In the post-election
period, Castles et al (1992, p 73) point to the role of the States, particularly
New South Wales, in the development of a socially democratic
multiculturalism, also known as ‘mainstreaming multiculturalism’. New South
Wales in establishing the first Ethnic Affairs Commission in 1977 began
mainstreaming multicultural policy, embedding cultural diversity into Australian
social and working life. For example, the idea of integrating ethnic-specific
assistance across government departments and services, contributes to the
idea of moderating the ‘specificness’ of ethnic populations, as well as the
disabled, Indigenous and other minority groups. This shift in multicultural
policy from a specific set of ethnically discrete measures to multiculturalism as
an inclusive element in all services and policy reflects the changes in later
years of multicultural representations as specific and problematic, to those of
the everyday. This phasing out of ‘ethno-specific services’ (Castles et al,
1992, p 74) from the Galbally era, also marks the beginning of thinking about
Australia in terms of cultural diversity. Here we see multiculturalism no longer
conceived of as an ethnic domain, but as an attempt to incorporate difference
into a reconstructed mainstream. This approach was to gain momentum in the
late 1980s and early 1990s and became a key component in such areas as
EEO strategies and the broadening of SBS’s television charter to address
cultural diversity for all Australians, rather than an exclusively ethnic audience.
The latter half of the 1980s is marked by two major developments which were
to impact upon the status of multiculturalism and attitudes towards
immigration for at least a decade: the so called Asian debate7 and the
National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia. It is difficult to ascertain whether
the National Agenda, released in 1989, was in some way a direct response to 7 The initial comments of Professor Geoffrey Blainey, who is credited with starting the debate, were made in 1984 in the town of Warrnambool at a Rotary meeting. Like Pauline Hanson’s folk-like popularity in the late 1990s, he is also believed to have been encouraged by receiving much ‘fan mail’ (Mackie, 1997, p 30).
38
the irritated climate of immigration and multiculturalism in the mid and later
part of the decade. However, it is insightful to consider both developments, as
both have residues in the recent past. The discord over immigration policy
begun by Geoffrey Blainey witnessed a significant mass media articulation of
racial intolerance towards Asian refugees. Blainey’s position was that the
community would become resentful of cultural differences on display in the
1950s dreamscape of his conception of an average Australian street. His now
infamous remarks about malevolence arising from ‘the smell of goat’s
meat…noodles drying on the line and phlegm on the footpath’ (Cope et
al,1995, p 31), suggested a wider intolerance to cultural diversity beyond his
comments at the time which were directed at Asian immigrants.
Not wishing to contain his comments to superficial markers of cultural
difference for causing conflict, he also invoked the well worn path of
immigration threatening ‘jobs for Australians’ and intimating social cohesion
would be in jeopardy. It is interesting to note that in 1986, only two years after
the Blainey debate, the ALP began to reduce commitments to multiculturalism
with the closure of the Australian Institute for Multicultural Affairs8, cuts to ESL
teaching and an attempt to amalgamate the ABC with SBS. Castles (1992, p
14) chronicles how ‘an ethnic mobilisation which threatened the ALP hold on
marginal seats [resulted] in an amazingly rapid about-turn’. In fact, after this
period, a form of policy and activity compensation occurred with the
establishment of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the FitzGerald Review
(FitzGerald, 1988) on immigration, scrapping plans to merge SBS with the
ABC and the release of the National Agenda. The FitzGerald Review,
released in 1988, marks an attempt in policy to move away from issues of
culture only towards an economic imperative for multiculturalism.
The Labor Government was embarrassed by FitzGerald’s questioning of
multiculturalism, criticisms of unskilled intakes and suggestions that
entrepreneurial Asian candidates would be preferred applicants. Such notions
also upset the more established European ethnic lobbies (Mackie, 1997, p 32; 8 Known as AIMA, this institute was established in the Fraser years to realize Galbally Report proposals.
39
Grattan, 1993, p 133). What is enduring about FitzGerald’s report is the move
away from the cultural and identity aspects surrounding immigration and
ethnic diversity found in early policy to the economic benefits of immigration.
Lack and Templeton (1995) provide a key understanding of the report in
identifying that the term multiculturalism was becoming a liability and
misunderstood. At the time of the report’s release in 1988, critical events and
public discourse surrounding notions of national identity and cultural
resurgence were also taking place: the Bicentennial ‘celebrations’ and Expo
88 in Brisbane. Both of these events contained theatre and spectacle in order
to evoke public sentiments, feelings and understandings of Australian
nationhood and the place of Australia in relation to others (Lawe Davies,
1998, p 35). Public and national media discourse around the multicultural
debate coincided with these national cultural events, just one year before the
release of the Agenda, making conditions for a re-evaluation of
multiculturalism judicious for the Agenda’s release in 1989.
Lawe Davies (1998, p 35) draws attention to the ‘competing versions of
national identity’ that were apparent by the end of 1988. Citing Morris (1993),
and Turner (1994), Lawe Davies (1998) constructs a continuum of readings
for the Bicentennial from Morris’ ‘bleakness’ to Turner’s ‘optimism’. Morris
(1993) provides the counter-celebratory history of a British invasion and
considers the Bicentennial year as an Australian ‘Tourism Fantasia’, where
tourism is cast as the national pursuit, deflecting attention from voices calling
for a more inclusive history of Australian settlement. Turner (1994) on the
other hand identifies the contested meanings around the Bicentenary as
signalling the beginning of Australia coming to terms with an ‘ambiguous,
contested, mutable but honourable, formation of national identity’ (cited in
Lawe Davis, 1998, p 40). Castles (1992) presents many of the ultimately
contradictory episodes of the Bicentennial9 as a clear sign that nationalism in
the sense of a cohesive reflection of an Anglo mainstream was untenable in
9 Castles (1992, pp 155 - 157) lists such episodes as an exchange of beer cans between Aborigines on the Harbour shore with yuppies in yachts, the bankruptcy of the First Fleet re-enactment, the staging of a mock Aboriginal counter-attack against the ‘first fleeters’, and a collection of ‘parochial’ community events.
40
the late 20th century. Indeed, the cultural and social uncertainty of the
Bicentenary’s ‘contested celebrations’ (Turner, 1994, p 92), can be seen as
the beginnings of a changing mainstream.
Turner’s (1994) notion of a reconceptualised Australian culture is associated
with the conception of cultural hybridity. He sees the end of the 1980s and
early 1990s as a hopeful site of cultural transformation in Australia, based on
a ‘hybrid (which) retains its links to and identification with its origins (and) is
also shaped and transformed by … its location in the present’ (Turner, 1994, p
125). Through such a construction of national identity, Turner offers an
alternative to the claims of Castles et al (1992) for the ‘demise of nationalism
in Australia’. Accounts of the Bicentenary such as Turner’s in the period
concerned are welcome, but such an account is in contrast with some of the
major political debates from the period.
In August 1988, John Howard, the then opposition leader, made remarks on
radio which clearly implied an aversion towards Asian immigration. Howard
pronounced, that if ‘Asian immigration were slowed down a little’, this would
be of benefit to social cohesion (cited in Betts, 1993, p 231). These remarks
follow his rejection of clear bipartisan support for immigration and multicultural
policy. This is in addition to his objection to the word ‘multiculturalism’ in the
name Australian Bicentennial Multiculturalism Foundation. Betts (1993)
analyses press before and after Howard’s removal as party leader over this
issue and notes that before the fateful radio interview on August 1st, the press
had generally supported Howard for his ‘brave’ criticisms against
multiculturalism and acquiesced with his endorsements of FitzGerald’s pro-
economic immigration policy recommendations. However, by the second
week of August, Howard had become the man who appealed to the ‘darker
aspects of human nature’ (editorial Financial Review, in Betts, 1993, p 233).
Within this replay of the Blainey debate (and later with Pauline Hanson and
the Tampa affair), one can find an alarming pattern in the Australian media’s
approach to new waves of immigration. As the press and electronic media
waver in their commitment to whichever group is arriving and how it is being
addressed in policy, the inevitable effect is for the debate to return to issues
41
driven by anxiety, familiar to those in the 19th century. As the media and
political mêlée inevitably subsided over Howard’s comments and his removal,
the arrival of the Agenda began a sustained period of political support for
broad multicultural policy.
The Agenda In 1989 the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia was released and
received bipartisan support throughout Labor’s term until 1996. The policy
was reaffirmed as a commitment to multiculturalism by the Liberal party on
October 30, 1996 (DIMA, 1998a). In spite of the change in government in
1996, the original Labor policy continues to have its impacts on policy
regarding cultural diversity in Australia, as the Agenda’s core objectives
remained mostly intact with the release in 1999 of the Liberal party’s
multicultural policy: A New Agenda for Multicultural Australia (New Agenda)
The original Agenda’s three core dimensions reflect a mix of economic and
social equity aspirations for the support of multiculturalism:
1) cultural identity: the right of all Australians, within carefully defined limits, to express and share their individual cultural heritage, including their language and religion.
2) social justice: the right of all Australians to equality of treatment
and opportunity, and the removal of barriers.
3) economic efficiency: the need to maintain, develop and utilize effectively the skills and talents of all Australians, regardless of background (OMA, 1989, p vii).
These three objectives are not dissimilar from the New Agenda’s four
principles:
1) civic duty: which obliges all Australians to support those basic structures and principles of Australian society which guarantee us our freedom and equality and enable diversity to flourish.
2) cultural respect: which, subject to the law, gives all Australians the
right to express their own culture and beliefs and obliges them to accept the right of others to do the same.
42
3) social equity: which entitles all Australians to equality of treatment and opportunity so that they are able to contribute to the social, political and economic life of Australia, free from discrimination, including on the grounds of race, culture, religion, language, location, gender or place of birth.
4) productive diversity: which maximises for all Australians the
significant cultural, social and economic dividends from the diversity of our population (New Agenda, p 8).
Both Agenda policies condense these domains into the promotion of social
harmony, a ‘fair go’ for all and the harnessing of human resources. The
policies cautious emphasis on private and community expressions of cultural
practice ‘within carefully defined limits’ is a progression of earlier policy, which
is mindful of Australian law, the Constitution and citizenship rights. The
change of government in 1996 brought with it a dismantling of multicultural
policy bodies and highly contentious changes to immigration policy with
respect to humanitarian immigration. In spite of these significant events, a
policy continuity with respect to multiculturalism is evident.
Stratton (1998) considers the cultural aspects of multicultural policy as a
disempowering influence. His criticism being that the ‘political and legal
spheres’ continue to be ‘dominated by British…premises and institutional
forms’ (Stratton, 1998, p 11). Davidson (1997, p 167), concurs with Stratton,
maintaining the view of the National Agenda as embellishing cultural diversity
at the cost of negating criticism of ‘existing political and legal structures’.
Davidson argues that multicultural policy’s emphasis on the cultural sphere
disavows considerable issues related to citizenship and active participation
therein. Closely related to Davidson’s argument, Castles (1997) attempts to
explore a ‘multicultural citizenship’ as a response to globalisation and
questions of national identity. Invoking Habermas, Castles connects
democracy with the collectivity of citizens able to exercise their rights.
Habermas states: ‘A correctly understood theory of rights requires a politics of
recognition that protects the integrity of the individual in the life contexts in
which his or her identity is formed’ (cited in Castles, 1997, p 13 - my
emphasis). The Agenda attempts to both recognise and defend the ‘life
contexts’ of different groups in an accord which confers on immigrants the
43
accessibility of citizenship while at the same time asking them to respect the
authority of an Australian system of law and democracy. Castles (1997)
regards social well-being, education and economic rights to be necessary for
the realisation of active or multicultural citizenship. The Agenda is concerned
with these domains (ie: social well being, education and economic security)
and its focus on equity as a pivotal element has been a consistent discourse.
In reflecting upon ten years of ‘the ALP model of multicultural citizenship’,
Castles (1999, p 35) states that the Agenda’s efforts in access and equity
brought ‘important benefits for many people’.
Equity policy in the Agenda expressed and translated into action centers on
placing responsibility for equity issues within the management processes of
organisations. In the New Agenda, a strategy continuity exists to form
partnerships between the Commonwealth and the private sector in order to:
achieve widespread appreciation of the fact that productive diversity and performance improvements are achievable through diversity management strategies, and that diversity planning should be viewed as an integral part of an organisation’s business (New Agenda, p 8).
The long term aim of the original Agenda’s strategy was the removal of ‘the
need for on-going external or additional support’ for minority populations
(OMA,1989, p 51). Castles (1992, p 19) observes the paradox in
mainstreaming. If not promoted, the continuation of distinct ethnic services
may ‘segregate and marginalise migrants’. On the other hand, the
mainstreaming of services ‘can mean neglecting special needs and
perpetuating structural discrimination’. The challenge for the Agenda was to
register a balance between specific assistance where needed to address
structural obstacles for some groups, while encouraging an embeddedness of
cultural diversity in mainstream work practices and everyday culture along the
way. The Agenda promotes the mainstream as the site for diversity and the
removal of barriers, due to ‘ethnicity, culture, religion, language, gender or
place of birth’ (OMA, 1989, p vii). Bottomley (1994, p 140) states with regard
to multiculturalism: ‘practices of heterogeneity are strongly influenced by
policies’. The Agenda’s focus is on social justice and equality. It is deliberate
44
in not converging on ethnicity as the central policy rationale. The Agenda’s
discourse is to alter the economic and cultural sphere, to gradually replace an
Anglo-centred mainstream with an everyday heterogeneity and cultural
mixing.
This evaluation is in contrast to Stratton, who marks out a clear division
between official multicultural policy and everyday multiculturalism. According
to Stratton (1998), policy such as the Agenda is firmly based in a conventional
cultural pluralist paradigm, representing the interests of the ‘core mainstream’,
whilst compartmentalising non-Anglo groups. Official policy is seen as
‘population management’ and a tool of the state for securing an Anglo-
Australian identity and ‘managing the national culture’ (Stratton, 1998, p 112).
In contrast to official multiculturalism, he describes everyday multiculturalism
as ‘how cultures, produced by individuals in their everyday lives, merge,
creolise and transform as people live their lives’ (Stratton, 1998, p 15).
On occasion, Stratton, like Bottomley above, acknowledges an association
between the development of social and cultural heterogeneity and the policies
of multiculturalism. Stratton states: ‘Of course, everyday multicultural practice
is heavily influenced by the institutional apparatus, and the concerns of official
multiculturalism’ (Stratton, 1998, p 34). However, this statement is tempered
by Stratton when he later asserts, ‘to think that Australian social life is lived in
the image of the official policy of multiculturalism is a crucial ideological
misrecognition’ (Stratton, 1998, p 138). It would be naïve to assert that
Australian social life strictly reproduces either the rhetoric of policy or that
policy captures the contradictions and complexities of ‘everyday’ life. As
Webber (2001, p 882) states, ‘countries are always richer and more varied
than the bare terms inscribed in legal texts’. However, Borrowski (2000, p
461) makes the point that social policy and social transformations are ‘often
impossible to disentangle … from other social, economic and political policies
and processes which act in tandem with it during a given epoch’. And as
O’Regan (1993, p 134) asserts, ‘multiculturalism is a policy that sets up a
range of possibilities which cannot be known in advance, and which will
provide many different styles and passages for realising policy’.
45
A range of possibilities began to materialize at the end of the 1980s with
questions of national identity epitomised by the Bicentenary year and policy
recognition for cultural diversity contained in The Agenda. The articulation of
cultural pluralism in this period is far removed from the primordialist
celebratory rhetoric of earlier multicultural policy. Turner (1994), writing before
the change of federal government in 1996, observed new found complexity in
the contradictions of the late 1980s, taking up the possibilities offered by
diasporic, hybrid and post-colonial accounts of identity. In addition, increasing
significance and attention of the dispossession of Indigenous Australians and
the germination of reconciliation at the time add weight to Turner’s (1994, p
87) claim that ‘something important did begin to happen during the
Bicentenary’. The Agenda’s framework for encouraging cultural diversity
across a broad social program and the possibilities awakened by the Mabo
decision delivered overdue changes to the social landscape. However, the
election of a Liberal government in 1996 placed in doubt, the work undertaken
since the Agenda’s inception.
1996: Back to the future? Just don’t mention the ‘M’ word - Sydney Morning Herald byline in a 1997 article (Sheridan, 1997, p 13) which comments on the Prime Minister’s artful avoidance of the word ‘Multicultural’, in spite of releasing an issues paper titled ‘Multicultural Australia – the Way Forward’.
The election of the Liberal government was interpreted as a response to
administrative and cultural ‘elites’ being out of touch with the social and
economic distress of ‘mainstream Australia’ (Jupp, 1997; Morris, 1998). This
contention was also used to explain the election success of Pauline Hanson
to the House of Representatives in 1996 along with the election of 13
members of her One Nation Party to the Queensland State Parliament in
1998. Stratton (1998, p 23) describes this conservative fracture as ‘the
revenge of the lower-middle class against the governmental consensus of the
rest of the middle class’. Developing a race based analysis of Hansonism,
Perera and Pugliese (1997, p 10) take the view that Hanson’s policy for
46
compulsory military service for example, was about mobilising the Anglo
mainstream ‘against a threat from the Asian north’ and to ‘protect against
aliens within’. Probyn (1999) on the other hand, claims Pauline Hanson’s
place in politics at the time represented the danger of the ‘white woman
settler’ who disturbs national male identity. While One Nation’s presence in
parliament became virtually extinct and Hanson herself was briefly jailed in
2003, a change in policy direction in the late 1990s for aboriginal affairs,
immigration and multiculturalism within the Liberal Party was in evidence. In a
blunt assessment of the period, Kalantzis (2000, p 99) stated: ‘the coalition
government has dumped multiculturalism’.
John Howard had previously opposed aspects of immigration policy and
multiculturalism throughout the Hawke/Keating era. It is therefore not
surprising Howard abolished the Office of Multicultural Affairs and The Bureau
of Immigration Multicultural and Population Research, cut ESL funding, and
introduced changes, with adverse implications for migrant populations who
are susceptible to economic hardship10. And during this period of
administrative contraction and revision of immigration policy, the advent of
Pauline Hanson contributed to the renaissance of debate over multiculturalism
and immigration in particular.
As with the preceding Blainey and Howard episodes in the 1980s, a lack of
‘conscious articulation of our values and what is non-negotiable’ (FitzGerald,
1997, p 161) with regard to Asian immigration and cultural diversity allowed
Hanson’s mixture of talkback radio anxieties, ignorance and factual errors to
proliferate in the media. Such racist and bigoted assessments, which were in
the past mostly confined to the private sphere, went ‘unchallenged by
Australia’s political leadership….for nearly 2 months’ (FitzGerald, 1997, p
161). This silence led to an increasing revisionism as opposed to any critical
reflection over where immigration policies should go in the late 1990s, with
multicultural policy development stalled for two years. There is no doubt that
10 Such changes include an extension of the waiting period for migrants to receive welfare payments from 6 months to 2 years, recouping costs of ESL teaching and increased scrutiny of family migration.
47
Hanson’s misinterpretations of multicultural policy at the time, as well as her
erroneous facts on a number of issues gave a voice to those wishing to attack
immigration – though Pauline Hanson was not the first to invoke such
methods.11
At the end of the 1990s, conservative politics began to target immigration
policy. A Public Affairs document distributed by DIMA (1998b) expresses an
implicit motive to implement immigration strategies which in effect
demonstrate that the Liberal Party was reacting to conservative influences by
‘doing something about immigration’. Within the four-page document (titled,
‘Immigration Reform: The Unfinished Agenda’) strategies include tightening
measures for family and refugee status, narrowing immigration appeal for
judicial review and ‘restoring the integrity of our borders’ by implementing
ministerial fast-track visa cancellations for ‘undesirables’. These measures
eventually came to fruition with the Tampa crisis and the resulting ‘Pacific
Solution’ for so called border protection purposes. These highly visible
changes to immigration policy came about at the same time as the New
Agenda was released in late 1999.
While the Liberal party undertook divisive changes to humanitarian
immigration policy, the major report by the National Multicultural Advisory
Council, Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century (NMAC, 1999)
continued policy support for multiculturalism. The resulting policy statement, A
New Agenda for Multicultural Australia embraces much of the previous 1989
Agenda with all but two of the NMAC report recommendations supported. Of
the two not supported but noted, Recommendations 16 and 17 ‘urge’ political
leaders to maintain a consensus of support for multiculturalism and to ‘not
lend support to or confer any political respectability or credibility on individuals
or parties’ who ‘violate the spirit’ of multicultural policy (NMAC, 1999, p 16).
11 Rimmer’s (1991a) publication The Cost of Multiculturalism, which contains lurid and unsubstantiated claims regarding the ‘true costs’ of multiculturalism is a major contribution to this genre. Claims made by Rimmer include supposed substantial ethnic insurance fraud, unfettered organised crime and the expense to Australia of immigrants with ‘contagious diseases’ (p 58). The book appears to be self published, but was seriously reviewed by The Age (Masanauskas, 1991, p 13) and found its way as an article in Bulletin (Rimmer, 1991b).
48
These two recommendations were a clear reference to One Nation and
Pauline Hanson’s performance when she spoke about immigration and
multiculturalism in the House of Representatives in 1996. Noteworthy
recommendations supported in the New Agenda are Recommendation 24 and
30. Recommendation 24 asks that Government agencies lead by example in
implementing policies, which will increase cultural diversity in the workplace.
This recommendation was then incorporated into the Australian Public
Service charter, making the collection of data on DCALB employees and
diversity workplace plans mandatory in government agencies.
Recommendation 30 requests that a central multicultural Agency, similar to
the defunct OMA be formed. The New Agenda supports this in principal, the
Government later establishing the Council for Multicultural Australia in 2000
to provide policy advice and to co-ordinate activities for the promotion of
cultural diversity in society, including ‘grassroots programs’ to support equity
strategies.
This policy continuity with multiculturalism brings about the question of
whether the government’s immigration policies have impacted deleteriously
on former multicultural policy outcomes and the progression of
multiculturalism since. Lopez (2000, p 28) notes that in spite of Pauline
Hanson’s remarks on multiculturalism from 1996 to 1998, multiculturalism in
public policy was eventually reconfirmed. In contrast to Kalantzis statement
above that multiculturalism has been ‘dumped’, Lopez (2000, p 27) asserts:
‘multiculturalism remains secure’. More recently in The Australian, one time
immigration advisor Professor Zubrzycki (2003, p 9) wrote that the entire
portfolio of immigration and multiculturalism had been ‘tainted by the disgrace
of the Tampa affair’ and policies for humanitarian immigration. This was in
response to a letter from Dr Colin Rubenstein (2003, p 10), a member of the
Council for Multicultural Australia, who asserted like Lopez above, that
multicultural policy has been safeguarded since the release and support of the
New Agenda.
The above dilemma rests largely on whether it is possible or desirable to
separate immigration from multicultural policy. Can multiculturalism in the
49
policy sphere and its outcomes in the everyday as conceptualized in this
research transcend recent ruptures in immigration policy, such as the Tampa
incident? Community opinion on immigration and its relationship to
multiculturalism is less than straightforward. Birrell and Betts (2001, pp 3 - 6)
examine community attitude research to immigration collected since 1954 in
order to discern whether the Coalition’s border protection policies have made
an impact upon community opinion. Figures show that since 1992, a steadily
decreasing number of people considered the intake to be too high. In late
September 2001 a majority (54%) thought the number of immigrants was ‘just
right’ or even ‘too low’. Using an interview survey methodology, SBS research
by Ang et al (2002, p 5), found high levels of support for multiculturalism and
cultural diversity, at 52% and 59% respectively (entirely negative views were
at 10%). Birrell and Betts speculate whether the Coalition’s border protection
policies have made people more comfortable with immigration or whether
lower levels of unemployment and low interest rates have had their impact on
opinion as well. But one could just as likely speculate that since the 1990s the
community is simply less concerned with immigration numbers and
multiculturalism but rather than with the category of immigrant.
Since the Tampa incident, it is the refugee (humanitarian) intake which has
become the focus of attention in community and media debate on
immigration. Based on this premise, it is problematic to conflate emotive and
unique issues surrounding humanitarian immigration and the legitimacy of
arrivals with the policy of multiculturalism, which increasingly, relates to
immigrants whose life in Australian society has less to do with the critical
needs of refugees. This does not mean that the Tampa incident has nothing
to do with important social trends in opinion regarding anxiety over
humanitarian immigration. However, DCALB immigrants as a group are more
likely to be either from first generation family category migration, related to the
1970s and 1980s waves of South East Asian migration, or second and third
generation migrants whose parents were part of post war period immigration
intakes (ABS, 2003c). In this regard, I agree with Birrell and Betts (2001, p 4)
who point out that ‘hard multiculturalists’ are mistakenly inclined to consider
immigration and multiculturalism as one and the same, as they ‘recast
50
Australia as a community of communities’. The authors are correct in their
assertion that there is a high degree of ‘intermixing and intermarriage’ within
Australia’s culturally diverse population, which makes any concentration on
refugee immigration as a focal point for considering multiculturalism
somewhat misguided. The issue of cultural mixing is a significant aspect of
this thesis. The comprehensive study by Ang et al (2002, p 4) on
contemporary trends and attitudes to multiculturalism came to the conclusion
that ‘cultural mixing and matching is almost universal’ – in all locations in
Australia. This is in contrast to the assumptions made by Birrell and Betts
however (2001), that there is an ‘ethnic divide’ in Australia, once one moves
away from South West Sydney.
Critical theorists such as Hage (1998) and Stratton (1998) also make
assumptions about the facility of those living in areas not belonging to the
‘cosmopolitan elite’ in Sydney or Melbourne to engage with cultural diversity.
Their position is that while the white, city living ‘tourist’ can search out their
measure of cultural diversity for self-edification at the expense of the migrant,
such an experience is assumed to be not available to the regional and
presumably less educated Anglo. For Hage (1997a, 1997b) in particular, it is
predominantly in the private homes and everyday lives of conspicuously non-
white immigrants in South West Sydney that a ‘vibrant interactive’ everyday
multiculturalism is located (Hage, 1997b, p 159). While I agree with Hage’s
desire for an approach to multiculturalism located in the everyday lives of
migrants, as opposed to celebratory or problematic notions of multiculturalism,
both he and Stratton ignore the inevitable process of community diffusion and
multicultural incrementalism. This diffusion occurs both geographically and
culturally, due to Australia’s high level of inter-ethnic relationships and the
increasing significance of the second generation and their relationship to
cultural diversity. This outlook is supported by Ang et al (2002, p 6), who
found no evidence of ‘ethnic ghettos’ with regard to cultural experience and
practice, but did find a marked and affirmative engagement with cultural
diversity among growing numbers of the second generation.
51
In quantitative terms, the statistics for cultural diversity within marriages12 and
what it might mean for cultural diversity in Australia is noteworthy. While
Australia and the United States have a similar percentage of people from
culturally diverse backgrounds, only two percent of marriages in the US are
registered as interracial (Luke and Luke, 1999, p 225). However in Australia,
marriages between brides and grooms from NES countries increased from
20% in 1974 to 30% of all marriages in 1998. Of this 30% of marriages,
almost one third were between a long term Australian and a NES partner, a
further 30% were between partners of the same NES overseas birthplace and
40% were between partners with different NES overseas birthplaces. In the
late 1990s, there was an even greater number of culturally diverse marriages
in the second generation than in the first generation. In this group, 40% of
marriages involved a long term Australian, 40% involved partners from
differing cultural backgrounds while only 20% were between partners of the
same cultural background (ABS, 2001)13. This equates to 80% of second
generation immigrants marrying outside their cultural group. Ang et al (2002, p
26) also reported a high incidence of intercultural relationships among their
sample, with people aged between 16 and 24 almost 30 times more likely to
be in an intercultural relationship than those over 55.
Price (1989, 1993) came to similar figures for projections on ‘intermixture’ and
he puts forward the challenge to multicultural policy to take account of these
inevitable changes in conceptualising multiculturalism. However, Price’s
(1989) use of ancestry and cultural diversity within marriage census data to
support an adaptation and dilution model of immigration and multiculturalism
is strongly attacked by Castles et al (1992). They state that the use of such
data is inherently racist and see it as an instrument of bloodline classification,
being worse than such data use in Nazi Germany (p 170 - 171). Luke and
Luke (1998, 1999, 2000), who undertake inter-ethnic family research, also cite
demographic data. However they tackle the classificatory vocabulary and
conceptual issues of collecting ethnic and race based data, and then go on to
12 The term ‘cultural diversity in marriage’ is preferred here over the term ‘mixed marriage’. 13 With regard to Indigenous couples, the ABS (2001) note that by 1996, 57% of all couples involved a partner who had not identified as Indigenous.
52
combine this with survey research among interethnic families. An assessment
of their research provides a helpful foundation for examining issues of
multiculturalism, cultural mixing, and the second generation.
Multicultural and strategic hybridity
Ang (2000, p xix) states that the term multiculturalism has become ‘stale’. A
conception of multiculturalism as an attempt to simply manage and contain
cultural diversity in the context of migrant communities ‘within the Australian
nation’ is indeed an ‘older notion of multiculturalism’. As a way to invigorate
multicultural policy and ways of thinking and teaching multiculturalism, Luke
and Luke (1998, 1999, 2000) undertook significant research in the late 1990s
into interracial families. One of their aims (1999, p 237) was to correct what
they saw as a lack of policy awareness in multiculturalism for more complex
renderings of the concept, as well as the need to enhance understanding of
racializing practices and the politics of identity in interracial families and their
offspring – which now constitute a considerable number of Australians. They
were also interested in pursuing deficiencies in cultural theory, particularly in
analyses of race and ethnicity, by highlighting the location of the interracial
family as a significant identity figure and key site ‘for the development and
articulation of hybrid identity’ (1999, p 223).
Luke and Luke (1999, p 232) make use of recent theoretical discussions of
diaspora and hybridity to construct the interracial family as an account of ‘the
affirmation of blended and malleable cultural identities’. Their field research
involving families in different parts of Australia reveals degrees of
ambivalence and ambiguity amongst their subjects towards their cultural
background, and ‘a slipperiness across a range of signifiers that bear no
direct ‘essential’ link to any identifiable a priori identity discourse’. They see
these families as enhanced exemplars of Bhabba’s ‘third space’ for the
formation of hybrid identities, which are not ‘exclusively the representation of
the dominant culture, but intertwine with community, family, or nation
narratives’ (Luke and Luke, 1999, p 234). Their service of diaspora and in
particular hybridity theory within intercultural families, presents a productive
53
approach in considering how significant cultural mixing and second generation
migrants have begun to transform the mainstream in Australia.
Luke and Luke’s analysis is not unlike that of Hage (1997a) and Stratton
(1998), who see multicultural policy as deficient in capturing or constructing
the everyday reality of cultural diversity within certain migrant communities –
particularly those from non-European backgrounds. But unlike Hage and
Stratton, Luke and Luke are more generous in recognising the locations and
depth of everyday multiculturalism throughout the Australian community. Their
research provides additional support for Ang et al’s (2002) conclusions, on the
extent and engagement of cultural diversity in the nation. Importantly, Luke
and Luke’s research demonstrates that while discrimination is obviously still
an important issue for subjects (and thus policy as well), it is not necessarily a
pivotal focus for such culturally diverse family members14. Among those
under 40 in particular, a range of sentiments and experiences of being from a
noticeably culturally diverse background are registered – from ambiguity and
total ‘lack of yearning’ for home or origin – to humour and a ‘playing through’
of difference and similarity (Luke and Luke, 1999, p 230). Hage’s (1997a)
determination to split the experience of multiculturalism between the Anglo
elite cosmo-multiculturalitst and the working class migrant seems misplaced
when one considers the greater complexity presented by significant interracial
relationships and the mobility of the second generation to move between
identities for varying purposes. Marotta (2000, p 185) notes while cultural
boundaries are still important for some groups in the ‘construction of self
identity’, the multicultural experience may make cultures ‘porous’ as well.
Essentially, such members are, as Luke and Luke (1999, p 249) state,
‘innovatively crafting themselves’ through a combination of local agency and
various institutions such as the family, school, media, community and nation.
This version of a multicultural hybridity extends and complicates the notion of
a celebratory hybridity or a self acting fluidity in much the same way as Noble
14 The fact that Luke and Luke’s subjects, were what Hage classifies as ‘Third World Looking migrants’, is particularly important in consideration of Hage and Stratton’s work, whose analyses are focused on the noticeably non-European migrant.
54
and Tabar (2002) find a strategic hybridity among second generation
Lebanese youth.
The importance of the second generation in broad multicultural research has
been noted by a number of Australian researchers. Ommundson (2000, p
105), writing about the place of migrant Chinese authors in Australian culture,
asserts that it is writers of the second generation who make contact with the
‘national mainstream’ with cross-cultural writing. Castles and Davidson (2000,
pp 138 - 139) also locate the second generation as the foremost instance of
transcultural consciousness and experience. In comparison with previous
notions of ethnic exclusion, classic assimilation theory, or even homeland
identification within diasporic communities, they perceive the second
generation’s interaction with increasingly diverse peer groups, as resulting in
new forms of cultural work and lifestyle. Baldassar (1997, p 89) demonstrates
in her interviews amongst second generation migrants who make the visit to
the homeland, that such groups in contemporary Australian culture reinvent
their ethnicity in response to the ‘host society’, as well as in response to the
homeland culture. And finally, Noble and Tabar (2002) bring what they believe
is overdue empirical application of hybridity theory to show how second
generation Lebanese youth may display a flexible or strategic hydridity.
In practice, such youth may assimilate for the purposes of employment, sport,
‘hanging out’, and pursuing relationships with partners from different cultural
groups. While at other times, they may construct a ‘Lebabese-ness’ for
reasons of group solidarity, in order to counteract racism or even
marginalisation within their own wider cultural group. The authors note that
while young males may ‘complain ardently’ about their parents’ traditional
values, the young subjects are not averse to asserting moral convictions to
what they perceive as a ‘moral laxity’ in the Anglo community (Noble and
Tabar, 2002, p 141). The authors make the conclusion that while exhibiting ‘a
degree of assimilation, they also have the capacity to adopt positions which
attempt to subvert the logic of context’ (Noble and Tabar, 2002, p 144). These
recent studies, based predominantly on field research, contribute much
needed perspectives on how the second generation (including ‘Third-world
55
looking migrants’) are able to complicate an overly celebratory account of
hybridity and expand the conception of multiculturalism.
This perspective is further enhanced as the proliferation of global popular
culture makes its contribution to young people’s identity formation. The
arguments of researchers such as Luke and Luke and Noble and Tabar
connect with During’s (2000, p 388) premise, that global culture presents
individuals and collectives with the ‘difficult business of timing when to discard
or transform, and when to welcome or improvise’, cultural and material
products from the global economy. During (2000, p 388) maintains that
cultural agents are making choices of when to ‘exploit, bolster, shrink or
transform’ their cultural repertoire. This second generation research helps to
temper Hage’s (1997a) over-emphasis on intercultural interaction as located
primarily around the everyday of home-building amongst Lebanese in South
West Sydney. It also offers an alternative to his synopsis of the cosmo-
multiculturalist, or ethnic culture consumer, as a conception of
multiculturalism.
Second generation perspectives and research do however bolster Hage’s
(2003, p 59) notion of multiculturalism as a way of conceiving national identity,
rather than multiculturalism as a ‘mode of governing ethnic cultures’. In this
conception of multiculturalism, ‘migrant cultures are seen to be actually
hybridising with the European Australian culture, creating a new multicultural
mainstream’ (Hage, 2003, p 59). The second generation and members of
interracial families in particular experience multiculturalism in no singular
expression or essential conception of the term. In the last 10 years,
researchers concerned with cultural diversity such as those mentioned above
in Australia, and to a greater degree in the United States, have come to
accept that a ‘bumpy’ (Gans, 1992b) or ‘segmented’ (Portes and Zhou, 1993)
‘assimilation’, particularly amongst the second generation, need not be
comprehended as purely an homogenizing device of the state. Rather, as a
conceptual tool, it offers ways of assessing the consequences of transcultural
interaction and proposes that assimilation can be fluctuating, and bring about
the transformation of mainstream culture as well.
56
Conclusion: ‘assimilation’ revisited
Alejandro Portes is recognized as the key sociologist in the US for proposing
a ‘more complex notion of assimilative outcomes’ with the introduction of the
term ‘segmented assimilation’ and for a shift in research agendas to the
second generation (Kivisto, 2001, p 557). This is in addition to the work of
Gans (1992a, 1992b) whose notion of a ‘bumpy-line’ assimilation model has
aspects in common with Portes’ segmented account of new assimilation
theory. Segmented assimilation refers to recognizable trends in some US
populations for uneven ‘inter-generational socioeconomic improvement’
(Boyd, 2002). In the US, communities with well established economic
networks and cultural practices which value ‘success’ such as some South
East Asian cultures, display superior life outcomes for the second generation
compared to other groups. For less successful groups, if parental resources
are minimal in the community, and considerable segments of the population
suffer poor education, the second generation can in fact exhibit downward life
outcomes. However, while the role of education is important, it is not absolute.
This is particularly so when a ‘minority population [is] characterized by an
oppositional culture and identity’ (Boyd, 2002, p 1043). Such factors will then
come into play in education contexts, when certain cultural groups will
encourage high achievement in both family and peer settings, while others will
be vulnerable to a culture of ‘high risk behaviors and school failure’ (Zhou,
1997, p 980). Gans ‘bumpy-line’ assimilation model mirrors the above
elements, however he places a much greater stress on self agency, rather
than broader structural implications in segmented assimilation theory.
According to Gans, the ‘bumps’ along the way to better life chances for ‘dark-
skinned’ young immigrant off-spring (such as Jamaicans) are heavily
influenced by dissimilar peer group practices in the US Black minority culture.
In addition, anti-authoritarian popular culture is seen as contributing to
offspring rejecting parents’ desires for a better life (Zhou, 1997). Under such
conditions, Gans (1992a, 1992b) maintains that it may be preferable for such
groups to delay interaction with other minority groups. Farley and Alba (2002)
on the other hand refute the pessimism of segmented assimilation
57
perspectives, arguing that the contemporary second generation’s diversity
does not allow for whole group assessments. They believe that while most
second generation Americans will not suffer in poverty, they do agree that
intergenerational advancement is diminished for Latino groups.
Brubaker (2001, p 543) points out that these researchers are not ‘opposed to
difference, but to segregation, ghettoization and marginalization’ and that
some forms of assimilation in regards to educational attainment, occupational
mobility and linguistic confidence are in fact desirable, while others are less
so. Aspirations for better life chances are commonly expressed amongst
migrant families, and as Kivisto (2001, p 555) observes, immigrants have
mostly ‘bought into the system [of capitalism] rather than attempted to resist
or subvert it’. This is especially so of more recent migrants. British researcher
Caroline Nagel (2002) offers a corrective to the overly quantitative and
administrative American studies by undertaking interviews with a variety of
Arab groups from the first and second generation in the UK.
Her study argues that strategies for ‘blending in’ are concerned with an
uneven (segmented) accommodation by individuals of dominant norms. She
identifies three clusters within the Arab community who share social and
cultural attitudes in their ‘balancing’ of Arab and English culture. The first
cluster is the Middle Class Negotiators. These mostly first generation Arabs
compartmentalise and at the same time balance their cultural practice into a
private traditional Arab identity, with a public identity of middle class
Englishness. Arab Multiculturalists are first generation, often working class
immigrants, who assert their Arab identity. This may stem from early
community involvement and a desire to maintain membership of their cultural
group, both within Arab culture and in relationship to the mainstream. And
finally, young Cosmopolitans are the second generation professionals, who
display a ‘semi-detachedness’ to Arab and traditional English culture. They
are more likely to declare themselves ‘as members of a new multicultural
mainstream’ and may identify ‘difference’ as an indicator of their belonging to
a culturally diverse London (p 277 – 279). Nagel’s research demonstrates that
the American literature offers points of departure for researching the second
58
generation, rather than incorporating them into multicultural research as an
undifferentiated group.
In other English speaking countries with significant immigration, the
demographics of American cultural diversity differ in important ways. Boyd
(2002) makes the observations that American research in the field may not
apply to other countries with significant culturally diverse populations. The
core reason for this is that the sheer size of the Black community in the US,
their marginal social status, as well as a clearly defined Black culture, is not
repeated in countries such as Canada or Australia. However, the US research
highlights the need for such studies regardless, amongst second generation
migrants in other countries. The American research also offers, as Boyd
(2002, p 1039) comments, conceptual tools for infusing ‘new empirically and
theoretically relevant insights’ into the second generation. While the classic
linear assimilation approach suggested a smooth and homogenous
integration leading to the ‘melting pot’ in the US, and Anglocentric conformity
in Australia, the ‘return of assimilation theory’ adds weight to the influence of
‘family strategies’ in constructing and influencing the identity and aspirations
of culturally diverse people (Nee and Sanders, 2001). Intercultural family
research also helps to enlarge the research agenda for multiculturalism and
offers an exploration of social and cultural intermixing (Hwang, Saenz and
Aguirre, 1997).
Such perspectives concur with Luke and Luke’s interracial family research
and reflect similar circumstances in Australia, where discrepancies in life
chances and education vary among different cultural groups. Like the
Australian research, US studies support the notion of a combination of local
agency and additional factors (school, community, media and nation) to
explain how the second and third generation experience and conceive
multiculturalism. Ang et al’s study (2002, pp 37 - 38) confirms this in the
Australian context, where the second generation live everyday ‘hybrid lives’
with multiple identities, which are not articulated or necessarily desired by the
first generation. However, what is most significant for this research is how
such theoretical work around the second generation in the US and Australia
59
generates an ‘awareness that immigrants do not assimilate into a society that
is fixed and given, but rather one that is fluid and subject to changes brought
about by the presence of immigrants’ (Kivisto, 2001, p 571).
The research on multiculturalism reviewed in this chapter helps lay a
foundation for exploring later in the thesis the inroads made by the second
generation (including more recently ‘Third-world looking’ migrants) into
popular programming, while first generation migrants are still noticeably
absent. Part Three of the thesis confirms how the late 1990s witnessed a
marked improvement in the type of representation of a multicultural Australia
from the problematic to the everyday, as well as improved employment
outcomes for culturally diverse lead actors – though predominantly from the
second generation. I contend that from the late 1980s, multicultural policy
played its role in delivering the social and cultural conditions, for a
‘mainstreaming tendency’ in multiculturalism due in part to an awareness of
cultural mixing and support for social justice issues. In the 1990s,
multiculturalism was conceived less as purely celebratory to be replaced by a
more complex and contradictory set of meanings.
While this chapter has examined broad multicultural theory along with
multicultural policy in the Australian context, Chapter Three focuses on explicit
policy discourses associated with cultural diversity and television. A core
assertion of this thesis is that expansive multicultural policies as typified by
the Agenda and explored in detail in this chapter have been an important
driver for articulating cultural diversity, with subsequent effects for popular
programming. The history, debate and analysis of specific policy aimed at
enhancing the portrayal of cultural diversity on Australian screens occupies a
no less significant location. Chapter Three describes how multicultural policy
from the 1970s informed by a liberal pluralist approach initiated a migrant
multicultural presence in the media, commonly referred to as ‘ethnic
television’. This was principally articulated through the early functions of SBS.
Such a compartmental approach became inadequate in capturing the
consequences of multiculturalism within an expanding mainstream, with
claims for the incorporation of explicit policy measures for cultural diversity to
60
be included within broadcasting policy and applied to the commercial sector.
Chapter Three charts the progression and results of debates surrounding
policy intervention into cultural diversity and popular programming.
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Chapter Three Cultural diversity, television and policy
Introduction Beginning with the Galbally (1978) report and its recommendation for ethnic
television services, broadcasting policy could not contain multiculturalism
forever to a special interest channel alone - being the SBS. The chapter
chronicles how in the 1980s and 1990s, the discourse of multicultural policy
and cultural diversity began to converge with broadcasting policy. I
demonstrate that such policy discourse was simultaneously invoked by
community, commercial and governmental interests to sustain a variety of
arguments around issues of cultural diversity and programming such as
employment and equity, industry protection, industry liberalisation, cultural
maintenance, opposing racism and advancing human rights. The change in
philosophy from a more regulated broadcasting environment to self-regulation
with the advent of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 also brought its
tensions. The chapter concludes with an examination of ‘governmental
television’ with two Creative Nation case studies of SBS Independent and its
commercial relation, the Commercial Television Production Fund. These two
case studies represent the achievements possible for a policy approach to
increasing diversity in programming – including cultural diversity. The chapter
substantiates the notion that cultural and broadcasting policy is influenced by
a broader field of social policy.
The politics of mobilisation by individual activists, advocacy groups, cultural
critics and key stakeholders are as O’Regan (1993, p 115) states, able to
‘project … a unity in diversity and stage their policy involvement’. Accounts of
policy in cultural spheres (Hawkins, 1993; Cunningham, 1992) have employed
a Foucauldian analysis to illustrate how the development of policy discourses
are linked to practices revolving around ‘political rationalities, actor networks
and technologies of government’ (Flew, 1997, p 91). The range of ‘actor
networks’ in debates surrounding cultural diversity in broadcasting policy
62
(particularly with respect to commercial drama production) substantiates
Hawkins (1994, pp 36 - 37) claim of fluidity and diversity within the ‘sphere of
the governmental’ and that cultural policy is ‘complex, shifting and
contradictory’. Liberal multiculturalism and ethnic TV Three years before the Galbally Report (1978) was released, ethnic
broadcasting existed in the form of access radio 3ZZ in Melbourne and the
state-like broadcasters 2EA and 3EA in Sydney and Melbourne respectively.
While 3ZZ did not continue beyond 1980, 2EA and 3EA went on to become
the SBS radio service. Lawe Davies (1997) considers the continuance of the
‘colonial controlled’ EA stations and their subsequent transition to SBS as the
beginning of a pattern in ethnic broadcasting, whereby higher paid Anglo
managers were in conflict with lower paid DCALB staff. According to Lawe
Davies, this conflict represented the ethnic community’s struggle against a
paternal mainstream. These early issues of the purpose of ethnic media and
how it should be managed evolved into debates around SBS television and its
charter responsibilities, which were to resonate for nearly twenty years.1 What
is important for this thesis is the impetus and effects that community and state
arguments for an ethnic representation in broadcasting had in more general
terms on the commercial sector. The combination of Galbally’s
recommendation for ethnic television and Fraser’s support for such
broadcasting led to the creation of SBS television. This subsequently and
importantly put commercial broadcasting on notice to give consideration to
Australia’s cultural diversity in its programming.
It is no surprise that the 1970s and early 1980s approach to multiculturalism
fits together with a preserved space for migrant cultures to find expression in
a discrete ethnic media. Castles et al (1992, p122) make the point that a
multiculturalism which is based only on the preservation of traditions and
celebration of descriptive cultural differences leaves minority groups ‘to play
the core cultural game’. In media representations of the period, this translates 1 See Lawe Davies (1997) and O’Regan (1993), particularly chapters 7 and 8, for a comprehensive history and analysis of SBS broadcasting.
63
to programming of sanctioned difference for DCALB audiences and DCALB
creative stakeholders which highlights ethnicity as exotic or problematic. Their
participation in multicultural representations in mainstream programming are
either absent or employ a performed ethnicity, conceived by a dominant Anglo
mainstream. The evolution of SBS television in the 1980s from ‘ethnic TV’ to a
broadcaster of culturally diverse programming in the 1990s for a culturally
diverse community, reflects changes to multicultural policy which took a
mainstreaming turn with the Agenda. In addition to SBS’ role in expanding the
definition of multiculturalism, Cunningham and Flew (2002) note that the
continued support by both sides of government for SBS is also an indicator of
a policy commitment to multiculturalism. With regard to a policy commitment
to multiculturalism in the commercial sector, a great deal of debate on the
issue of Australian identity and representation was an important issue for
commercial broadcasting in the 1980s. Debates about what constitutes an
Australian program have a long history. Of particular significance are those
that took place during the period of regulation under the Australian
Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) and then within its replacement, the Australian
Broadcasting Authority (ABA).
An Australian look
The desire for domestic television to contain Australian content was
expressed in 1956, before television services even began. The Broadcasting
and Television Act 1942 requested licensees to use the services of
Australians in the production and presentation of programs. In 1954, the
Royal Commission on Television resolved that ‘there was an obligation on
television stations to make the best use of Australian talent’ (ABT, 1991a, p
123). The period from the 1950s onwards witnessed the development of
policy intervention into Australian content on commercial television as a
means of securing a space for national culture, by way of advancing local
television production, with drama being the most contested ground. Central to
past decades of policy debate on content regulation is that such regulation is
based on cultural and social objectives, rather than economic imperatives.
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The Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) began content regulation
proper in 1961 with percentage requirements for local content and quotas for
peak viewing periods. This was in response to what was seen as a distressing
trend in increasing American content on Australian screens. At the end of the
1960s content regulation required 50 percent of all content to be local with 12
hours of local content per month dedicated to peak viewing times (ABT,
1991b, p 61). The 1970s saw a major review of the content requirements by
which time the now familiar pattern of consultation began with advocacy
groups such as the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), the
commercial television networks, and the production industry guilds. The ABT
replaced the ABCB in 1977 and made further refinements to the regulation of
local content as well as bringing ‘specific public interest criteria to be
considered by the Tribunal in the granting, renewal, revocation, suspension or
transfer of a licence’ (ABT, 1991a, p 127). With the demise of the ABT in
1992, the public hearing process into licence renewals was replaced by a
range of self-regulation procedures and codes of practice administered by the
Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA). However it is in the area of local
drama specifically, where debates around cultural identity have mostly taken
place.
From 1967, when the first ABCB quota set local drama at two hours per 28
days to the contemporary points system of the Australian Content Standard,
the implication has been that locally produced drama will contribute in
fostering, promoting and reflecting an Australian national identity. From the
1980s onwards, this aim began to include cultural diversity. The ABT first
introduced the term ‘an Australian look’ in 1977 in the initial report Self
Regulation for Broadcasters? (ABT, 1977). Over a period of 10 years,
attempts were made at crafting the regulations behind the phrase into a
feasible and accepted method in order to implement the document. By the
late 1980s, an ‘Australian look’ was described in the ‘Draft Proposal for the
Television Program Standard’ (TPS 14) through ‘on screen’ markers (ABT,
1991a). The indicators were to be tested against a program’s intensity of
‘theme’ (illustrating an Australian lifestyle), ‘perspective’ (the content to be
65
conveyed from an Australian point of view), ‘language’ (use of local accents
and idiom) and ‘character’ (portrayal of Australian characters). The
impossibility of scrutinising such factors was not lost on both the commercial
networks and sectors of the independent production industry2. Cunningham
(1992, p 57) makes the point that the Standard ‘sought to define the
Australianness of a given program as it is viewed on screen and commit the
Tribunal to a hermeneutic rather than an administrative process’. The
irreconcilable vagaries of monitoring such elements subsequently led to the
‘Australian look’ being replaced by the test of an ‘Australian factor’. This test
for Australian content hinges on a quota and points system. For a program to
be deemed Australian, a combination of local key creative personnel indicate
the program’s Australianness. The quota aspect is a measure to ensure a
diversity of local content makes up a percentage of screen time. An amount of
50% was increased in 1999 to 55% of programming to be broadcast between
6.00 am and midnight. The drama score gives different types of drama
programming a point value for which an annual total must be reached.3
Looking beyond the failure of an ‘Australian look’ as the ABT’s means for
promoting cultural objectives, analysts such as Cunningham (1989, p 10) note
that the ‘on screen’ test was the first instance of a ‘modern western system of
broadcasting regulation to move from pinpointing structural and employment
criteria to textual markers of nationality’. What Cunningham is referring to for
example is the replacement of quantitative data on employment requirements
in the media, ownership rules and quotas of local programming, with the
ABT’s aspiration of qualitative interpretation of a program’s text. However as
Cunningham (1992, p 57) observes, such limiting or definitive means of
marking out national identity in a text ‘flew in the face of prevailing cultural
criticism’, which advocated a deconstructionist view of identity – that is, there
is no essential Australian identity, only cultural constructions rendered by
questions of gender, ethnicity and class. This view does not seem to have
been shared by the Standing Committee on Transport, Communication and 2 For more detail on the history of the Draft Standard see ABA 1991a and 1991b. For analysis, see Cunningham, 1992. 3 For a detailed description of the current and previous Australian Content Standards, see http//www.aba.gov.au.
66
Infrastructure, who state that the Tribunal’s role is a ‘significant cultural and
social one’ and that ‘considerable research … supports the concept of
national identity’. They state that the ‘propagation of a sense of national
identity requires television to have a predominantly Australian look’ (Standing
Committee on Transport, Communication and Infrastructure, 1988, p 79).
Beyond the debates over how to regulate for Australian content, Flew (1997, p
97) notes the communal nature of the ABT policy process during the local
Content Inquiry of 1983-1989. He goes on to say that such feedback
mechanisms promoted ‘the circulation of information’, thus reducing conflict
and assisting negotiations to ‘move beyond ritualised oppositions’. A
consequence of years of dialogue on national identity was that both the
broadcasters and the production industry had to consider ‘the relationship of
commercial television to changing notions of Australian cultural identity’ (Flew,
1997, p 97). The convergence of broadcasting policy discourse on issues of
Australian identity in the late 1980s begins to connect with the Labor party’s
activity in formulating and then releasing the National Agenda for a
Multicultural Australia in 1989. Such issues were to sustain momentum into
the transition period during and after the introduction of the new Broadcasting
Act and a new government authority to administer its regulation.
The ABA, the BSA and cultural diversity With the advent of the Australian Broadcasting Authority in 1992, the
occurrence of cultural diversity discourse in broadcasting policy becomes
more conspicuous with the Object of the Content Standard closely aligned
with the Object of clause 3 (e) of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA).
The object of the Content Standard is to:
promote the role of commercial television in developing and reflecting a sense of Australian identity, character and cultural diversity by supporting the community’s continued access to television programs produced under Australian creative control.
Replacing the previous 1942 Act, the BSA heralded the change to a light
touch regulation of the media, which included co-regulatory frameworks for
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television broadcasting. On a macro level, the BSA was seen as a means to
‘facilitate the entry of new competitors and technological developments’ in an
era of spectrum abundance instead of the former rationale of spectrum
scarcity (Cunningham and Flew, 2002, p 471). I will concentrate on that part
of the Act and subsequent Content Standard which is concerned with cultural
diversity.
By the early 1990s, the appearance of terms such as ‘cultural diversity’ and
references to a ‘multicultural Australia’ begin to surface in discussion papers,
submissions and reports on television broadcasting policy. In the lead up to
the 1994 review of the Program Standard, the ABA’s initial discussion paper
places cultural diversity in a discrete discourse relating it to the Object of the
Standard, whereas before discussion centred more on an indistinct Australian
identity (ABA, 1994). The paper spends considerable space asserting that the
self-regulatory Commercial Television Code of Practice provides ‘substantially
greater safeguards [for promoting cultural diversity] than those contained in
the previous ABT television program standards’ (ABA, 1994, p 9). The paper
outlines the framework for determining a Standard, quoting the Explanatory
Memorandum to the Broadcasting Services Bill for 1992, which stipulates that
programs should ‘reflect the multicultural nature of Australia’s population’.
This is reinforced with the Memorandum’s notice on Clause 3 (e) of the Act
which explains the origin of how the wording ‘cultural diversity’ came to be in
the Act and it states: ‘the reference to “cultural diversity” is consistent with the
(Labor) Commonwealth’s multicultural agenda’ (ABA, 1994, p 44). Here we
see an explicit convergence of policy discourse between the Agenda and
broadcasting policy. The ABA’s contention that cultural diversity was being
well served by the new Standard is however in conflict with several
submissions it consequently received. The MEAA, the SBS, the Australian
Film Commission (AFC) and the Communications Law Centre (CLC) all
expressed serious concerns at the past performance of commercial
broadcasters in complying with the Object of the Standard in relation to
cultural diversity (ABA, 1994). When the Australian Content Standard for 1996
was finally released, the ABA provided lengthy ‘Explanatory Notes’ to the
Standard, which stated the following in the introduction:
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The issue of cultural diversity is a central part of the Objective of the Standard. The absence of any specific requirement which addresses the representation of cultural diversity is not a reflection on the importance of this aspect of the objective (ABA, 1996, p 1).
The note goes on to clarify that the former ABT TPS 14 (Television
Programme Standard) test could not be assessed and that under the new
Content Standard, cultural diversity ‘is assumed to be there if the program
satisfied the objective for Australian creative control over production’ (ABA,
1996, p 2). This final statement is significant. The participation of culturally
diverse creative personnel such as writers and actors, who ultimately make a
substantial contribution to whether a program reflects cultural diversity or not,
are assumed to be fairly represented within the workforce of the commercial
television industry. The ABA’s position regarding the wording of the Object is
that is an ‘aspirational’ goal, rather than an objective with measurable
outcomes (Osbourne, 1999). A central policy debate surrounding cultural
diversity and commercial broadcasting is whether the ABA should have
directed the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations (FACTS
- now called Commercial Television Australia) to devise a new code of
practice relating to cultural diversity, which it decided was unnecessary.
Casting, policy and the cultural diversity debate 1992-19964 As pointed out above and subsequently stated in the Productivity
Commission’s (1999, p 199) draft report into broadacsting: ‘the objectives of
content regulation are largely cultural and social’. Any evaluation of how
broadcasters have or have not met the cultural and social objectives of
content regulation is extremely difficult to empirically gauge without reference
to industrial indicators such as employment or television program content
analysis. This is particularly so when it comes to assessing whether local
content quota programming has contributed to developing and reflecting
cultural diversity. In the early 1990s, the Communication Law Centre and the
MEAA, with assistance from the Office of Multicultural Affairs, began a
4 The year 1996 is used as a cut off date, as little policy advocacy and no major public seminars on the issue took place in Australia after this date.
69
campaign to address what they felt was a poor record of achievement when it
came to the portrayal of cultural diversity in commercial television drama.
While the portrayal of a multicultural Australia had been an issue of note some
years before the early 1990s, it was the beginning of co-regulation under the
new 1992 Broadcasting Services Act, which acted as the catalyst for the
following events.
In the early 1990s, conferences and campaigns for an improved portrayal of
cultural diversity were often a collaborative effort on the part of the guilds,
government policy agents, academics and the Office of Multicultural Affairs.
Beginning in 1991, the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS)
hosted a forum for scriptwriting in a multicultural society. This forum was a
rare event as it addressed writers in particular, whereas subsequent
conferences were more focused on the contribution of program producers and
the networks to the issue of cultural diversity. However at the AFTRS forum,
producers from the commercial television industry were present and
expressed the attitude that portraying cultural diversity tended to be
addressed as a problem of the week issue. Because of this narrow portrayal,
the scope and opportunity for writers and actors was restricted. The AFTRS
forum indicated that the industry continually problematised migrants and
focused on negative aspects of characters from culturally diverse
backgrounds (AFTRS, 1991).
In 1992, FACTS released a draft code of practice and invited public comment.
A joint submission (CLC, 1992b) was endorsed by several organisations
including the MEAA, Australian Writers Guild (AWG), Screen Producers
Association of Australia (SPAA), Australian Screen Directors Association
(ASDA) and the CLC among others. The submission made note of the short
timeframe allowed for comment and expressed concern at how an
assessment of community attitudes and concerns would be taken into account
in the new code. The submission also reflected concerns made in a CLC
discussion paper (1992c) on self-regulation, where processes of
accountability and broad representation of any administrative panel were seen
as lacking in the proposed code. When the code was released in 1993, it
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coincided with media research (CLC, 1992a and Cope et al, 1992; Bell, 1993)
which indicated an unsatisfactory state of participation and representation for
ethnic and Indigenous Australians. As the ABA prepared to replace TPS14
with the new content standard, the conclusions made in the research at the
time helped support arguments for policy intervention in order to satisfy the
cultural and social objectives of the Act.
The lack of opportunities for ethnically diverse groups was again brought to
the attention of a public forum at ‘The Media and Indigenous Australians
Conference’ held in Brisbane in 1993. At this venue the MEAA revealed that
no Aboriginal actor had been cast in a lead role in a series or serial to date.
MEAA Federal Secretary Anne Britton (Conference Proceedings, 1993, p 74)
noted that the draft Code of Practice and Content Standard, while addressing
aspects of the public interest (such as decency) contained no facility to
scrutinise portrayals of cultural diversity. As a result, the MEAA once again
proposed a ‘head count’ of actors to gauge the level of participation of actors
from culturally diverse backgrounds as a means of improving the situation.
The MEAA’s dissatisfaction with the new code of practice, combined with the
energies of the CLC, resulted in a two year period of action to address what
were seen as regulatory deficiencies. Gillian Appleton (1993) authored a
paper for the Department of Arts and Administrative Services indicating the
need for the creation of a new program standard should cultural policy of the
time be found to be inadequate. She also suggested training initiatives for
culturally diverse populations to facilitate their involvement in broadcasting. In
the same period, a CLC/MEAA working group was organised and possible
scenarios for the inclusion of cultural diversity in future policy were put forward
in a background paper (CLC, 1993a). Such possibilities included a cultural
diversity standard or a code of practice relating to cultural diversity. However,
achieving such a policy intervention faces considerable hurdles.
Under section 123 subsection (1) the BSA asks industry to develop codes of
practice in consultation with the ABA and to take ‘account of any relevant
research conducted by the ABA’. The ABA may also create a new standard if
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an existing code has failed or does not exist in order to provide ‘community
safeguards for a matter referred to in subsection 123 (2)’ ((s125(1)). The
problem here is that no item referred to in 123 (2) deals with the portrayal of
cultural diversity. However, 123 (2) (l) states that [a code of practice may be
developed if] ‘such other matters relating to program content as are of
concern to the community’. As noted above, the ABA rejected this need for a
code or standard on cultural diversity based on the research and information
presented to it at the time.
The CLC (1993a) background paper and related lobbying for a new standard
or code drew varied responses from industry and policy organisations. In a
response from the AFC (1993, p 2), they noted that the existing wording of the
Act (and Content Standard) gave broadcasters the chance to ‘see themselves
as having positive obligations rather than only negative ones’. Problems in
regulating representation were raised by the AFC and it was suggested that a
code of practice would be more suitable than a program standard. In a letter
signed by 22 organisations (CLC, 1993b) including ethnic, Indigenous and
media advocacy groups, the CLC/MEAA presented Brian Johns (then Chair
of the ABA) with research and evidence of community desire for an improved
portrayal of cultural diversity. In response, Johns (ABA, 1993) would not
commit the ABA to any action citing the constraints of the regulatory process
but added in relation to the new code that the ABA is ‘closely monitoring the
progress of each sector’. He also cited Section 123(3)(e) of the BSA relating
to racial vilification as meeting concerns about the portrayal of cultural
diversity. In reviewing documents of the period, the issue of the portrayal of
cultural diversity with regard to television drama is displaced by the separate
issue of anti-vilification legislation. Both the ABA and FACTS cite the inclusion
of anti-vilification discourse as adequately addressing a lack of policy explicitly
related to culturally diverse actors in television drama. Irene Moss,
Commissioner for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission,
stated that ‘racial vilification looks at racism in the media – it’s not about
portrayal of cultural diversity. That’s another debate, which in my opinion is
actually more important’ (OMA, 1993, p 20). Such comment from the
Commissioner is helpful in separating the issue of policy for the portrayal of
72
cultural diversity with issues of human rights related to discriminatory
employment practices and representations of racism.
The MEAA/CLC letter sent to the ABA and then to FACTS was subsequently
released to the media and a story in the Sydney Morning Herald (Lecky, 1993,
p 9) appeared titled ‘TV chief says ethnic quotas not practical’. Tony Branigan
(then General Manager of FACTS) declares in the article that quotas would be
impractical to administer – in spite of the fact the MEAA had never suggested
quotas. The tactic of invoking an alarmist statement about the use of ‘ethnic
quotas’ has been an effective one for FACTS in derailing the cultural diversity
issue. Concern over the possibility of quotas eventuating was sometimes
raised in interviews with production stakeholders during this research, with the
MEAA desire for cast monitoring confused with fears of prescriptive casting
quotas. In spite of the less than positive response from FACTS to the letter in
February 1994, the CLC, MEAA and FACTS did meet in order to discuss
some form of resolution to the issue. In the same period, the Advisory Notes
on the portrayal of cultural diversity were formulated.
The applicable point in the Advisory Notes on cultural diversity reads:
in scripting and casting drama and selecting on-air talent, management and producers should be concerned to reflect Australia’s complex and culturally diverse society (FACTS, 1994a).
It was initially hoped that the Advisory Notes would be included in the scope
for complaints relating to television services in the same manner that
audiences can complain about matters relating to the appropriate
classification and content of programs such as issues of violence, language
and sex. However, the Advisory Notes as they stand have no regulatory
significance as they are outside the scope of the actual Code of Practice.
Finally in 1994, the CLC and MEAA (CLC, 1994) once again put forward a
model for the unofficial monitoring of roles and actor employment data for
performers from culturally diverse backgrounds. The MEAA suggested a six-
monthly information collection on the cultural background of performers. To be
kept confidential, the data would be used as a method of identifying where
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remedial action may need to be taken to improve casting practices for DCALB
actors. It was also discussed whether networks could report to the ABA
regarding their activities with respect to the Advisory Notes. However there is
no regulatory compulsion for networks to do so. FACTS (1994b) responded
to the letter by declaring the Advisory Notes as a satisfactory approach to the
issue and rejected the need for cast monitoring.
In August 1994, FACTS officially released the Advisory Notes along with a
commitment from their council to fund an annual scholarship for a NES or
Indigenous student to take up studies at NIDA (this scholarship was still in
place at the time of writing). In the same year Heartbreak High began on the
TEN network offering signs the commercial networks were responding to a
multicultural Australia. While the acceptance of the Advisory Notes were the
least preferred choice for the MEAA and CLC for a policy driven approach in
the issue of portrayal and cultural diversity, the contribution that the MEAA,
CLC and OMA made in raising awareness of the issue should not be
overlooked. In 1994, a National Multicultural Advisory Council paper (NMAC,
1994) on multiculturalism committed the Labor government to seek
‘substantial progress in addressing the portrayal of cultural diversity on
commercial television’ when the FACTS code of practice was to come up for
review in 1996. This was broad multicultural policy recognition of the
preceding debate over cultural diversity and programming in the previous four
years within the broadcasting community. However, the Labor government did
not survive the 1996 Federal election and a 1996 revised FACTS code of
practice was eventually delayed for almost three years, with no change to the
status or policy of cultural diversity in the new Code in 1999.
Two additional significant events were the Television and the Multicultural
Audience conference in Sydney held at Taronga Zoo in 1995 and the release
of the Australian Content Standard in 1996. Turning to the notion of the
economic advantages of programming for a culturally diverse audience, the
1995 conference reflected Agenda objectives for promoting economic
development by utilising the skills and economic potential of multicultural
Australia. While the 1995 conference covered some of the same ground as
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1994, it included possibilities for pay TV’s contribution to the issue and the
advertising market potential of a multicultural audience. It was noted in the
conference discussion paper (Appleton, 1995) that since 1993 there had been
positive change. Cited as encouraging developments was Network Ten’s
Heartbreak High (discussed in Chapter Eight), the presence of more actors
from culturally diverse backgrounds in serial drama, an increasing input from
Indigenous film-makers to tell their own stories, and the employment of Stan
Grant and Aaron Pederson (both from Indigenous background) as TV show
hosts. However the conference heard of continued stereotyping and a lack of
Indigenous actors in commercial drama. The need for follow up was again the
conclusion of this important forum on the issue of cultural diversity and
television. A further policy development in the mid-1990s was a commitment
from Labor to address the portrayal of cultural diversity in drama and other
local programming through support of the Commercial Television Production
Fund (CTPF) and SBS Independent (SBSI). Both initiatives were the result of
Creative Nation, which survived beyond Labor’s 1996 election defeat, with
SBSI still in existence and the CTPF finishing its run of productions in 1999.
Creative Nation case studies: SBS Independent and the Commercial Television Production Fund In the domain of television broadcasting, the Creative Nation cultural
development policy made two specific pledges for enhancing domestic
programming. SBS television was provided with $13m over four years ‘in
recognition of the importance of developing programming to reflect Australia’s
multicultural society’ (DOCA, 1994, p 47). In addition, the Commercial
Television Production Fund was established to ‘give Australians access to a
wide range of high quality Australian programmes’ (DOCA, 1994, p 48) and
through Objective 4 of the Fund, ‘to encourage a more representative
portrayal of Australia’s cultural diversity by encouraging applicants from
people of diverse cultural background’ (AFC, 1997). Once again, the influence
of the Agenda is to be found converging with policy discourse related to the
production of television programming – and specifically in the commercial
sector. While the cultural diversity objective was only one of several, the
success of the CTPF overall offers an example of the possibilities which are
75
afforded by more express policy and financial support in the production of
domestic commercial programming. SBS had previously been criticised for a
lack of locally produced programming, and in the fifteen years prior to Creative
Nation funding, SBS had averaged between three to four hours per year of
locally-produced ‘multicultural drama’ (Long, 1995, p 19). Since 1991, SBS
has had a clear legislative requirement to cultivate cultural diversity at the
level of community awareness and an expectation that local programming be
one avenue of expression (SBS Act, 1991).
The augmentation of SBS Independent (SBSI) with Creative Nation funds was
intended to help SBS realise its multicultural Charter responsibilities more
comprehensively. The only other commitment of Creative Nation funds to
broadcasting was the Commercial Television Production Fund. By way of
investment funding, $60 million over three years was pledged to program
production for screening on commercial television. However, by the CTPF’s
final year, the newly elected conservative government had effectively reduced
government support to $53.6 million. Additional aims for CTPF productions
were to increase local programming beyond the Australian Content Standard
and to produce programs ‘primarily aimed at an Australian audience’ (AFC,
1997, p 7). In 1998, funding for SBSI was extended at $19m over four more
years, while the CTPF did not receive further funding.
SBS Independent (SBSI) Established at the same time of the release of Creative Nation, SBSI was a
collection of SBS staff headed by Andy Lloyd James, who worked to facilitate
support for local production. This arm of SBSI was funded from the
appropriated budget thus allowing the entire amount of Creative Nation funds
to be ‘quarantined for production’ (Urban, 1998, p 22). SBSI also attached its
trademark name to programming which was not funded from Creative Nation
capital. This distinction is made in literature supplied with a production status
report (SBS, 1998a) under separate listings for productions from the ‘SBSI
General Production Fund’ and the ‘SBSI Special Production Fund’.
Significantly, the bulk of SBSI programs funded from appropriations (General
Fund) are documentaries while Creative Nation funds make up for a diverse
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slate of fiction and non-fiction programming. In the 1995/96 SBS Annual
Report, there is a transparent articulation of programming being sourced from
both the appropriated budget (40 hours) and from ‘Federal government
independent production funding’ ie: Creative Nation (27 hours). However, the
1997/98 Annual Report no longer makes this delineation of funding sources. It
cites SBSI as contributing ‘about 300 hours of innovative film and television
projects’ commissioned ‘to reflect and embody the spirit of contemporary
multicultural Australia’ (SBS, 1998a, p 18). In actuality, 127 hours of
programming were from the appropriated budget while only 152 hours were
from Creative Nation funds. My reason for making clear the divisions in
funding is related to how in the coming year (1997) SBS capitalised heavily on
the achievements of SBSI as a whole, as a Creative Nation initiative, in
securing extended funding from the conservative Liberal government. The
CTPF on the other hand failed to achieve the same extension as it was not
able to refer to such a high programming output.
In quantitative terms though, SBSI’s Special Production Fund achieved a
good deal. From 1994 to 1998, SBSI could attach its name to 73.4 hours of
fiction and 78.5 hours of non-fiction in the form of documentaries, short films,
and series. Drama commitments accounted for 80% of funds and 60% of
programs were sold overseas. Productions such as Shifting Sands, Bran Nue
Dae, Tales From a Suitcase and Radiance made a measurable contribution to
the portrayal of cultural diversity in the Australian film and television
landscape. At the level of employment, more than a quarter of the 2,500
personnel associated with SBSI productions were from a culturally diverse
background (SBS, 1998b). In order to measure the fund’s diversity of
outcomes, programs were accorded an ‘SBS Element’ in a 1998 status report.
Examples of these descriptors are ‘Access and Equity’, ‘NESB Crew and/or
Director/Producer’, ‘Multicultural Issues’, ‘Indigenous’, and ‘Cultural Diversity’.
Themes related to rural Australia, gender and sexuality, social class and
alternative lifestyles were also part of SBSI’s production diversity. More
ambiguous program genres such as Chooks (a comic-documentary about
chickens) and House Gang (a comedy-drama series set amongst intellectually
disabled housemates) were simply classified under ‘diversity’, as were a
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further 25 programs. What such diversity demonstrates is the further
development of SBS as a minority broadcaster in the sense that its focus was
no longer ‘ethnic’ Australia. Minoritarian in this instance does not indicate
minority audiences however, but rather what Hawkins (1996, p 47) has
described as a ‘bizarre and pleasurable heterogeneity’ which is considered a
positive aspect of the service’s evolution. SBSI’s success in overseas sales
also reflected the export desires contained in Creative Nation at a macro
policy level.
In lobbying for the continuation of SBSI, the SBS utilised the impressive data
mentioned above to demonstrate results and to appeal to the government’s
affection for ‘value for money’ when it came to funding a national broadcaster.
It is also insightful to consider the new directions SBSI intended to go with the
extended $19m, with one statement indicating that SBSI would give a greater
focus to programs which reflect regional Australia (DCITA, 1998), a direction
also reflected in the 1997/98 SBS Annual Report.5 In contrast to the fortunes
of the ‘lean and hungry’ SBS, the Commercial Television Production Fund did
not secure a further three years funding.
The Commercial Television Production Fund (CTPF) It could be argued that SBSI programs rather than CTPF product more
accurately reflected Creative Nation’s description of Australian culture as an
‘exotic hybrid’ (DOCA, 1994, p 1). Commercial television makes a less than
usual bedfellow with cultural initiatives commonly referred to as ‘the arts’, such
as museums, theatre or even emerging digital art of the era. However both
broadcasting and ‘the arts’ are within the one portfolio. Nevertheless, the
CTPF provided a key strategy in Creative Nation for contributing to an area of
cultural production not associated with the traditional and subsidised arts –
popular broadcast television. Thirty-eight projects were the direct result of
CTPF funding, accounting for 81.5 hours of new Australian programming
above the local content requirements. Objective four of the CTPF was to
5 It is difficult to gauge whether SBSI did eventually achieve its objective to provide a greater focus on regional Australia, without conducting detailed content analysis into its post-1997 output.
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‘encourage a more representational portrayal of Australia’s cultural diversity
by encouraging applications from people of diverse cultural backgrounds’
(AFC, 1997, p 2). The CTPF’s Chief Executive Officer Chris Fitchett (1999)
affirmed that this objective was considered important by himself and the
selection panel when making decisions about project approvals. This
translates to the CTPF operating as a career development and informal equity
function for DCALB creative personnel in a policy initiative, aimed at improving
cultural diversity in television programming.
Total CTPF investment was $54.9m, but total project budgets amount to
$74.5m, thus creating a funding leverage of $20m. Programs consistently
won their ratings with The Day of the Roses (about the 1976 train disaster at
Granville in Sydney) attracting 2.5million viewers. As far as comparisons can
be made, the CTPF represents 53 hours of fictional programming compared
to 73 hours from SBSI’s Creative Nation funds. Obviously SBSI outlays were
somewhat less than the CTPF and help explain why SBSI seems to represent
incredible value next to the CTPF. However, CTPF projects did not source
government financing from other state funding bodies to the degree SBSI
projects did and the costs of a drama such as The Day of the Roses are
significantly greater than those for a shot-on-video program such as
HouseGang.
The CTPF established the possibilities for a working relationship between the
production industry, commercial networks, governmental process and
overseas trade. Such policy outcomes reflect assessments of Creative
Nation’s commercial television achievements as signalling a shift away from
quota-based forms of content regulation to ‘industry assistance in the name of
cultural development’ (Melville, 1995, p 39). There was also comment from
across the industry that CTPF programming took more risk with content and
genre. Kris Noble, director of drama for the Nine Network, referred to CTPF
projects as generating an ‘impressive list of progressive programs’ (Harty,
1999). Producer of Good Guys, Bad Guys, Roger Simpson, stated that ‘we
take more risks [with this series] than we’ve ever taken before on commercial
television’ (Mauric, 1996, p 23). As for aiming programs at Australian
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audiences, a mini-series such as The Day of the Roses, which focused on a
specific episode of Australian history and attracted significant audiences, may
have found financing difficult otherwise. One figure also of note, particularly in
comparison to SBSI’s reported total hours of Creative Nation product, is that
CTPF funds which laid the foundations for many programs (with props,
costumes, legal expenses and offices) which continued after the end of the
CTPF. These network funded shows were worth an additional $60 million in
1999 and over 200 hours of programming, in addition to the original CTPF
achievements.
The CTPF and SBSI clearly contributed to Creative Nation’s commitment to
cultural diversity in terms of both cultural production and the portrayal of
cultural diversity. Obviously the output of SBSI was more explicitly concerned
with diversity in the sense of reflecting a multicultural Australia and its
achievements in this respect are more assessable due to reporting
requirements of the broadcaster. While the CTPF was more concerned with
providing audiences with increased local programming of a diverse nature, it
nevertheless progressed cultural diversity policy objectives by containing the
objective on cultural diversity, which was operationalised in a less direct and
measurable fashion compared to SBSI6. The CTPF selection process and
comments from within the industry support such an appraisal.
The CTPF provides an example of national cultural policy not restricted to the
elite in terms of its cultural product and audience. While it is true that CTPF
funds went to what could be described as flagship organisations (ie: major
television production houses), ratings attest to audience levels which would
rarely be achieved for attendances at cultural events contained within cultural
institutions more commonly associated with the arts. The range of cultural
product over both the CTPF and SBSI with regard to cultural diversity in
programming and in creative participation would be difficult to achieve in one
cultural arena alone such as dance, theatre, music or multimedia arts. Both
6 For example, the ongoing and originally CTPF funded children’s show Hi 5, has a clear mandate for cultural diversity in its content, presenters and the culturally diverse children’s audience who are present in the opening and closing songs.
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initiatives are an indication of Creative Nation’s capacity to include the
domains of television and film within cultural policy and ‘the arts’. Both
schemes also reflect in organisation and output what Flew (1999) describes
as policy which adopts inter-relationships between globalisation and national
culture, multiculturalism and national identity, and the coupling of cultural
policy with economic policy. Such an approach is also found to varying
degrees in the UK and New Zealand, which is examined in Part Two.
Conclusion: cultural diversity policy discourse and television
The Australian Content Standard, Object 3(e) of the BSA and Creative Nation
initiatives such as SBSI are articulated to promote a culturally diverse nation
in the form of cultural products. In the 1990s, the macro objectives of the
Agenda outlined in Chapter Two filtered through to policy strategies at the
micro level within the various levels of government (local, state and federal).
Such policies cover a broad spectrum of locations for the convergence of
multicultural policy discourse: EEO monitoring in the public service, local area
multicultural partnerships (LAMPs) involving local councils and state
governments, education curriculum design and city councils having a
community development section with staff dedicated to issues of
multiculturalism or cultural diversity. Critics of multicultural policy such as
Jakubowicz et al (1994, p136) question such an assessment, perceiving
strong ideological motivations behind both bureaucratic and advocacy group
participation in the policy process. They cite the early 1990s cultural diversity
debate described above as substantiation of a symbolic policy process, which
exposes the ‘real commitments of the power blocs that lie beneath the public
rhetoric’ (p 136).
While Jakubowicz et al (1994, p 134) concede that SBS has been ‘the most
outstanding expression of multicultural policy’, their general criticism of
multicultural policy as an exercise in class domination does not take into
account that, like the creation of SBS, the Agenda’s schema has led to
strategies and policies across a range of services and in organisations, not as
apparent or direct as SBS. The final outcome of the cultural diversity debate
(the Advisory Notes) might be seen as a failure from the standpoint of those
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expecting nothing less than the application of a new Standard or Code of
Practice on cultural diversity. In order to reposition the outcome beyond that of
a policy failure, interactions amongst the policy community during the cultural
diversity debate can instead be evaluated as part of Bennett’s (1998, p 106)
thesis of cultural policy as a ‘reforming apparatus’. Bennett’s consideration of
cultural transformation and analysis through the task of cultural management
and administration does not translate to an exclusionary account of how a
‘top-down’ policy process ensures a static status quo. In the cultural diversity
debate, a wide range of stakeholders were engaged with an investment in the
portrayal of cultural diversity on commercial television within the context of
existing policy, with its currency and outcome for change under negotiation.
The policy projects of the Agenda at a macro level and a concomitant
awareness of cultural diversity within the community, eventually funnelled into
the cultural diversity debate within the commercial television sector. O’Regan
(1993, p 109) helpfully extends this reforming role of the Agenda and his
insights can be readily applied to what has occurred with the portrayal of
cultural diversity in popular programming since the cultural diversity debate of
the early 1990s:
Lobbying for more multiculturalism in television is encouraged by the more general acceptance of equal opportunity, affirmative action and anti-racism policies targeting pluralist outcomes, better life opportunities and social and economic integration, and fair dealing within Australia as a territorial nation.
O’Regan points to a discourse in the early 1990s, which became increasingly
apparent in policy and industry discourse at the end of the late 1990s, and
that is the mainstreaming of multiculturalism. While minority populations’
interaction with the mainstream can be fettered by lack of familiarity with
Australian life and language barriers, more recent audience research (ABA,
2000) makes the case that recently arrived migrant communities are in fact
more satisfied than dissatisfied with their portrayal on commercial television.
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In the late 1990s, the ABA commissioned the Department of Immigration and
Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) to include questions about media use by newly
arrived immigrants in DIMA’s longitudinal survey of immigrants, in the survey
period 1997 to 1999.7 With an initial sample size of over 5,000 recently arrived
migrants, the results of the research are of significance. The survey found that
commercial television was the most frequently used media by respondents.
Asian and Middle Eastern migrants watched television more often than
European migrants and in the specific area of entertainment, commercial
television was listed by one third of all migrants as the primary source of
entertainment. Such results highlight the continuing significance of
commercial television as a cultural product for migrant groups. With regard to
questions on the representation of ethnic groups, only 12% of the sample
agreed with the assertion that a higher representation was needed. As to
whether commercial television ‘accurately reflects what ethnic groups in
Australia are really like’ (ABA, 2000, p 13), 30% felt commercial television did
not, while 37% felt the portrayal was accurate (the remainder being
undecided). ABA (2000, p 15) makes the statement that such findings
‘appear quite contradictory’ compared to findings of earlier research (Nugent
et al, 1993), which indicated a measured dissatisfaction among ethnic
communities. The ABA (2000, p 15) concludes with a possible hypothesis that
the ‘depiction of ethnic groups on commercial television has increased’
compared to the early 1990s. In Part Three of the thesis this hypothesis is
shown to be correct.
Chapters Two and Three has charted how broad multicultural policy, in
particular the Agenda, began to influence the discourses of broadcast policy
with resultant effects on the broadcast policy community, as well as drawing in
industry stakeholders such as producers and writers. The Agenda’s change in
policy philosophy from earlier conceptions of multiculturalism as cultural
maintenance, to a set of multicultural policies aimed at equity and skill
utilisation, placed multiculturalism increasingly as a mainstream issue rather
than an insular or private-life only issue. By the early 1990s, advocacy groups, 7The survey tracks a variety of social indicators and attitudes of migrants at three intervals after they have been in Australia for 6 months, 18 months and 3.5 years.
83
the OMA and academics had called for greater policy attention to cultural
diversity and programming. While the commercial network representative
body FACTS, participated in the process, an adversarial attitude developed
with the actors representative body, the MEAA. The material policy outcome
of the early 1990s, the Adivisory Notes on cultural diversity, lack the
regulatory authority advocacy groups were seeking. However, the several
years of debate and policy attention to cultural diversity and television
programming made it clear that former casting practices and representations
of multicultural Australia were not in keeping with the changes in broad
multicultural policy and the mainstreaming of multiculturalism.
Part Two demonstrates how in the USA, the UK and New Zealand,
approaches to broad social policy for dealing with culturally diverse
populations have influenced those countries’ approaches in representing their
cultural diversity in drama programming. This reflects the contextual
relationships explored above between Australian multicultural policy and
resulting influences on broadcasting policy. As in Australia, this is then
followed by changes to production practices and ultimately – changes to
programming. The three chapters in Part Two explore the possibilities for
policy intervention and influence in order to change production practices. Each
country has its own multicultural policy history, which has resulted in distinct
approaches to how cultural diversity is promoted as an integral, or everyday,
part of drama programming. This contextual work precedes a return to
Australian production and programming, where in Part Three, policy process
outcomes of the early 1990s and the continued support of multiculturalism as
a mainstream social policy, has seen an increased participation and everyday
representation of cultural diversity on Australian drama.
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PART TWO INTERNATIONAL POLICY AND PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENTS
Introduction As explored in Chapter Two, Australia developed a governmental approach to
managing the social, political and cultural spheres of immigration, defining
immigration’s social consequences and management under multiculturalism.
However in the United States, the grounding of multiculturalism as a social
and cultural consequence of immigration and slavery has its roots in two key
locations. The first is minority civil action of the 1960s against social
inequalities - predominantly in the Black community. This led, among other
things, to affirmative action programs for participation and employment, which
have come under attack in recent years. The second site of multiculturalism in
the USA can also be identified as the politics of recognition and
representation. Here, multiculturalism is interrogated as a collection of
theoretical questions advanced by academia from the 1970s onwards, and in
particular from critical cultural studies departments within United States
universities (Wieviorka, 1998).
New Zealand on the other hand shares with Australia a significant British
legacy of colonisation. Both nations charted similar paths in their development
in the 19th and 20th centuries with the observance of British governance and a
cultural attachment to Britain not shared by the States. The 20th century saw
both countries develop increasingly urban centres with immigration from
Europe in the post World War II period, providing skilled and unskilled labour.
But there are keen differences between Australia and New Zealand. Like
Australia and the USA, New Zealand has an Indigenous minority population.
However unlike the USA and Australia, in New Zealand it is the Indigenous
Maori population who are central to negotiating cultural diversity and not
various migrant groups as is the case in Australia and the United States. As a
consequence, the relationship between the dominant European society and
the Indigenous population in New Zealand has seen the establishment of a
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not unproblematic biculturalism involving the Maori and Pakeha.1 Mirroring the
advance of Black politics in the USA, a reassertion of political rights
resonating from the Treaty of Waitangi (1840), has seen a ‘Maori revival’ since
the 1980s. In Australia on the other hand, Indigenous populations have
endured a long period of less than benign paternalism, which has been
replaced only in the last decade with a crucial awareness of the unfinished
business of reconciliation.
In contrast to Australia, New Zealand and the USA, the status of cultural
diversity in the latter half of the 20th century in the United Kingdom (at least in
terms of migrant multiculturalism) has evolved from the movement of people
to the UK from former English colonies or dependent states, such as the
Commonwealth Caribbean and Africa and the Indian sub-continent. There is
also the earlier shared history of migration that links the United Kingdom to
the other three countries under study. Britain itself has not experienced the
displacement of an Indigenous population. Rather, the ‘relatively unorganised
and voluntary’ (Layton-Henry, 1992, p 12) arrival of ‘coloured’2 migrants
seeking better life chances from 1948 onwards later fractured any impression
of a racial and culturally homogonous Britain (aside from those conflicts of
independence surrounding Wales, Scotland and Ireland, of course). The early
response to an apparent cultural diversity in Britain oscillated between
government fears for social stability followed by inaction, as research
discounted xenophobic claims and political inertia combined to dilute the
issue. By the 1970s, a series of Race Relation Acts and Commissions on the
matter began to redefine the politics of citizenship and belonging in the UK.
The 1970s also saw Black protest and radicalised groups who were not
dissimilar to Black power in the USA. A salient feature of the era were the
conflictual relations between predominantly African-Caribbean communities
1 The terms biculturalism and Pakeha have fluctuating and contested meanings through recent New Zealand history. Spoonley (1990) has defined Pakeha as New Zealanders of a European background whose cultural understandings have been shaped by their location in NZ and membership of the dominant group. 2 The term ‘coloured’, while imbued with social prejudice, is significant not only for its use in the UK. For it was the skin colour of what was a relatively small number of Commonwealth Caribbean migrants in the early post-war years which evoked issues of national belonging, citizenship and the expression of a British multi-racial society.
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and the police, with the Brixton disturbances in 1981 being the most media-
memorable illustration of a challenged multicultural Britain.
And finally, the later years of the 20th century also witnessed Britain’s uneasy
entry into the European Community. This has brought changes to citizenship
rights being more aligned to the European tradition of ancestry - jus sanguinis
- as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of jus soli, which confers citizenship
through either birth in the nation concerned, or soon after settlement. But of
particular interest to this study is the cultural and intellectual recognition of
particular well established communities in Britain such as those from the
Indian sub-continent. As an example, the Rushdie Affair became a well known
site of contemporary post-colonial expression as well as a site of cultural
conflict in a multicultural Britain.3 In addition to post-colonial discourses in
literature and academia, the late 1990s saw Britain take the lead in European
contexts for Equal Employment Opportunity and affirmative action strategies
(including television), not dissimilar to the United States. In comparison to the
US, Britain’s EEO measures are not particularly exceptional – however when
compared to other EC countries such as France for example, which refuses to
engage in the concept of minority discourse or disadvantage, Britain’s policies
are progressive.
3 Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses, was critically acclaimed by a cosmopolitan West looking for cultural assurance of its sophistication while at the same time, Muslim calls for withdrawal of the book and Rushdie’s death brought to bear the limits of multiculturalism’s ideals for difference within a frame of social cohesion and the tolerance of Others.
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Chapter Four The United States: Affirmative Action, 'Quotas' And Diversity Rights Policy and industry contexts
In discussion with key Australian television drama program personnel, it was
common to perceive a cynical criticism or mistrust expressed with regard to
explicit measures for representing diversity. In the United States where such
measures come with a long history of accomplishment, the following extract
(O’Sullivan, 1997) demonstrates that also in the USA, unambiguous diversity
in casting draws its critics. The National Review ran an ongoing competition to
find the best use of multicultural to mean ‘good’ or ‘worthy’ with the winner on
this occasion sending in the press release below from Disney, for an
upcoming TV movie (bracketed text belongs to the Review ‘s editor):
Disney's newest Cinderella passes multicultural muster with flying colors. The title role belongs to singer-actress Brandy [who is Black]... Her prince is Paolo Montalban, a newcomer of Hispanic descent. Milk-skinned Bernadette Peters has the role of the wicked stepmother whose two haughty daughters are played by white and Black actresses [Ugly Sisters under the skin, presumably]. Whitney Houston is the fairy godmother, Jason Alexander is the Prince's loyal steward - Lionel, and Whoopi Goldberg gets to be Queen Constantina. ‘We hope that this Cinderella, as we approach the millennium,’ says co-producer Debra Martin Chase, ‘is reflective of what our society is today’ (O’Sullivan, 1997, p 8).
The Review ‘s editor goes on to add:
Not quite. The Ugly Sisters--oops, sorry, haughty daughters, should surely be white and Asian. But the new Disney Cinderella is a brilliant reflection of what multiculturalism itself means in our society, i.e: a monocultural fairy tale involving people of different races and ethnic groups (O’Sullivan, 1997, p 8).
The irony in the article reveals fundamental differences in casting for a
culturally diverse society in the USA and Australia. It is doubtful whether an
Australian telemovie rendition of Cinderella could, or would be able to muster
such a diverse cast. A heightened awareness of utilising culturally diverse
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casts among US networks (sceptically labelled the Disneyfication of
multiculturalism in the above case) is not the only rationale to explain why
such a colourblind Cinderella is more likely in the States. For one thing, the
establishment of culturally diverse performers in the States has a longer
history than in Australia, due in part to the size of the Black community and
the success of advocacy groups in bringing networks to task over the issue.
Additionally, the significant market value of names such as Brandy, Whitney
Houston and Whoopi Goldberg also carry the security of likely success for a
production. Shohat and Stam (1994, p 190) note that only since the 1980s has
a pool of US actors from culturally diverse backgrounds attained the star
status necessary to play leads in racially non-designated roles. They make the
valid point that for a film to be considered economically viable, the demand for
(usually white) universal stars exposes the complex relationship between
racism and capitalism. The question could be asked – would Disney have
pursued this culturally diverse cast without the ratings confidence of such well
established and successful performers of culturally diverse backgrounds? And
as the National Review‘s editor quips, does the presence of a culturally
diverse cast in this production of a European fairy tale describe
multiculturalism?
Perhaps the author is suggesting that the suspension of belief required to take
pleasure in a fairy tale is also required for audiences to accept a cast, such as
the one above. Such a criticism does not hold up to scrutiny. The weekly
hospital drama ER, for example, contains a diverse cast and is a critically
acclaimed ratings winner, suggesting its culturally diverse cast is accepted by
mainstream audiences. ER is very much set in the ‘real world’ as opposed to
Cinderella. Notwithstanding such cynical responses to diverse casting in the
media, there is strong agreement among acting guilds, policy makers and
sections of the production industry in all the countries studied that non-
traditional casting is more desirable than casting only performers from Anglo
backgrounds. To this end, the United States has established robust regulatory
requirements for monitoring the employment of DCALB employees, including
casts. Its performance in this issue provides a superior example when
compared to the situation in Australia.
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Television broadcasting overview: USA
In the USA, the place of commercial television is central. Its public service
channel (PBS) is funded to a far lesser degree than those in the UK or
Australia. However, like Australia, three major networks have dominated the
free to air market (CBS, NBC and ABC), though FOX television has evolved
to become the fourth network in recent years and has since been joined by
two mini-networks, United Paramount (UPN) and Warner Brothers (WB). The
television landscape is based on free enterprise and was set in place by the
Federal Communications Commission, which promoted a mix of local based
TV and nationwide services. In the early 1950s however, the dominance of
the established radio broadcasters NBC and CBS forged further alliances with
local TV stations (affiliates) across the US through superior programming
(with formats often brought over from radio shows). The third network, ABC,
was not able to compete on a strong basis with NBC and CBS until into the
1970s, when it achieved affiliate parity with the other two networks (Walker
and Ferguson, 1998).
The staple of television programs on US TV was an evolution of program
content from other entertainment forms. Radio quiz shows, musicals, soaps
and comedies were transferred to television. Televised theatre contributed a
period of live drama broadcasts in the 1950s but it was the connection to
movie making which cemented the place of drama programming from the late
1950s onwards. However the position held by the three networks was
challenged in the 1970s and 1980s by the eventual penetration of cable with
Home Box Office, which was followed by the likes of MTV, CNN, and ESPN.
The other obvious addition to the televisual landscape was Rupert Murdoch’s
FOX Network in the late 1980s. A combination of sport and youth oriented
programming has seen FOX foster an established position as the fourth
network. And like Australia, the US has witnessed the merging of media
industries across product ranges, including television, making it merely a
component within a collection of entertainment content and delivery platforms.
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Power to the people: multiculturalism in the USA
The settlement of America by European immigrants differs from Australia.
While the percentage of Americans born overseas in the USA in the second
half of the 20th century did not surpass 15%, the number of people who
identify with a particular ethnic origin is nevertheless significant. The main
ethnic groups of migrants residing in the United States are 55 million who
claim German descent, the English with 50 million and the Irish at 45 million.
Italian and French are 26 million, and Latino 24 million. The main groups
discussed in this chapter are African Americans who in 1996 made up circa
12% of the population, Latino at 11% and an Asian population of 4%.
Indigenous Americans accounted for 1% of the community (Mastro and
Greenberg, 2000). In spite of the image of an American melting pot, a strong
Anglophile current runs through American history dating back to the English
settlers who in the 18th century deemed themselves to be ‘the true Americans’
(Highham, 1991, p 2). Quantitatively, it is estimated that in 20 to 30 years, the
USA may approximate a ‘majority minority’ society, meaning that the category
non-white will make up more than half of the population (Williams, 1997). On
a more political and ideological basis, the hegemony of a dominant white and
middle class America has in fact been open to fissures for some time.
Before the Revolution, North America was a collection of ‘disparate groups,
separated from one another by religion, country of origin, local institutions and
geographical distance’, who resisted attempts to construct a coherent identity
(Highham 1991, p 3). Post-Revolution America though, began to witness the
emergence of an ideological republican based identity, founded on shared
visions for a strong, diverse, yet individualistic America. Immigration was seen
as an integral part of the development of the United States. A continuum of
immigration history which lasted into the 20th century conceived immigration
as belonging to the myth of the USA as an unbounded society. However, from
WW I onwards, the integrity of a boundless culture was undermined by a
significant voice of dissent. Into the 1950s and 1960s, Black politics combined
with the civil rights movement, drew attention to the status of minorities in the
USA.
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Until the 1960s, a taken for granted assimilationist attitude existed towards
immigrants in the States. In later years, a philosophy of cultural pluralism
replaced the melting pot and the period has similarities with Australian
multiculturalism of the 1970s. However, institutionalised programs for
managing immigrant populations such as those in Australia were not
apparent. From the Kennedy era onwards, a notion of multiculturalism grew
out of the civil rights movement, which accorded affirmative action to the
Black community and then to other minority populations. Prior to the 1960s,
the explicit discrimination of Blacks had been challenged in the celebrated
Brown Vs Board of Education legal action which saw the Supreme Court put
an end to segregated schooling, creating the constitutional foundation for
equal opportunity. The impetus for the ensuing civil action of the 1960s can be
traced to unrest over the urbanisation of Blacks in ghettoes and a forceful
awareness among the Black community for equal rights (Naylor, 1997).
Affirmative action was intended initially only for the Black population but as it
is based on social equality and not on cultural recognition, it was extended to
women, Hispanics and other minority groups. Affirmative action should not be
confused with the application of explicit quotas in the workplace, as is
commonly assumed. This is particularly relevant in the area of casting, where
on the basis of quotas alone, equality is reduced to a purely quantitative
measure. The type of portrayal is of vital importance, as is the facility for
minority groups to have some control over both recognition and
representation. This is the other side to multiculturalism in the United States.
The politics of recognition, related to the growth of a critical paradigm in the
social sciences, began in educational contexts in the 1970s. The study of
minority groups in US university curricula includes Afro-American studies and
cultural studies based programs, centered on identity politics analyses.
Critical analyses of American multiculturalism also relate to the effectiveness
of affirmative action, which in the Black community, is seen to benefit a middle
class Afro-American (Wieviorka, 1998; Fair, 1999). The reality for many in the
Black community has not meant parity in life chances. The vision of the
Huxtables in The Cosby Show for example offers contradictory interpretations
of Black America in this context. While being criticised for presenting a fantasy
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of middle class American meritocracy for Black Americans, The Cosby Show
was also considered innovative in the way it de-ethnicised the Huxtable
family. Zook (1999, p 68) presents a connection between affirmative action of
the 1960s with contemporary contradictions in programming:
In the late 1980s and early 90s, shows such as Cosby … presented the refreshing possibility that racial authenticity could be negotiated rather than assumed, with the success of integration and affirmative action in the 1960s and 70s, unusually large numbers of African Americans had been granted economic mobility. This ‘buffer’ caste, although only a small fraction of the total African American population, experienced a certain, strange inclusion, one that blurred established notions of race.
As a ‘buffer’ caste, the Huxtable family present an alternative to the usual
associations of Blacks with crime, poverty and hip hop. However, the life of
the Huxtables is far removed from practices such as racial steering for
example, where Blacks are shown only housing located next to other Blacks
(a practice which complements the ‘White Flight’ of the 1960s and 70s where
whites abandoned the metropolis for the suburbs).
While links can be made between the social movements for equality of the
1960s with the representation of Blacks in the 1990s, current debates around
multiculturalism are now more likely to focus on identity politics. Downey
(1999) defines the period of the late 1970s onwards, as an era of ‘benign
neglect’ for the further stimulation of civil rights and in some cases, the
reversal of socially transformative policy. A disengagement from analyses of
structural factors and issues of minority obstructions to equity, was replaced
by a move toward examining issues of identity and culture. Subversive textual
readings on their own, achieve little by way of engagement with the political
process and day to day struggles for equality, which were a key feature of the
civil rights era. As a transformative tool, the turn to identity politics is
questionable, and the symbol of multiculturalism perceived as diluted and
ambiguous. As a consequence, multiculturalism understood outside of
academic fields of study in the USA has drifted away from its civil rights roots.
The allegation that cultural diversity has become a corporate multiculturalism
is also a perceptible discourse in the USA:
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While the new economic utilitarian rationale for diversity lent broad legitimacy, it further compromised the significance of diversity as a symbol of – or lever for – progressive social change, and the meaning of the advocacy of cultural diversity shifted dramatically away from social equity issues (Downey, 1999, p 180).
The shift away from an advocacy discourse is further reinforced by the
concept proposed by Glazer (1997), with the claim that all Americans are now
multiculturalists. The danger with this is that continuing minority needs for
structural equality, particularly among more recently arrived groups, may be
submerged. Such a discussion is also to be found in Australia, where
multicultural analysis centered on questions of identity and representation
alone, overlook one of Australian multiculturalism’s original purposes as the
betterment of immigrant living and working conditions. However the fashion
of the cultural critique of multiculturalism in the USA has enabled groups such
as Mexican-Americans and Native Americans to explore a renewal of their
culture and identity in institutional forums such as university courses and in
wider contexts through the publishing of articles and books. The challenge to
place contemporary American multiculturalism into a framework for examining
television programming and cultural diversity lies in its synthesis of civil history
and resulting affirmative action, with the progression of identity politics and
questions of representation.
Policy contexts
Broadcasting in the United States is regulated by an independent body, the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Its policies are established and
modified by legislative amendment. Being similar to the position of the
Australian Broadcasting Authority, it offers the prospect of making
comparisons in how regulating for cultural diversity has been approached in
the two countries. Commissions such as the FCC develop policy as required
from guidelines handed down by Congress. While the US promotes free
market forces in most industries, in some areas the government considers
that ‘normal market forces in a capitalist economy will generally promote their
self-interests, and may not protect the interest of the general public’ (Walker
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and Ferguson, 1998, p 71). Broadcasting is considered one such public
interest under the Communications Act of 1934. This key notion of a public
interest for broadcasting in the US has meant that minorities may also stake a
claim for their interests in both ownership of and representation in television
broadcasting. This can be compared to Object 3(e) of the BSA in Australia,
concerning the promotion of cultural diversity and the debates centred around
the Act, examined in Chapter Three.
Decisions made by the FCC can be appealed in the courts and may be
contested on the grounds of poor conduct by the FCC, a lack of due process
and importantly in the US, decisions may be challenged if they are in conflict
with the constitution. Also contributing to the policy making process, the FCC
is at times pressured for favourable treatment by the television industry (by its
lobbying and self regulatory body the National Association of Broadcasters -
NAB) and by various public lobby groups. Public action against stations over
children’s TV in the 1960s for example, resulted in the term ‘petition to deny’,
whereby a station licence renewal is challenged by advocacy groups over
specific matters. Although this avenue of dispute diminished as deregulation
took hold in later decades, it served as a stimulus for change in the
representation of minorities in the civil rights era. However issues concerning
the representation of Blacks in particular were being raised a decade before
the rise of the civil rights movement.
Amos n’ Andy was a signpost in relations between minority communities and
broadcasters over issues of portrayal. Billed as the first all Black network
show in 1951, its coarse representations received condemnation from the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but
the program remained on air for many years in spite of losing its sponsor.
After the public protest surrounding Amos n’ Andy,1 an unanticipated
consequence was that Black characters were avoided for the next decade.
When in the early 1960s they did return, Lichter, Lichter and Rothman (1994,
1 The NAACP sought an injunction in the federal court to prevent CBS broadcasting the show when it came out. After five years of litigation, CBS withdrew the show from syndication in 1966 (NAACP, 2001).
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p 354) note how Blacks featured as ‘saintly or heroic figures with little sense
of place or heritage’. Such a representation is similar with those of
Indigenous Australians in the 1960s and 1970s, where they were portrayed as
either noble savages or as a problematised community. In the USA, a pious
rendering of Blacks changed by the mid 60s, when social realism replaced the
superficial portrayal of previous years. As a consequence, Black characters
became ghettoised as criminals though this portrayal was tempered by stories
which showed Black America as the repressed, overcoming hardship by any
means. Nevertheless, this did not endear the television industry to the civil
rights movement who rightly saw the power of television in communicating
pessimistic messages about minority communities. After the passing of the
Civil Rights Act in 1964, the New York Ethical Culture Society began the first
national monitoring of Blacks in television. Two years later, a coalition of civil
rights groups filed the first ‘petition to deny’ as a regulatory measure against a
Mississippi station for discriminatory hiring practices. Monitoring played a vital
role in the case and two years later in 1966 the US Court of Appeals ruled the
FCC must grant a hearing on the matter (Montgomery, 1989). As a
consequence, the monitoring method was repeated by Hispanics, women,
gay groups and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). By 1968, enough pressure
had mounted for the FCC to issue a new policy and rule that would link
licence renewal to a station’s performance over EEO practices.
The FCC’s EEO requirements were in place for 30 years until 1998, when
they were deemed unconstitutional in a case involving the Lutheran Church,
which protested the FCC’s finding that the church had made inadequate
requirements in recruiting minorities at two of its radio stations.2 Over the
previous 30 years however, the FCC’s equal opportunity rules were
interpreted as enabling content diversity by increasing the chances of
minorities to work in the sector. The FCC also stated that its inclusivity
requirements in hiring make ‘good business sense and benefited employers
because they (the requirements) increase an employer’s chances of obtaining
the services of the most talented people’ (FCC, 1998). This also reflects the
2 Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod v. FCC, 141 F.3rd 344 (D.C. Cir. 1998).
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idea of productive diversity (Cope and Kalantzis, 1997) in Australian
multiculturalism, where a culturally diverse population will provide ‘diversity
dividends’ in the workplace, once their cultural resources are fully utilised.
The FCC’s measures in EEO went well beyond the policy Object of the
Australian Content Standard with its aspirational goal of promoting and
reflecting a multicultural society. The FCC measures for EEO are supported
with consistent enforcement of monitoring and reporting efforts. The FCC
claim the following results in support of the near 30-year-old rule. In 1971,
women constituted 23.3% of full time broadcast employees and minorities
9.1%. In 1997, women constituted 41% and ethnic minorities 20.2% of
employees. Congress also expanded the FCC hiring rules to include cable TV
in 1984 and to multichannel video programming distributors in 1992,
endorsing a mandate for diversity in digital media industries as well. However
an inconsistency in the rule with the constitution was established in the
Lutheran Church case, in that discriminatory hiring based on gender, race,
colour, religion or national origin was deemed unconstitutional – and this
applies to positive discrimination as well. Over the years, an interpretation of
the ruling had led to the practice of de facto affirmative action in order for
broadcasters to safely approach their licence hearings, as well as to deter
attention from the NAACP, the SAG and other advocacy groups. This was the
foundation of the so-called and much maligned quota system of proportional
employment.
An explicit and enforced quota system has never existed in US broadcasting,
despite popular belief to the contrary. The FCC would simply consider the
employment data (minority-hire filings) and other relevant matters at licence
renewal time and compare this with local labour force figures. If results were
unsatisfactory, a more detailed analysis would be carried out with a worst
case scenario being remedial conditions placed on the broadcaster such as
extended reporting and perhaps a shorter licence period. However when such
measures were about to be applied to the Lutheran Church due to a lack of
diversity in their employment figures at two of its radio stations, their
subsequent appeal resulted in the court identifying the FCC rules to be an
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imposition of racial considerations for the purposes of employment. The FCC
(1998) maintained that its sole purpose in EEO rules was to ‘foster diverse
programming content’ and that such diversity is a ‘compelling motivation’.3
However the court held that even assuming the compelling nature of program
diversity as stipulated under the 1934 Act, the Commission had introduced no
evidence linking DCALB employees to what appears in programming content.
This decision undermined, in the words of the FCC, ‘the proposition that there
is any link between broad employment regulation and the Commission’s
avowed interest in broadcast diversity’. The FCC (1998) continue to believe
that affirmative action efforts do not constitute discrimination as ‘white males
suffer no cognizable harm in being forced to compete against a larger pool of
qualified applicants’.
As well as hiring rules, the FCC maintains policies which enhance minority
ownership of the media as an instrument for ensuring diversity. These policies
were also contested in the 1990s through the courts in separate cases,4
however the court affirmed the Commission’s judgement on one occasion that
there is a nexus between rules fostering minority ownership of broadcast
stations and the statutory goal of fostering diversity of viewpoints.5 And finally
precedent was established in a previous ruling where ‘Circuit recognised the
Commission’s authority to enforce both “affirmative action” and anti-
discrimination rules in the licence renewal context to advance its public
interest mandate to foster diverse programming'.6 These conflicting legal
precedents over minority hiring also contributed to uncertainty over the
formulation of new FCC equity rules in the late 1990s. As a consequence, the
3 The notion of a ‘compelling interest’ may be deemed as a just reason for racial based affirmative action practices to take precedence over Amendment 14 of the Constitution which prohibits racial discrimination (‘positive’ included). 4 The minority ownership preference rules received much criticism in the 1990s as they were abused by large companies for profit and tax avoidance. After deregulation amendments in the 1990s, companies such as Murdoch’s FOX were able to broker quid pro quo deals with government to gain favourable changes in ownership rules for investment into minority interests. Indeed, the higher ‘homes coverage percentage’ for minority controlled broadcasters (30% rather than 25%) and better tax breaks saw Murdoch expand into the market. The FCC has questioned the wisdom of allowing greater media concentration in order to foster program diversity. 5 This was of course to be then contested in the Lutheran Church case. For a review of these decisions, see Hammond (1999). 6 Bilingual Bicultural Coalition on Mass Media v. FCC, see Hammond (1999).
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FCC called for empirical evidence in a 1998 proposal for Rule Making which
would determine the nexus between women and minority hiring and
programming content and how various positions exert influence on
programming decisions.
This lack of empirical analysis in the past between employment data and
programming content illustrates the FFC’s challenges as a mixed regulatory
body. That is, conflicting perspectives and analytical gaps in evaluating social
and cultural objectives related to the public interest compare poorly with more
tangible and measurable economic outcomes related to researching issues of
ownership and control. Napoli (1999, p 571) comments: ‘These gaps [in social
objectives] are largely due to an analytical orientation that consistently fails to
investigate and account for the social and political consequences of policy
decisions with the same empirical rigor as for economic consequences’.7 The
failure to link information about minority job positions with program outcomes
led the FCC to design new EEO rules which would maintain its policy
responsibility for the promotion of content diversity while trying to maintain
equity goals, without resorting to the application of discriminatory hiring
practices (including positive discrimination). This is something which the ABA
in Australia will not consider.
In January 2000 the FCC released new rules for broadcasters and cable
systems to court minorities through so called ‘outreach efforts’ in their job
vacancies. The rules came into effect in April 2000, with critical comment from
some broadcasters that the new measures were too arduous. Advocacy
groups on the other hand were critical of the outreach rules for being less
influential than the pre-1998 rules. The new requirements were to apply to
stations with more than four employees and offered as two options. Option A:
a licencee sends their job vacancy announcements to any organisation
requesting the vacancy, and for the station to select from and participate in a
variety of outreach opportunities such as job fairs, internships or interaction
7 Such comments are similar to those made in the context of the Project Blue Sky court case and in recommendations made by the 2000 Productivity Commission into Broadcasting (discussed in Chapter Three).
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with educational and community groups. Option B: the licencee designs their
own outreach recruitment program, which would also require them to keep
data on the sources, race, ethnicity and gender of applicants (McConnell,
2000a).
Broadcasters suggested that publishing their vacancies on the Net would
suffice and that the new rules would ‘bury them under paperwork’ and that
these rules also constitute de facto quotas as licence challenges could be
based on ‘whether stations are doing enough to reach minorities and women’
(McConnell, 2000b, p 19). The FCC rejected such claims estimating that the
new filings would take three hours per year and while gender and minority
employment figures must be kept, the data would not be considered at licence
renewal reviews. The NAB argued this was overly optimistic but interestingly,
cable operators were satisfied with the new rules. These FCC rules were still
well advanced compared to Australia, as they contained an obligation for
employee monitoring. However, the US Court of Appeals vacated (ruled
invalid) the new EEO outreach programs in January 2001, citing the same
reasons for vacating as they did in 1998, ie: that they encourage
discriminatory hiring practices (albeit positive).
The primary rationale was that such rules put pressure on broadcasters to
recruit on race-based classification that is not ‘narrowly tailored to support a
compelling governmental interest’ and so the rules were again judged
unconstitutional (Ward, 2001, p 2). However in late 2002, the FCC was able to
register a revised set of EEO rules based on the Option A outreach concept
put forward in 2000. The new EEO rules took effect from March 2003.
Interestingly, these rules will be tied to the FCC licence renewal process with
EEO compliance being central to the FCC’s assessment of a licence renewal
application. At the time of writing, no appeal has been lodged to vacate or
suspend the new rules.
Network programming and production: historical contexts
It was the Black sitcom Amos n’ Andy that brought a mostly Black show to
American television in 1951. Though advocacy groups were unable to
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pressure CBS to remove the family sitcom, the show’s initial sponsor (Blatz
Beer) did eventually withdraw. After Amos n’ Andy, ethnic roles were once
again minor or consigned to single episodes. An exception to this was actor
Desi Arnaz - co-owner of Desilu Productions and the character Ricky Ricardo
on I Love Lucy. While a permanent feature on the show, Ricky’s character set
the tone for Hispanic representation as being of ‘Latin temperament’ and
therefore prone to excitable outbursts in uncontrolled Spanish. Asian
characters were rare in early years and it was only ‘subservient roles … that
kept them from complete oblivion’ (Lichter et al, 1994, p 337). However with
the advent of the civil rights movement, cast monitoring, and FCC interest in
minority participation, the late 1960s and early 1970s saw significant change.
In a decade, roles for Blacks increased fourteen fold, although roles for other
ethnic groups decreased. The range and quality also changed for Blacks with
starring roles in shows such as I Spy, Mission Impossible, Julia and Mod
Squad. Previous features of Black roles such as the use of slang and servile
behaviour were no longer tolerated. Racial issues were addressed in keeping
with the era, though as Lichter et al (1994, p 341) note below, the roles
tended to over-compensate for past ignorance and stereotype:
There was a tendency to replace the old negative Black stereotypes with new positive ones. Having discovered that Blacks didn’t have to be cast as valets and janitors, white writers turned them into James Bonds and Mary Tyler Moores [reference to the shows Mod Squad and Julia]. The frantic search for positive characters smothered individuality with good intentions.
This resurgence in Black portrayal, regardless of its naivety, demonstrates the
power of early advocacy groups to effect change, although the general
disruption to social conservatism in the 1960s also played a role. At the
networks, a department was put in place to consult and negotiate with
audience groups to avoid unwanted attention over contentious content. While
not initially connected to issues of representation, the establishment of
network broadcast standards and program practices departments8 were to
8 Referred to as Standards and Practices, such departments were established after the controversy resulting from contest rigging on game shows in the late 1950s. Networks put the
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play a significant role in how broadcasters negotiated the portrayal of
minorities.
By the 1970s, Standards and Practices departments were previewing scripts
in advance of filming in an effort to anticipate controversy. In some cases,
consultation with advocacy groups and the employment of technical
consultants and members of advocacy groups were made when researching
contentious issues. Over the decades, networks formed relationships with
spokespersons or advocacy groups in many areas such as the gay
movement, pro-choice, Indigenous Americans and ethnic groups
(Montgomery, 1989). The role of Standards and Practices however declined
in the late 1980s as networks downsized and in any case, the heady days of
the 60s and 70s had been replaced by an absence of political action. After
two decades of experimentation, not only did producers know what might be a
problem in scripts, but issue-based stories had become somewhat exhausted.
However in 1971 the exploration of homosexuality, miscarriage, equality and
race in the infamous All in the Family set the pace for years to come.
The producer of the controversial and issue-based show All in the Family,
Norman Lear, became known for his support of racial justice and a willingness
to explore political issues in his shows (such as Good Times, Sanford and
Son, That’s my Mama and Maude). However his All in the Family character,
Archie Bunker, was an overt racist presented as a person to be derided. The
show received a good deal of criticism for airing Archie’s racist slurs: terms
such as spade, spic, coon and coloured were common and would be
impossible to utter in a comedy a few years later. An equal opportunity bigot,
Archie was borrowed from the British series Till Death us do Part. Lear hoped
that the likeable racist would present viewers with a non-preaching style anti-
racism message. However studies suggested that the show only served to
departments forward as a way of avoiding tighter regulation as was recommended in a Congressional report of the time (Montgomery, 1989).
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confirm liberals’ contempt for the Archie Bunkers of the world while
conservatives found solace in identifying with him (Lichter et al, 1994, p 345).9
Lear’s seminal comedy paved the way for several such Black comedies in the
years to come. Good Times and Different Strokes were both screened with
some success in Australia and represented a liberal approach to teasing out
issues of race in a non-threatening manner. Later in the 1970s, Blacks were
joined by other minorities in lesser numbers in a range of shows such as a
Greek Kojak, the Polish Banacek, and the Italian attorney Petrocelli. The
expansion of lead and support roles also brought with it an expanded menu of
characterisations, both flattering and unflattering. Alongside criminals of
obvious non-Anglo descent (particularly Hispanic and later Asian), characters
such as Vinnie Barbarino, Freddy ‘Boom Boom’ Washington and Juan Epstein
presented a combination of comic stereotype and liberal social
consciousness. This period of televised pluralism, reinforces critical
multiculturalists allegations against liberal or soft multiculturalism, which they
see as unable to grapple with institutionalised racism due to the focus on
outbursts of individualised bigotry. However the 1980s heralded an important
shift in the production of minority programming with the arrival of shows made
by Blacks for Blacks, rather than the previous liberal content of white made
shows with Blacks in them.
Racial narrowcasting In 1984 The Cosby Show premiered as a major series with significant creative
input by Blacks. Generating the highest ratings for a show since Bonanza, it
remains a one-off in Black programming in that the major networks were
joined in later years by cable, FOX, WB and UPN, who offered Black
audiences a greater variety of programming. In the 1990s, shows such as
FOX’s The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, In Living Color, New York Undercover,
Roc, The Sinbad Show, South Central and UPN’s Moesha delivered a Black
authorship with the following distinctive elements:
9 Years later, Norman Lear held a preview screening for Washington’s Black Caucus of a comedy series about a Black congressman (Mister Dugan). The reaction was so critical, Leer withdrew the series for good, losing three-quarters of a million US dollars.
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Autobiography, meaning a tendency toward collective and individual authorship of Black experience; improvisation, the practice of inventing and ad-libbing unscripted dialogue or action; aesthetics, a certain pride in visual signifiers of Blackness; and drama, a marked desire for complex characterizations and emotionally challenging subject matter (Zook, 1999, p 5).
Zook’s study of the FOX Network and Black programming illustrates the two
edged sword of commercial interests and Black television. According to Zook
(1999), FOX fostered a place for Black authorship in television in its youth
orientated shows. However after a short affair with such programming, FOX
sought out a white legitimacy by abandoning many Black shows and courting
the mainstream with NFL football. This FOX strategy had little to do with
social justice and it could also be argued that its Black programming had an
alternative agenda. Traditional network television was seen as not overly
appealing to Blacks. However with the advent of FOX, advertisers interested
in targeting the Black demographic in particular were also interested in ‘going
after the more affluent young white urbanites who watch Black orientated
shows to keep abreast of the latest trends and styles’. Murdoch himself is
quoted as wanting to ‘hook the hip white audience’ (Lichter et al, 1994, p 56).
Nevertheless, shows such as The Fresh Prince of Bel Air explored integration
in a Black post civil rights America, taking ‘the Black upper class for granted,
as had Cosby, it also wrestled, frequently and openly with economic and
cultural mobility’ (Zook, 1999, p 15). However as FOX became more
established as the fourth network, minority-heavy casts in shows such as New
York Undercover with its Latino / Black leads, presented FOX with a dilemma
if it wanted to be seen as less of a racial narrowcaster. In spite of such
economic rationales FOX programming showed minority characters in
dynamic contradictions within issues of race loyalty, class disparity and
nationalist desire. Such stories and representations were not often found in
prime time mainstream programming.
As FOX withdrew from its Black programming in the mid 90s, two new mini-
networks, United Paramount (UPN) and Warner Brothers (WB) launched
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themselves with the same strategies as FOX had years earlier. Hoping to
attract an abandoned audience, UPN and WB took on FOX staff and
replicated their programming for a hip audience. The two new networks hurt
FOX and as the late 90s came to a close, FOX held onto its Black shows and
was still the top-rated network among Black and Latino audiences. However
as Entertainment Weekly suggested about the two new networks, ‘the bigger
UPN and WB get, the whiter they’ll become’ (cited in Zook, 1999, p 105). This
is not to say that the big three networks contain nothing of value for research
into the place of cultural diversity on TV.
In a content analysis of minority characters in new season programs from
1966 to 1992, new Black characters accounted for an average 6% of casts in
the late 1960s, 8% in the 1970s, 12% in the 1980s and near 15% in the 1990s
(Greenberg and Collette, 1997). From the 1980s onwards, Black roles were in
sync with US census figures and then exceeded the real world population.
Asian and Hispanic roles on the other hand ran counter to census figures,
with only sporadic new characters from these groups. While such
comprehensive quantitative analysis serves useful purposes for identifying the
presence or invisibility of minority actors, it is limited in its capacity to take into
account the type of roles played by actors. In other research, analysis of
prime time TV in 1992/93 found that on the whole producers and writers
‘challenge white preconceptions through their portrayals of minority individuals
victimized by passive bias and active discrimination’ (Lichter et al, 1994, p
61). The study also found that 8% of Black characters in prime time were
criminal – half that of white characters. Looking specifically at homicides over
a period of 30 years, Blacks on television were 18 times less likely to commit
murder than in real life, while Asian murderers were three times more
prevalent on TV than in reality. Whites committed murder at twice the rate on
TV compared to actual rates for homicide in the real world. What such content
and demographic research presents is sometimes at odds with common
beliefs that Blacks are portrayed in a manner which reinforces established
perceptions of them as anti-social.
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In a further study of Blacks in the highest rating TV entertainment shows, 70%
of characters were in professional or management positions (Entman and
Rojecki, 2000). While this may seem a positive step, such a utopian reversal
imposes a formal distance between Black and White actors, detaching them
from the sort of peer interaction that White characters engage in. In support of
this argument, an eight week study (Bramlett-Solomon and Farwell, 1997) in
1994 of intimacy and relationships between characters in the top network
soap operas, showed that intimacy was far more prevalent between White
characters than Black, and no scenes depicting interracial intimacy occurred
at all. However, research (Lichter et al, 1996, p 426) among Hollywood’s
executive and creative TV personnel suggest that discriminatory intentions
are not evident. Polling 104 influential writers, producers and executives in the
1990s, it was found that the ‘creative leadership (of television) represents an
urban and cosmopolitan society’. Being mostly ‘left of centre’, the sample
expressed significantly less conservative opinions than the general
population, who were also surveyed at the time
This has resulted in television drama that attempts to mediate social and
political transformations from the perspective of white liberal America into the
homes of what is commonly thought to be a conservative mainstream. At the
same time it is worth noting that 1999 figures from the NAACP (NAACP,
1999) showed that of 839 writers at the networks, 55 are Black and they were
mostly employed at UPN and WB (NBC having 1, CBS 2, ABC 9 and FOX 3).
Accepting the proposition that television can have a ‘substantive effect on the
social context in which it operates’ (Harper, 1998), then the portrayal of
minorities in such stories over a long period of time is significant and
necessitates on-going evaluation. Aside from the mostly academic research
presented above, the Screen Actors Guild of America and the NAACP have
played significant roles in monitoring the place of minorities in US television
as well.
Changing times
From its foundation years in the 1930s, SAG has concerned itself with
inequalities and detrimental representations of minorities on American
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screens. In 1947, a special resolution was passed that the SAG commit itself
to issues of inequality. An anti-discrimination committee was established and
meetings held with producers, the directors guild and the writers guild with the
result that an agreement was reached regarding the portrayal of Blacks (SAG,
2000a). Through the 1950s, the NAACP joined with the SAG to address
issues of discriminatory casting. In the area of feature film production, SAG
negotiated minority hiring reports into contracts in 1977. However it took
several years to attain industry compliance, with the SAG writing in the threat
of monetary penalties in contracts for failure to provide affirmative action
information. SAG have their own EEO department and support another
advocacy project: The Non-Traditional Casting Project, which organises
conferences and forums on inclusive hiring as well as maintaining an
extensive national talent bank. SAG also undertake campaigns to raise the
awareness of minority hiring and commission research on the topic of cultural
diversity and television. One such SAG research project undertaken by
George Gerbner (2000) looked at the roles for minorities on prime time and
daytime TV between 1994 and 1997. The position of African Americans was
confirmed to be that they were over-represented (at 171% of their real-life
proportion) and that Hispanic and Asian characters continued to be
represented at less than half their statistical figure in the community. As for
the type of portrayal, Gerbner seems most upset by the lack of poverty on
fictional TV with only 1.4% of major roles cast as underprivileged, whereas US
census data shows that 13% of people live in poverty. He is also critical of
ageism in both minority and mainstream casting – an issue which actors and
casting agents do indeed grapple with (see Chapter Seven).
More recently, SAG released further research which confirmed the FCC’s
fears that with the absence of minority hiring rules in the late 1990s, advances
made in the previous decades had come undone. For the first time since
records were kept, all minority groups bar Asian/Pacific saw decreases in their
proportion of roles after 1997 (though by less than 1%). Still of particular
concern in the US are the on-going problems Latino actors face in securing
roles. Now representing around 11% of the US population, their
representation hovers around 3% (Mastro and Greenberg, 2000). In a further
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study on Latino portrayal, when Latinos are cast, it is often in servant type
roles, such as ‘Jose the busboy and Maria the maid’ (SAG, 2000b). Similar to
claims from Australian DCALB actors, Latinos are occasionally asked to
speak poor English and perform their ethnic background in order to conform
to a rather coarse portrayal. Hollywood executives claimed in the study that a
combination of low pulling power of Latino themes at the box office or in the
ratings, combined with a lack of Latino ‘name’ actors, are the main reasons for
the poor result. The appearance of Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Banderas in
recent years questions this assertion. Mastro and Greenberg’s (2000, p 699)
study explains the lack of Latino programming as a classic tautology: ‘Latinos
tend to watch programs that Whites watch, therefore, there is no need for
Latino oriented shows’.
With respect to African Americans, a SAG commissioned report (Hunt, 2000)
examined 384 episodes of prime time series in late 1999 on ABC, CBS, NBC,
FOX, UPN and WB, finding an uneven distribution of Black characters in
situation comedy. UPN and WB took the lion’s share of on-going roles for
Blacks, even though the two networks produced less than a third of all
programming. Every show on UPN featured a Black regular, whereas the
once Black narrowcaster FOX had none. Such abundance of quantitative
research in the States has allowed organisations such as the SAG and the
NAACP to manage high profile media campaigns in support of their causes.
After the drop in roles for minorities became noticeable and verifiable by the
end of 1999, the NAACP began a particularly intensive promotion targeting
the networks over their new season of programs, which they claim were
demonstrably ‘pale’.
The NAACP itself is the USA’s oldest civil rights organisation. Begun in 1909,
it works on numerous projects concurrently across a wide range of social
justice issues, with a bias towards Black America. In the second half of 1999,
the NAACP made television casting its high profile activity charging the
networks with a whitewash and threatening a national boycott which would
see minority audiences tune out of prime time. This campaign gained
significant media coverage. The following months in early 2000 saw
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agreements reached between the NAACP and networks. Even before the
agreements, networks had attempted to calm the situation by adding minority
actors to existing shows and sending out memos to department heads to
increase diversity (Consoli, 1999). Later in 1999, there was criticism of the
NAACP for not imposing more concrete terms in the agreements with network
goals being vague and difficult to enforce (Stodghill, 1999). However from an
Australian perspective, such agreements and their possible impacts appear
significant. The accords made by the networks involve a commitment to
establish minority internship programs, make explicit minority recruitment
drives, double their business with minority owned companies and of most
interest link executive remuneration to the fulfillment of diversity
responsibilities. Within a few months of the agreements, production outcomes
became tangible.
In 2000, CBS began producing a predominantly Latino series and NBC slated
a similar show with a mainly Black cast. ABC was committed to deliver three
shows with minority leads in them. The newer networks also committed to
Black and Latino shows, with FOX hiring a diversity executive. CBS was cited
as the leader among the networks with the Stephen Bochco (Hill Street Blues,
NYPD Blue) drama City of Angels. Conceived some time before the NAACP
action, the hospital drama had Black executive and creative staff with half the
writing team African American and 70% of the crew from minority
backgrounds. Like most new shows, producer Bochco was concerned about
its initial success, however in Angels case the show was also a test for
culturally diverse programming in the market place. In spite of such concerns,
the show gained high ratings in Black households, only just behind Who
Wants to be a Millionaire and another season of the series was made
(Moonves, 2000).
Aside from high production values, the success of Bochco’s diversity dramas
possibly lies with their intentional yet unspectacular multiculturalism. CBS
president Leslie Moonves (2000, p 18) cites such a change in programming
as a shift towards the everyday in the way Black America is portrayed, stating,
‘Black series were always about being Black as opposed to being just a
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straight melodrama that dealt with situations where the cast just happened to
be Black. Which is a big difference’.
A popular and culturally diverse show in all households is of course NBC’s
ER, which demonstrates the possibility of inclusive casting. The program has
won at annual NAACP Image Awards where actors, films and television
shows are nominated for their engagement with a culturally diverse US. The
series which screened in Australia in 2000/2001 had a cast of 14 main
characters, seven of whom were from diverse cultural and linguistic
backgrounds. Most significant compared to Australian shows of the same
genre, is that two of these seven DCALB actors on ER were born overseas.
Ming-Na as Dr Chen was born in China and Goran Visnjic as Dr Kovic was
born in Croatia and speaks with his natural accent – a rare occurrence in
drama. In addition to these cast members is the non-disabled actress Laura
Innes as Dr Weaver, whose disability has never been explained in the entire
series. ER also demonstrates a breadth of inclusivity for cultural diversity.
While a show such as ER contains a disabled portrayal, shows in the US
nevertheless come under fire for not representing other groups such as ‘hefty
eaters, middle-aged women, non-spunky seniors, blue collar workers’ and
those in poverty (Johnson, 1999b; Gerbner, 2000). In spite of the intended
humour here, this is possibly one reason why technologies such as DBS and
cable have taken audience share away from the networks as they are able to
offer more specialised programming to particular groups. However such
divisions in audiences can also be seen as a reflection of the segregation in
American social life and the rejection of the liberal-pluralist ideal of integration
and diversity (Gray, 2001). Gross (2001) notes that of the 10 shows most
watched by Black audiences on US television, seven of these are the least
watched shows by White audiences.10 Network programs which do offer
attraction for both minority and White audiences are predominantly
action/drama series such as ER, Chicago Hope, NYPD Blue and The
Practice. 10 The main programs of overlap are Monday Night Football and Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
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A show such as ER also demonstrates that while culturally diverse actors in
the cast appear in everyday (though dramatic) roles, a similarly dramatic show
which is all-black for example, does not feature on the networks. In a study
(Entman and Rojecki, 2000) of narrowcaster programming on the Black
Entertainment Network for example, the depiction of African Americans was
more ‘egalitarian and inclusive’ when compared to network programs. But of
course, 89% of its audience is Black America and so such portrayals are not
seen by white audiences. Nevertheless, the same authors found in interviews
with 251 white households that as consumers of network television, white
Americans now hold ambivalent attitudes toward African Americans and that
this represents a significant positive change from previous feelings of
animosity and fear. This contrasts with the proposal of critics such as Gross
(2001) who consider the TV drama backstage of hospitals, police stations and
courthouses as merely offering white audiences the opportunity to go on a
‘weekly safari’ into gritty urban lifestyles. This understates the social efficacy
of everyday, non-designated portrayals of culturally diverse professionals.
While other electronic media have eroded the dominant position of network
TV, and will continue to do so, network primetime TV still remains the most
contested and keenly observed location for measuring and discussing the
portrayal of cultural diversity and programming in the USA.
Conclusion The USA presents a model of compelling intervention by advocacy groups to
transform the representation of culturally diverse groups. Using a combination
of public campaigning, direct negotiation with network management and when
necessary court action, groups such as the NAACP continue a civil rights
tradition in bringing about change in broadcasting and cultural diversity.
However the historical preeminence of African American civil rights groups
has meant that it is mainly this population who have made noteworthy
improvement, while South East Asian, and numbers of other DCALB groups,
in particular Indigenous Americans, continue to suffer lower participation rates
in employment and diminished portrayals in mainstream programming.
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Nevertheless, the type of negotiation the NAACP recently undertook with the
four networks offers constructive insight for the Australian context.
Two years after the NAACP campaign over the networks’ poor performance in
cultural diversity, they have been able to seek evaluative outcomes from the
networks in relation to the accords made with them in 1999. All four networks
hired Diversity Vice Presidents, directly responsible to the CEO and a
diversity board. At FOX and CBS, these newly created positions were seen as
a core factor in ‘significantly influencing casting practices and decisions’
(NAACP, 2001, p 31). Three networks have explicitly made the outcomes of
diversity performance linked to manager bonuses. FOX in particular have
almost doubled the number of actors from culturally diverse backgrounds in
primetime schedules. Other measurable outcomes across the four networks
include at least $10 million per network spent on minority services and goods,
the employment of an African American public relations company, managerial
employment outreach programs to boost minority executive staff and
participation in training programs.
A consistently poor outcome was the stagnation of opportunity for Indigenous
Americans, in spite of a CBS telemovie which featured predominantly
American Indian actors. The movie, The Lost Child, performed well critically
as well as with mainstream audiences, demonstrating that such programming
can translate to ‘good business for a network’ (NAACP, 2001, p 35).11 While
such unambiguous commitments from networks to cultural diversity are not
foreseeable in the Australian context, the USA demonstrates that both
economic and cultural objectives for meeting the needs of audiences and
broadcasters are open to outcomes-focused negotiations. These outcomes
need not be seen as over zealous regulatory interventions, imposing upon the
profit orientated business of commercial television. The negation of any such
agreements or accords in Australia was a significant frustration for those
involved in the cultural diversity debate of the early 1990s. The acceptance of 11 Outside of the broadcasting sector, retailer K-Mart hired singer/guitarist Jose Feliciano in TV ads to increase Hispanic business – K-Mart also employ a Chief Officer of Diversity (The Australian, 2002). Coca-Cola also announced a $1 billion plan to increase its business activities with minority and female owned companies (Jet, 2000).
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explicit measures to promote cultural diversity as stated in Object 3(e) of the
BSA and the Object of the Australian Content Standard are rejected by both
industry and the regulatory body in Australia, the ABA. It is worth considering
how less Anglocentric the media of the 1980s and early 1990s would have
been had such measures as those in the USA been in place. However one
area of concurrence between the two countries has been the increasing
acknowledgement by program makers for a mainstream and everyday
portrayal of cultural diversity. This means casting in a non-specific manner
and avoiding previous representations which narrowed the scope of possible
roles. However, some US producers embarked on such an agenda at least a
decade before Australian drama producers were either able to, or wanted to.
The critical mass of the American Black audience as both advocacy power
broker for regulatory intervention, and as a significant marketing target should
not be discounted as a major motivation for such changes in the US program
production industry. In this respect, the demographics of cultural diversity and
the broadcasting system in the United Kingdom bears a closer resemblance
to the Australian framework. However, like the USA, stakeholders in the UK
are also attempting to embrace the notion of a cultural diversity dividend in
order to make multicultural programming part of an expanded mainstream.
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Chapter Five The United Kingdom: Policy Remits For Diversity And An 'Everyday' Multiculturalism
Introduction This chapter examines recent research in the UK on multicultural
representation and how top levels of UK broadcasting management
demonstrate a willingness to address cultural diversity on two levels. First,
broadcasters and policy agents acknowledge that cultural diversity is an
integral component of programming which requires a tangible response. This
has evolved to what I term a remit for everyday multiculturalism. It is a
multiculturalism based on a contemporary understanding of multiculturalism
which acknowledges the cultural mixing of the second and third generation
into the social fabric of a changing mainstream. Second, the realization that
an expanded mainstream contains market potential translates to program
makers having to take responsibility for addressing culturally diverse
audiences.
In the production environment in the UK, symbolic or piecemeal approaches
to influencing professional practice are deemed insufficient to facilitate
program production which consistently speaks to increasingly diverse
audiences. Both state and commercial broadcasters in the UK have set
tangible targets for transforming employment profiles, including those of
creative stakeholders and management. The chapter illustrates that
responses to cultural diversity and programming for industry and policy agents
will continuously be challenged as the movement of people around the world
continues beyond the post war immigration era. In addition to new migration
trends, the consequences of an ever-increasing second generation is also
addressed.
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Television broadcasting overview: the UK
Britain’s BBC was established in the early 1920s and from the outset it was a
service which would provide more than entertainment. Committed to
educative, religious, and democratic notions of social responsibility, the BBC
model of public service broadcasting was emulated in many other countries.
Television began in the late 1930s with the BBC holding on to its monopoly
until the mid-1950s. Intense debate over the introduction of commercial
services in Britain mirrors exactly what was to eventuate throughout Europe in
the 1980s, when technology made it impossible for nations to maintain
transmission borders. In addition to BBC 1 and BBC 2 (launched in 1964),
commercial television, referred to as ITV or channel 3 stations, became firmly
established by the early 1960s and are now controlled by a number of
companies (the main ones being Thames, London Weekend, Central,
Granada and Yorkshire). These companies share popular programs across
the ITV network and schedule, combined with regional specific programming.
The BBC experienced a sharp drop in the audience share with the
introduction of ITV, which later evened out to reasonably equal audience
portions, unlike Australia where the commercial sector has always dominated.
The established dual system outlined above remained intact until the 1980s
when Channel 4 was created as a semi-state, semi-commercial broadcaster
for servicing special interest audiences and to explore innovative
programming. However it is with pay and digital services that there has been
a significant transformation of British television in comparison to Australia. In
the 1980s and into the 1990s, Britain developed additional services such as
cable and satellite. Of the three, it was Murdoch’s BskyB service which
dominated. Cable has had a measured impact in the UK due to a low rate of
cable infrastructure compared with the spread of easily installed satellite
dishes. Alongside commercial interests, the BBC also offers its pay service
across platforms. The free to air terrestrial market faced further competition in
the 1990s with Channel 4 becoming an independent commercial broadcaster
along with the commencement of channel 5. In the digital realm, Britain
currently enjoys a burgeoning market with satellite, terrestrial and cable digital
services provided by established commercial broadcasters (BskyB), and
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public broadcasters (BBC). Interactive services are already in use and are
expected to expand in coming years.
Race relations in the United Kingdom
As in Australia, the impact of World War II on the availability of labour in the
UK led to shortages in manufacturing and industry. Unlike most DCALB
migrants to the USA and Australia, Britain’s immigrants had a relationship to
its imperial past. This resulted in the arrival of migrants who were already
connected to Britain. Both migrant and host, had pre-established notions or
direct experience of each other. In the case of the British, these were mostly
derogatory attitudes inherited from past generations interaction with those
from Commonwealth states, who viewed the Asian and African migrants
deprecatingly. The British TV comedy It ain’t Half Hot Mum (discussed below)
provides an example of such colonial representation. However the unplanned
arrival of people from the West Indies in 1948 marked the beginning of
significant immigration to the United Kingdom. While Britain did not embark on
the kind of strategic and mass immigration which Australia undertook, pockets
of industry and state services did enter into a form of recruitment. One
particularly evident location for this was the explicit recruitment of Barbadian
and Jamaican immigrants to staff London’s transport network. In addition to
Caribbean migration, Asian immigrants from the Indian sub-continent and
East Africa eventually made up the larger proportion of post-war immigrants to
Britain, who now number around 8% of the population.
With palpable discrimination against immigrants increasing through the 1950s
and 1960s, action was taken by the government to tackle race-based inequity
while at the same time establishing barriers to further migration to the United
Kingdom. A liberal pluralist approach to cultural diversity generated race
relations institutions and policy, which included a Commission for Racial
Equality, a Race Relations Board, community councils and research bodies.
The 1971 Immigration Act drew attention to the active role of government in
shoring up Britain’s island status. The element of patriality in the Act
demanded that one must prove direct parentage connection to Britain in order
to reside there. British citizenship was also split into several categories with
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the result that distinctions were made about ‘who belonged in Britain and who
did not’ (Goulbourne, 1998, p 53). Thus the British government employed the
dual tactic of restricting immigration, while at the same time establishing anti-
discrimination legislation to help support an assimilationist policy.
Like Australia, the 1970s also saw the appearance of second generation UK
immigrants who had acquired their education in British schools. As is common
in other post WW II immigration countries, second generation migrants will
typically be involved in cultural interaction to a greater degree than their
parents. Such cultural encounters promote cultural fusion between the
mainstream and migrant culture and not necessarily in a one-way fashion.
With the emergence of the second generation in Britain came the formation of
organised interest groups who were willing to agitate for enhanced life
chances and to protest acts of explicit racism. Such political activism of the
1970s was on the one hand highly visible but on the other hand, it was also
presented as militant. This civil action had connections with the civil rights
movement and Black Power of the 1960s in the United States. Indeed, the
term Black was also embellished with notions of pride and strength by
coalitions of African-Caribbeans and Asians in Britain. The evolution of mainly
young and politically active immigrant groups marked, as Brah (1996, p 47)
puts it, the ‘coming of age of a new form of Asian political and cultural
agnecy’. Around the same period, the Race Relations Acts of the 1960s were
replaced by the Race Relations Act of 1976, which is still current today.
The current Race Relations Act 1976 allows complaints to be heard against
direct and also indirect acts of discrimination. This means for example that
requirements for employment, which would exclude people on ‘cultural or
racial grounds’, are no longer a way for employers to limit their applicants to
non-immigrant groups. Examples of this are conditions of dress, which are
purely on cultural grounds, such as the wearing of a hijaab. While not
particularly strenuous in comparison with the United States’ affirmative action
legislation, the British Act is considered comprehensive by European
standards (Ouaj, 1999). However, conscious of public sensitivity to the
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concept of positive discrimination, the British Act makes clear that affirmative
action is not permitted:
An employer cannot try to change the balance of the workforce by selecting someone mainly because she or he is from a particular racial group. This would be discrimination on racial grounds and is unlawful (Race Relations Act 1976).
There are also exceptions to the Act whereby a genuine occupational
qualification may override the above statement, as in the use of performers for
particular roles (such as a Black actor to play Martin Luther King). The Act
was complemented by a new Commission for Racial Equality, which has
broad applications relating to enforcement of the Act - and like multicultural
policy in Australia - it seeks to promote awareness of multicultural issues and
anti-discriminatory practice in the wider community. While such policy
advanced the avenues to equity in comparison with the previous decades, the
impact of Tory politics under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s resonated with
conservative anti-immigration debates reminiscent of Enoch Powell.1 Brah
(1996) reviews the 1980s for immigrant Britain as a time of continuing
institutionalised racism and provocative measures aimed at discouraging
further migration to Britain by Asian migrants. This period in race relations,
which Husband (1994) terms ‘the new racism’, meshed with Thatcher’s Britain
of self interest and nationalism
The 1980s also saw minority debate focus on Muslim communities with
Ayotollah Khomeni calling for the death of Salman Rushdie, who was judged
to have committed blasphemy with the writing and publication of his novel,
The Satanic Verses. What the Rushdie episode highlighted for race relations
in Britain was the disputed position of Muslims and religion in a multicultural
British society. As in Australia, the capacity for the state to embrace cultural
divergence in multicultural policy, will clearly be tested at times. Husband
(1994) notes continuing inequities in the UK are a challenge to multicultural
1 Enoch Powell was a conservative MP who in the 1960s demanded zero immigration and voluntary repatriation of migrants. Giving a speech in 1968 he foresaw ‘rivers of blood’ flowing in Britain as a result of immigration – the speech gained much publicity and a level of popular support at the time.
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policy, which he believes prioritises cultural aspects over power relations.
Husband’s analysis of British multicultural policy is similar to critical
multicultural analyses in Australia. British multicultural policy is judged as a
benevolent gesture, which obscures mainstream privilege. Such assessments
of multicultural policy fail to consider contemporary enabling devices in the UK
like explicit EEO measures. And as in Australia, an incremental reconstruction
of the mainstream through second generation participation in social and
cultural life has been buttressed by multicultural policy of previous years.
Britain, like Australia in the 1990s, began to make efforts in the direction of
workforce equity reporting.
The mobilisation of ethnic groups at the level of politics has also contributed to
transforming the overall public discourse on immigration and race relations
(Coopmans and Statham, 1999). Events such as the debate surrounding
Rushdie’s book and a cultural renaissance of Asian hybridised popular culture
contribute to the multicultural reality of urban Britain, where 27% of London’s
Underground staff are from a minority community, 23% of Britain’s doctors are
born overseas and two-thirds of independent local shops are owned by ethnic
British (Commission for Racial Equality, 2000). The transformation of a
domineering British cultural identity in post-imperial and post-colonial times is
still contested at many levels. The prevailing class structure for example has
seen the formation of a hybrid ethnic bourgeoisie, as comically portrayed in
the TV show Goodness Gracious Me. Television sectors both commercial and
public have made commitments to furthering the portrayal of cultural diversity,
increasing participation in the media and attempting to better serve
audiences. As a member of the European Union, Britain not only considers
itself advanced in these areas, there is also agreement outside Britain that its
achievements and approach to cultural diversity and the media are superior
compared to continental Europe’s efforts (Ouaj, 1999).
Policy contexts
The Commission for Racial Equality first highlighted the lack of cultural
diversity in British media in the late 1970s, however it took the first half of the
1980s to gain acceptance for remedial measures from industry, the second
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half of the 1980s to see implementation begin, and only in the early 1990s
were changes becoming more apparent (Myant, 1995). The BBC, realising
profound changes were ahead in the media landscape, also began to
formulate policy for addressing a multi-racial Britain in the 1980s. The BBC’s
enhanced efforts in the 1990s coincide with the arrival of The Broadcasting
Act 1990 for commercial broadcasters, which saw the replacement of the
Independent Broadcasting Authority with the Independent Television
Commission (ITC). Channel 4 was made a non-profit corporation and
provision was made for a fifth terrestrial channel. Unlike the examination of
US television above, the place of public broadcasting as well as commercial
services needs to be considered as both maintain reasonably equal audience
share and the status of the BBC is of course highly significant in British
broadcasting.
The BBC operates under a charter with a director general as the CEO. The
1990s at the BBC saw two changes in human resources which impacted upon
cultural diversity and programming. Under outsourcing policies of Producer
Choice and Extending Choice, the BBC were able to shed several thousand
positions. Up until the late 1980s, the BBC was a traditional employer of long-
term staff. Less than 1% of these employees were from ethnic minority
backgrounds (Myant, 1995). The diminution of the BBC as an employer is
likely to reduce the chances for newcomers from ethnic backgrounds, as the
BBC as a state employer was more aware of EEO policy than the
independent sector. On the other hand, outsourcing was a way to theoretically
engage with a diverse range of independents to bring about new
programming at a faster pace than in an overly bureaucratic organization.
Changes to the overall running of the broadcaster also came with the
realisation that explicit policies were needed to address the lack of diversity in
the workplace. An EEO department was established in 1988 and research
undertaken into the portrayal of minority communities made the conclusion
that much needed to be done. The BBC set itself a target in 2000 that its
workforce would include 8% ethnic minorities, which is the statistical
proportion of ethnic minorities in the wider population. Along with the
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establishment of multicultural units, the target for 8% was achieved in 2000,
however it is only among the general workforce. Management is far lower at
2% and of the 8% DCALB employees in the general workforce, many
positions are in security, cleaning and catering. As a result, the latest Director
General, Greg Dyke, made it a specific aim of his term to see general
workforce diversity increase to 10%, and more importantly, for management
to double to 4%. He also intends to see improvements made in culturally
diverse programming by the end of 2003, by linking executive financial
bonuses to achievement appraisals in the area of diversity and programming.2
The BBC’s efforts in the last five years parallel the accords which American
networks have undertaken to maintain and improve their performance in
areas of cultural diversity and television. Among the European Union member
states, Britain’s efforts are considered an imperfect best practice model. The
European Institute for the Media (Ouaj, 1999) recently conducted a
comparative study of several member states’ television and their response to
cultural diversity. Its results confirm the BBC as the leading institution for
providing EEO in the media professions, however there was criticism that
areas of digital media and further redefining of the broadcaster’s mission have
taken up an inordinate amount of resources. The BBC’s establishment of
specific multicultural units and setting of EEO targets lies in direct contrast to
the French sector for example, which refused to participate in the study
claiming multicultural research to be unnecessary and offensive. France’s
model of integration by symbiosis highlights the administrative nature of
British EEO policy, which reflects its foundation in a wide legislative base,
necessary in the post-war era.
Having similarities with Australia’s governmental method of multicultural policy
as opposed to the USA’s civil rights actions, principles for EEO are based on
the Sex Discrimination Act (1975 and 1986), the above mentioned Race
Relations Act (1976), the Equal Pay Act (1976), and the Disability
Discrimination Act (1995). In spite of such policy, with significant numbers of 2 Speech by Greg Dyke, BBC Director General, made at the Race in the Media Awards, 7/4/2000. Copy provided by BBC in a personal email.
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people who contribute to BBC programming being technically outside the
organisation, monitoring and enforcement of EEO strategies present
problems. For a start, it was ascertained in the European Institute’s study that
the most common method of obtaining a position in the sector was through
informal and personal contacts. With an estimated 54% of the film and TV
workforce freelance and/or casualised, strategies for addressing the dynamics
of such a workforce and minority employment are not apparent (Ouaj, 1999).
This results in an exclusion by default whereby outreach efforts are not widely
available to minorities and the requirements of experience act to deflect
minority application. This highlights why the NAACP in the USA were so keen
to include employment outreach programs in their accords with the major
networks. However, this should not entirely devalue the recent commitments
made by BBC management in regard to equity.
In order to take some control over issues of cultural diversity among its
producers and freelancers, the BBC issue Programme Standards, which are
considered to be part of the contractual agreement between the BBC and the
production team. The standards refer to the use of language and portrayal
regarding a number of areas including the disabled, women, ethnic minorities,
sexual orientation and older people (BBC, 2000a). Audiences may complain
to the BBC’s Programme Complaints Unit if they believe there has been a
breach in a Programme Standard. Beyond this unit, the complaint may be
taken to a Governors’ complaints committee for review. In 2000, the BBC also
set out a range of goals in a document titled, The BBC Beyond 2000, with an
obligation ‘to reflect the nations, regions and communities of the UK to
themselves and to the rest of the UK’ (BBC, 2000b). This is a similar policy for
accountability that was applied in 1998 when the BBC made a series of
promises which would be evaluated in 2000. With regard to a promise in 1998
to represent all groups in society accurately, the BBC introduced a Diversity
Database, which gives program makers access to over 2,000 individuals and
organisations who represent minority interests and backgrounds (BBC, 1999).
In a Statement of Promises for 1999, the BBC again set goals for reflecting a
diverse United Kingdom, noting one year later in the 2000 Annual Report,
(BBC, 2000c) there was still some stereotyping and under-representation.
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And finally in April 2000, Greg Dyke appointed a Head of Diversity manager
directly responsible to the executive, making cultural diversity a business
objective with financial bonuses to be linked to appraisal targets (BBC,
2000d). This measure has much in common with the Accords made between
the NAACP and the main networks in the US3.
ITV stations (not including Channel 4) in comparison to the BBC have been
somewhat slower in addressing issues of cultural diversity and as a
consequence lie behind in minority employment. This is in spite of statutory
requirements under the Broadcasting Act 1990, which deal with EEO
concerns. There are three conditions placed on broadcasters: 1) that non-
discriminatory employment practices are followed, 2) that licensees review
their job selection procedures at regular intervals and undertake monitoring
and 3) that a licensee provide to the ITC statements regarding the licensee’s
actions with regard to EEO policy. The Act does not offer guidance or impose
codes upon licensees regarding the explicit representation of minorities on
screen, nor does it refer to matters of ‘integrated casting’. These requirements
for commercial broadcasters put a degree of accountability onto them for
monitoring their efforts in cultural diversity and programming as well as
employment – something lacking in the Australian context. While not as
intense as the obligations placed on USA networks, the UK sector
nevertheless has a framework in place.
Using its powers under the Act, the ITC conducted a review in 1997/1998 of
ITV stations with regard to their performance in EEO policy. The commission
acknowledged a ‘lot more had to be done’ and that progress was ‘uneven’
with the traditional channel 3 stations. The mean rate of employment for
ethnic minorities was under 3% (ITC, 2000a). Channel 3 stations such as
Carlton and London Weekend (LWT) had the healthiest figures of 6.5% and
8% respectively, while regional broadcasters had very low numbers of
3 However according to Trevor Phillips (1995, p17), a London Weekend Television manager, British producers still had some learning to do as he relates how a colleague’s negotiations with a US company fell through with a member of the American group later taking him aside and commenting ‘no-one goes into a negotiation with an all-white team’ and that this is interpreted as poor business conduct in the USA.
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culturally diverse staff. This reflects the fact that minorities make up over 22%
of the population of Greater London while regional Britain has far fewer
people from culturally diverse backgrounds. However, the European Institute
for the Media make the point, that even the London-based stations are well
behind their community levels of diversity (Ouaj, 1999). By the next review in
1999, the overall rate lifted to 3.5% with Carlton and LWT making increases of
two percent. 1999 also saw the release of data for management from
culturally diverse backgrounds at 1.6%, only half a percent less than the
BBC’s figure of 2%. Looking back on 1999, the ITC note that while women
had moved to near parity levels in most areas, ‘ethnic minorities were heavily
concentrated in non-managerial and non-programme positions’ (ITC, 2000b).
Several ITV-3 companies also committed themselves to developing program
portrayal policies using screen analysis and monitoring of achievements
compared to policy statements.
In comparison with the channel 3 ITV stations, Channel 4 has displayed a
superior commitment to cultural diversity in both the workplace and in its
programming. Having a general multicultural workforce of over 9% and 5.8%
for those in program and management, it is the best performer in the UK. This
is however hardly surprising, as at its establishment in 1982 the remit was ‘to
innovate and experiment, and to appeal to tastes and interests not generally
catered for by ITV’ (Ouaj, 1999, p 50). Channel 4 initiated a training scheme
specifically for minority groups and has actively pursued culturally diverse
programming. Since being transformed into a corporation in 1993, the channel
has become responsible for securing its own advertising revenue rather than
receiving a levy. There has been criticism since (ITC, 2000c), that Channel 4
has subsequently taken on an overly commercial outlook in raising income
with the broadcasting of too many repeats and imported material with US
Black actors as a substitute for local, culturally diverse programming. In
answer to these criticisms, the ITC imposed a number of licence conditions on
the broadcaster in the 1998 licence reviews: Channel 4 was to increase
production outside London, increase commissions of original product, limit
repeat material and broadcast three hours per week of multiracial programs
(ITC, 2000c). Like the multicultural SBS in Australia, the Channel 4 remit
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easily finds the broadcaster in conflict with various minority groups (including
independent producers), who become frustrated that their particular
community is not being served.
The other ITV station, Channel 5, experienced a significant reduction in
general staff from culturally diverse backgrounds from 10.4% in 1998 to 7.4%
in 1999, however its management component is a comparatively healthy 4.5%
(ITC, 2000b). The other noteworthy feature of recent ITV monitoring is the
inclusion of figures for women and the disabled. In the late 1990s, both the
BBC and ITV made noticeable efforts to recruit disabled and engage with
representatives in the formulation of policy. One final piece of policy related to
cultural diversity and programming is an Equity Model Clause prepared by the
British Actors’ Equity Association. In 1999, British Equity developed EEO
agreements with the BBC, ITV and Independent TV Producers with wording
based on a model clause. The agreements with the three bodies essentially
commit all sectors to developing and promoting policies for EEO employment,
including non-traditional casting and bind the organisations to monitoring the
agreement clause and its operation on an annual basis.4 It is not difficult to
see the similarities between what British Equity proposed with what the
Australian actors’ equity organization (the MEAA) also put forward in the early
1990s. But in the UK the proposal was accepted.
The above assessment of policy in the UK illustrates two defining features for
cultural diversity and television programming. One is the relative newness of
policy discourse for EEO strategies compared to the USA. The second feature
is a heavy reliance on statutory bodies and organisational input for the
creation of so-called top-down policy which has evolved from more
established race relations policy. This doesn’t however discount the
contribution made by minority activists in the 1980s for better conditions. In
comparison with Australia, the collection and publication of minority
monitoring and EEO data in both commercial and PSB sectors in the UK
4 British Actors’ Equity Association, Independent Producer Agreement Clause CC4 , BBC TV Agreement section 13 paragraph 1303 and ITV TV Agreement, paragraph 7. Approved 11th May 1999 by Council. Personal correspondence from British Equity to the author.
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presents yet another example of a broadcasting environment willing to open
itself up to some degree of scrutiny on the issue. The ABC and SBS in
Australia do collect voluntary EEO data on the cultural background of staff
and set goals for the employment of Indigenous staff. However, self initiated
research on a level comparable with UK broadcasters is not so apparent.5
While the Australian Broadcasting Authority like the ITC has undertaken
research in the past on cultural diversity and programming (Nugent et al,
1993; ABA, 2000), it remains a descriptive tool with no consequential follow
up for policy change. This reinforces the importance of considering
programming as well as the professional practice and attitude of media
stakeholders in making a thicker analysis.
Programming contexts
The inspiration behind Norman Leer’s Archie Bunker in his seminal family
comedy All in the Family (discussed in Chapter Four) was no doubt Alf
Garnett, described as a legendary bigot in the LWT show Till Death Us Do
Part. Alf, played by actor Warren Mitchell, was meant to be laughed at, rather
than along with, as was the case with Archie Bunker. However, as
conservatives in the USA looked to Archie for confirmation of their racist
attitudes, it is likely that British audiences also watched Alf with some degree
of consolation (Mullan, 1996, p 9). Also in common with the early US shows
was the use of humour in shows such as Mind Your Language. Such shows
commonly employed humor as a device for making fun of the community. As
Amos n’ Andy had used exaggerated language and mannerisms to mock
Black Americans, the immigrant students at the English language school in
Mind Your Language were the source of humour due to linguistic and cultural
differences (Barker, 1999, p 78).
The appearance of a sustaining Black character on British TV came in 1972
with Love Thy Neighbour. In an effort to defuse the depth of racism in the UK,
racist attitudes were shown as being more a matter of personal folly and
possible in both the mainstream and minority culture. In the show, two 5 However, the SBS (Ang et al, 2001) recently commissioned a significant community research into attitudes towards multiculturalism, including media portrayal.
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couples are neighbours – one couple Black the other White. The men in each
case are involved in an on-going war of verbal abuse with each other while
the two women on the other hand are friends. Love Thy Neighbour is
memorable for its frequency of slang, somewhat similar to early US Black
comedy shows – particularly common were the terms ‘sambo’, ‘nig-nog’ and
‘honky’. While both White and Black received verbal insults, it is the pejorative
terms against the Black minority population which carry the most resonance
with what was after all a predominantly White audience (Medhurst quoted in
Mullan, 1996, p 9). Invoking coarse humour once again, the Sergeant Major in
the comedy It Ain’t Half Hot Mum also expressed scandalous attitudes to the
local and ‘servile’ Asians, and to his regiment of performing ‘lovely boys’.
Other early drama such as Crossroads and Coronation Street failed to
incorporate characters of culturally diverse backgrounds in what would have
been urban and diverse communities (Manchester in the case of Coronation
Street). Though in 1984, Black factory worker Shirley Armitage joined the cast
of Coronation Street. Also in 1984, the Commission for Racial Equality
conducted a casting survey in light of the advances Black actors had made in
the USA. Their findings were that 5% of British drama roles went to Black
actors (meaning both Asian and Caribbean) and that on-going roles
accounted for three of the 62 actors working on programs at that time (Barker,
1999). As the 1980s witnessed the Commission’s efforts in promoting the
necessity for explicit EEO measures, the BBC serial East Enders arrived in
1985 with its realistic inner London setting. The original cast and later
additions to the show have included actors from culturally diverse
backgrounds.
East Enders, like shows in the US with diverse casts, have at the outset
characters and actors of culturally diverse backgrounds. This goes contrary to
some industry opinion whereby actors from culturally diverse backgrounds will
find work if by chance they are explicitly written in by a writer, or more
commonly – if they happen to be right for the part at audition (see Chapter
Seven). The show’s creators believed that long term serial Coronation Street
suffered from being a static community and felt the East End would offer a
mobile society. After conducting research in the East End, they arrived at a
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set of core characters which included Bengali shop owners, a Jewish doctor,
Caribbean father and son, and a Turkish-Cypriot café owner (Buckingham,
2000). Programs such as East Enders combine policy for cast diversity with
writing that attempts to take representation beyond one-dimensional
characters. But even East Enders is open to criticism with claims that its
diverse roles rely on safe representations of Asian doctors and shopkeepers
(Barker, 1999, p 82). Of course television writers and producers can state
facts like two thirds of small shops in England are owned by Asians and one
quarter of doctors are from culturally diverse backgrounds. But the reaction
from audiences can nevertheless be problematic, as this comment from an
African-Caribbean viewer demonstrates: ‘The thing is though, where I live, all
the corner shops are owned by Asians. It is quite representative, you know,
quite a true representation, but it is very stereotypical’ (Sreberny, 1999, p 23).
One significant difference between British shows such as East Enders and
Australian drama from the last five years compared with US series is that
inter-race relationships are not uncommon on British and Australian programs
while they are very rare on US shows. In focus group audience research in
the UK, the presentation of mixed marriages was noteworthy by participants: ‘I
think it’s sad that you don’t get Black couples together, in America it’s
acceptable but over here you tend to have a Black man with a white woman
or vice versa … it happens too often for it not to be deliberate’ (Mullan, 1996,
p 40). Of course what this viewer perhaps fails to realise is that it is still
unacceptable for mixed marriages to be presented on most US programming.
These conflicting remarks by audiences highlight the cultural specificity of how
individual nations represent on-screen cultural diversity – particularly in the
domain of personal relationships. The low incidence of portrayals of interracial
relationships in the US corresponds to the relatively low levels of interracial
marriage in the US between Black and white – while in Australia, it was noted
in Chapter Two, that the incidence is quite high.
At ITV, The Bill has been an enduring police series which, like East Enders,
has been given both credit and derided for its portrayal of cultural diversity.
While two of Sun Hill’s officers have usually been Black or Asian, a number of
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‘villains’ are at times from minority groups. Once again, there is a comparison
to be made with the US. A content analysis in 1996 of four weeks
programming on all British terrestrial channels confirmed the portrayal of
minority characters involved in crime as actually being less than their White
counterparts at 6% (minority) and 8% (White) respectively (ITC, 1996a). A
later study by Gunter (1998) mostly confirms the ITC results, however in a
comparison with programs in the USA regarding violence and Black roles, it
was found UK Blacks engaged in violent actions in the context of upholding
the law (most likely as police officers). Whereas in the US, Blacks were more
likely to be involved in violence associated with law-breaking.
As in the USA, media discrimination in race-based news reporting around
crime and colour can lead to a sensitivity among audiences over the issue.
The quantitative analysis of drama above does not bear out perceptions of
minorities being overly represented in criminal contexts in drama
programming. A heightened sensitivity to seeing your community portrayed in
crime may also be linked to not seeing your people in more mundane,
everyday, middle class or professional roles. This is then combined with an
attentiveness to all roles and incidences which are related to your cultural
background due to the lack of everyday portrayals. One problem however with
interpretive and textual analysis such as that used by the ITC (1996a and
1996b) in the UK context, compared with the US’s wealth of quantitative
research, is the method used for classifying characters and actors in such
research.
A 1996 study undertaken by the ITC (1996a) examined the frequency and
portrayal of ethnic minorities across all programming, regardless of origin in
both fictional and factual genres. The research does not define what counts
as an ethnic performer, character, guest, or presenter and relies on coding
ethnicity by appearance only. As a consequence, those on television who may
be from a culturally diverse background but who do not display clear signs of
their ethnicity are not included. The point is raised here, because the ITC
(1996b) research locates Australian television to be the least culturally diverse
programming based on the appearance of actors. This correlates with the
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early 1990s research and method carried out in Australia, which came to
similar conclusions for culturally diverse casts and Australian drama.
In other audience research (Barker, 1997) involving Asian British girls and
their attitudes to soap operas, the representation of ethnicity in Heartbreak
High is described as ‘inherently racist’ due to a lack of Black and Asian leads
(as in Indian or Pakistani). This is then conflated with the predominance of
White (though possibly non-Anglo) actors as further testimony as to the shows
perceived lack of cultural diversity. This said, the ITC research does contain
broad insights of value, with a figure of 6% of people in UK programs from
ethnic minority groups, compared with 13% in USA programs. The type of
portrayal confirms the attitudes of audiences in that there is a lack of roles for
minority professionals.
The British sitcom Desmonds (1989-1994) for example revolved around the
comings and goings in a Black hairdressing salon and met with success,
though its social setting was somewhat limiting in terms of showing a Black
professional class. In contrast to this, British audience research of the 1990s
showed the US comedy Cosby as offering the sort of role models for Black
children not apparent on British television. Yet is was also interpreted as an
unrealistic fairy tale by other viewers (Mullan, 1996, p 44). In more recent
times, British shows such as The Cops and This Life have included more
complex and multi-dimensional representations of ethnic characters where
gender, social class and sexuality are at the forefront of the drama, with the
character’s ethnicity an incidental and unspectacular detail. More recent
audience research (Sreberny, 1999) also suggests that a show such as
Goodness Gracious Me operates along similar lines to the US show The
Fresh Prince of Bel Air in giving minority communities a space for authorship
on TV as discussed in Chapter Four. At the same time, such programming
speaks to a younger demographic which traverses the cultural backgrounds in
which the shows are set. This correlates to youth programming in Australia
which is discussed in Chapter Eight.
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Sreberny’s (1999) research for the Broadcasting Standards Commission
(BSC) offers insights into audience perceptions for the portrayal of ethnicity on
British television – particularly fiction programming. The study deliberately set
out to avoid ‘dealing with predominantly male community activists as
‘representative’ of minority ethnic opinion’ and instead accessed a range of
audience members with a focus on generational and gender variables
(Sreberny, 1999, p 9). As a consequence, the views of young people and
women make up the majority of participants who not only took part in
discussions, but filled out media diaries as well. While all programming was
open for discussion, viewers required no prompting by moderators in their
discussions about drama and it was these dialogues, which were the focus of
the most spirited comments.
Overseas programming was also included and once again, Neighbours and
Home and Away were criticised by young viewers for their apparent lack of
ethnic minorities in the casts, while the presence of Blacks in US
programming was regarded as encouraging. English series such as The Bill
were noted as making attempts at including diverse characters, however the
portrayal was seen as mostly negative and inaccurate as far as the
presentation of young people from culturally diverse backgrounds. However
the BBC show Goodness Gracious Me elicited some of the most valuable
comments. On the one hand this comedy received much positive commentary
from young people for its deliberate employment of Asian stereotypes – of
both young and old. On the other hand, some Asian audience members felt
discomfort at seeing themselves portrayed in rather savage caricature, which
was particularly heightened when viewed with parents or elders. White
audiences interpreted the program as a sign of Asian self-assertion and as an
important cultural boundary-marker. Overall, the show is considered
innovative and a ‘watershed in minority representation on British television’
(Sreberny, 1999. p 33). The program reflects the way in which programming
made by second generation migrants displays an ease with themes of cultural
specificity as well as confidence with the mainstream in creating a cultural
intermixing and contributing to an expanded mainstream.
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Production contexts The manner in which British programming is produced has moved in a similar
direction to Australian programming, in that shows are now substantially
commissioned from an independent production sector. In particular, the BBC
and Channel 4 contract producers for a variety of programs and station
commissioners act as gatekeepers. A survey of independent producers
(Cottle, 1997) who are involved with minority programming found the
institutional doors to program makers very tightly shut to all program
producers, let alone minority producers. The capital risk of programs is such
that commissioning staff tend to go with well established independents, who
may have originated within the commissioning institution in the first place.
Such arrangements are labeled ‘sweetheart deals’. Such deals bring with
them difficulties in ascertaining who is being employed and under what criteria
at the executive level. The issue of participation by minority television workers
is then made problematic in an independent sector which relies on networking
to get a job at lower levels in the production process. This confirms the
European Institute for the Media’s conclusionz (Ouaj, 1999) that work in the
industry is difficult to formally monitor for equity purposes. Aside from informal
processes, which obviously impact upon what does and doesn’t get produced
in an outsource production model, the channels have explicit policy and
management arrangements for multicultural program production.
The BBC created a Multicultural Programmes Department in 1991 after
merging its separate Asian and African-Caribbean units. This new department
of broad multicultural programming lasted only four years before it was
decided to remain only with an Asian unit and place Caribbean programming
in the hands of independent producers and mainstream departments within
the BBC. While there has been criticism of this change among Caribbean
producers, in-house producers of the Asian unit still walk a balance between
the advantages of professional credentials the BBC give to them, along with
the dread of being branded ghetto-programming (Cottle, 1997). Cottle’s
research supports the notion that a significant number of producers desire to
be considered mainstream rather than minority program makers. Yet at the
same time, the producers interviewed were also quick to point out the virtues
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of a specialised program unit for delivering what the mainstream cannot. This
was especially so with regard to discrete units providing a development
environment, which when considering the tightly shut doors of commissioning
producers, seems to be a compelling argument for their continuance.
Channel Four has since conception been considered a site for multicultural
programming. However with its evolution to a commercial entity, there was the
sentiment that it had failed in this area of its programming production (Cottle,
1997, p 147). Senior editors pointed out in the late 90s that the exact remit for
Channel Four is to cater for interests not otherwise served – the mention of
minority concerns is not explicitly mentioned. However as the ITC licence
review for Channel Four resolved, it would now have to explicitly address
multicultural programming as a licence condition (ITC, 2000c). For the BBC,
as a fully-fledged public service broadcaster, such an overt guideline probably
sits more comfortably with its overall mission. However with Channel Four, the
demands of being a commercial enterprise with a public service remit have
created a specific approach to the issue, as expressed by Channel Four’s
CEO:
Here [at C4] it’s different. We’re a commercial channel, but still with a public service remit. And here, and in ITV, what’s driving people is the recognition that, first of all, the general mission [is] that we should cover properly. But also, we’re a largely urban, pretty young channel. And large parts of the urban audiences in all the big cities are African-Caribbean or Asian. And so, if we’re not reflecting and tapping into their agenda, we are going to see our audience sort of fall off the end. So it’s marketing reasons. So the BBC has a social function plus a licence fee function; we’ve got a social function plus we’ve got an audience driven function … if people stop watching, we can’t get advertising (Sreberny, 1999, p 91).
As a consequence, Channel Four’s idea of the place of multicultural
programming and production falls into step with notions of mainstreaming.
This philosophy was reflected in a 1999 speech by the new Head of Channel
Four, Michael Jackson, who suggested that the minority sector was outdated
and a multicultural Britain needed no special slots for minority audiences. C4’s
commissioning Multicultural Editor, Patrick Young (2000) claims there has
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been a degree of improvement in culturally diverse representations across
most British broadcasters. However he feels the superior portrayals have
come from non-fiction programming (such as news, documentary and
entertainment) where portrayals are most likely to be everyday. He cites the
UK Big Brother series (from 2000) as a case in point when in the final week,
the housemates were composed of a White working class ‘scouser’, an Irish
lesbian ex-nun and a Black father of three. He states ‘the effortless
multiculturalism and their ease of presence in each other’s company is what
program makers need to aspire to’ (Young, 2000). Some years earlier,
interviews with BBC and independent minority producers (Cottle, 1997) had
hinted at such an approach as a way of including representations of minorities
which are at the same time both complex and ordinary. This sits well with the
notion of a mundane or everyday concept of multiculturalism discussed
throughout the thesis. What is surprising in the case of British television
production though, is that such an approach has become policy in the last few
years among a wide variety of stakeholders including the BBC, Channel 4 and
independent producers. In the case of Australian television policy discourse,
such explicit references and clear articulations of an everyday multiculturalism
are mostly absent. However amongst creative stakeholders in the
independent production industry, everyday portrayals of cultural diversity are
recognized as desirable (see Part Three).
Conclusion: a remit for everyday multiculturalism
The BBC and Channel Four wish to de-problematise multiculturalism in their
programming, in much the same way that Australian programs have evolved
towards an everyday multiculturalism. The BBC’s Director General expressed
such sentiment in a speech made in April 2000:
I want a BBC where diversity is seen as an asset not an issue or a problem. For young people today British culture is already diverse and heterogeneous, multi-ethnic, multi-everything. For them multiculturalism is not about political correctness but is simply part of the furniture of their everyday lives (Dyke, 2000).
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At Channel Four, Director of Programmes Tim Garden stated that multicultural
programming policy was no longer about specific programs for minority
groups, but about ‘innovative programmes for the mainstream reflecting
society as it is, modern and cosmopolitan’. The channel’s commissioning
editor of multicultural programs went on to say ‘There’s sort of an old view of
Britain and there’s a new view of Britain, and I think the new view sees very
much Britain as a hybrid society’ (Sreberny, 1997, p 91). Both Channel Four’s
and the BBC’s invitations to producers in applying for program commissions
are framed with attracting a broad audience (ie: market share) in mind. At the
same time, a producer should be ‘daring and original’ but also give more
general themes a ‘multicultural texture’ (Channel Four, 2000). At the BBC, an
executive producer expressed it this way:
I’d like to see these communities in all their aspects on the tele … not just when they’re victims and villains but all the incidental stuff … just let them find script-writers who know how Black and Asian people operate, but don’t turn them into issues every time they’re on television. They go to Tescos, they make dinner, they do their homework, they draw pensions, they do all those really banal things everyone else does, so that’s where they need to be shown (quoted in Cottle, 1997, p 53).
At ITV the message is a little different, but it still reflects faith in an
encompassing, though diverse, audience as the market to serve, as David
Liddiment (2000), Director of Programmes at ITV, has stated:
programmes we make like Coronation Street will still be the lingua franca that brings disparate groups of people together to enjoy a common experience in an increasingly fragmented society … There’s no longer any need for single channels to try to meet mass and minority needs at the same time. We are now more responsive to our audience. Important minority programmes are part of the mix, but they are more on merit than by regulatory dictate.
The shift to cultural diversity as good business sense is of course not new in
multicultural policy, however it has its critics. Allowing popular and market
driven formulae to dominate entertainment programming may close off spaces
to important, though not necessarily low audience appeal, minority
programming. Independent producers express hope for incorporating their
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stories into the mainstream and at the same time express concerns over the
opportunities to present realistic and truthful issues to that mainstream
audience (Cottle, 1997, p 113). This unremitting dilemma over balancing the
exceptional with the routine in the representation of minority groups on
audience driven television is well articulated in the following comment by
Sreberny (1999, p 117).
There is a rather depressing synergy between the positive sense of becoming more hybrid that comes from the audience, followed by demands for more African-Caribbean and Asian faces across the range of media output, and rhetoric that seems to consign social responsibility simply to the marketplace.
It may be attractive for program management to evoke the discourses of
hybrid identities and post-colonial states in support of mainstream
multicultural programming, rather than relying on former progressive liberal
ideologies and minority politics. However this also requires support for
minority actors, writers and producers to create precedents for multicultural
work. Also, monitoring of minorities in the British production sector is
inadequate due to the diffuse organisation of employment in television
production.
Sreberny’s (1999) suggestions for coordinated longitudinal research involving
broadcasters, independent production companies and regulatory authorities
would provide a more eloquent interpretation of the output made by both
mainstream and minority production organizations. Such measures are also
highly relevant for the Australian context.. A more elaborate monitoring
research goes beyond the use of EEO data. Being able to analyse program
volume and range may point to remedial action required to promote
complexity and depth of portrayal, as well as increased participation for
people from culturally diverse backgrounds – rather than just meeting EEO
targets. A multifarious range of diverse stories which are able to capture the
experience of diverse peoples without falling prey to burdened
representations is the challenge for programmers, particularly in drama on
mainstream channels. Such strategies need not be a call for quotas.
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What program strategies in the UK demonstrate is that the current juncture in
post World War II multicultural evolution in countries such as England and
Australia may be in a transitory stage, where ethnicity experienced as migrant
is keenly divided by generational shift and class background. The needs and
demands model of early multicultural policy has little application to second
and third generation migrants whose everyday experience of social interaction
may be far removed from their parents’ struggles in the decades before.
Changes in media diversity and availability coupled with second or third
generation migrants’ access to the mainstream media (or alternatives) may
also be different to the recently arrived immigrant’s requirements for
pragmatic information or homeland media.
Such sliding understandings of what constitutes an immigrant identity make
for the very challenges mentioned above and in Chapter Two, in capturing the
mundane and the exceptional (which we all experience) in the life of people
from culturally diverse backgrounds. The arrival of South East Asian refugees
in the 1970s in Australia and more recently, arrivals from former eastern
European nations continue the process of settlement, possible hardship and a
negotiated adjustment. This of course is in addition to considerable numbers
of non-refugee migrants, who settle for professional and family migration
reasons. But what of cultural diversity and television programming in a nation
where two main cultural groups influence the conception and policies of
cultural diversity? New Zealand’s Indigenous Maori and the European Pakeha
mainstream have, in recent years, developed a palpable official and cultural
biculturalism in comparison to multiculturalism in the US, the UK and
Australia. How this has impacted on television programming in a deregulated
broadcasting environment is the focus of the next chapter.
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Chapter Six New Zealand: Biculturalism And Targeted Subsidies
Television Broadcasting Overview1
Television broadcasting started later in New Zealand than in most Western
countries. It began in 1960 essentially as a public service broadcaster funded
by a mix of advertising and licence fees, much like the European model. The
two state channels (TV1 and later TV2) held a monopoly and displayed similar
values for comprehensive and socially responsible broadcasting as the BBC.
Television remained fairly stable until the late 1980s, when New Zealand
embarked upon a wide ranging program of deregulation of state services,
including broadcasting. In place of the two state public-service channels, the
state broadcaster was recast as an entirely commercial enterprise with an
obligation to return a dividend to its ‘owners’ – the New Zealand government.
A new agency, New Zealand On Air (NZOA) was formed to harvest the
broadcasting licence fee with the remit to fund culturally diverse local
programming, as well as programming vulnerable to market failure, such as
drama, comedy, minority programming and documentaries. The $NZ110
licence fee paid by viewers to fund NZOA was abandoned in 2000 in favour of
government funding from consolidated revenue. The late 1980s also saw the
arrival of a privately owned broadcaster (TV3). Originally in New Zealand
hands, it was bought-out by Canadian company Canwest after collapsing in
its early stages – the government having to remove foreign ownership rules in
order to attract investment for the ailing channel. Added to these three free to
air channels was TV4 (also Canwest) in 1997. And in 1998, Australian owned
Prime television began with a collection of five networked regional channels.
In 2000, a Labour government indicated a commitment to reinvigorate public
service broadcasting principles into the original state owned channels.
The profile of the five channels do differ, but as expected in a country with the
population of New Zealand, broadcasters rely heavily on imports from the
USA, Australia and the UK. Of the two state channels, TV1 is considered the
1 I thank Geoff Lealand and Roger Horrocks for their assistance in developing this outline of the broadcasting system in New Zealand.
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most like Britain’s BBC or Australia’s ABC, screening local content,
educational shows and quality drama. TV2 is more entertainment orientated
and more dependent on foreign product. The local long running serial
Shortland Street stands out as a notable exception in a mostly imported
drama schedule. Of the three private channels, the nationally broadcast TV3
relies somewhat on USA product and has managed to maintain local non-
fiction programming, though very little local drama. Of the two non-national
free to air channels, TV4’s youth oriented profile was based upon a large
amount of foreign product - its capturing of the cricket from TV3 in 1997 as a
start up measure being the only point of significant local programming. More
recently it has been refigured as a music video channel. Prime offers a
combination of imported shows from the UK, USA and Australia while
broadcasting a percentage of regional specific programming. As for pay
services, Sky Network (not related to BskyB) and Saturn delivered a packet of
channels in 2000, showing mostly imported product. However in spite of New
Zealand’s deregulated and privatised structure, the state funded NZOA has
managed to establish a presence for local drama which reflects the country’s
biculturalism and a Pacific cultural hybridity. Bicultural New Zealand Unlike Australia, Britain and the United States, New Zealand’s demand for
immigrant labour in the post-WW II period was more easily accommodated by
skilled migrants from Northern European countries such as the Netherlands
(Winkelmann, 2000). Semi-skilled labour was to be found amongst Maori
workers moving to urban centres, complemented by migrants from
neighbouring Pacific Islands. As a consequence, the significant transformation
in demographics caused by immigrants from non-Anglo backgrounds was not
apparent in New Zealand as compared to the other three countries. The lower
numbers of mainly White immigrants to New Zealand compared with the
numbers and diversity of Australia’s migrant program for example meant that
New Zealand’s non-Pacific immigration programs initially received less
political and policy controversy.
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What has been significant about New Zealand’s history of cultural diversity is
the relationship between the European population and the Maori, where they
are the central culturally diverse community while smaller immigrant groups
are peripheral (Mulgan, 1993). Of course minority immigrant history in New
Zealand is by no means unimportant, however the focus on cultural diversity
in New Zealand policy and in the realm of creative arts has in the last two
decades been more about developing a sense of biculturalism rather than
multiculturalism. And like Australia and debates around multiculturalism, New
Zealand also has undergone an extended period of contestation over the
issue of biculturalism.
New Zealand’s early settlement by Pakeha was a combination of exploration,
trade and missionary efforts. While the colonial settlement of New Zealand
shares facets of Australia’s settlement by the British, Pearson (1990) notes
that a vital difference in the case of New Zealand was that the ‘raw edge’ of
imperial power was blunted. Maintaining a degree of autonomy, Pearson
maintains that Maori were well organised in dealing with the settlers
compared to episodes of colonial settlement in other countries. In the
decades before mass settlement, an ‘uneasy co-existence’ existed and this
has its effects today. Through the early 1800s, it was assumed that Maori
people would be assimilated into the mainstream in much the same way as
Indigenous people were expected to assimilate with Australian Anglo culture.
In spite of this, in 1840 the Crown made a treaty with Maori people – the
Treaty of Waitangi. The compact instituted British sovereignty and authority
over the administration of land sales while preserving the traditional authority
of the chiefs, guaranteeing them continued possession of land and treasures.
However a Eurocentric interpretation of the treaty in the century to come saw
the Maori people lose much of their land and powers (Williams, 1996). In spite
of this, Maori people maintained a sense of independence through a
combination of resistance and collaboration. In the latter half of the 20th
century, interpretation of the 1840 Treaty combined with a history of Maori
autonomy became reflected in the resurgence of Maori political activity and
accompanying legislative rights.
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An emphasis on the relationship between Pakeha and Maori should not
however negate the presence of significant Chinese, Indian and South Pacific
Island immigration to New Zealand. Of importance is the intransigent political
response to non-Pacific immigrant groups in the early 1900s, who made up a
small proportion of the population. The antagonism directed towards early
Asian immigration by restrictive immigration policy also mirrors the response
of the other countries under study. While access for Pacific Islanders to New
Zealand was more liberal due to legal and economic ties, their status in New
Zealand was, and continues to be, a matter of contention and conflict among
Maori and Pakeha alike. However, the defining component of cultural diversity
continues to be focused on Maori/Pakeha relations. In the 1970s, the Treaty
of Waitangi was examined with regard to its impact on the Crown and its
institutions. Initially, debate over land and fishing rights then expanded to
include a wide-ranging reappraisal of the place of Maori culture in New
Zealand mainstream life. Alongside political agendas for creating a
partnership based on the Treaty, Maori people also asserted a greater
influence on the cultural life of New Zealand. Maori writers, artists and film
makers exercised a presence in the 1980s which contributed to the decline of
colonial significance in both economic and cultural foundations (Williams,
1996).
The recognition of Maori as an official language, explicit equity measures
combined with self-determination interests are the sort of outcomes more
palpable than what critics (Hage 1998; Stratton 1998) refer to as a cosmetic
multiculturalism in Australia. In addition, the constitutional approach to Maori
progress in terms of equity and self-determination has more in common with
the United States civil rights movement than the Australian policy approach.
At the same time, it should be noted that in Australia, no one or two particular
minority groups, including Indigenous Australia, constitute the size or impact
the Maori have in New Zealand. An adverse consequence of New Zealand’s
biculturalism though is the increased level of marginalisation for immigrant
groups, such as more recently arrived immigrants from South East Asia. In
the late 1990s, Asian immigration became a target for immigration debate
instigated by racist statements from the nationalist New Zealand First Party,
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not unlike the One Nation party in Australia. Munshi (1998, p 109) describes
such episodes in New Zealand as illustrative of ‘the keen tussle between
multiculturalism and biculturalism’ as competing frameworks of discourse for
cultural diversity in New Zealand.
Biculturalism in New Zealand functions in two major ways. The first is the
adaptation of mainstream institutions for Maori needs. Sectors such as health
and education for example may instigate provisions for addressing the
particular needs of Maori people. The second implication of biculturalism is
the development of specifically Maori institutions to ‘share the authority
defined in the treaty’ (Durie, 1995, p 35). This translates to the development of
a redefined mainstream, where both Maori and Pakeha share in defining the
cultural, social and economic interests of the nation. Putting these two
implications into practice in the television industry, New Zealand’s core
funding body expects that productions it funds will take into account the reality
of New Zealand’s cultural diversity. NZOA also supports an independent
Maori agency (Te Mangai Paho) focused on promoting Maori language and
culture for broadcasting to Maori and mainstream audiences alike. Te Mangai
Paho is administered by the Maori ministry Te Puni Kokiri.
However, Pakeha identity as part of that partnership is still not accepted
throughout New Zealand, where its meaning is not always agreed upon. It can
be employed by those involved in policy and intellectual debate who believe in
reparative justice, to those who see it as an offensive label aimed at the White
intruder (Spoonley, 1995). Marotta (2000, p 182) takes a more healing view of
New Zealand’s cultural mixing and employing Gadamer’s notion of the
‘fusions of horizons’ he states:
Cultural horizons are always able to incorporate different horizons to achieve a wider, more unifying ‘fusion of horizons’. Thus, a bicultural self fuses the cultures of Maori and Pakeha to contruct an in-between hybrid perspective.
This does not necessarily translate to Maori culture relinquishing
constructions of self identity, or that it is so porous that important cultural
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boundaries are lost to new hybrid perspectives. In addition to such ideas of
cultural mixing, is the false notion that the Maori are a homogeneous people
representing a unified Maori culture which can amalgamate with Pakeha
culture. What New Zealand biculturalism demonstrates along with the other
three countries’ tussles with multiculturalism is the ‘salience of political
pluralism, material equality and cultural hybridity for contemporary democratic
struggle’ (Bell and McLennan, 1995, p 6). Such struggles give rise to
strategies for equity and cultural expression such as an independent Maori
media and school curriculum.
Policy contexts
In contrast to the UK’s and Australia’s varying degrees of broadcasting
regulation, New Zealand is placed at the extreme end of a deregulated
marketplace. Having limited local production, New Zealand must rely on
program imports of high cost productions. The situation for local programming
in a deregulated New Zealand is not comparable with the deregulated United
States however, which by the nature of its enormous domestic markets easily
sustains high production volume and local content levels. In a 10 country
comparative study of local content and broadcasting diversity, New Zealand
was found to have an extensively deregulated market, second only to the
United States (NZOA, 1999a). As such, there are no legislative requirements
placed upon broadcasters in New Zealand for local content or types of
programming and no restrictions on foreign ownership. This has not however
seen the disappearance of local programs in New Zealand. Indeed, local
content increased by 265% six years after deregulation and programming has
been expanded with the addition of new services and longer transmission
hours (NZOA, 1999b). Compared to other countries in this research though,
local content in New Zealand still accounts for less than one quarter of
transmission time. While the total hours of content increased after
deregulation, the proportion of local content in the schedule has barely
changed since 1989 and is continually under threat of diminishing. Likewise, it
is arguable whether increased consumer choice has translated to enhanced
content diversity.
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Such market competition has also resulted in scheduling practices which see
a flourishing of populist programming made up of magazine, reality and repeat
programs while innovative programming goes to late night slots (Lealand,
2000). In such an environment, it is perhaps surprising that high cost
programming is produced at all over more cost efficient local shows such as
sport, news and current affairs. More risky, minority or cost intensive
programming is subsequently supported by the funding body NZOA, created
at the same time as deregulation came into being, as a counter measure for
ensuring program production which may otherwise be under threat in such a
market driven environment.
As the former public service type broadcasters TV1 and TV2 became profit
seeking channels, a separate discussion of public and private broadcasters is
somewhat redundant in discussing New Zealand up to the early 2000s.2 While
all five terrestrial stations have decidedly marked program mixes, drama and
minority programming is really dependent on the relationship between NZOA,
the program producer, and the broadcaster. This differs from Australia and the
USA where there is a close relationship between producer and commercial
network only. In these two markets, most commercial drama is outsourced to
independent production companies. State funding is mostly involved in public
broadcasting programs and while the state has in the past funded commercial
programming as well, it has not been an ongoing policy.3 In New Zealand
however, NZOA represents the foremost influence in explicitly promoting
cultural diversity in television programming. NZOA has the responsibility to
carry out cultural policy tasks set out in section 36 of the Broadcasting Act to
‘reflect and develop New Zealand identity and culture’. This is to be achieved
by promoting programs about New Zealand, promoting Maori language and
culture and ensuring that programs are of interest to women, children, the
disabled, other minorities and ethnic minorities. The ‘special needs’ nature of
the Act, and the relegation of such programming to a singular body at first
2 I accept that the re-orientation of Television New Zealand towards a ‘public service’ remit has taken place under the Labor government in the years since 2000. 3 The Commercial Television Production Fund being the notable example, discussed in Chapter Three.
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appears in contrast to Britain’s mainstreaming approach. However this is not
entirely the case.
As well as setting out the cultural mandates for NZOA, the Act also lays down
certain matters to be considered in order to guarantee (as far as possible) that
a program will be broadcast. Section 39 addresses prospective program
makers in conjunction with section 36 (on cultural diversity) to clarify that
funding will be connected to a program’s potential audience and the likelihood
of it being broadcast. The purpose of Section 39 is that minority programming,
while sought after, will need to satisfy a mainstream audience by designing
market potential into any submission for funding. In effect, minorities become
‘part of the mainstream primetime programming, their faces and concerns
become part of the public sphere of popular culture’ (Bell, 1995a, p 114).
Critics of such a concept for cultural diversity and television programming like
Roscoe (2000) suggest that the result of ‘mainstreaming the margins’ is that
minority programming suffers as it becomes more acceptable to mass
audience sensibilities. Roscoe claims that bringing marginal faces, stories and
drama to the centre, under the pressures of a state funded agency with
market considerations attached, leads to programs which focus on minority
culture as exotic. However, such attitudes to mainstreaming should also take
into consideration the desires of minority program makers and actors, who
may actually yearn for such mainstream opportunities.
This is not to say that complex stories and thought provoking programs should
be absent from TV schedules, or that ‘marginal’ portrayals in the mainstream
need be exotic to court audiences. But the quarantining of state funded
minority programming to non-popular and risky programs alone contains the
risk in itself of delegating minority programming to the exceptional,
problematic or special interest alone. The dilemma facing cultural diversity
and local programming in New Zealand stems from the fact that there is no
public service broadcaster to guarantee a space for so called risky and
challenging programming. The very limiting size of the domestic market also
makes it uncertain that commercial interests would commit to particularly
innovative programming. This doesn’t mean such programming is entirely
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lacking on New Zealand screens, but media commentators and innovative
program makers have grounds for anxiety.
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New Zealand on Air Treating NZOA as the principal site of study for culturally diverse
programming aligns with this thesis’ focus on drama. While programming such
as children’s, Maori, ethnic, arts and documentary are independently
produced and near 100% subsidised by NZOA, all drama programming is
nevertheless subsidised by 60% through NZOA (NZOA, 1998). This makes
NZOA an important element in the consideration of cultural diversity and
drama programming, particularly with its requirements for the inclusion of
cultural diversity within programs. While entertainment and information
programs in New Zealand such as Gone Fishing, Changing Rooms, Behind
the Wheel or the talent show Get Your Act Together, accounted for a large
portion of local popular content in 1999/2000, no studies examining the level
and type of portrayal in popular entertainment shows similar to research in the
USA have been undertaken. Nor are EEO figures for the composition of
broadcasting and production workplaces readily at hand in New Zealand as
they are in the UK. However, NZOA does have EEO requirements stipulated
as part of its funding support and NZOA itself has a robust research agenda
which covers extensive content analysis and audience research. Minority
(Maori) producer and industry perspectives have also been reviewed and will
be monitored over the coming years (NZOA, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c).
NZOA cite as critical the task of encouraging broadcasters ‘to maintain a
sustained commitment to programs reflecting New Zealand identity, cultural
diversity and regional mix’ (NZOA, 2000a). With a yearly budget of around
NZ$87 million, it is not surprising that in its 1999 annual report, the overall
tone is gloomy, with the agency predicting it may not be able to sustain
previous levels of production support. During 1998, only seven hours of first
run NZOA supported drama was screened (though 182 hours of combined
first run drama/comedy was screened in total). In 1999, total drama/comedy
hours were slightly less at 179, with the stripped serial Shortland Street on
TV2 (originally a NZOA funded program) accounting for a significant block of
these hours. On TV1, the period drama Greenstone, a detective series, and
the first two 30 minute Pacific Island dramas made to date, The Overstayer
and Matou Uma made their premieres, thus signifying a multicultural rather
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than strictly bicultural New Zealand in funding for NZOA. TV3 on the other
hand virtually withdrew from commissioning drama or comedy. In spite of
such sparse production activity, New Zealand’s biculturalism is to be observed
in NZOA’s policies relating to Maori programming. While its legislative
commitment is 6% of funding, it has supported the domain to levels around
12-14%.
NZOA has a dual strategy for supporting Maori culture by a) assisting the
independent Maori agency, Te Mangai Paho, and b) the funding of
mainstream projects which feature Maori talent within them. Te Mangai Paho
‘concentrates on the promotion of Maori language broadcasting initiatives for
a Maori audience’ while projects accessible to a wider audience ‘help to
increase Maori presence in the mainstream media and present Maori
language, culture, and issues in regular programming’ (NZOA, 2000b, my
italics). NZOA also expects that program makers include Maori language,
culture and viewpoints where relevant across all programming. In 1999,
TV1,2,3 and 4 all screened distinctive Maori shows including two youth series
(Mai Time and Pukana) and documentary projects, making a total of 196
hours of first run Maori programming. In a 1999 audience research (NZOA,
1999c) of 750 viewers, over 80% of people were aware of NZOA’s function in
promoting Maori culture and identity, the same level of awareness for its
function to promote New Zealand identity and culture in its totality. In 2000,
NZOA decided to re-evaluate its policies with regard to the mainstream
component of its Maori television programming. The key objectives of the new
strategy are to ‘enhance the on-screen outcomes of mainstream Maori
programming … improve the broadcast experience for Maori practitioners
[and] to develop and maintain understanding of relevant Maori issues, as well
as relationships with Maori’ (NZOA, 2000c). The review identifies some of the
problems faced by minority producers similar to those identified in UK
research (Cottle, 1997). The review sets a series of goals and action points,
and importantly timeframes for their implementation. This policy strategy
reflects that taken by the BBC and resonates with the network accords in the
USA, in that evaluation of policy is included with regard to cultural diversity in
their programming and employment structures.
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In 2000/2001, the most important action points in the NZOA review were:
appointment of a Maori executive producer to act as mentor, guidelines for
non-Maori producers to undertake mentor relationships, bringing Maori
programming into prime time by holding discussions with broadcasters,
introduce a Maori Quota for prime time and instigating a regular and diverse
schedule of meetings and consultations with Maori stakeholders. There are
also formal criteria laid down for what constitutes a Maori Project with the
criteria closely resembling the creative elements test in the Australian Content
Standard. The test requires a Maori project to have a core Maori creative
team. Where a non-Maori company is involved, a Maori executive
producer/mentor should be attached. The subject matter should be relevant to
Maori culture and there should be a balance of positive and non-stereotypical
subjects across the quota range. While such policy is promising and includes
evaluations against undertakings, it represents a small proportion of total
programming, and may not overcome the issue of Maori programs absence in
prime time. After all, it is finally up to broadcasters to decide and consequently
control what gets broadcast and when.
Maori programming combined with activities in documentary and drama place
NZOA as either a compensatory funding body for addressing the
mainstream’s inability to produce such programming, or, a complimentary
constituent to the mainstream. Bell (1995b, p 192) believes what deregulation
has done is to entrust a singular body to be the televisual ‘guardian of the
“national imaginary”’, in a country which clearly claims its bicultural status as
preferable. In a nation of about 4 million people, where an import such as ER
cost NZ$6,000 per hour in the late 1990s to broadcast over local drama which
costs up to 50 times that amount, the efforts of NZOA are crucial in promoting
New Zealand’s distinctive cultural diversity on TV. NZOA could be helpfully
viewed as development assistance for culturally diverse programming in the
high-risk marketplace of commercial television, as it tries to leverage prime
time opportunities for expensive or ‘marginal’ product. Such programs and the
creative teams behind them will at least have a chance to extend their skill
base, while negotiating a cultural space. And from audience research carried
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out by NZOA (2000d, 2002), it would seem that audiences are beginning to
value local drama as long as it is high quality.
Audiences, programming and production
New Zealand audiences seem to have suffered a quality crisis in past years
with their drama, if NZOA’s audience survey (NZOA, 2000d) is any indication.
While the vast majority of New Zealanders wish to see more local content,
there are certain barriers stopping audiences from watching New Zealand
drama. Poor acting, low production budgets, an unpolished look and a lack of
emotional impact were cited by respondents. However this changed in
1999/2000 with the screening of dramas displaying higher production values
(Duggan, Greenstone, Jackson’s Wharf), which would be more familiar to
audiences used to imported product. This is a noteworthy point as later in the
study it is revealed that audiences value ‘high quality’ in local drama over and
above seeing New Zealand culture, if local content is being discussed. British
drama is rated as best followed by American, with Australian drama receiving
mixed comments.
Production values such as flat sound and poor acting in New Zealand shows
are mixed with a feeling of cultural cringe for New Zealanders seeing and
hearing themselves (one participant stating overseas actors are also ‘better
looking’). Previously, the predominance of polished overseas product created
such an overwhelming norm that a shock of the familiar would be experienced
at hearing a New Zealand accent on a drama program (Horrocks, 1995).
However with the advent of international co-productions and the
improvements in local drama, the case of a distinctive New Zealand look and
sound has diminished, as the following comments illustrate:
Jackon’s Wharf looks and sounds Australian. The cop with the big round hat looks Australian not New Zealand (Male European).
I thought Jackson’s Wharf was Australian the first time I saw it (Female European).
And it works the other way as well:
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Some Australian ones (dramas) almost have a New Zealand feel to them. Like having Jay (Laga’aia) in Water Rats (Male Maori) (NZOA, 2000d, p 12).
The above comments hint at a broader trend in countries such as Australia
and New Zealand, where there is now a blurring between the local and the
international in audio visual product, as overseas production units, actors and
their respective genres locate elsewhere for financial or creative reasons
(programs and films such as Xena: Warrior Princess or The Piano in New
Zealand and Farscape or The Matrix in Australia being examples). An issue
for cultural diversity and programming in New Zealand is whether local
diversity becomes subsumed into off-shore productions, as well as being
muted in local drama due to the internationalising of audience taste. However
according to NZOA audience research, New Zealanders display a fairly typical
attitude for viewers everywhere in preferring well made local content over
imports and attaching meaning to the portrayal of a local cultural diversity. In a
later survey (NZOA, 2002), attitudes to drama had improved since the
previous research in 2000, with programs such as Street Legal and The Strip
providing more contemporary and diverse representations of New Zealand
culture.
The representation of New Zealand’s ethnic diversity and having well known
actors are high on the list of priorities for audiences. Related to questions of
cultural identity, participants have high regard for fictional characters to be
role models, whether it be children’s, mainstream or culturally diverse
programming. This reflects the comments of Indigenous performers in
Australian drama who act as both role models for aspiring performers and
examples of successful casting to the production industry. In new Zealand,
there seems to be a fine line for audiences between what represents a fair
and acceptable portrayal, and the representation of minority groups in
negatively reinforcing roles – even though such portrayals are recognisable to
such audiences. While not initially a television program, the film Once Were
Warriors was found to be hurtful and upsetting for some Maori (NZOA,
2000d). Likewise, Pacific Islander participants were not pleased to see an
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Islander in a cleaning role, despite them accepting that this is a common
experience in real life. Such a comment echoes that of Asian shop owners in
the UK who accept the social reality of their prominence as shop owners, but
are nevertheless uncomfortable when seeing themselves portrayed as such.
More promising, there was comment from culturally diverse groups that
instances of minority representation gave pleasure for the simple, though
powerful reason of being included: ‘Shortland Street had a Fijian girl getting
an operation. Back in Fiji they loved it, it’s something you can relate to’ (Male,
Pacific Islander) (NZOA, 2000d, p 23). Overall, participants believed that a
model of proportional representation of New Zealand’s ethnic minorities in
television programs would be acceptable, an attitude not widely held or
accepted in the other countries under study. In 2002, around two thirds of
audiences had positive attitudes towards NZOA making explicit commitments
to Maori programming in mainstream productions, in addition to existing
support for distinctive Maori programming (NZOA, 2002, p 68).
When it came to specific Maori programming, Europeans had contrasting
sentiments ranging from resentment to enjoyment and interest (with older
participants less enthusiastic about such programming). In comparison, most
Maori have an understandably keen interest in culturally specific
programming, while other Maori would prefer such programming to be a part
of the mainstream for all New Zealanders to have access to (Maori specific
programming as well as some mainstream programs do not sub-title Maori
dialogue, making it difficult for non-Maori speaking European and Maori alike,
to engage with such programs, NZOA, 2000d).4
A mainstream program in 2000 was the drama series Street Legal, funded
with NZOA support and screened on TV2. Not only does it star Water Rats
veteran Jay Laga’aia (from Pacific Island background), but it casts him in the
role of a confident and successful lawyer (a criticism of minority audiences
4 Bearing in mind Maori is an official language in New Zealand.
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was the scarcity of successful characters in local drama). Adopting the
philosophy of character first, ethnicity second, Laga’aia says of his part:
He’s a lawyer first and Polynesian second. That’s why you won’t find tapa clothes hanging up in his office. You’ll just find diplomas and a hard attitude … we make no excuses for the fact we sometimes speak like Islanders, because we are (quoted in Cleave, 2000, p 5).
Street Legal is set in what was originally a working-class area of Auckland,
later populated by Pacific Islanders, which has since transformed into the
ubiquitous café precinct common to culturally diverse inner-city locations. The
show is reminiscent of inner-city dramas made in most countries, in that as
the location moves closer to a city’s centre, the more cosmopolitan and hence
culturally diverse it may be (one recalls the Australian ABC program
Wildside). Set in a very different New Zealand landscape but of cultural
significance, the mainstream drama series Jackons Wharf was in its second
run of production in 2000.
The 20 part series recalls comments made by audiences for their desire to
see ‘recognisably’ New Zealand locations – meaning the sort of places New
Zealand has become well known for as a tourist destination. NZOA (2000e, p
3) develop drama in line with government cultural policy which aims to
contribute to ‘cultural tourism by taking New Zealand to the world’. The global
marketing of New Zealand landscapes has long been a valued commodity
across a range of markets. Turner (2000, p 226) wryly points out that a ‘way
of saying what it is like living in the export zone of settler colonization - is that
the New Zealander is a tourist at home’. The local significance of a
‘recognisable’ New Zealand heartland is expressed by Jo Tyndall, former
NZOA CEO:
(Jackson’s Wharf) is set in a small town, and there is a strong sentiment that in New Zealand, in one way or another, we all come from a small town – where there are simpler times, stronger values and a sense of community … it embraces and showcases the things we hold near and dear about ourselves as New Zealanders (Tyndall, 2000).
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This sentimental longing for the untainted small town is not exclusive to urban
bound New Zealanders though, as the producers/creators of Blue Heelers,
Seachange and A Country Practice attest to in Australia. And like Australia, it
is a yearning for a past and way of life experienced mostly by Europeans.
However the veneration of both the rural location or small town and the past it
signifies have profoundly different meanings and conceptions for the
Indigenous groups. The histories of settlement and the mainstream’s
relationship to the Indigene in America, Australia and New Zealand will always
sit uncomfortably with mainstream drama set in the present, particularly in
country/rural settings. Nevertheless, Jacksons Wharf attempts to be inclusive,
as John Barnett, managing director for the show’s production company, South
Pacific, states:
The cast is reflective of New Zealand society. About a quarter of the cast are Maori or Polynesian and a large number of stories are based around the fact that Jacksons Wharf was settled by the Jacksons in the 1800s but Maori have been living there for much longer … NZOA look to see that drama meets requirements for programs to be reflective of New Zealand society (Barnett, 2000).
Like all dramas put forward by producers for NZOA funding, as a significant
stakeholder NZOA anticipates the inclusion of Maori and other minority
elements in story and cast. This requirement does not operate as a quota at
de facto level or otherwise. The inclusion of Maori talent has become very
much part of the everyday life for producers and audiences in New Zealand
television. This can be traced back to the history of Maori claims for social and
political rights based on the Treaty of Waitangi and government recognition
for those rights. The depth of inclusiveness resultant from the Treaty is still
very much contested at many levels, however resultant policy efforts have
had their consequences. Such outcomes of policy funded drama for an
inclusive New Zealand are to be found in another program, Shortland Street,
produced by South Pacific and originally funded by NZOA. Shortland Street
has left an enduring mark on New Zealand television and presents an
interesting study in government subsidised local content within a commercial
marketplace.
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Running for over 10 years, the medical serial Shortland Street was initially
funded by the then recently formed NZOA as a risky foray into long form
drama. In 1991, New Zealand youth had little choice but to watch overseas
productions for the lack of local ones. They also preferred US programming
with research showing they had reservations about warming to local actors
combined with a reluctance to hear local accents (Horrocks, 1995). In order to
combat negative expectations, Shortland Street adopted a mixed genre or
hybrid approach to the soap opera, taking American influences and imbuing
the program with distinctive New Zealand attributes, including a cast which
reflected the country’s cultural diversity. Early criticisms of poor acting and
unreal storylines on the show are typical of the reception for most new serials,
which can often take two years to become established. By the mid-1990s,
young audiences showed a dramatic change in attitude toward the show and
its longevity attests to this support. More interesting is the fact that NZOA
progressively reduced funding for the show after four years, as it became
more successful, thus making it a stand alone independent production and
obviously a profitable one.
Such success was not expected when it was conceived. Considered a
controversial initiative for NZOA at the time, its good intentions in the direction
of launching local youth drama were met with a cynical response from some
who saw it as a ‘sellout’ to commercial type programming. Horrocks (1995)
notes how debate occurred over whether an Americanised soap was the type
of project a public service type funding body should be investing in. The
show’s anticipation of commercial success was also unpopular with advocates
of public service broadcasting ideals, who conflate state funding with
exclusively anti-commercial and quality programming. Nearly 10 years later
though, the initial support from NZOA is described as pivotal by South Pacific
Pictures managing director:
The creation of NZOA gave South Pacific the opportunity to make Shortland Street, which created the talent necessary to make Hercules on a day to day basis, which created the confidence for US studios to back Peter Jackson’s considerable talent into Lord of the Rings, which
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convinced Sony to listen to the New Zealand producer and director of Vertical Limits, and locate here (Barnett, 2000).
In the case of Shortland Street, NZOA not only allowed the show to build an
established audience, it gave the production company the initial support
required to go on with the show. The show provided ongoing technical and
creative training for a small New Zealand industry and has been the starting
place for a very large majority of New Zealand actors, who have progressed
to both national and international projects at home and overseas (Onfilm,
2000). Barnett estimates that 50% of crews on the productions are Maori or
Polynesian. He concedes that there is a shortfall in minority writers, producers
and directors but that NZOA and the New Zealand Film Commission have
instigated measures to address this, such as funding for a Maori TV drama
series. As for actors on Shortland Street, no hard data exists for New Zealand
programs but an extended viewing of the show demonstrates a diversity of
faces not seen on many other serial programs produced in the region (of
particular significance in 2000 was the presence of two continuing roles
played by Australian actors of South East Asian background). Barnett also
believes that finding suitable actors from Maori and Polynesian background
has become easier than locating actors of European background. This is in
direct contrast to the sentiments of Australian producers who claim that there
is still difficulty in getting access to a range of actors from culturally diverse
backgrounds (see next chapter). Barnett (2000) believes the reason for the
ease of access to actors of Pacific cultural background in New Zealand may
be due to their ‘tradition of oral performance, an emphasis from funding
bodies to achieve better representation and the commercial recognition of the
size and diversity of various demographics’.
In NZOA (1999c) audience research, Shortland Street has become well
accepted across a range of demographics beyond the youth audience. A
cross section of Maori, other ethnic minority and Pakeha viewers felt the show
had made significant improvements in production standards, dealt with
contemporary issues, and looked more professional. This is due in part to the
show’s long standing policy of diverse casting and its setting in multicultural
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Auckland. Not only popular with Maori and Pakeha audiences in New
Zealand, the program is watched with enthusiasm throughout the Pacific
Island region in places such as Fiji and The Cook Islands. For the show’s
producers, explicitly including cultural diversity through cast and script in
Shortland Street was not motivated by NZOA policy or good intentions alone.
As has been raised several times in this study, the idea of building in cultural
diversity as a market advantage need not be viewed with mistrust by industry
stakeholders, if it is implemented at the outset by an informed understanding
of culturally diverse groups. Barnett (2000) sees the cultural diversity in
Shortland Street as ‘setting the show apart from overseas programs and helps
our veracity in the New Zealand market’.
Conclusion A program such as Shortland Street challenges established ideas about the
role state funding plays in programming which must compete in a market
orientated environment. The balance of trying to promote a nationally diverse
culture in television production with the pragmatics of market demands
presents its challenges. Commenting on the struggle, Horrocks (1996, p 57)
puts it well:
Local content now exists within an extremely complex field of forces. The possible funding of each program involves a negotiation in terms of its commercial value to the broadcaster and its social or cultural value to NZOA, as it pursues the aims set out in its legislation.
Shortland Street demonstrates the capacity of a dedicated funding body to
step in at the crucial development phase in order to make a space for
programming which is risky for a small market. Such a model of funding is
reminiscent of the Commercial Television Production Fund examined in
Chapter Three. The fact that Shortland Street is popular, culturally diverse,
pro-social and profitable confirms the possibilities for assisted programming in
a de-regulated market. However the exceptionality of Shortland Street as
being the one show which Lealand (2000, p 87) describes as ‘occupying a
central place in the New Zealand consciousness’ presents the danger of
placing all one’s eggs in the one basket. In a discussion paper on drama,
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NZOA (2000e) express frustration at the lack of network enthusiasm for
prolonging a series after its first production run, noting that Shortland Street
has been the main exception to this pattern. Without network backing, a
reduction in funding at NZOA, jeopardizes both second run series and future
shows in attracting the crucial start-up finance. As a consequence, culturally
diverse programming in such an environment continues to be overly-
dependent on state support. Aside from more popular genres, less
commercial product may be prevented from evolving as well. While changes
in NZOA funding don’t entirely put at risk the inclusive nature of New
Zealand’s bicultural broadcasting environment, a show such as Shortland
Street rested on the kind of support that a body such as NZOA can provide.
Unlike the mostly unprotected drama production sector in New Zealand,
Australian drama production continues to be encouraged by quotas for local
content on commercial channels in addition to the commissioning support of a
public broadcasting sector. As audience research in the UK illustrated, the
perception in the UK of popular programming from Australia in the early 1990s
was that it was the least ‘ethnic looking’ of all. As pointed out in Chapter
Three, media critics, past research and ethnic groups in Australia stated
exactly this in the early 1990s as well. Part Three of the thesis explores
cultural diversity and television programming in Australia with a focus on the
commercial television production industry in the late 1990s and up to 2001.
Chapter Seven contextualises policy and industry developments of the 1990s
related to cultural diversity and presents key primary research undertaken
within the commercial drama television industry. In order to determine the
status of cultural diversity and commercial television drama at the end of the
1990s, a casting survey of all Australian commercial drama programs
broadcast in 1999 was carried out. The latter half of Chapter Seven explores
the issue further through industry interviews in order to explain both
improvements made in the previous years and the obstacles faced by some
groups in gaining a place on popular drama programs. Chapter Eight
complements the interview material of Chapter Seven with a study of three
two-week periods of programming. The analyses presented in Chapter Eight
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examine the textual position and type of portrayal with regard to cultural
diversity and mainstream television.
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PART THREE AUSTRALIAN POPULAR DRAMA: MAINSTREAMING THE MULTICULTURAL
Chapter Seven Australian Drama Casting and Production Perspectives
Introduction The primary research presented here is the first since the early 1990s to offer
a survey of actors and industry professionals related to casting, writing and
producing for commercial television drama. Bertone et al (2000, p 9) note that
there is limited statistical information concerning the number of DCALB
professionals working in Australian television and that ‘the [existing] literature
is dated’. This chapter provides results of a questionnaire survey undertaken
in Australia of leading actors appearing in all drama on commercial
programming in 1999, to determine their cultural background1. The volume of
casting data, amount of programming analysed and breadth of interview
material in this study allows for assessment and analysis of cultural diversity
and drama programming. This relates to both quantitative and qualitative
evaluations on the representation of cultural diversity on television.
Academic and media research of the early 1990s examined in Chapter Three
(Jakubowicz et al, 1994; Bell, 1993; Nugent et al, 1993; CLC, 1992a, Goodall
et al, 1990), established a disparity between cultural diversity in the Australian
community with the representation of that diversity on commercial television
screens. With the exception of the Nugent et al research (carried out by the
ABA), all of these researchers were critical of the commercial media industry
and the regulatory process regarding the representation of cultural diversity.
Australian drama in particular received much criticism for its seemingly Anglo
portrayal of Australian society. The content analyses of television drama
contained in the research of Goodall et al (1990), Bell (1993), and Nugent et
al (1993), found very few instances of either actors from culturally diverse
1 See Appendix One for a copy of the questionnaire administered to actors.
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backgrounds or engagement with multicultural stories. However, these
previous studies have their limitations.
In the case of Goodall et al (1990) and Nugent et al (1993), only one week’s
programming was analysed, Jakubowicz et al undertook a two-week analysis
of programming while Bell recorded and reported on three two-week periods.
The CLC research undertook a two-week analysis as well as attempting to
cover a longer period of ‘a few years’ by presenting ‘informal’ research on the
number of culturally diverse roles in several commercial drama programs.
However, all of these research projects were based on program content
analyses, which employed an observational methodology of programming to
determine the cultural diversity of casts and characters in order to make
evaluations of multiculturalism and the media. The ethnicity of the actors and
the characters they played in these studies was based upon whether the
actor/character was ‘recognisably non-Anglo’. Only the Nugent et al (1993)
research provides a clearer explanation of methodology. In this research, two
coders watched drama programs to determine ‘frequency of appearance’ and
‘nature of appearance’ to classify the cultural background of the character and
so establish an indication of representation of cultural diversity in Australian
drama. The two coders’ results were then compared to obtain a reliability
factor for their coding (which was close to 100% agreement). The key
weakness for this methodology is its dependence on taking data from screen
appearance alone. Classifying the ethnicity of an actor on their ‘looks’ is
unreliable, as it depends largely on an individual’s subjective opinion on what
phenotypic and verbal characteristics constitute an actor or character’s
cultural background. While Bell (1993) for example uses terms such as an
‘Anglo-centric’ media and other studies discuss the lack of ‘NESB’ roles in
Australian drama, their conclusions are based on information and data which
leaves open the possibility that non-Anglo or NESB actors were on screen in
the early 1990s, but not included in the assessments. What these early
studies do provide, is the ability to make limited conclusions about how
culturally diverse the media appeared at the time.
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Probably the best known of the above studies in the area of multiculturalism
and the media is the 1994 book Racism, Ethnicity and the Media (Jakubowicz
et al, 1994) which researched cultural diversity across a broad range of issues
within print and broadcast media, news, advertising, the SBS and children’s
TV. The research was a combination of smaller research programs conducted
over a four-year period (1990-1994) with the aim of revealing ‘media practices
as well as their social context’ in the construction of ethnicity in the media.
This was achieved through interviews with minority and mainstream media
workers, contribution to media seminars, audience surveys, content analysis
of programming, as well as textual analysis of particular programs. The core
argument put forward by the authors is that mainstream Australian media is
essentially discriminatory and Anglocentric. While a limited investigation of
media industry practice was undertaken, little insight was presented regarding
the decision making processes of key creative stakeholders within the
television drama industry as they relate to the portrayal of cultural diversity.
Nor did the Jakubowicz et al (1994) research or other studies mentioned
above present a comprehensive survey of casting practices or a wide range of
interview material with DCALB actors who were working in commercial drama
at the time.
While previous studies and industry perspectives inform the research to a
significant extent, the relationship of the study to the Broadcasting Services
Act 1992 is also important. One of its ten Objects, Object 3(e) is ‘to promote
the role of broadcasting services in developing and reflecting a sense of
Australian identity, character and cultural diversity’. This wording is also to be
found in the Object of the Australian Content Standard (1999), which
prescribes amounts of first release drama for commercial television amongst
other things. As noted in Chapter Three, both the Act and the Australian
Content Standard express the aspiration that broadcasters facilitate the
development and representation of cultural diversity in the community,
through their programming. The industrial indicator of employment is taken as
an important measure of movement towards this policy goal. In Part Two of
this thesis, the employment status of culturally diverse populations in the
media in the USA and the UK was shown to be a key factor in framing policy
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and influencing employment practices to address issues of cultural diversity
and television programming.
The chapter establishes that while significant improvements occurred in the
late 1990s for both the participation and representation of actors of culturally
diverse backgrounds, an engagement with Asian stories and characters,
particularly in commercial drama programming, was still lagging behind the
social reality in 2000. This chapter explores the possible reasons for this,
concluding that creative stakeholders have a lack of awareness as to how to
incorporate Asian stories and roles into drama, compared to the more
sophisticated and everyday portrayals of cultural diversity which are now
predominant for other DCALB populations. This chapter also suggests that
cultural factors, post-secondary education, and family life also play an
important role in determining the extent to which aspirant actors are able to
secure ongoing work in television drama.
Casting survey: method The core component of this study is a casting survey of Australian commercial
drama series and serials that were produced in July to October, 1999. The
focus is on sustaining or lead cast, meaning those members of the cast who
regularly appear in the programs. The programs surveyed were: Water Rats
and Stingers broadcast on the Nine Network, Blue Heelers, All Saints and
Home and Away broadcast on the Seven Network, and Neighbours and
Breakers broadcast on Network Ten (as of week beginning November 8th
1999, Breakers was no longer screened on Ten).
A questionnaire survey was administered to the cast on-site at the
productions concerned. With assistance from the Media Entertainment and
Arts Alliance, four weeks was spent in Sydney and Melbourne overseeing the
administration of the survey to as many performers as possible. Actors of
culturally diverse backgrounds were divided into three groups for the purpose
of the study. DCALB 1 for those actors born overseas in a NES country (Non
English Speaking) and DCALB 2 for those actors born in Australia with at
least one parent born in an NES country (generally referred to as the second
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generation). Actors of Aboriginal or Torres Straits Islander background were
given the opportunity to identify themselves as Indigenous in a separate
question. Actors were also given the opportunity to write their own comments
on the issue of casting for a culturally diverse Australia. Survey responses
were received and processed up until December 1999. Interviews were also
conducted with actors and creative stakeholders in the latter half of 19992.
Casting survey: results From a possible total of 88 ongoing actors appearing in all dramas, the
ethnicity of 65 performers was established. Fifty (77%) were of English
speaking background, 13 (20%) were of NES background, made up of two
DCALB 1 (3%) and 11 DCALB 2 actors (17%). Two performers (3%) were
from Aboriginal background (see Chart A below).
The two most significant results compared with research from the early 1990s
(CLC, 1992a; OMA, 1993; Bostock, 1993) is the presence of Aboriginal
performers in sustaining roles (up from none to 3%) and a total NES presence
of 20%, compared with 2% in the previous decade. The NES outcome
requires some discussion. It is significant that only 2 (or 3%) of actors were
born in non-English speaking countries, according to this study. ABS data for
2 A list of interviewees is contained in Appendix Two.
Figure 7.1: Ethnicity of Actors
Anglo-Australian77%
DCALB 1-born overseas
3%
DCALB 2-born in Australia
17%
Indigenous-Australian
3%
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1998 (ABS, 1998) shows that the comparable percentage for this group in the
Australian community is approximately 14%. Clearly, those born overseas in
non-English speaking countries are not well represented on Australian
commercial drama. A more positive result is that for second generation actors
or ‘DCALB 2’ actors. According to the ABS figures, Australians who have one
or both parents born in a non-English speaking country made up
approximately 10% of the total population in 1998. Thus the 17% figure in this
survey represents a better than statistical approximation than occurs in the
community.
Table A provides three comparisons for performers of culturally diverse
backgrounds: 1) the results of the CLC (1992a) survey; 2) the current survey
based on a response rate of 74%; 3) the statistical representation of these
groups in the general population.
Figure 7.2: Comparison of Studies
Group 1992 Survey *
1999 Survey
General Population
DCALB 1 2 % 3 % 14 % DCALB 2 - 17 % 10 % Indigenous 0 % 3 % 2 %
* The figure of 2% in the MEAA research represents both DCALB 1 and 2.
Table A demonstrates the continuing poor representation of NES actors born
overseas working in drama as compared the general population. The
remaining two groups fare much better. The other significant data collected
was the actual countries DCALB performers came from. Table B on page 163
shows the regional origins of actors.
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Figure 7.3: Family Background by Region
Region Mother Father
Pacific 1 1 Western Europe 1 3 Eastern Europe 3 3 Mediterranean 2 1 Middle East 0 1 Scandinavia 0 2
The research shows that no sustaining actor was from an Asian background.
This compares with an Asian-born population in Australia of 5% and an
estimated Asian second generation population of 2%. The research supports
the notion that it is children from the longer established migrant groups who
are able to negotiate the profession and industry obstacles.
Self-Identification of ethnicity Respondents were given the opportunity to state how they identified
themselves with regard to ethnicity. This was included as a means of
supporting the classification of birthplace data. The reasoning here is that a
person whose mother or father was born in a non-English speaking country
may or may not have an affiliation with their parents’ birthplace and culture.
Figure 7.4: Self Identification
Indg/Aust3%
no answer5%
Multicultural11%
Anglo-Australian or
Australian81%
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What is clear from Figure 7.4 is that a number of DCALB actors self identify
as simply Australian, rather than for example, German or German-Australian.
The underlying reasons for the result are complex. How and why people
choose to identify their cultural background is discussed in Chapters Two and
Eight. However a connection can be made between the results of the above
chart and some of the comments made by actors in interview. A number of
DCALB actors commented that they were ‘simply Australian’, and did not wish
to take on roles that were concerned with their ethnicity. A female actor of
Greek-Cypriot background with significant experience on several programs,
felt she would have been in danger of being stereotyped had she ever taken
on an ethnic specific role. Likewise, when asked if he was pleased to be
playing a non-specific role, a male actor of second generation commented: ‘I
love it – I was born here and feel Australian. Even my humour is Australian’.
DCALB actors noted in interview and commented in writing that they do not
wish to have their ethnic background foregrounded. They desire to play non-
specific roles:
Once an actor of non-Anglo background plays a role that is say, the typical Italian guy for some time, the industry will only see him as that character (Female DCALB actor3 Breakers).
I find that the casting of non-Anglo characters fails to understand that the character lives and operates in the same world as the Anglo characters. I am an Australian of Italian background - that is an incidental matter in the course of my life, but in roles I play that background is often everything (Male DCALB actor Stingers).
To not be cast any differently from Anglo background actors is what a multicultural society is (Female DCALB actor Neighbours).
It should be emphasised that the great majority of DCALB actors surveyed are
second generation Australians and the overwhelming non-specific nature of
roles for DCALB actors accords with their wishes. Such a portrayal also
reflects the cultural mixing of second generation migrants across the wider
community. The connection between these actor sentiments with the concept
of mainstreaming and the lack of lead Asian actors is discussed below, as 3 Where the actor’s name is not used, it signifies they wished to remain anonymous.
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well as why guest roles are more likely to utilise such cultural elements as
accent, attitude and appearance in order to engage with a multicultural story. Industry perspectives: Indigenous casting This research shows that since the early 1990s, there has been a noticeable
increase in the participation of actors from culturally diverse backgrounds in
Australian commercial television drama. In particular, there has been an
increase in the number of Indigenous performers. Not only were there two
sustaining roles for this group on commercial drama, but they were of a non-
specific nature. In the case of actor Aaron Pederson, from Water Rats, he
progressed from TV magazine programs with the ABC to co-presenting
Gladiators. After appearing in mini-series screened on commercial television
and other shows, Pederson was seen back on the ABC in 1998/99 in his
detective role in Wildside which led to his leading role as Detective Michael
Reilly in Water Rats. Pederson is keen to present Indigenous people as filling
‘everyday roles in society and at sophisticated levels’ (quoted in Johnston,
1999, p 2). He situates his role on Water Rats as being an ‘important
breakthrough for his people’ and recognises that it ‘was a big move for a
commercial network to cast an Indigenous actor in a mainstream role (and) a
very positive one’ (quoted in New Idea, 1999, p 23).
Actor Heath Bergersen, the other Indigenous actor in a lead role, had a
history in theatre and television series before working on Breakers. While
Bergersen’s character Reuben occasionally had story lines concerned with his
cultural background, the actor was consulted on these stories and was
pleased with his role and portrayal in the program:
It was all up to me anyway, what the stories about Reuben’s past should be. The writers didn’t really have any sure idea for his background. The writer rang me up and we spent an hour on the phone and she got some ideas from our yarn. It came out pretty good in the episodes. They also showed the Stolen Generation - you know, real Australian history. They put everything in there. There was one story though. A mate rips off 50 dollars from the flat and I get caught putting it back and I react by taking off. Aaron (Pederson) did phone me up and thought I shouldn’t have let them do that story. He reckoned the stealing idea and Aboriginals took us back to early days. But I know the
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character and how the audience would be feeling. They’ll feel sympathetic for Rueben, they already know he’s a good guy and done the right thing (Bergersen, 1999).
Both Indigenous actors declared the importance of getting an Indigenous
presence on the screen as a way of communicating to their own people and
program makers that Aboriginal performers need not play culturally specific
roles. Until Bergersen’s previous on-going role in Sweat in 1996, no Aboriginal
actor had appeared in the list of beginning credits of a television series or
serial (opening credits are reserved for the main on-going cast, while guest
cast, regardless of duration on the show, are relegated to the end credits).
The fact that in 1999 there were three drama programs on TV with Indigenous
actors in the main cast went some way to dispelling the notion of Aboriginal
characters being on the peripheral (Aaron Pederson was also appearing in
the ABC drama Wildside at the time). Their representation in multiple and
familiar drama narratives with professional challenges, relationships, sex, and
personal crisis bolsters their arrival as mainstream characters. The fact that
two shows (Breakers and Wildside) also grappled with issues related to the
actors’ cultural background demonstrates a confidence by both actor and
program producer to include issues of specific cultural identity as well as the
mainstream and everyday portrayal.
Industry perspectives: the acting profession and casting For Indigenous and DCALB actors, the 1999 survey research suggests that
sustainer level work opportunities exist, but actors were unlikely to have an
accent4 or be from a South East Asian background. All casting directors
interviewed were unanimous in the belief that there had been a significant
increase in the number of tertiary trained acting graduates from culturally
diverse backgrounds throughout the 1990s, and that this was a major factor in
the diversity of casts in the late 1990s:
In the last five years there has been a noticeable increase in actors from non-Anglo backgrounds graduating from the acting schools.
4 Bertone et al’s (2000, p xii) survey of theatre based actors also found that first generation DCALB actors with accents experience more problems gaining employment than second generation actors, who do not have an accent.
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Theatre has played a part, but the schools have understood the need to encourage young actors with potential from a variety of backgrounds to train (Anne Robinson, Casting Director for Mullinars) (Robinson, 1999).
I think the drama schools like QUT, NIDA, Nepean and so on have opened their eyes to the opportunities of having an ethnic mix (Kim Saville, Casting Director for Faith Martin & Associates) (Seville, 1999).
The drama schools’ reasons for having a diverse cohort are principally
motivated by two considerations. Firstly, different plays, stories and program
genres obviously require a mix of people in gender, personality, and physical
appearance. Secondly, the potential marketability of the students is important
when it comes time to securing an agent and eventual work in the industry.
Having a diverse range of graduates translates to a greater choice for agents,
who also seek to fulfil a range of choices for their clients. However when it
comes to recruitment, acting is certainly not like most other businesses.
Opportunities for work are obtained through a mixture of conventional
requirements, such as qualifications and experience, and non-conventional
requirements. Unlike most professions, factors such as physical appearance,
voice and personality at auditions (the acting equivalent of the job interview)
are very important and explicitly so. While these factors are no doubt
influential when interview panels make final choices in the recruitment of any
job, it is very unlikely and probably discriminatory if a tertiary trained teacher,
engineer, lawyer or nurse would be explicitly discussed in such terms by an
interview panel. The nuances of achieving success for obtaining a role begin
before an actor has begun professional training. Diane Eden (head of QUT’s
Acting Discipline) and her department must like other acting schools choose a
mere fraction from the hundreds of aspirants each year:
The only way to achieve an excellent graduate is to pay enormous attention to the intake. If we can’t honestly say we think that with training an applicant has a chance of getting an agent and breaking into the business, we don't take them on, we won't lie. Integrity for an acting school must begin at these intake auditions, not at the end of the course. This is not a comfortable process because we are playing God with their young lives during the auditions - but we rely on our experience and our love of the profession to make these decisions. This concept of marketability is not driven by soapies wanting
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handsome little be-bop boys and girls. It is driven by the knowledge that if they are skilled enough, they will eventually get a job, probably on film or television. The students can be attractive, they can be big, thin, ugly, short, tall, Italian or Icelandic or Indigenous, or anything. They have to offer something strong, interesting, and reliable. And they need to demonstrate a disciplined professional attitude. It's a tough, tough industry, run by even tougher people (Eden, 1999).
These comments help to illustrate both the competitive nature of securing an
acting career and give an insight to the tacit impenetrability of the industry.
The difficulty in obtaining well-paid and ongoing work as an actor is widely
understood. It is therefore not surprising that aspiring actors from diverse
cultural and linguistic backgrounds must accept, like all other acting students,
that choosing acting as a profession indicates a level of struggle not usually
associated with most other careers. The drama training institutions have by de
facto given the Australian film and television industry much of the cultural
diversity now apparent on our screens. The motivation of university
departments to actively recruit a diverse cohort is based on the knowledge
that the mainstream market seeks diverse talent, and this now includes
cultural diversity. In a follow up casting survey to the one undertaken for this
study (Jacka, 2002), the main drama schools all reported significant numbers
of students from culturally diverse backgrounds, with the Victoria College of
the Arts (VCA) having established an Aboriginal Access Program. How much
of a contribution any implicit affirmative-action recruiting has made is difficult
to gauge, as the institutions do not keep formal records of the cultural
background of their intakes.5 However, as argued in Chapter Two,
multicultural policy from the Agenda onwards has served to permeate, albeit
gradually, an awareness of multiculturalism as part of mainstream life and an
expectation that cultural diversity is integral to Australian culture and work.
Tony Knight, head of acting at the National Institute for Dramatic Arts (NIDA)
describes the changes which have come about by taking an active role in
changing what was once a largely Anglo domain:
5 However NIDA provided information on students’ cultural background to Bertone et al (2000, p 31) indicating that 11% of students at that time were first generation DCALB migrants, while a further 21% of students were second generation DCLAB migrants.
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We’ve always been aware that we needed to make more of an effort particularly with regard to Aboriginal people. And it had to be in consultation with Indigenous people and with the University of New South Wales about what we could do. The biggest difference that came though was when Michael Leslie was running the school in WA associated with WAAPA (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts). What was wonderful about Michael’s school was that it was a stepping stone – it was a valuable place and it was our main source of getting Indigenous people into our school. It’s not like we do a reverse discrimination. Look to be absolutely honest there has been some of that and I’m not ashamed of doing it, and saying it. These students are disadvantaged. They do not have the same advantages that the mainstream may have. But it’s not just Indigenous students, it’s students from Asian and other backgrounds as well. I’ve been doing this job for a long time, back in the late 70s it was pretty Anglo-Saxon. But slowly you started to see the influence of Greeks and Italians. So the effects of multiculturalism gradually started to have their effects. And that has steadily grown. In any one year there is now a huge mixture of ethnic backgrounds in our intake (Knight, 1999).
Graduating from an acting course or training in theatre is one method of finally
getting a ‘gig’ on television. Of course many working actors have used other
methods such as crossing over from advertising and modeling, or in rare
cases, they have been ‘discovered’. Actors themselves are very aware of the
pressures placed on them for conforming to socially constructed concepts of
attractiveness and personality. The demands of an industry which can lean
towards outward appearance for employment criteria further complicates the
issue of casting and cultural diversity. Tony Knight again:
The beauty myth still operates in the industry of course. But regarding our intake, we don’t look at that at all. It’s not relevant. It would be silly to say it doesn’t exist however. But that’s a pressure that comes from outside. Particularly from television but not so much in film and theatre. I guess all the television shows have it, whether somebody is ‘sexy’ or not. And that changes as easily as fashion. You do run along side it but you don’t pay too much attention to it. I find that whole beauty thing a bit of a horror actually. Someone will be passed over for a role and some else will be cast based on their looks alone (Knight, 1999).
Interviews with casting directors indicate that the pressures which operate in
choosing drama school students in very competitive courses are reflected in
how choices are made in the ‘tough’ casting business for choosing actors in
television drama roles. In a study of four of Australia’s premier actor training
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institutions, Leahy (1994) followed the audition process for hopeful students
wishing to enroll at NIDA, VCA, The Western Australian Academy of
Performing Arts (WAAPA) and the University of Western Sydney – Nepean, in
1993. While the study is now somewhat dated, it showed that successful
applicants were most likely to come from higher socio-economic backgrounds
and have had exposure to what she terms ‘elite culture’.6 A weakness in
Leahy’s comments for application to this research however is that her study
was primarily in context to mainstream theatre. She makes a correlation
between the theatre’s roots in societal privilege and elite culture with actor
training institutions, whereby they operate in an implicit manner to reproduce
dominant cultural values as evidenced by a privileged student intake. In the
late 1990s though, the drama schools were aware of the career aspirations of
potential students in the direction of film and television, as opposed to a
theatrical career (QUT’s head of acting noted a strong shift in student
preferences towards film and/or TV jobs in the 1990s). While the compression
of content in high and low culture has taken place, occupational differences
between acting for mainstream theatre and acting for popular television drama
are very evident. The schools’ close ties with agents and a focus on
marketability also suggests a change from preparing actors for a ‘life on the
stage’ to gaining the all important first professional role in front of the camera.
However in spite of Leahy’s theatre focus, her finding that actor training
institutions were beginning to attempt an intake balance with regard to
gender, ‘type’ and ethnicity of students 10 years ago, corresponds to
comments made by the acting school heads for this research who asserted
this was taking place in the late 1990s.
During Leahy’s (1994, p 14) observations of auditions and interviews it was
found that auditioning students who were ‘in control of themselves and the
situation’ were most likely to proceed in the selection process. As a
companion to this, all institutions placed ‘great emphasis on all elements of
6 Leahy employs Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital to demonstrate how the schools implicitly restrict their intake to those students who have access to ‘the kinds of educational and social privileges … that constitute ‘cultural capital’ (Leahy, 1994, p 43). There is some validity to her position, as well spoken English combined with an appreciation of ‘the arts’ was shown to assist some applicants in making a favourable impression on selection panels.
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language facility, reading, writing, listening and speaking’ (Leahy, 1994, p 26).
Given such criteria, there is little surprise that applicants with poor English
skills from either Anglo backgrounds or culturally diverse backgrounds
struggle with the intimidating audition process. What these demands for
success in being chosen for an acting course demonstrate is the difficulty an
overseas born student would encounter whose English and social skills were
not in the top percentile. While non-English speaking high school students
achieve high scores on pre-university entry tests, academic mastery is not a
core criterion in securing an acting career. The combination of language and
interpersonal skills based on cultural familiarity, as well as the obvious desire
to perform, make acting an unlikely career for some groups based on social
and cultural factors. However, when the cultural proximity of the homeland
and family life are blended with other cultural and mainstream influences,
something which is marked among second generation young people, the
complex social negotiations which occur in the audition process are more
easily and confidently navigated than by students from NES countries.
Outside the acting schools, the casting profession is well aware of the issue of
cultural diversity and, in particular, the hardships faced in getting female
actors into a range of roles. There was general agreement among casting
directors that in some ways, women and older actors face more discrimination
in the industry than those of culturally diverse backgrounds:
There will be an endless search for a man in a role for which there is no concrete reason that it has to be a man, and then someone might finally suggest ‘what about a woman’. If we honestly want to reflect our society and workplaces as they appear on TV, then you have to ask – ‘why can’t this role be a women? (Robinson, 1999).
Strong roles for women - where is that being discussed or debated within the industry? It goes for older actors too. Youth seems to be the priority for the networks. Older actors in Australia feel their experience is not respected. Think how different it is for old footballers! In many shows there is the feeling that our more experienced actors are playing ‘second fiddle’ to the often inexperienced younger ones. Look at the UK and the USA, where a greater range of actors are accorded respect and reverence (Jan Russ, Casting Director for Grundy Television) (Russ, 1999).
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Noticeably absent from screens are actors from Asian background and actors
from culturally diverse backgrounds who speak with an accent. The question
needs to be asked: are these actors missing training opportunities and being
discriminated against in the industry? The relationship between the drama
schools and the lack of actors with accents or Asian actors could be explained
because DCALB students of the acting schools from the previous 10 to 15
years will predominantly be young second or third generation migrants from
European background, who will most likely speak without an accent. As Asian
immigration is more recent than the wave of post-war European immigration,
the proportional number of young second generation migrants from Asian
background is less than those from NES European background (ABS, 2003c).
This is certainly the situation in the wider community where first generation
overseas born migrants of Asian background significantly outnumber their
Australian born children.
There is tension within the industry though when it comes to explaining the
lack of Asian actors on-screen, particularly in non-specific roles. Personnel
associated with casting point out that the available pool of experienced actors
from Asian backgrounds is smaller than for other DCALB groups. Advocacy
groups and actors from Asian backgrounds are vigorous in their rebuttal of
this argument. The several experienced second generation actors of Asian
background interviewed related a continuing lack of opportunities even at the
audition level, compared with their Anglo-Australian colleagues. Upon finally
gaining an audition call-up, they are often asked to perform their ethnicity,
such as playing the role of a recently arrived migrant who speaks with an
accent. The issue is complicated further in that producers and network
Executive Producers constantly seek an alchemy for success in casting,
hopefully turning the program they are developing into an elusive hit show.
And so they may screen-test up to 300 actors for 10 available roles, taking
into consideration a range of tacit factors aside from acting skill in order to
have a balanced cast. Such factors as body shape, appearance and
personality of short listed cast may be endlessly pondered in the hope of
achieving the right look for the show. Whether an ‘Asian look’ is acceptable in
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the balance of a lead cast among key industry stakeholders is a vexing
question.
Based on the results of the 1999 casting survey and comments from actors,
the answer to the above question seems to be that an Asian look remains
problematic. While the pool of available actors from culturally diverse
backgrounds may be of a limiting size, the chances for significant employment
also rely upon a complex set of subjective circumstances. Casting directors
often used language such as an actor being ‘right’ for the role, having the
‘essence’ of the character, and particularly in television in many roles, having
‘good looks’, which a network marketing department can utilise. But the point
was also made, that actors of Anglo background also complain of not being
cast for reasons of age, gender and appearance. Comments from those within
the television industry also reflect to a degree Leahy’s (1994) conclusions that
there is a ‘theatrical Darwinism’ operating in the auditioning process for
applicants to the drama schools. Across the television industry as well, all
creative stakeholders and actors themselves spoke of the adversity in
achieving success in their field. Like the hopeful students trying out for the
acting courses, all actors at some time will experience the ‘ruthless process of
auditioning’, which has little in common with the now mandatory position
description used to recruit for most other jobs. Leahy (1994, p 98) sees the
audition as a process based upon ‘aesthetically legitimated tastes and
behaviours’ which results in only the smallest minority gaining entry to the
profession. The impact of such adversity in the employment process and the
appropriateness of acting as a career may influence whether acting is valued
as a future profession by some parents.
In interviews with several Asian background actors, there was cautious
agreement that in some Asian communities acting and creative careers in
general are not highly valued, making acting a less likely career for children of
Asian parents. Annette Shun Wah has had a range of professional experience
in radio, television, writing and feature films. Shun Wah (1999) is quoted at
length here as her insightful comments are from the perspective of someone
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who has experienced professional success, critical acclaim and also
frustration, over a period of more than 20 years working in the media:
When I was growing up, many young Chinese and other Asian youth would come to me and talk to me about this stereotype of Asian people studying very hard and getting a job as an accountant. Now this is partly the way it actually is because your parents want you to get a good job. They want you to be financially secure. And that is their major aim so you won’t go through the struggles they went through. That can dissuade you from a creative career, because a creative career may be seen as a waste of time – it’s not a real job. So there is that. There probably also isn’t the respect for a creative career. With migration the position of scholars and artists got changed around with merchants. With Chinese, the ones who were most looked up to were the ones successful in business – the merchants. And of those, some became the community leaders. So that pattern has remained. The encouragement is to enter professions that are well rewarded financially. I can speculate that Cambodian and Vietnamese first generation migrants who have children here – it may be even more difficult for them as they are still going through the financial struggle of finding a future. So for those people struggling, certainly an acting career may be unforgivable. Having said that – there are the already trained actors and directors who come here. For them it must be very difficult as they have the skills, and they can not use them. People do put up cultural networks in order to do work but that’s tough. You know kids have come up to me and said that by seeing me succeed it had inspired them to go on and do what they wanted to do. That is wonderful when they say that.
Shun Wah’s comments suggest that there are cultural pressures against
taking up acting as a career, but also important cultural reasons for the
presence of actors in roles from her cultural background. Her comments
reflect those of Heath Bergersen, where he recalls his pleasure at seeing
Aaron Pederson on Gladiators and then the pleasure his people got from
seeing him on Breakers. The importance of role modelling for young people
presented by instances of seeing themselves on TV is a potent justification for
the industry to actively adjust its skew from DCALB European actors of
second or third generation and recruit more Asian actors into programs.
Agents made the point that there needs to be an expectation that the roles are
there for actors of culturally diverse backgrounds, for them to pursue acting as
a career. However all this aside, while there may be a smaller pool of Asian
actors available, there are most certainly more actors available than the
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number of Asian sustainers appearing on television. While the number was
none in late 1999, in the three years to 2003 the situation improved with six
shows having Asian sustainers (Home and Away, Neighbours, Crash Palace,
Going Home, Secret Life of Us, Something in the Air) and one show (All
Saints) having an ongoing guest role of three years duration. However this
result should also be understood in the context of guest roles, where actors
from more recent migration communities are more likely to find themselves in
culturally specific roles.
After finally securing an agent in 1997, Annette Shun Wah has had very few
screen tests and of the few roles offered, they have required her to perform
her ethnicity in minor parts or guest roles as a waitress for example with an
Asian accent on every occasion. A preferable portrayal that not only
corresponds to the reality of Asians living in Australia but also makes for
better drama is well expressed by her here:
The issue though, is that it isn’t just a factor of a face on the screen. If you’re talking about multiculturalism and television programming, there needs to be a sensitivity for the culture …. the characters need to be interesting, multidimensional characters living in Australia. And that is almost non-existent. And that possibility is a really rich seam for people to plunder in order to come up with interesting characters and plot lines.
From the casting profession’s point of view, there are pressures from their
clients, who in television drama are made up of a program’s producer and
network executive producers. The involvement of these stakeholders was
described as them having ‘ultimate control’ in the casting process. One may
construe this to mean having a final say, or perhaps more significantly a
definitive control over the program and casting. In the mix of a lead cast for a
series, out of 10 actors, a network seeks at least two star names to attach
publicity to, with the marketing department joining in the decision making
process. Other cast members are usually at the discretion of the producer
with final approval always resting with the network. In casting for roles which
are not ethnic specific, it is up to casting directors to put forward and then
audition a range of actors. It is here that the casting profession has the
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opportunity to encourage colour blind casting. However all good efforts must
eventually pass through what can be an arduous decision making process,
influenced by a number of interested parties. All casting directors had varying
perceptions on the availability of DCALB actors and the reasons for the
continuing difficulties faced by some groups:
We used to cast GP and it was our commitment for there to be at least one NESB actor per episode, scripted or not. In many shows that has been the case. There has also been an increase in Italian and Greek background actors over the years, but there has been a limited access to actors of other backgrounds. The reason might be a cultural one related to the education process and their family life. I would suggest, and I hate to suggest it, that a highish percentage of all actors come from middle class backgrounds. The immigrant parents of children from the 1950s and 60s were interested in their children getting a better education and particularly a professional education. This is now reflected in our broad Australian middle class life, but you don’t get a lot of representation from the middle class ethnic groups in the acting fraternity. However, if you take into account the small percentage of ‘working actors’ that there are in the late 1990s, then there are a well represented and diverse range. In addition to that, the Indigenous area has had a significant commitment from several avenues. And I think that’s healthy (Maura Fay, Casting Director), (Fay, 1999).
A hypothetical situation was put to all casting directors that a script called for a
major guest role for a lawyer named Samantha Lee. The writer obviously
intending that she be from an Asian background, though the role and story
had nothing to do with her ethnicity. They were asked how they would cast
this role and would it be a difficult one to fill. All believed that a suitable actor
could be found and that they had cast such roles in the past few years, but if a
client called for a sustaining role to be filled by an Asian actor, the point was
then made that a production may prefer a seasoned TV actor. This ‘chicken or
the egg’ scenario aside, with the smaller pool of Asian actors to choose from,
there were also concerns about meeting other criteria (again ill-defined) which
may be brought to the decision process by a range of people. If a consensus
cannot be reached, it may not be a difficult decision to abandon the original
idea for an Asian actor and resort to the less demanding task of casting an
actor of European background.
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On one commercial TV medical series,7 it was related that two lead roles were
originally written for an Asian ambulance driver and a South American doctor.
However by the time casting was complete, the roles had gone to actors of
Ango-Australian background. Confirming the ease with which productions now
cast a diverse range of DCALB European performers, actors from these
backgrounds expressed less culturally based concerns than their Asian
colleagues. However once again, the sheer difficulty in obtaining any work as
an actor was most often mentioned by all actors, regardless of cultural
background. The following comment is from a young DCALB actor who got an
on-going role on a serial shortly after graduating from Nepean:
When I got a call back for another audition for Breakers, I wanted to find out more about the role and I also wanted to do this when I eventually got the part. Nine times out of ten I was told ‘you didn’t get the part because of your acting, you weren’t cast just on your performance, we liked your personality’. They liked the real me.8
Other actor perspectives on the profession indicate a range of biases in the
industry and actors displayed various approaches to dealing with the system.
Jason Chong displays a pragmatic attitude to the profession and the casting
practices which relate to his cultural background:
All you can hope for is to go from job to job. You can’t expect a career as an actor in Australia. I don’t put judgment on those roles that come along and that have an ethnic specific element to them. I ask, is this good material and is the character strong. I have in the past played the ‘Asian bad guy’. I’ve done that twice and occasionally they ring up and ask if I would be interested to do that again. It’s how the system operates. All actors are put into a box regardless though. However, I would like to see more faces on screen that reflect the diversity we have in this country and not just in supporting roles, but in the lead roles (Chong, 1999).
Meme Thorne gained an on-going guest role in the Network Ten series Above
the Law. Describing herself as of European/Asian background, she played the
role of a Filipino housekeeper. The producer of the show, Hal McElroy, had a
7 This was confirmed by the initial director of the series as well as the two Anglo actors who eventually got the lead roles. All wished that the show not be identified. 8 Identity suppressed at the request of the actor.
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Filipino actress in mind to play the part, however, as noted above, such
decisions often change in the pre-production process. Thorne’s character is
also culturally problematic as she played a role that might be considered
conventional:
For my part, Hal asked how I might want to change or inject story lines into the role. It is unusual I think, that an actor can offer them ideas and that they are open to it. About Sunny, my role in the show, you see I also know the backstory. She is in fact a psychologist who can’t get work in her profession in Australia and so she is taking up this cleaning work. In reality it can be very hard for professionals from other countries who migrate to Australia to practice their profession. I am going to make sure that her professional background comes out. I need that for myself. I am in fact pleased that the role is going to evolve, the fact that I do play a Filipino cleaning lady who will then develop into this more complex character. But I do have contradictory feelings about this part. On the one hand, there is a part of me that enjoys the challenge, the fabulous challenge of mastering the accent of a Filipino. Also a gig means work. I need the work. Now politically, I in fact talked myself out of a possible role with Bruce Beresford on Paradise Road. I said at my screen test that I felt the roles should be filled by Vietnamese actors. So of course I didn’t get the part. But when it comes to needing and wanting the work, the situation isn’t easy (Thorne, 1999).
The inner-conflict for actors to balance their professional aspirations with the
opportunity to simply get paid employment must be recognised. Jeremy
Angerson is an actor of Singapore/Swiss/Javanese/Irish background. He
takes a sanguine attitude to his experiences in the industry and his comments
acknowledge the particular hardships of the acting profession:
I’ve played a Vietnamese street-kid, a ‘retarded’ Italian, a Tibetan prince and everyday roles on soapies and series. I took an optimistic approach when I was young and that was: I can get the parts that others can’t. So it balances itself out. I feel lucky that I can cross boundaries. My experience is that if any prejudice is in this industry, it’s from your work pedigree. So if you’ve done Neighbours or Home and Away – then you are conditioned in the eyes of those who hire you to do certain parts. I can say with some confidence that I’ve lost parts because I’ve been a part of programs that elitists may think of as unsavoury. But I also love playing non-specific roles. I was born here and I feel Australian. Even my humour is Australian. Just getting a job these days, it’s a fucking joke how hard you have to work to get a role. When you do win a part you have literally fucking won it. You can feel proud just to be working and working consistently. I take my hat off to those people who do because it’s rare (Angerson, 1999).
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The varied challenges faced by DCALB actors presented above are centred
within their profession. This fails to take account of the consequences which
key creative stakeholders have in advancing the possible scope and quantity
for roles and actors of diverse cultural backgrounds. A significant number of
actors commented on survey forms or during interview, that writers should
take significant responsibility when it comes to the lack of superior roles for
performers of culturally diverse backgrounds. However in discussion with
several experienced television drama writers, it became evident that this was
an oversimplification.
Industry perspectives: writing While it is true that writers are key contributors to a television program, like
casting directors they are also at the mercy of the production process. The
several mainstream writers interviewed for this research made up a politically
progressive cohort operating at a distance and in some remoteness from the
day to day production of a program. Even in expensive series, once a script is
finalised, characters may be changed after writing without the writer’s input
and writers all mentioned having good and bad surprises when finally seeing
the show on TV. And once scripts reach the final edit with an independent
production company they are sent to the network for approval. Before a series
script reaches the network, it has undergone two to three months of plotting,
story and scene breakdown meetings, followed by final edits. Chris
Hawkshaw has written for many of the programs covered in this research and
illuminates the difficulties for writers in the process:
Well, writers are pretty much at the bottom of the food chain. If there’s going to be resistance for a role from above, writers have got no hope. We can try, and we could try harder. But in the end it won’t be just up to the writers as too many people have a say in each script – and particularly when it leaves our hands. If a character is deemed to be getting in the way of the story, seen as too unpopular with an audience, or difficult to cast, it will be changed to fit the story (Hawkshaw, 1999).
Jo Horsburgh progressed through the writing profession over a period of
fifteen years from serials writer to script producer on Water Rats. As the head
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of the writing team on a production (not attached to the network), she is well
placed to comment on the writing process. She comments about non-specific
roles being written in during the writing process:
Yes, that happens all the time and then it depends on the availability of actors. It’s funny but it’s not an issue. The big problem in the past was that it was all very well to say you wanted a character of a certain background, but depending on the level of the role (guest or lead), the bottom line is you want the best actor. If they audition and a) they weren’t good and b) you couldn’t sell them – the director is always going to go for the better actor. Time is so short you can’t workshop people. But I think over the last decade, we have people from more backgrounds having had greater experience. They’ve been noticed and come through (Horsburgh, 1999).
Kevin Roberts wrote on the last three series of Heartbreak High, the inner-city
school drama with a noteworthy multicultural cast. The show was originally
bought by Ten, who were interested in having a youth series with multicultural
credentials. Ten subsequently lost interest in the show, which was eventually
picked up by the ABC. The program itself is covered in greater depth in
Chapter Eight. However, the show is an example of laying foundations for
cultural diversity in the initial phases of production, which then continues on
through the production process. It presents an alternative model to casting for
cultural diversity by placing an embedded sense of cultural diversity in the
cast from the outset:
If you don’t have a multicultural cast at the outset, what tends to happen is that the writers come up with a one-off stereotypical multicultural story. Then you can understand executive producers saying ‘well not another bloody ethnic story’. If the cast is diverse and there from the beginning, then there is less chance that they will be written in a stereotypical way. If your cast is part of the multicultural neighbourhood, then race-based stories won’t have to be the focus. Just bringing in an Asian character for a guest role may mean they won’t be treated the same as ordinary characters on the show (Roberts, 1999).
This notion of an ordinary or everyday multiculturalism, has been raised
several times in this thesis. Many Australian creative personnel, including
actors, believe this is the way forward in popular drama. This does not mean
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that characters are emptied of their cultural background. Predominantly
issues-based drama of the variety made popular in the 1980s and early 1990s
have lost favour, though characters are still of course going through topics
related to community and personal crises (some of the dramas studied have
dealt with Aboriginal issues in the late 1990s for example). Although
Heartbreak High consisted of a cast from various cultural backgrounds, overt
‘ethnic’ stories were mostly avoided:
We went the other way in regards to highlighting the cultural diversity of the characters. We thought that if we were to do a race based story it should occur only once in every series (40 episodes). What we did deliberately is to think these kids are just kids – not focus on their cultural background. If we did do a race based story we really gave it some thought. Mostly we wanted to ignore the fact of their cultural background (Roberts, 1999).
Regardless of inclusiveness in casting by producers and an increasingly
everyday portrayal of cultural diversity, marketing concerns are an important
influence when it comes to deciding on the look of a show. It was pointed out
above that marketing departments have an influence on the final choice of
actors for a program. When a cast is in place, a small number of the regulars
will usually be the focus of on-going promotion. In the case of Heartbreak
High, which was very successful in Europe, overseas and local promotion
converged on three particular actors:
I can tell you that the press interest in our Asian or Black actors was considerably less than the publicity our Anglo actors got. I think that also reflects the situation. There is an image that advertisers want. As an example, at the film festival in Monaco, the three actors invited were the Anglo actors from the show and were the ones who attracted the most publicity everywhere (Roberts, 1999)
Advertisers may assume that a predominantly Anglo demographic is their only
market and so networks may work towards satisfying these expectations.
Cunningham and Miller (1994, p 6) remark how in the commercial arena of
competitive Australian television, ‘there is a powerful concentration on
audiences and their presumed tastes as a passage to profitability’. Focusing
on the relationship between producers and how they are implicated in
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presenting cultural diversity on their programs, Jakubowicz et al (1994, p 83)
consider it is the audience who ‘determines for the producer how issues of
race and ethnicity will be handled’. Writing in the early 1990s, Jakubowicz et
al locate instances in Australian drama where the ‘social perspectives of
(producers) are negotiated over time with the audiences’. Script producer Jo
Horsburg raises the issue of audiences and their reaction to cultural diversity
on screen:
The only time a negative thing happened was on A Country Practice when the show had an Asian female doctor, I think it was the early nineties. She had a romance with one of the regulars and they kissed. The network as well as the production house was inundated with hate mail. None of us had ever experienced it before. People involved in the show were horrified (Horsburgh, 1999).
Other key players in the industry also related stories about occasionally
aggressive reactions from audiences when confronted with stories or scenes
portraying inter-racial intimacy, though in all cases, such incidents occurred
prior to the mid-1990s. Asked whether such reaction from an audience at the
time had an effect on producing subsequent stories, Horsburgh (1999)
comments:
I don’t think there was a conscious effort not to do it again. Very soon after that we had a story about an Iranian refugee. That was an issue based story, a different kind of story. But we didn’t deliberately move away from that kind of writing. Script departments are always far more progressive than society at large. Before I worked in television, I thought they must be racist and sexist, then you go in to script departments and you find them very forward-thinking. I went to Neighbours in 1988 or 1989 for work experience as my first job and got the shock of my life. It was so feminist, so green, so political. And, if you watched it carefully, all these issues would be worked out in the show. Writers have good intent, but there are all sorts of reasons that may stymie things.
The issue of interference ‘from above’ is one raised by people within and
outside the industry. Anecdotes circulate about past transgressions and one
network will be considered worse than the other for its conservative position.
Publicly and officially, network heads obviously reject claims of discrimination
in casting or in the portrayal of cultural diversity. Networks are obliged to
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comply with the Code of Practice, which contains clauses on racial vilification
and how program content is to be classified. As a consequence, a show will at
times be altered to fit a particular classification. Networks also refer to
audience demands as well as community standards as aspects they take into
consideration when it comes to deciding what will or won’t be broadcast.
Nevertheless, a recent anecdote from Denise Morgan, a writer with 30 years
experience, gives an insight to the issue:
I won’t touch rape by and large, because I think there is a group of people out there who find it titillating and so unless I can hit it from a different approach, I steer clear of it. So I wanted to try a story where one of the male cops on a police series is raped - just going about his social life, crossing a park, unable to defend himself and he’s raped. Well that script got all the way through producers, story editors and the script producer. The trouble started with a director who found it terribly uncomfortable and rather than him saying ‘I can’t work on this, I’ll do a different episode’ the actor became concerned and then the others got all strange about it too. It went as far as the network Executive Producer, but they didn’t come back to the scripting department. Eventually it was pulled and this is after the script had been released as ready to shoot. So I re-wrote the script into something else again. In fact, I think the original episode could have been an award winner for the actor, it was a gutsy thing, especially because he was a man, and he was also a cop (Morgan, 1999).
Most of the writers interviewed believed there were both resistances and
encouragement along the production process for more culturally diverse
looking drama. Sean Nash, a writer and creator for Australian drama, noted
the following:
On the one hand I think there is a resistance in network television towards multiculturalism. But on the other hand, I created and actually shot a pilot for Channel Seven in 1996/1997 and one of the characters in that was an Anglo-Chinese girl, played by Ling Hsueh Tang, who was on Breakers and now appears on All Saints. Likewise, we deliberately created a character played by Aaron Pedersen as an up and coming guy in the Customs service with an Aboriginal background. The reason I mention that is because as much as I thought there would be ‘discussions’ to keep them in, nobody batted an eyelid. The only concern was, let’s make sure we can cast these roles with the calibre of actors that we want (Nash, 1999).
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The above comments demonstrate the variety of experiences and
complexities in the industry regarding the portrayal of cultural diversity.
Writers, program creators and other key creative personnel in the industry will
often take an active role in trying to address the lag between how society is
portrayed on television and how it really is. Tony Morphett is the original
creator of programs such as Water Rats, Blue Heelers and more recently
Above the Law and Going Home. He also has an impressive list of film and
television writing credits and he talks of his own desires to effect change:
You just keep doing it. I often write in ethnic characters, sometimes they get in and sometimes they don’t. You’ve got to keep trying. At the end of the day I want the screen to look like the street. I don’t want 1950s Australia – I lived in 1950s Australia and I prefer the Australia we have now. Writing is a collaborative process and at the end of the day, you do what you can do (Morphett, 1999).
The collaborative relationship in the making of a program means that there
are constraints placed on each party to achieve individual desires, but
comments from writers illustrate that making an individual effort to effect
change is an important step if they wish to write for contemporary Australia.
As writers often write ‘what they know’, it was suggested by writers
themselves that more writers from culturally diverse backgrounds need to be
supported into the industry. This would also see more ‘interesting and
multidimensional’ characters of diverse backgrounds, which Annette Shun
Wah believes is so necessary. Jakubowicz (1994, p 94) also posits the
importance of having writers from diverse cultural backgrounds as a key
means of creating ‘cultural visions’ which are dissimilar from those of the past.
Specifically addressing this dilemma, the Australian Writers Guild (AWG)
undertook research (AWG, 1997) into the employment and support of film and
television writers from non-English speaking backgrounds.
The study found that state film organizations, literary bodies and multicultural
organizations provide support such as workshops, information, training and
liaison for writers from non-English speaking backgrounds. However, specific
funding opportunities for this group are not available. The research notes that
this is in contrast to the situation for Indigenous and women writers, who have
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access to a funding pool of targeted programs (for example the Australian
Film Commission). In surveying the Guild’s culturally diverse members, the
study reveals the pattern that first generation writers feel they suffer greater
hardship in obtaining work as compared to the second generation and the
second generation feel a less significant need for targeted support. The
conclusion of the study is that support for DCALB writers in the form of
mentoring and direct grants would assist in nurturing more such writers into
the mainstream industry. In spite of actors’ beliefs in the importance of writers’
contribution to cultural diversity, the role the producer plays is more pivotal. In
Australian television production, it is often producers who shape the initial
components of a drama or even create the concept and story. Such germinal
input can have lasting effects on a show once it is established in the network
landscape.
Industry perspectives: producing
The majority of television series such as Water Rats and Stingers produced
in Australia are not made by the networks, but commissioned from
independent production companies. These companies are mostly made up of
a group of principals, who are involved in creating the concept and pushing it
through to a pre-sale with one of the networks. Since the late 1990s, overseas
sales have become critical for producers to recoup their production costs as
network pre-sales no longer cover 100% of the cost of a series. The serials
are somewhat different as their longevity usually means there will have been a
number of producers over a period of time. Yet, even here, an executive
producer will usually remain attached for a number of years. Network script
and drama executives will work closely with both series and serial production
providers, looking out for the network’s investment. Network approval aside,
producers were unanimously identified as having the most input to the cast,
stories and look of a show.
Hal McElroy was previously a film producer and with his brother Jim produced
such films as The Cars That Ate Paris, Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last
Wave. McElroy later moved into popular television drama, creating Blue
Heelers, with its nostalgic country values:
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It’s a perfectly human, legitimate desire for things to be easy, simple, uncomplicated and rewarding. For there to be heroes and for villains to be captured in the end. That’s been there through the ages so I make no apology for doing it today. The fact that it’s popular reflects the fact that it’s what audiences desire (McElroy, 1999).
However in spite of audiences’ desires for what may be conservative values in
programming, he acknowledges the need for there to be a mix of
programming and a mix of cast on television:
We had written in a character in Water Rats who was Italian – this is many years ago now. I was directing the screen tests and thought ‘fuck I’ve seen this character a thousand fucking times before – this is getting boring’. I wanted to think of another way. Anyway, one part of the script was that this Italian character’s family is involved in the fish markets. So I went to the markets and there were a lot of Islanders, as well as Greeks, Asians and so on. So I said to Tony Morphett and John Hugginson (co-creators) ‘guys why don’t we just forget Italian and think Maori’. They loved it and so we ended up with Jay Laga’aia (who is actually Samoan) (McElroy, 1999).
McElroy prefers to cast a range of actors and claims not to be a devotee of
the beauty myth on TV shows. In creating a cast, he prefers to have a
balanced cast of men and women who may not conform to network
expectations:
A network usually becomes risk averse if it is doing very well. So often, a network’s attitude to casting is, frankly, if it’s a girl she should be blonde and ideally have large breasts. If it’s a man he should have plenty of hair and be muscular. So as a joke, I said to them (network drama executives): ‘you’re fuckin’ hairist, you want everyone to have a big fuckin’ shock of hair’. Anyway, they [a particular network]9 have a white bread middle Australian view, an old fashioned view of what audiences want to see on television (McElroy, 1999).
McElroy went on to produce Above the Law for Network Ten, who were
interested in exploring a contemporary series which included a culturally
diverse cast. Creators of Above the Law, Tony Morphett and Inga Hunter,
were also satisfied to be able to write a show which reflected and explored a
9 McElroy did not wish the network to be identified.
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diverse urban culture from the outset. Mirroring their preferences, Breakers
producer Dave Gould also sought to create a more contemporary
representation on the daily serial from the beginning, not unlike the everyday
casting of Heartbreak High:
From inception, there was a desire on Breakers to make it more ‘real’ in terms of the world that we now live in – with warts and all. Rather than go for what has in the past been a sort of sanitised or nostalgic take on Australian life. Part of that is clearly the cultural mix of this city (Sydney) that we live in. Having established that from the start it became part of the palette that we painted with. It was not something that we sat down at story conferences and tried to find story lines based on ethnicity. But we did look for stories based on emotion, character and human nature. And part of that palette to paint with was cultural diversity (Gould, 1999).
The two other serials on TV at the time in 1999 were Home and Away and
Neighbours. In previous research into television and cultural diversity
(Jakubowicz et al, 1994, Bell, 1993) Neighbours has often been criticised as
an all white Australian drama. In the casting survey, the proportion of second
generation DCALB actors on the show was representative of cultural diversity
in the community.10 Grundy Executive Producer for Neighbours, Stanley
Walsh, like the show’s long term casting director Jan Russ, was aware of the
criticism. In reply to disapproving comments on the show’s cultural make-up,
both pointed out that the show does represent a particular location both
socially and geographically. They argue that when the show was conceived of
over 15 years ago, it was unashamedly set in a suburb which represented a
nostalgic Australia. The criticism that nowhere in Australia in the last two
decades could look like Ramsay street is also not substantiated by population
demographics in capital and regional cities outside particular suburbs in
Sydney and Melbourne.11 Nevertheless, Walsh had this to say about the
show:
I can understand critics’ reaction. I mean the show was like that and still is to a certain extent. I mean they picked a particular suburb in a
10 These shows are discussed in detail in Chapter Eight. 11 A perusal of 1996 and 2000 census data (ABS, 2003c) confirms that significant urban areas of Australia are made up of largely white Anglo/European groups.
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particular area that is reflective of the community around that sort of suburb at the time. There has been an ethnic mix on Neighbours from time to time and it will continue to happen from time to time. You won’t find as broad an ethnic mix in Neighbours as you would in Heartbreak High because the shows are set in different territories, suburbs and locations. It’s not a policy decision of ours that we don’t have as broad a mix as Heartbreak High. It’s more a question of ‘do we believe it in this area or location?’ (Walsh, 1999).
The success of Neighbours in England is also a contentious issue if seen as
offering British audiences a vision of a pre-Coloured Britain set in the
colonies. Such an analysis is difficult to maintain in light of audience and
ethnographic research (for example see Gillespie, 1995), which shows the
program being popular among young Asian viewers in England. The success
of East Enders in the UK with its obvious multicultural cast and audience
research also places such an argument into doubt. Stanley Walsh proposes
the following analysis for Neighbours’ success with British audiences:
One of the reasons the British like Neighbours is that England is dark most of the year, it’s raining and it’s a miserable place. Now in Neighbours we have ordinary working people who live in homes that have got 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, two bathrooms, rumpus rooms and garages and maybe a swimming pool. They look to be ordinary people. Now that’s the sort of fantasy that they can accept about Australia, because a lot of people do live in homes like that here compared to England, where they don’t. And so it’s a bit of escapism with generally positive stories. My basic philosophy is: would I like to have these people in my home five nights a week (Walsh, 1999).
Both Stanley Walsh and Russel Webb, producer of Australia’s other soapie
Home and Away, believe a ‘permeating multiculturalism’ is preferable to an
obvious placement of cultural diversity. This doesn’t mean Home and Away
ignores issues related to race. Episodes about racism, The Stolen Generation
and Pauline Hanson have all been produced. A plot line surrounding The
Stolen Generation garnered 15 phone calls from the audience, when a single
phone call is unusual. Only one call was abusive. Web’s inclination towards
the representation of cultural diversity in Summer Bay is expressed thus: ’I
think it is most important that there is cultural diversity but that we don’t have
to explain it … in fact we try to cast out of character sometimes’ (Webb,
2000).
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A range of stakeholders articulated the notion that a contrived representation
of cultural diversity is ‘doomed’. One writer commented it might be useful to
even go against type and write for a Vietnamese school boy who hates doing
his homework. This suggests an approach to writing and casting that the
Australian industry are yet to fully embrace with Aboriginal and particularly
Asian roles. That is, writing and casting explicitly against type or producing
unambiguous alternatives to more common portrayals of past media
representations, such as the servile Asian character or a problematised
Indigenous portrayal. In the USA, The Cosby Show is the obvious example of
this tactic. As mentioned in Chapter Four, there have been criticisms of the
show for presenting a successful middle class Black family as the achievable
norm, against which other Blacks are then judged. However such criticism did
not occur with Aaron Pederson’s roles in Water Rats and Wildside. But of
course these characters operate within a diverse mix of lead characters and
not in an all Black show. Aside from Acropolis Now and Pizza (discussed in
Chapter Eight), no Australian shows under study have presented a lead cast
made up of entirely Indigenous actors or any other cultural group in the way
The Cosby Show does. But of course no single group in Australia has the
comparative size as that of Black America.
Conclusion Industry comments and quantitative data demonstrate that programming lags
behind the social reality with the representation of Australia’s Asian
community. Not only has their lack of presence been an issue of concern, but
the type of roles have often been culturally-specific, rather than everyday.
This representation lies in contrast to the contemporary social experience of
migration to Australia in recent years. Sixty percent of recently arrived
migrants to Australia, who had been employed before migrating, had been
working in professional, managerial or administrative positions. Seventy
percent of these professionals coming to Australia are from non-English
speaking countries. Of this professional class of migrant, a significant 37.4%
were from Asian regions (Inglis, 1999, pp 47 - 50). Such statistical analysis
adds weight to claims for a greater variety of roles be made available for
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migrants who settled in Australia after the post war period, including those
from South East Asia. Relying on problematised representations or portraying
all recently arrived immigrants as facing considerable issues upon settling in
Australia akin to refugees is mistaken, as the humanitarian intake now
accounts for only a fraction of immigration numbers.12
In more recent years, immigrants to Australia are much more likely to be
middle class and have formal qualifications. The era of continually
problematising the ‘ethnic’ presence in television drama is over. However, this
has translated to making more recent immigrant groups simply invisible, or
falling back to wearying typecasting. There is another issue at stake though
and that is the long history of Asian discrimination in all four countries studied.
This should also not be discounted as a contributory factor as to why
entrenched notions of Asian casting for culturally specific roles has been slow
to change. However, this chapter illustrates that a lack of professional
participation by Asian creative stakeholders in the industry, especially in
acting, has cultural reasons based both within and outside their community.
The social and familial pressures on children from such populations make
choosing a career in the acting profession less straightforward than for their
contemporaries. Comments regarding parental expectations and family
conflict from actors of South East Asian backgrounds in this research reflect
the anxieties of young South East Asians who call the national phone
counselling service Kids Help Line (Reid and Litchfield, 2000). The majority of
calls from young migrants, particularly from South East Asian backgrounds,
are concerned with parental conflict. Indeed, the number of calls this group
makes regarding anxiety over study matters is double that of Anglo callers. In
a longitudinal study of Australian high school students by Marjoribanks (2002),
adolescents from DCALB families in general were more likely to stay in school
than Anglo students, with Asian students three to four times more likely to do
so. Likewise, analysis of ABS data by Teicher, Shan and Griffin (2002),
12 The 2001-2002 migration intake was composed of 93,000 entrants on family and skill entry visas, with humanitarian and refugee intake visas accounting for 12,000 entrants (DIMA, 2003).
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indicates that overseas-born youth (aged 15-24) have higher participation
rates in education and training than those born in Australia. And in the large
survey of community groups and attitudes to cultural diversity by Ang et al
(2002), it was found that the Vietnamese sample displayed the greatest
investment in cultural maintenance and lowest levels of English language
usage. While such research tends to confirm notions of the ‘studious Asian’, it
does add substance to the comments made by actors that there are additional
cultural pressures, as well as existing social impediments from wider society,
which make an Asian mainstream and everyday portrayal less evident. This
arises as less young people from South East Asian backgrounds pursue actor
training through the drama schools with the resultant effect that casting
directors are presented with fewer choices by agents. Chapter Eight attempts
to grapple with the issue of mainstreaming, including its limits in the Australian
context. It also examines the claim that Australian drama is still at times
considered to be ‘sliced white bread’, in spite of the results of the casting
survey and industry comment presented in this chapter, which suggest a
greater diversity than that of a purely Anglo mainstream.
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Chapter Eight Australian Television Programs: Texts and Contexts
Introduction This chapter examines Australian programs recorded in three survey periods
to enable a more detailed consideration of cultural diversity in popular
television programs in the domestic market. The chart below sets out the
different periods and programs that were recorded. The recording periods
represent six rating weeks and all programs were broadcast as ‘first run’, ie:
no repeats. A further motivation for choosing these periods was that these
weeks offered the opportunity to examine a large range of recently produced
local programs. At different times of the year weekly programs in particular will
be replaced by repeats or disappear altogether as productions are shut down
or are halted for a duration. A key motivation for choosing three periods of two
weeks each was that this replicates the time range undertaken by Bell (1993)
in his research into multiculturalism and the media.
While Bell’s study presented a broad content analysis of print and electronic
media, he also included a qualitative analysis of television drama over three
two-week periods, examining three programs Neighbours, Home and Away
and A Country Practice.1 While Bell used a quantitative coding methodology
for news media items to determine the media’s engagement with
multiculturalism, a qualitative methodology was used for a discussion of
television drama. His conclusion is that the shows under study are the
exclusive domain of Ango-Australian actors. This finding should be interpreted
with care, as no casting survey of actors was undertaken to determine an
actor’s cultural background. The methodology relied on whether an actor
appeared to be of a diverse cultural or linguistic background or not, and
whether the scripting took account of multicultural themes. The Bell research
presents Australian television drama as devoid of any reference to a culturally
diverse society, whether through casting or explicit themes in the scripting.
1 Bell acknowledges research by Goodall et al (1990) in making his comments regarding drama and cultural diversity.
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The approach taken to studying the programs for this chapter differs from
Bell’s in that as well as analysing program content I draw on a wider range of
factors which permit a ‘thicker’ analysis. Such factors include the financial
relationship to a program’s content, meanings circulating around the programs
in print media as well as material from interviews with program makers and
actors. I am also able to draw on the quantitative research presented in
Chapter Seven, which conclusively demonstrated the presence of actors from
diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The respective programs are
presented below.
Figure 8.1 : Program recording chart
Period 1: Two Weeks, 19/06/1999 - 02/07/1999.
• Commercial Programs : Breakers, Neighbours, Home and Away, Water
Rats, All Saints, Blue Heelers and Stingers
• ABC Programs : Sea Change, Wildside, Heartbreak High and Queen
Kat, Karmel and St Jude.
Period 2: Two Weeks, 11/09/1999 – 24/09/1999.
• Commercial Programs : Breakers, Neighbours, Home and Away, Water
Rats, All Saints, Blue Heelers and Stingers.
Period 3: Two Weeks, 19/06/2000 – 02/07/2000.
• Commercial Programs : Neighbours, Home and Away, Water Rats, All
Saints, Blue Heelers, Stingers and Above the Law.
• ABC Programs : Something in the Air
• SBS Programs : Pizza, Bondi Banquet and Going Home
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It is perhaps worth noting that SBS programs only begin to feature in the third
period in 2000, as there was little in the way of local fictional television on
SBS in the preceding recording times.
As an addition to the blanket recording and analysis of programming in the
above periods, this chapter begins with a more comprehensive examination of
the commercial serial Breakers and the SBS weekly comedy series Pizza.
Both Pizza and Breakers offer a rich canvas for investigation of how cultural
diversity is articulated in shows with a younger audience. These shows are
significant in that the youth audiences they attract of Anglo and culturally
diverse backgrounds are a demographic this thesis maintains to be the most
engaged in the Australian community with cultural diversity and most likely to
be from the second generation. This claim is supported by Ang et al (2002)
who conducted community research on the subject of multiculturalism and
cultural diversity based on the attitudes of 3,500 subjects. They find that the
youth demographic is the most accepting of cultural diversity as an everyday
and embedded experience.
I am not suggesting that Breakers and Pizza represents all Australian popular
programming, as this would equate with examining only Neighbours and
Home and Away as standing for the sum of Australian television drama.
However both Breakers and Pizza are innovative programs in portraying
cultural diversity and engage with cultural diversity more so than other
programs of the same period. Both programs have exceptional funding
arrangements and display distinctive factors as examples of the program
genres a commercial serial (Breakers) and a multicultural comedy (Pizza).
Other drama programs are examined in less detail for practical reasons,
however, any perceived lack of cultural diversity in some of these programs
belies their culturally diverse casts and a desire by producers to engage with
multiculturalism at an everyday level, as opposed to actively pursuing
culturally diverse themes. The two SBS shows Bondi Banquet and Going
Home are predictably and necessarily high profile in their multicultural
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content, considering the charter expectations of their broadcaster. These two
programs will also be considered.
Breakers: cosmopolitan serial television The financing Former Channel Seven executives, Bob Campbell (CEO) and Des Monaghan
(Head of Production), left the Seven Network in 1995 and 1996 respectively to
pursue independent program production activities. Setting up Screentime in
1996, they have since produced a number of television programs in genres
such as quiz, mini-series, infotainment, children’s TV and telemovies. Their
initial big-ticket item was the serial Breakers. Promoting program concepts at
European media trade shows in 1997, Campbell and Monaghan were
approached by UK record label company Chrysalis to consider producing a
third Australian serial for the European market to complement the highly
successful Home and Away and Neighbours (Shoebridge, 1998, p.49).
Aspiring Sydney-based and UK-born drama writer/creator Jimmy Thompson
who had met Monaghan on Gladiators a few years earlier had already pitched
Breakers to Monaghan as either a five days a week or two days a week
drama, based on the social diversity of life he had witnessed at Bondi with his
wife while house hunting (Thompson, 1999).
What makes Breakers interesting compared with the financing of other
Australian drama, is that a production run was fully deficit financed by a mix of
private and corporate investors (one being Chrysalis) before it achieved an
Australian sale. So confident were Screentime of Breakers overseas sales
potential, that when Ten had signed on to the show six months after
production had begun, Screentime bosses claimed in 1998 they could
continue producing Breakers should Ten not extend the one year contract
(Shoebridge, 1998, p 51). As it turned out, Ten wished to purchase more
Breakers episodes after two years of supply, but it was Screentime’s decision
to cease production on account of lower than expected overseas sales and
unacceptable returns to key investors.2 Breakers ceased production in 1999,
2 Personal correspondence with Ten and Screentime, August 1999.
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emulating the short life of inexpensive local sun and surf soaps Echo Point
and Paradise Beach before it. The termination of Breakers lends support to
the notion that the Australian television industry can only sustain two
commercial Australian serial dramas on a long term basis, whether broadcast
locally and/or overseas. A network Ten executive commented on Breakers
demise in the market as follows:
When Neighbours and Home and Away started, you could say here is an audience and they will commit to it. So the audience got engaged with the characters and stayed. Now Neighbours took two years to get going and Home and Away took a while too. My view is that sort of commitment won’t happen again in these times. The pressures on an audience’s time is one reason, there are many more alternative things to do, particularly with the young audiences. 3
In spite of Breakers’ ultimate failure in the market, it is the financial origins of
the program which bear a connection to how Breakers employed cultural
diversity as a clear textual marker. Without network attachment, the Breakers
concept and first episodes were written without network input. As has been
identified in previous chapters, program matters from scripting to how a cast
look together are in the ‘ultimate’ control of network executives. Consequently,
creator Jimmy Thompson and initial writer/director Sean Nash were unfettered
to pursue a ‘gritty realism’ and issues-based stories they considered as
underprovided in Neighbours and Home and Away. Indeed, in the first week
of Breakers, a depressed young girl drinks herself to a stupor in the bath, with
the suggestion of suicide.
The core characters of the show also signified an ethnic and sexual diversity
beyond that which Neighbours or Home and Away cared to aspire to in the
late 1990s. Though to a degree, this logically reflects the geography and
original concept of each of these programs. As Executive Producer of
Neighbours, Stanley Walsh points out, a show such as Neighbours was
originally conceived as set in an outer middleclass suburb in the early 1980s.
While there are exceptions of course, every Australian capital city has its mix 3 Personal interview with the author, 1999. The executive concerned requested that his name be withheld.
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of both Anglo dominant and more ethnically diverse suburbs. In the case of
Bondi Beach and Breakers, the outwardly harmonious community of
cosmopolitan chic, disenfranchised street-kids and the surfer lifestyle of a
culturally diverse Bondi was something creator Thompson (1999) felt the
‘class conscious English’ in particular would find compelling:
My wife and I were spending every weekend down at Bondi and looking around. I became aware of the diversity of people on Campbell Parade and you would see your Jamie Packers and your Kate Fishers and you would see Mum and Dad and the 3 kids - people from all sorts of backgrounds. I remember specifically there was a Brazilian couple, they just looked so elegant and so cool, but behind them would be mum pushing the pram and dragging two more kids, while dad’s gone to get the ice-cream kind of thing. On the beach these people became equal, that was the feeling that I got. Although they came from totally different backgrounds, totally different aspirations, when we got to Bondi, they became equal. That was the idea behind Breakers.
Network 10 signed on to Breakers for similar reasons in a period when the
ratings for Neighbours were a little ‘soft’. Ten’s drama script executive
highlights how Breakers was able to define itself in the market:
Neighbours only once became issues-based six years ago and it was not successful at that. The audience was uncomfortable with the changing position. Breakers started out a bit gritty – a lot of that had to do with the product design. Breakers was pitched to an English market, which already had Home and Away and Neighbours. So you’ve got Neighbours which is perceived to be soft and warm – you know they’ll have a barbecue and everyone is invited. Then Home and Away which is a little bit harder. So - the only place for Breakers to go is a little bit harder still.4
More pragmatically, it was suggested that Ten CEO John McAlpine wanted
another cost effective serial up and running in the event of Neighbours ‘falling
over’. Having an established serial on air, they could quickly replace
Neighbours if need be (Shoebridge, 1998, p 52).
4 Personal interview with the author, July 1999. The executive concerned requested that his name be withheld.
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Another reason to explore the production history of Breakers relates to the
understandings and comments which circulate in the media and community
around a program which is seen as attempting to be different or innovative (or
is considered ‘unworthy’ – as was the case with a number of past and short
lived local serials).5 Heartbreak High (HBH) falls into the innovative category
and like Breakers, it was a Network Ten program. It was shunted around
Ten’s schedule and then finally exported to the ABC, where its disappearance
from a commercial network invoked accusations of ethnic intolerance on the
part of both audiences and network executives for shows with gritty plots or a
‘multicultural flavour’ (Hawthorne, 1996; Wilding, 1998).6 With HBH, there
was some evidence that the shows downbeat inner-city location and
concomitant cultural diversity was one factor that programming heads
speculated on, as a possible reason for its poor ratings. However as Wilding
(1998) suggests, a range of production contexts and constraints weigh more
heavily on the outcome of a program than how multicultural the cast is. In the
case of Breakers, a number of erroneous reasons for its demise also
circulated among fans and the press such as poor ratings (it was winning its
slot by July 1999), low quality (a subjective opinion in this genre) and that the
show was too controversial (which it was at times). The sole reason for its
demise however was lack of profit on overseas sales. A Breakers writer
related the sentiment that for a third Australian soap to remain financial, it had
to succeed in two of the three following markets: Britain, Australia and/or
Continental Europe. As Breakers was relegated to the digital channel BBC
Choice and more substantial sales to the rest of world failed to materialise,
Breakers was ultimately discontinued for financial reasons rather than notions
of network or audience discomfort for culturally diverse programming.7
5 The 1990s serial Paradise Beach is a case in point. As Cunningham and Jacka (1995) identify, a number of industrial, textual and cultural factors led to its demise, not least the ‘wrath’ it attracted from media critics. 6 One might also include ABC’s financial failure Wildside. 7 More recently, one need only consider the ongoing popularity of Ten’s The Secret Life of Us, with its Indigenous and South East Asian cast members as well as gay and lesbian characters to establish the comfort commercial television now has with programming of a culturally diverse nature. The program is not examined in detail here as it falls outside the thesis cut-off date of programming broadcast up to but not including 2001.
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The set-up ‘The Breakers’ is the name of a 1930s multilevel building on the esplanade at
Bondi Beach containing a café, local newspaper office, model agency, family
home, a flat and a youth drop in centre. All characters either reside or work in
the building, making it a high density ‘neighbourhood drama’ (as opposed to a
‘franchise drama’ which is set in a professional context such as medicine or
law).8 The press kit for Breakers focuses on the cosmopolitan, the clash of
cultures (though not those necessarily focused on ethnicity), the display of
youth and beauty, as well as the trials and tribulations of the main characters.
The variety of characters, predominantly under 25, include the Indigenous
actor Heath Bergersen as one time street kid Rueben, Greek-Cypriot Ada
Nicodemou as waitress Fiona, Anglo actor John Atkinson as drop-in centre
manager Steve Giordano (presumably of Southern European heritage),
Simon Munro as (gay) dancer Vince and three other cast members of
culturally diverse backgrounds. The overall impression of the cast is indeed
one of cultural diversity. However, like Heartbreak High, any explicit
examination of multicultural issues is resolutely avoided with the
problematisation of multiculturalism seen as redundant in this location,
amongst this generation. Rather, as has been identified in most soaps, it is
the predominant textual attributes of the interpersonal, emotional, conflictual
and the sexual which provide the foundation of scripts (Bowles 2000, p 119).
Just as the geographic setting of Bondi reflects a more cosmopolitan Australia
compared to Neighbours’ Ramsey Street, the social fabric of Breakers
represents opportunities to explore fractured relationships and transgressive
representations of its diverse characters – at least in comparison with its
companion programs. Creator Jimmy Thompson explains:
All successful soaps are based around families, there is always a central family, and although I created a family in Breakers which was mum and dad, two kids, and aunty - I gave it a nice modern twist and had dad having his divorce from the mother of his children but they are still living in the same building - as a matter of convenience. And aunty is a single parent whose kid - the bad boy in every soap - is coming
8 A year later, Network Ten and McElroy Television would produce a similar high density neighbourhood drama series with Above the Law, which suffered low ratings and was cancelled after one season.
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back to stir things up. So that was my core family and I also decided that instead of setting it in the village of Bondi, I made it a building which I refer to as the ‘vertical village’ (Thompson, 1999).
The location of Bondi with its opportunities for scenes of the beach repeats
the conventional marketing device of selling Australian series and serials
based somewhat on the sunny landscapes of coastal or inland Australia.
However, Breakers set itself apart from Home and Away and Neighbours by
affirming from the show’s start that contemporary Australia is not necessarily
about having, or hoping for, a nuclear family life with a home and a backyard.
This is evident in the lifestyles of core characters who display alternate life
choices such as the gay character Vince, or the fragmented Simmons family,
who occupy upper floors of the mixed purpose building. Breakers also
continues the trend of harnessing the appeal of young attractive actors
(Bowles, 2000), albeit ones of diverse cultural and linguistic background.
‘Have you visited the world lately?’: cultural diversity and Breakers
The above comment was posted on the Breakers official message-board,
which was one feature on the program’s website. The message was part of a
string which overwhelmingly came down in favour of the everyday cultural
diversity palpable on the show, supporting it as a ‘true representation’ of life in
Australia9. A viewer from Tasmania had started the string by criticising what
they perceived was an overemphasis on actors from ‘minority’ backgrounds.
The last message of the string reads in full:
I ask you this Milton of Tasmania: Have you actually seen the show before? That is, sat and watched it for half an hour each day for a couple of weeks. Have you visited the world lately? Things have changed since 1970.
This comment says something beyond the fan’s support for the show and for
multiculturalism. One of the dilemmas in passing comment on long form
drama such as Breakers, is making an analysis based on a cursory or
superficial viewing. A diverse range of television audience research (for 9 The string was contained in messages in the range 330 to 351 titled ‘Breakers is not life’, posted in May 1999. http://www.ten.com.au/webCh10/admin/Swit…otionID=447, accessed 15/051999.
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example Ang 1985, 1991; Brown 1994; Morley 1992) has alluded to the
varied, complex and subterranean interpretations audiences make of
television drama texts, not available to a quantitative research methodology or
a program analysis which extends to intermittent viewings.
In making an analysis of long form drama it is important to consider how a
character’s actions over a few viewings do not represent the whole of that
character. McKee (1997a, p 53) makes the following point on Indigenous
portrayal in serial drama: ‘an acknowledgement of generically-precise
knowledges, formed over the huge texts that make up the run of a serial, is
important when suggesting how Aboriginal characters are open to
interpretation in these programs’. A good case in point is an examination of
Rueben’s portrayal on Breakers. Played by actor Heath Bergersen, a young
man of Indigenous background, Reuben’s character comes to the story as a
recent ‘street kid’, who’s making good with a fresh start. As the serial
progresses, Reuben discards his street kid history and evolves into an
‘ordinary’ young person hanging out in Bondi with a job, sharing a flat and
driving about in his battered car – which bears hand painted Indigenous art
work.
Producers of the show commented that Reuben became a popular character
in fan feedback, especially in the United Kingdom where it was thought his
‘good looks’ were to account for this. Twice in the series, Reuben is involved
in romantic relationships, both with White actors. In culturally specific terms,
during a one week storyline, Reuben returns to his homeland in order to seek
out his people and family.10 Aside from this storyline, Reuben’s role was
predominantly non-specific in a cultural sense. However, part way through the
series, Reuben begins to busk with a didgeridoo from time to time and plays
the instrument on the cliffs at Bondi with one of his romantic interests.
Producer Dave Gould estimated that didgeridoo playing occurred ‘about eight
times in two years over more than 400 episodes’ (Gould, 1999). Heath
10 This story was suggested and co-crafted by the actor himself with the scriptwriter. This method of co-operative scripting was also employed on the ABC drama Wildside, where Indigenous actor Aaron Pederson went on to become the show’s Indigenous Adviser.
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Bergersen is, in real life, considered to be one of West Australia’s foremost
didgeridoo players and did in fact spend part of his youth busking in such a
manner. This crossing over of real life with the actor’s role, also mirrors the
‘Homeland’ story, as during the two year shooting of Breakers, Bergersen was
re-united with his biological mother.11
On many occasions, Bergersen was consulted by the writers and producers to
seek out not only his approval for culturally specific representations, but for
assistance in the writing itself. As pointed out in Chapter One, both Bergersen
and the creator/producing team were keen for an ‘everyday’ portrayal. Such
intimate knowledge of the production or the longitudinal aspects of Reuben’s
portrayal are not available to those who view Breakers for less than several
weeks, possibly even months. One would also need to be aware of inter-
textual information to be found in magazines such as TV Week, That’s Life,
New Idea or the TV pages of daily press – not to mention the show’s website.
If tuning into Breakers for just one afternoon and witnessing Reuben playing
the didgeridoo, a critic might make the conclusion that Reuben’s is a touristic
representation of Indigenous Australia.
The infrequent representation of Reuben in culturally specific terms denotes
his representation in domains of the ‘banal’ as well as the ‘Other’ – though it is
the banal which is by far the predominant. As McKee (1997b) notes, up until
the early 1990s, depictions of Aboriginal identity fell into two main categories:
the spiritual or the violent (as in death or endangered), both rendering
Indigenous Australia apart or ‘Othered’. Hartley and McKee (2000, pp 229 –
230) note that ‘banal’ occurrences of Indigenous identity in popular media
forms such as magazines or popular television shows or indeed as ‘stars’
denote their arrival as part of the wider Australian community. The mostly
everyday presence of Reuben in banal programming such as a TV soap,
demonstrates the beginning of a trend in popular television in the late 1990s.
Up until that time, actors of culturally diverse backgrounds, particularly
Indigenous Australians and actors of South East Asian heritage, were unable 11 Heath was in fact the last child in 1976 in West Australia to be adopted out in the manner of the Stolen Generations.
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to be accommodated in everyday portrayals, which had begun to occur for
those of European background. Breakers, along with Wildside and then Water
Rats, gave a space to Indigenous actors to contest the former portrayals of
Indigenous Australians as either ‘spiritual Blackfellas’ (as Bergersen calls
such roles) or ‘endangered’ exotica. However, unlike McKee’s suggestion that
banal or trivial occurrences on popular programming provoke a ‘vaguely
scandalous’ sentiment (at least in the mid 1990s), by the end of the 1990s,
such rendering of Indigenous faces became trivial in itself – at least for young
audiences.12 As McKee (1997b) notes for Indigenous actors up to the mid
1990s, they were included in narratives ‘textually linked’ to their cultural
background and sometimes not. However unlike texts in the early 1990s,
more recent portrayals include a broad palette of generic plotting and
character interpretation concomitant with their Anglo companions. This
emerging confidence to represent Indigenous Australia in such terms gives
room for actors and scriptwriters alike, to pursue Indigenous issues from time
to time within the ‘everyday’, without fear of falling prey to a virtuous liberal
sentiment.
Breakers’ limits The inclusion in Breakers of actors from Indigenous, South East Asian and
other NES backgrounds found a mostly everyday portrayal with no adverse
publicity or viewer feedback, giving support to the notion of an expanding
multicultural mainstream. However, the portrayal of gay sexuality and other
edgy themes was more problematic. Breakers encountered hostile media,
political and fan attention when it broadcast a storyline involving a core
character experimenting with her sexuality. Network classification input was
consequently to affect scripts with more edgy themes. In spite of the show
having a male gay sustaining role, the eight week ‘lesbian’ plotline achieved
the program’s mention in Parliament with subsequent debate in the press and
amongst fans. Turbulence over the storyline peaked when the two women
kissed tenderly on the lips. This prompted Liberal Senator Karen Synon to
raise the issue in the Senate and complain to the ABA, at the same time the 12 2002 research (Ang et al, 2002, p 23) concurs with this study that young people are more at ease with cultural diversity than the general population, with Indigenous youth ‘growing up multiculturarlly [and being] so much more relaxed’ with regard to cultural diversity.
206
Liberal Party was attempting to pass stricter Internet and video classification
legislation regarding sexual matter, with Tasmanian Senator Brian Harradine
leading the charge.13 The incident places into relief continuing tensions
surrounding community, industry and political reaction to cultural diversity
beyond that of cultural background.
The gay character Vince could often be seen flirting with other young men and
in one particular scene he leaves his bedroom one morning to enter the living
room of the shared flat – only to be followed out of his room by another older
man, who he has recently become friends with. A conventional reading of this
scene cues the two have had sex, such a filmic device employed in either
conservative texts (McKee, 1996) or those with classification restrictions on
what can be shown. However in Breakers’ case, this sudden possibility for the
audience that Vince has had sex with an older man (or any male for that
matter) is quickly resolved with Rueben’s chaste concern over his best mate’s
virginity being still intact (Vince is about 16 years old). Vince openly reassures
Rueben the new friend has slept on the floor and ‘nothing happened’. This
‘lack of sex’ is in keeping with content capable of being broadcast in the G
classification which Breakers was contractually bound to, with the sale to
Network Ten and to the BBC. While sexual relations between heterosexual
characters was intimated at in the show, it is hardly surprising that the show’s
producers would tread carefully with a young gay male – particularly when the
age of consent for homosexual sex was until recently still 18 in some
territories. However, what is noteworthy in relation to the lesbian storyline and
notorious kiss, is that in the course of two years, audiences were never to
enjoy glimpsing a kiss between Vince and one of his romantic interests.14 This
reticence on the part of program makers may also be related to what McKee
(1996) calls as a lack of ‘the banal’ in homosexual representation, at least in
13 A typical headline reads ‘Lesbians not normal says Alston’. Minister for Communication, Richard Alston, joined the debate in declaring that there was normal behaviour and non-normal behaviour in society, such as those who kick with their left foot are ‘not normal’ (Symons, 1999b). 14 It may also be worth noting that Reuben is seen sharing an intimate kiss with his second (and white) romantic interest – something Network executives were nervous to show a decade earlier when an episode of The Flying Doctors was edited to remove a kiss between the Anglo pilot and Indigenous nurse (Di Chiera, 1988) – however, Channel 9 later commented that it was removed for story development and ‘timing reasons’ (Baxter, 1988).
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American soap operas – as he notes that Australian adult television
programs have achieved the ‘familiar and unsurprising’ to some degree, with
the meeting of men’s lips on several occasions.15 In the case of Breakers, it is
nevertheless a contradiction that a kiss between lesbians was sanctioned by
the Network classification process, while a gay kiss was always beyond
acceptance.16
From an audience perspective, it would appear that for some viewers an
exploration of sexual diversity by a young woman in her twenties is beyond
community acceptance for a program broadcast at 3.30 pm at least. Indeed,
the Network received two complaints on the day of the kiss, a very significant
matter in this case and one in which industry personnel indicate they take very
seriously.17 One of the complaints was regarding the appropriateness of such
material broadcast in after-school hours, which aligns with a community
concerns agenda raised in the Senate on the issue. An ABA spokesperson
commented though, that a lesbian relationship was considered ‘normal’ and
that at 3.30pm, such material with a G or PG rating is permissible (Symons,
1999a, p 6).18
The second complaint expressed disagreement with how the lesbian
relationship was portrayed. This reflects the essence of debate which
occurred on the show’s website – being whether the portrayal of the lesbian
lifestyle was accurate. Typically, message board comments fell into two
camps, those that felt the two females were too feminine and attractive (‘a
male fantasy’) and those that expressed pleasure in seeing the notion of
diversity in the lesbian community, where ‘lesbians can be pretty, wear short
15 In recent episodes of the Network Ten series The Secret Life of Us, both gay and lesbian sex scenes share equal standing in intensity with the heterosexual scenes. 16 For a discussion on earlier portrayals of gay/lesbian intimacy on Australian drama television, see Wilding (1998) and in particular, Chapter Seven. 17 Three different network executive staff expressed that each official viewer complaint represents a significant audience base. In one example, a small number of viewers complained that the background music on Neighbours was too loud – this was then investigated and production company staff notified to maintain a suitable balance. Another producer considers a single viewer complaint to represent one thousand audience members. (the comments in this note are restricted in use to this thesis). 18 Classification guidelines for PG (Parental Guidance Recommended) allow ‘careful presentations of adult themes or concepts’ (FACTS Code of Practice, 1999).
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skirts and get perved on by guys and chicks’ as opposed to a ‘butch’
portrayal.19 I do not wish to make an analysis here of the portrayal as to how
‘correct’ a portrayal it was, as this falls prey to the sort of critical reasoning
which recurs around stereotyping and attempts to define a lesbian essence or
an Indigenous essence which is somehow the most authentic or acceptable.
Rather, it is the fact that Breakers dealt with a lesbian theme on a social
education level for its young audience, as well as attempting to market itself
as edgy and contemporary that is significant. These two aspects are of course
related to the core ambition of the show in presenting Australia as culturally
diverse and cosmopolitan, particularly for a youth audience. However, the
position of youth drama within the Australian television industry generally
poses a range of industry and audience related dilemmas faced by TV
producers, who must successfully compete against US programs such as
Dawson’s Creek, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Party of Five and Beverly Hills
90210, by producing drama that is relevant to and popular with young
Australians, but produced for a fraction of the cost of US material.
The time slot of Australian youth dramas such as Breakers, Neighbours and
Home and Away is also a problem. In the late afternoon and early evening
times when they are most often screened, both in Australia and in the United
Kingdom, the shows are required contractually to have a G classification.20
This means the extent to which they can explicitly confront controversial
issues and adult themes, which are of course attractive to adolescents, is
limited. US shows on the other hand such as Dawson’s Creek and Party of
Five are screened later in the evening with Buffy screened in a late-night cult
slot. As a consequence, these US shows are granted less restrictive
classifications. These classifications allow for greater scope in ‘hot’ story lines
and the frequency and context of coarse language, sexual references and
violence.21
19 Breakers Website Forum, Messages 182 to 191, posted in early July 1999. 20 G denotes a program suitable for a general audience – such shows will often be broadcast in the after school slot of 3.00 to 6.00pm. 21 It is noteworthy that Network Ten were also hoping for a late night cult following with a the late 20s audience with Breakers, by running episodes at 11.30pm as well as at 3.30pm (Hill, 1998, p 4).
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The creative team at Breakers were often challenged by their classification
obligations in presenting a young, urban Australia as opposed to the suburban
Neighbours or the sunny seaside at Home and Away. Creator Jimmy
Thompson recalls:
Being locked into a G rating, with the first week of Breakers having a suicide at the end presented its problems. The character is shown drinking whisky in a bathtub. That scene went to air in Australia but it didn’t go to air in Britain, they chopped it (Thompson, 1999).
While such a sequence passed the network classifier in Australia on that
occasion, a later suicide sequence involving a popular lead character had to
be re-shot several times to satisfy the G rating, resulting in a most ambiguous
and unsatisfactory sequence. Series writer and director Sean Nash comments
on the predicament:
Some material was re-written after the fact due to classification pressures and I think as a result the scripts suffered. An example of the downside is we did a teenage suicide episode. Around the time we were going to air with it we started to get some pressure (from the network) and that particular story got to the point where the character couldn’t stand on the edge of the cliff - they had to be seated and be at least 6-8 feet from the edge and so on, so it was re-shot more than once (Nash, 1999).
In Home and Away, producer Russell Web recalled how an episode dealing
with the Stolen Generation had to be edited for the G classification as scenes
involving the emotional removal of a young Indigenous boy could be deemed
‘terrifying’ to a six-year-old (Web, 2000).
Compared to the possibilities for more explicit and contemporary
representations of death, drugs and sex offered in US youth series screened
later in the evening, it is not hard to imagine why a local teenage audience
might find Australian shows peculiarly modest. However such difficulties do
not reduce the scope to which Breakers was able to engage with multicultural
Australia in an everyday context.
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Findings from the six week recording period Throughout the recording period, there were only a handful of instances when
Breakers’ multiculturalism becomes more conspicuous than the everyday. In a
series of episodes screened during June/July 1999, two of the married
characters (Monique and Alex) are seeking a nanny for their baby. In what
would likely be the crudest portrayal of ethnic diversity on the show, an older
Greek woman named Mama Lia (played by Maria Venuti) takes the job for a
short time. Speaking in a heavy accent, her maternal behaviour nears parody,
with the baby’s mother feeling threatened by the nanny’s extent of
involvement with the child. As a consequence, Mama Lia is exchanged for a
younger culturally diverse nanny: the aspiring model India. Initially, India
assumes the plot device as a possible affair interest for the married Alex,
however, by week’s end, equilibrium has been established and India is
accepted into the family (and the actor achieves status as an ongoing guest
role). Mama Lia’s appearance on the show was indeed a retrospective
portrayal. The representation appeared comical in comparison with the show’s
usual handling of characters and actors from culturally diverse backgrounds.
As Mama Lia was obviously meant to be from the first generation pool of
migrants, the depiction relied heavily on the outmoded dichotomy of first
generation migrants being poorly spoken, uneducated and working in
unskilled labour. This is contrasted to the second generation, who are
portrayed as balancing their cultural identity within a ‘cool’ mainstream. While
the intergenerational theme of multicultural family conflict has mostly
disappeared from Australian screens, this is nevertheless a disappointing
return to a portrayal more common in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
The only other instance noteworthy for its engagement with cultural diversity,
is when Rueben has a brief affair with visiting casting agent, Brooke. As
mentioned previously, the two engage in a rather long kiss, with Brooke
wishing to take the affair to the bedroom. However, Rueben would rather not
‘complicate matters’ as Brooke is leaving for New York the next day. Just as
Aaron Pederson’s character Reilly in Wildside has a ‘threesome’ with two girls
of Anglo background, Reuben’s cultural background is an unspectacular
element when it comes to who he might or might not have intimate relations
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with. This effortlessness in scripting for intercultural relationships on
contemporary Australian television stands out from America’s reluctance to do
so and from the past in Australia, where only a decade previously, programs
would receive hate mail from viewers if intercultural scenes moved to the
intimate.22
Breaking into the mainstream During the recording period, there is a scene which encapsulates Breakers’
brand of cultural diversity and that of a mainstream and everyday
multiculturalism. On the 22nd of June 1999, an episode involves Fiona (Greek-
Cypriot actor Ada Nicodemou) throwing a dinner party. She invites Rueben
(the Indigenous Heath Bergersen), Boris (played by DCALB actor Jean-Marc
Russ) and the gay character Vince (Simon Munroe). The night is spent
debating whether Fiona should get braces (as the actor decided to get them in
real life and so the script had to accommodate) and advice was given to Vince
not to fall prey to being overly concerned about his looks. In spite of the
culturally diverse group, at no time was this a scripting feature of the scene.
The Breakers community relates closely to what Nagel (2002) identifies as
‘young cosmopolitans’. While her research concerns the study of the
assimilatory tendencies of Arab immigrants in London, her conceptual
framework fits over an inner-city migrant youth culture in Australia. ‘Young
cosmopolitans’ are upwardly mobile in comparison with their parents. They do
not reject their cultural heritage but also tend not to identify themselves
exclusively with social networks based on their ‘ethnicity’. In the British
context, they ‘assert themselves as members of a new ‘multicultural’
mainstream … comprising the upwardly mobile children of post-colonial
migrants’ (Nagel, 2002, p 277). Relieved of the stigmatisation which ensues
from problematic approaches to multiculturalism, the second generation of
many culturally diverse groups in Australia experience a security with cultural
diversity which was not available to their parents.
If we go back to the remark from the Breakers message-boards, where a fan
commented Australia was no longer in the 1970s, what the viewer probably 22 This information confirmed with three experienced scriptwriters and a network executive.
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meant was that the portrayal of Australia’s migrant diversity was no longer as
it was in the 1970s – as Australia was already a culturally diverse nation in the
1970s – but television was not. The complete lack of cultural diversity found
by Bell (1993) has been replaced with a strong multifaceted cultural diversity.
While Chapter Seven found it is still a tenuous achievement in the production
industry with regard to Indigenous and South East Asian representation, the
nature of multicultural representation on Breakers signifies both audience and
industry equanimity for a mainstream, everyday and intercultural portrayal.
Pizza ‘chocko comedy’23
Ten years before Pizza appeared on television, Australian audiences had the
opportunity to view ‘ethnic comedy’, predominantly by means of the
commercial programs Acropolis Now and The Comedy Company. An
examination of these comedies will assist in establishing how critical
discourses surrounding the concept of stereotyping and a ‘correct’ portrayal
relate to the authority of comedy programming in performing a transitive
function for reducing anxiety for portrayals and stories which are deemed
intolerable. The shows also represent the evolution from a migrant centred
multiculturalism to that of cultural diversity. Programs such as Acropolis Now
and Pizza, also become conduits for subsequent multifaceted representations
and stories, as the comedies attempt to combine the intimacy of in-group
humour with an exploration of often scandalous representations. Although 10
years apart, both programs elicited comment for their impudent treatment of
‘ethnic’ representations (though Pizza to a lesser degree).
Noteworthy for this research is the emphasis on post war migrants in
Acropolis Now as opposed to the Arab and Asian migrant presence on Pizza’s
comedy (though NES Europeans feature in Pizza as well). This reflects the
transformation in immigration intake from Southern European countries in the
23 The term ‘chocko’ is used by the show’s main character Pauly (played by Paul Fenech who is the show’s creator/director) to describe himself or other migrants, as well as ‘everyone who’s a bit loose’ (Molitorisz, 2003). Australians of Anglo decent are referred to as ‘bumpkins’ and likewise, the term can be more broadly employed - as in conservative Australian music being ‘bumpkin music’.
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post war period to those from the Middle East and South East Asia in the
1970s and 1980s. At the level of representation, it also reflects the trends
reported in Chapter Seven where the participation of actors from European
background significantly advanced in the 1990s, whereas the opportunities for
South East Asian and Arabic background actors were still sparse. Just as
Acropolis Now was seen as giving a space to Greek (‘wog’) self-identification -
albeit working class - Pizza continues this design. Casting its net over a range
of groups from skater to car culture, Pizza offers an alternative to and parody
of the news media’s rendering of youth culture, in particular the Lebanese
community of Sydney, who at the time were portrayed in the news media as
ethnically motivated gangs, involved in street crime. While such a rendering
was the focus of one episode of Pizza, the episode is a subversive text and
communicates a clear message of image-corruption grounded in conservative
politics and police discourse.24 While Con the Fruiterer, Jim, or Effie from
Acropolis Now were unlikely to engage with such manifest politics, their
images and symbols of cultural diversity at the time of the Agenda, contribute
to a continuity of debate around ‘worthy’ or ‘positive’ portrayals of a
multicultural Australia. What follows is an assessment of the two earlier
comedies to be followed by an analysis of the first series of Pizza.
The Comedy Company was a skit show, which included a variety of weekly
characters as well as presenting a number of parodies of recognisable
television personalities and shows of the time. However, it was the regular
character Con the Fruiterer who provided the ‘ethnic’ humour in the program.
Con was played by Anglo comedian Mark Mitchell with a considerable amount
of makeup to darken his complexion, supplemented with the obligatory fake
moustache, greasy hair and thick accent. Mark Mitchell also played Con’s
Greek wife in what can only be described as gross caricature. Acropolis Now
was a well known and successful comedy series which ran over several years
and was based on the theatre production Wogs Out of Work. In one way,
Acropolis Now differed markedly from Con the Fruiterer in that Acropolis Now
was produced by a culturally diverse team. But in another way, the programs 24 See Poynting (2002) for a discussion of the ‘moral panic’ which surrounded a series of incidents connecting the Arabic community with crime.
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were similar in their service of the ethnic stereotype for audience appeal.
While the utilisation of Anglo actors for roles as DCALB characters has an
unflattering history in Australian representations of cultural diversity (though
mostly in drama),25 it is the use of the stereotype that I will focus on here,
rather than the politics of the Anglo actor Mark Mitchell playing a Greek man –
or woman.
Both shows have produced their share of critical comment, positive and
negative. Con’s creators mischievously claim his presence on commercial TV
at the time contributed a certain ‘proportional representation’ to the perceived
dominance of an Anglocentric media of the time (White, 1989, p13). In
response to this claim, Victorian ethnic community representatives were not
so impressed, sharing Bell’s view that Con’s ‘comic stereotype … infantilises
the ethnic group’ (Di Chera, 1988). Academic Tony Mitchell’s (1992, p 123)
perception that the Comedy Company’s aim was connected to providing a
‘satirical antidote to “minority activists’’’ also rings true. However at the time, it
was also likely that Con bestowed racist substantiation upon those seeking
consolation for their bigoted attitudes (as did Archie Bunker in the USA sitcom
All in the Family). Regardless, it is the more substantial and enduring
Acropolis Now which warrants further examination.
The theatre piece Wogs out of Work is often discussed as the more worthy
text in comparison to its spin off television program, Acropolis Now
(Carmichael, 1991; Mitchell, 1992; Jakubowicz, 1994; Jakubowicz et al,
1994). Wogs out of Work is celebrated for using mimicry as ‘political strategy
that mocks and undermines the colonial apparatus’ (Jakubowicz, 1994, p
123). The TV show Acropolis Now was accused of reducing the political
power of the theatre production to caricatures of migrants as ‘buffoons’, with
25 A reasonably contemporary (1991) and noteworthy case of this was when the Anglo actor Cameron Daddo was ‘blacked up’ to play the Indigenous ranger Boney. The episode led to involvement of the MEAA who were able to secure Indigenous involvement on the show and from that time the practice has been abandoned. However, actors of culturally diverse backgrounds do at times play roles for which they are able to because of phenotype factors (such as a Chinese actor playing a Japanese role). This practice holds its own dilemmas for the actors from an employment perspective, as decently paid work as an actor is notoriously difficult to come by.
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writer and actor Simon Palomares being accused of ‘selling out to the
mainstream’ (Carmichael, 1991, p 48). Yet in audience research carried out
by the same critics who accuse the TV show of detrimental stereotype, they
found that amongst 600 mostly Greek subjects, the vast majority saw no
offence in the TV show, with audiences saying there was ‘little difference’
between the TV show and the stage production, which most audience
members had also seen (Jacubowicz et al, 1994, p 126). The Acropolis Now
production team themselves concede to modification of the theatre production
for an early evening television show on commercial TV. Indeed, the generic,
classificatory and time constraints of television as a medium clearly limit the
uncompromising possibilities available to an adult theatre production. In spite
of the critical assessments of Acropolis Now, critics such as Mitchell find that
it is amongst younger audiences that the potential offered by such comedy is
realised:
Acropolis Now … provides an important focal point for out-group identity, and fuel to fight against discrimination by ‘skips’… [this] form of mimicry which is a defiant enactment of an exaggerated ethnicity challenges both the strictures and constraints imposed by migrant parents and stigmatisation by Anglo-Australians (Mitchell, 1992, p 132).
In the same way that Acropolis Now invokes distortion and exaggeration of its
characters, Pizza employs similar methods to garner both an affectionate and
compelling representation of a particular group, in order to articulate and
challenge what are often offensive and/or distressing attitudes, which circulate
in the media (or among ‘bumpkins’). The attraction for culturally diverse youth
to shows such as Pizza and Acropolis Now rests in the way in which the
second generation take on a ‘transcultural consciousness’. Castles and
Davidson (2000) note how this emergent identity forms through experiences
which DCALB second generation youth have within their own group, as well
as interaction with other DCALB groups. The authors note such interaction is
more likely to occur for those growing up in the cities of developed countries,
which relates well to Sydney or Melbourne. Mixing with youth of other cultural
backgrounds and employing global and local sources of culture, DCALB youth
often occupy a tactical or strategic hybridity. Noble and Tabar (2002) found in
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their research with Arabic-Australian youth, that young males may move
between an ‘essentialised’ identity for purposes of ‘in group’ solidarity, to an
‘assimilationist’ mode when the cultural manners of the dominant are more
beneficial (such as in relationships with girls for example). Such modes of
identity formation have been well established in other research, which indicate
the slipperiness of contemporary identities in immigrant and post-colonial
states (Gilroy, 1987; Hall, 1988; Gillespie, 1995). However, what is sometimes
overlooked is that in a choice of contexts, DCALB youth identity may in fact be
conforming and conservative, whether it be a hegemonic attitude to gender
and sexuality, or racist attitudes to other groups. Comedy offers a location to
needle the often unspoken views, trends and cultural practices of DCALB
youth, whose tactical hybridity habitually remains concealed by media
representations, often grounded in moral panics, which repeat only one
potential component of their cultural practice.
What is interesting with the arrival, and ongoing popularity of Pizza compared
with Acropolis Now, is the low level of media attention and cultural criticism
over Pizza, which haunted Acropolis Now for a significant period in the early
1990s. Using a media clippings service, only twelve articles relating to Pizza
between March 2000 and April 2003 were located. None of the articles
interrogate the program for racist or stereotypical issues and in fact, most
focus on the comedic nature of the show, the unusual professional life-history
of creator Paul Fenech and the impressive list of cameos. Two articles make
brief mention of the program exploring ‘racial differences’ (Molitorisz, 2003;
Williamson, 2000) and one makes note of its ‘political incorrectness’ (Ellul,
2003). There are probably two core reasons for the lack of multicultural
criticism of the show. The first relates to the two shows’ ‘pedigree’. Acropolis
Now was burdened with the esteemed approbation of its theatre-based roots.
Pizza on the other hand was born of a winning entry at the Tropfest short film
festival.26 However, more significant is on which broadcaster the shows have
screened.
26 Tropfrest has become one of the nation’s best known short film festivals for its eccentric and eclectic range of independent films.
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SBS’ status as a ‘post-modern’ broadcaster is now well established (Hartley,
1992). Moving beyond ‘ethnic television’ in the early 1990s, it now
encompasses a range of special interests such as sport, soft pornography, art
house, animation and of course programming in other languages in a range of
genres, which fashion a ‘creative heterogeneity’ (Hawkins, 1996, p 62). Pizza
follows the success SBS already established with the animation comedy
South Park, a show which did attract significant media and critical interest due
mostly to ‘moral panics’ around violence, coarse language and the effects on
a youth audience. Like South Park, Pizza’s characters swear profusely and
both shows have a clear “anti-political correctness” curriculum. In spite of
South Park exhausting media and community indignation over swearing and
un-PC behaviour on an SBS program, (which partly accounts for Pizza’s lack
of media attention), the weight of multicultural ‘authenticity’ awarded to Pizza
due to its presence in the SBS schedule should not be underestimated. This
is in contrast to Acropolis Now’s location on a commercial network. As
described in Chapter Three, the commercial networks attracted robust and
persistent criticism in the early 1990s over a lack of multicultural themes or
DCALB actors. Acropolis Now gave other sectors of the media, cultural critics
and policy advocates more ammunition for the assault on commercial
broadcasters. While it is difficult to make retrospect assumptions, it would
have been interesting to gauge the critical response to Acropolis Now had it
appeared on SBS.
Malcom Long (1993, p 80), managing director of SBS in the early 1990s,
states that ‘SBS would love to have produced the program [Acropolis Now],
but dollars are dollars’. This indicates the financial reality for SBS up until the
South Park era, when revenues could not attract the funds necessary to
engage in more risky local production, such as comedy. Long goes on to
comment that SBS would in any case probably not produce a comedy like
Acropolis Now which ‘makes fun of racial characteristics [as] the necessary
self-confidence may not have been there in the community’. Long’s argument
is that what SBS does best is issues based, provocative programming ‘with an
eye to balance …. comedy is not quite controllable in that way’ (Long, 1993, p
81). This contrasts with the comments of Nick Giannopolous (1993, pp 73 -
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76) (co-writer and actor in Acropolis Now), who believes the show reflected a
maturity within the community and accelerated an ‘ethnic self confidence’ – for
all culturally diverse groups, including Indigenous Australians. Malcom Long’s
response to this is that it is a ‘generational issue’, later inferring that such a
program is specific to second generation Greek culture. He adds: ‘I think there
would be a lot of failures if our industry attempted to do it in a terribly broader
way with different communities because the issues are still too close to the
bone’ (Long, 1993, p 83). The fact that only six years passed between when
the above comments were made and Pizza getting the ‘green light’, parallels
the changes in the commercial sector, where casting and culturally diverse
portrayals improved markedly as well.
What Pizza and Acropolis Now demonstrate is the evolution of culturally
diverse portrayals (whether ‘ethnic’, ‘gay’ or ‘disabled’) along a continuum of
representations in popular programming. Such portrayals can be delineated
along with the development of multicultural policy, though at a delayed
advancement. This begins with the invisible, where the lack of any
representation indicates both a lack of professional opportunity for the
creative talent and the mainstream’s incapacity to accommodate the
contemporary social reality – this resonates with post-war assimilation policy.
This is then followed by the problematic, where issues are explored from a
paternal liberal axis – mostly by the mainstream looking at the margins
(shows such as A Country Practice, Flying Doctors and earlier episodes of
Home and Away and Neighbours assumed these portrayals). This reflects the
policy turn of the 1970s to a liberal pluralism and the Grasby and Galbally era
of multiculturalism. This is then fractured by the comedic, which defuses the
anxiety of the problematic, expressing a maturity and confidence by the
group, whether it relates to a community from a diverse cultural or linguistic
background, gay representation or the disabled. Pizza stands somewhere
here. While there is no obvious policy companion to the comedic, Acropolis
Now and the debates around such portrayals coincide with intense debates
around the Agenda from a critical multiculturalist perspective. The Agenda’s
multicultural policy legacy is to be found in the way in which its ‘political and
cultural agenda [provided] a context in which everyday multiculturalism is lived
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and thought through’ (my italics, Stratton, 1998, p 207). In television
programming, this relates to how such a context materialised opportunities for
creative stakeholders and decision makers to attempt programming which
was grounded in the everyday more so than the problematic or spectacular.
Finally, the banal and everyday portrayal evolves to a position, where
audiences are interested in characters’ motivations, emotions, history and
futures, which are not fastened to either the actor’s ethnicity or cultural
background. The transformation of multicultural policy from a migrant focus to
that of cultural diversity and cosmopolitanism in the early to mid-1990s,
mirrors the significant improvements in portrayal and participation in the last
decade. This is manifest for example when it is no longer spectacular to
broadcast the physical expression of alternate sexualities (a passionate kiss
between two men or women in The Secret Life of Us), or the non-specific
attendance of Indigenous actors in a police show (such as Aaron Pederson in
Water Rats) or the presence of significant cast members from culturally
diverse backgrounds in a soap. This does not however, translate to the post-
war assimilationist paradigm. An unmitigated abandonment of any cultural
symbols, conflict, issues or story related to a group’s particular cultural
complexity need not be assumed redundant by the mainstream due to the
collapsing of the group into the mainstream. Rather, it is the representation of
an expanded mainstream that develops through cultural and social
intermixing, that denotes a media which has come to grips with the social
reality of the present. However, this is not to say that at any time in the
present, particular culturally diverse groups will not continue to experience
any one of the former stages of representation, from invisibility to
problematisation.
Examining a selection of portrayals from Pizza recorded in 1999 will help
demonstrate how the comedic in particular works to challenge the previously
problematic and act as a bridge to the ‘everyday’.
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A slice of Pizza
Paul Fenech (producer, writer, actor and director of Pizza, of Maltese
heritage) had worked for SBS as an executive producer on ICAM, before
offering SBS two pilots based on his award wining short film Pizza Man. SBS
were interested in capitalising on the newly found and significant sized youth
audience it had attracted through South Park. The animated comedy had
brought to SBS the sort of advertising revenues more common to its
commercial cousins. Indeed, funds gleaned from South Park advertising
revenue helped to fund Pizza.27 Head of SBS local production, Craig Collie,
tested the pilots and short film on teenage family members and their friends,
finding that ‘instinct told me it would work in the 15-35 demographic’
(Williamson, 2000, p 3). Fenech had a reputation in the industry as ‘being a bit
of a lad’28 and had made the first pilot two years previous to SBS taking up
Pizza for production. However, according to Fenech, previous manager of
production, David White, was ‘scared by it’ and the show was only produced
after the second pilot was made and David White had died (Molitorisz, 2003, p
3). Produced for the sum of a ‘small new car’, the nine episodes of the first
series rotate around themes of sex, violence, drugs and a comedy style which
encompasses slapstick, parody, political satire and gags which exploit niche
cultural knowledge. As far as the program being labelled ‘ethnic’ comedy,
Fenech prefers to think that the material for the program is broader than such
description, stating:
Actually I think it is a bit less of an ethnic comedy than, say Wog Boy … I just try to represent all of the characters in Australia. It just happens that our main characters are chockos, but we also touch on the bumpkins, the bogans. I just want to represent everyone I see walking down the street (quoted in Molitorisz, 2003, p 3).29
27 This is based on the fact that earlier advertising revenue significantly helped in the formation of SBSI and local fictional programming. The statement is also based on an informal conversation with an SBS program executive in 2000. 28 Quoted by Craig Collie in Williamson (2000). Supporting this reputation, Fenech had a public altercation with Tropfest director John Polsen, after Fenech won Tropfest two years in a row by submitting the film Intolerance under the female name, Laura Fienstein, winning a prize to meet with Hollywood ‘players’. Fenech claims it was the only way he could have won Tropfest twice (Molitorisz, 2003). 29 The feature film version of the TV show is an extension of all characters and themes in the television series. It is worth noting that the Pizza feature film follows the success of Wog Boy (2000) and Looking for Alibrandi (1999) – both local films with multicultural themes.
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Fenech was particularly keen to show some of the distinctive features of youth
culture as experienced in city locations, conspicuous among those parts of
Sydney in the city’s south west. Examples of this include the car stereo
culture, the use of mobile phones, rapping, drug culture and Lebanese culture,
which he portrays as being heavily interconnected by a network of family
members, who can be called upon for a variety of motives ranging from
compensation claims legal advice to drugs and stolen property supply.
The program also employs a range of cameos, whose impact for audiences is
largely dependent on a sound depth of textual knowledge of Australian
television and media in general. Some examples are appearances by Tony
Bonner (from Skippy), John Mangos (former TV news reader), Bob Ellis
(iconic Australian writer), Barry Crocker (star of early Australian feature film,
The Adventures of Barry McKenzie), the lead cast of Prisoner (Australian TV
series from the 1970s based on life in a women’s prison with a cult following),
Lex Marinos (early SBS public figure and ‘ethnic media’ advocate), Shane
Porteous (lead actor in A Country Practice) and a range of entertainment
industry people such as Kamal, Bernard King, Austen Tayshus, Bill Hunter,
Ian Turpie, Trevor Hendy and Jon English. Many of these entertainers and
actors experienced the height of their careers in the 1970s and 1980s. It is
therefore unlikely that most 15 to 20 year olds would have access to the inter-
textual nature of the comedy, beyond the role the actor is playing for their
appearance on Pizza (which were in fact always related to the cameo’s
previous career highlight or media persona). However in balance to these
cameos from the media’s past is a late 1990s club soundtrack and cultural
references very much grounded in recent youth culture - with a culturally
diverse undercurrent.
Cultural diversity and Pizza: series one The show’s premise revolves around the incidents which befall the two main
characters, Pauly (Paul Fenech) and Sleek the Elite (played by real life
Lebanese rapper and air-conditioning mechanic, Paul Nadak) who work as
pizza delivery drivers for their Italian boss, BoBo (Johnny Boxer). In spite of
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having all leads of culturally diverse background, a portrayal running through
the series is that of the Anglo-Australian ‘bumpkin’. Fenech’s inclusion of
Anglo Australia30 within the cultural diversity of the nation responds to
criticisms of multiculturalism as a ‘core – peripheral’ dichotomy, whereby the
dominant mainstream sit privileged in their consumption and enjoyment of
‘minority’ culture (Hage, 1995; Stratton, 1998). Fenech somewhat turns this
on its head, when Pauly is lost in ‘the desert’31 he ventures upon crushed beer
cans and sights a shed in the distance. But fearing ‘interbred bumpkins’ who
‘hate chockos’, he continues on, rather than seeking assistance. The bumpkin
scene is reminiscent of the 1975 film Sunday Too Far Away, however, the
outback men’s masculine bush toughness is tempered by the suggestion that
they have created a ‘goatman’ (by way of bestiality), who they sadly miss
since the goatman’s escape to Sydney where he now works for SBS under an
EEO employment strategy. Later in the same episode, Barry Crocker plays
the men’s city living brother who turns out to be an axe-murderer. In other
episodes, Anglo Australians are variously portrayed as over-indulged ‘white’
homeboys, superfluous appendages to USA off-shore film production, military
characters, lowly paid and grimy workers, and members of a corrupt police
force and polity. Such representations of the dominant group consign a
reverse-stigmatisation of dominant culture at sites of contested meaning. In
place of a mainstream discourse of ‘youth out of control’ – and in particular
Lebanese youth (Poynting, 2002) - Pizza presents an Anglo culture ‘out of
control’, by employing either caricature of iconic Australian symbols or
substituting the target minority culture for an Anglo one (such as when
menacing ethnic homeboys turn out to be Anglos from affluent homes).
That is not to say Pizza confines itself to representing exclusively Anglo
Australians in less than venerable portrayals. Main cast member BoBo is the
owner of the Fat Pizza shop. A man of barely contained violence towards the
30 In one episode, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo escapes from the set of an off-shore film-set, only to be captured by BoBo who turns Skippy into Pizza meat – this cultural icon of Australian to later be ‘consumed’ by his customers. 31 At the beginning of each episode, a list of characters appearing ‘on tonight’s menu’ is presented with their image. In this episode, an image of the Australian outback accompanies the text ‘the desert’, followed by a still of two obviously iconic outback men, with the text ‘the bumpkins’.
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world, he nevertheless plays Dean Martin music and continually has SBS TV
on in the shop. He is the eternal son to his Mama, who sits with her mother,
also watching SBS in the family home – a renaissance inspired suburban
mansion. His representation continues the tradition of a media stereotype - in
this case, the Italian pizza-maker. However, as customary on the show, his
masculinity is destabilised on several occasions. For example, on one
occasion he is shown masturbating to internet porn while being harangued by
his mother. And on another, he engages in relations with a transgender
clubber. Threats to the masculine are repeated throughout the series with
both leads, Pauly and Sleek the Elite, finding themselves in a number of
compromising situations. This is significant as the show repeatedly displays
women as objects of male desire, most notably by employing
Norwegian/Australian actress Annaliese Braakensiek as a bulemic model. In
balance to this conservatism, are incidents where Pauly is obviously raped
(possibly anally) by the original cast of Prisoner, when he goes to the
women’s prison to deliver a Pizza. He is also lured to an elite society party,
where he is forced to act as their ‘gimp’ for the night.32 Such scenes
destabilise what might otherwise be the fortification of status quo
representations concerning gender issues, which transgress the more
apparent and anticipated cultural issues of ethnicity.
In spite of considerable media-savvy references, slapstick humour and visual
gags, themes related to life as a young second generation migrant
predominate. At times the program attempts to incorporate topical issues
within this subject matter, the episode titled Crime Pizza is the most obvious.
There are clear references to the Lakemba Police Station shooting incident in
the episode. After a series of homeboy home invasions, the NSW premier,
played by Bob Ellis, decrees it an offence to wear a cap or extravagant
joggers (Pauly is fined $300 for wearing Nikes). Police harassment of young
people from culturally diverse backgrounds attains a gravity in this episode
not manifest in other issues dealt with in a more irreverent manner (such as
supposed drug trafficking links amongst culturally diverse communities). In
32 The meaning of the word ‘gimp’ attaining wide exposure after the film Pulp Fiction (1995).
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another episode which draws attention to traditional mainstream culture and
its relevance to a diverse youth culture, Australia Day celebrations come
under fire as being extraneous to Pauly and Sleek (Pauly unaware why so
much ‘bumpkin’ music is being played by radio stations on his car stereo)33.
In comparison to Acropolis Now and Con the Fruiterer, some of the coarse
portrayals in Pizza are of the same genre – only the cultural groups have
changed from exclusively European to encompass Asian and those in
addition to ethnicity (such as sexuality - though any coarse parody of
Indigenous Australia is absent). Nevertheless, Pizza offers a timely restoration
for local comedy, which imparts an alternative analysis on a range of issues
related to youth and cultural diversity. Jakubowicz’ (1994, p 100) comments
about Acropolis Now and the possibilities for comedy also resonate through
Pizza’s motives:
The comic has been appropriated to assert a difference as creative and cutting, a space to be both different and a part of the mainstream … comedy offers an important site for the recomposition of the mythic forms of a society. An understanding of the use of comedy as an element in ethnic relations suggests that the emergence of mainstream comic characters will be one of the very crucial tests of the way in which multiculturalism has been incorporated into the parameters of popular culture.
A show such as Pizza, is given licence to explore issues which may otherwise
remain buried in the ‘institutionally structured racism’ of the mainstream news
media (Shohat and Stam, 1994, p 200). The social positioning of Pizza
should also be considered significant as the show was consciously produced
for multicultural broadcaster SBS, to be broadcast right before South Park.
This translates to the program having the potential to meet the widest possible
audience, as SBS secured audiences who had never before viewed SBS
when South Park was aired. This delivers Pizza’s incorporation into the
popular – with Village Roadshow’s financing of the feature film taking Pizza
further into the mainstream. Just as the British comedy Goodness Gracious
33 The songs Pauly flicks through on his car radio are Click go the Shears, Echo Beach, Wild Colonial Boy and Advance Australia Fair – the version played for station close before TV went 24 hours.
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Me served as a marker for Asian self-assertion (Sreberny, 1999), Pizza offers
a comparable symbol for the self-assertion of culturally diverse groups whose
inclusion in the popular had been meagre through the 1980s and much of the
90s.
While Pizza and Breakers were screened during the recording period in 1999,
an analysis of these two programs alone would bias any appraisal of cultural
diversity and Australian popular fictional programming. As has been seen,
both shows stand out to some degree with their culturally diverse casts. While
most Australian programming also contains actors of culturally diverse
backgrounds, Pizza and Breakers are notable for their employment of actors
from beyond those of Northern European background. However, as I have
argued, the presence of a blatant cultural diversity in these two programs
merely refects the geographic reality of the shows’ settings as well as astute
marketing in the conception of the programs’ target audiences. Writing on
Australian television culture, O’Regan (1993, p 114) invites critical
multiculturalists to move beyond ‘marginal’ and/or ‘token’ discourses
whenever an ‘ethnic’ portrayal finds its way into popular programming. He
advocates to such critics that ‘criticism which recognises distinctions in
presentation and dramaturgical necessity’ will do more to encourage ‘poly-
ethnic representations’ and participation for culturally diverse groups than
perennial harassment of programs and producers regardless of whether a
show does or does not contain a culturally diverse cast and/or theme. Taking
such comment into consideration, the remaining section of the chapter will
examine six weeks of fictional programming, as did Bell’s (1993) study ten
years earlier to determine a broader assessment across all popular
programming.
Six weeks of popular programming and cultural diversity Sea Change (ABC)
The residents of Pearl Bay are on the whole of Anglo appearance. This
reflects the geographical integrity of the series’ location, being a small coastal
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town.34 However, one resident of the local caravan park is Phrani Gupter
(played by Georgina Naidu), a woman from the Indian sub-continent. In one of
two episodes captured in the recording period (Fish Could Fly), Phrani’s
cultural connection with Indian mysticism is used to effect when she gives
evidence in court by way of recounting a vision. The locals in the courtroom
display a respectable awe and faith in the vision, however the scene is played
for humour with the use of mystical sitar music and camera work in the genre
of the film Lost Horizon. Nevertheless, the episode is significant as it implies
the beginning of a romance between Phrani and caravan park owner Kevin (a
stout, uncomplicated man most often seen in a blue singlet). The episode also
follows an established pattern in Australian drama by employing a DCALB
guest role actor who speaks with an accent – in this case, the actor Alex
Menglet plays a ‘cosmic’ Pole migrant with strong beliefs in chaos theory. The
representation in the case of Phrani is more complex than what one episode
demonstrates. She is often portrayed as a strong, independent women in the
community, willing to stand up to the town’s self-serving mayor. As the series
develops, so to her relationship with the unlikely Kevin. As the attraction of the
series lies in its larger than life characterisations, Phrani is not excluded from
such treatment. While the episode discussed utilises Phrani’s cultural
specificity, her portrayal throughout the series is a more balanced
representation in keeping with the humour of the program.
Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude (ABC)
This ABC miniseries examined the lives of three women who have taken
various paths along a feminist axis of the post 1970s Cultural Revolution. The
episode recorded concentrates on Jude, whose father is Chilean and mother
Australian. Jude is a spokesperson for a protest organisation which
represents those who disappeared at the hands of the Chilean government.
Tempered with her cultural background are scenes of Jude as a medical
student and scenes set in her social life, which also present a number of the
culturally diverse cast. The cultural theme explored in Jude’s life does not
focus on the familial or generational as might be expected, but on the 34 ABS data for 1996 indicates that coastal towns which are devoid of agricultural industry have rates of NES residents almost half the national average.
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disturbing events which beset political refugees. While scenes of South
American dancing and music combine with orbital characters who speak with
accents might lead to criticisms of stereotype, this would be an imbalanced
judgment considering the number of such clubs in capital cities and the
recentness of Chilean refugees to Australia. Rather, the drama of the series is
an exploration of women’s choices in the 1990s.
Heartbreak High (ABC)
Recorded in the final days of the youth series, the show continued to display
an inner-city cultural diversity for which it was both celebrated and
admonished in previous research (Hawthorne, 1996 and Wilding, 1998). In the
episodes recorded, a generational conflict is played out, however it is within
an Anglo family, rather than a second generation DCALB family. A new
character joins the series, the Italian Marco, who quickly establishes a
conflictual relationship with Anglo student Dennis. In the classroom scene,
Marco and Dennis exchange words related to Marco’s cultural background,
with Dennis clearly understood as being the ignorant bigot – this implication
supported by classmates’ derision of Dennis. Later in the week, a romance is
suggested between Lee (Anglo actor Marvel Bracks) and the African student
Nikki (Fleur Beaupert). A number of students from culturally diverse
background are also included in sustaining and guest roles.
Before the series moved to the ABC, Hawthorn (1996) charted the ‘whitening’
of the program in its first two years of production (while screening on Network
Ten). However her research is based entirely on reception analysis with no
quantifiable evidence for the claims she makes that the show’s producers
explicitly set out to ‘purge’ ethnicity from the screen. Hawthorne (1996, p 66)
claims that only ‘non-stigmatised’ actors of European origin could now be
included, leading to the ‘obliteration of Asian or Middle eastern faces’. Wilding
(1998) usefully extends the analysis of the program’s transformation by
contributing necessary comment from the show’s producers and Network Ten
executives. His research illustrates how the independent producer (Ben
Gannon) fought network desire for a less gritty realism, which was not
necessarily focused on purging the series of cultural diversity, but on
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delivering a product more akin in genre to the soaps Neighbours and Home
and Away. Wilding notes that network interference was profound in areas of
classification concerns, scheduling and scripting – as well as the desire to
reduce the use of accents and moderate the focus on the key Greek family.
Interviewed in 2000 over the matter, Ben Gannon claims network Ten were
unsure of their demographic at the time and changes were made in an
attempt to capture a broader audience, rather than any motivation to
moderate the multicultural presence (Gannon, 2000).
While I agree with both Hawthorne and Wilding that network intrusion resulted
in a different representation of cultural diversity on HBH, the changes should
also be placed in the context of the early 1990s, when culturally diverse casts
were less in evidence. HBH was an expensive attempt at innovative youth
programming for a commercial broadcaster to make. Such experimentation on
a commercial station brings with it financial expectations and associated risks,
such as ratings pressures and the related obligations networks have to
advertisers. Wilding’s claims (1998, p 359) that the use of an African Black
teacher instead of a Black Indigenous teacher reduces ‘interrogation’ and
‘problematisation’ opportunities for the program are in conflict with the show’s
desire for an everyday portrayal, as well as conflicting with the overwhelming
desire from DCALB actors to not be continually ‘interrogated’ and
‘problematised’. Both Wilding and Hawthorne fall into a misguided tokenism
discourse which, as suggested previously in the thesis, retards critical
analysis of cultural diversity in repetitive suspicious assessments at the sight
of Black or other DCALB actors, whose banal participation in popular
programming is then frustrated.
After HBH was exported to the ABC, producers were granted a certain
freedom, not by the fact that the show was now on the ABC, but because the
show’s overseas sales now funded the production. Writer Kevin Roberts notes
that due to this, the team experienced no interference in casting or plotlines
with such a dispersed range of financial backers. However, even overseas,
he states broadcasters are more interested in promoting the white stars of the
show more so than their DCALB colleagues. As the writer of 120 episodes in
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the late 1990s, he is also adamant that ‘race based stories were not the focus
of the show’ and that mostly he ignores the characters’ cultural background
(Roberts, 1999). Once again, the desire for a lack of specific cultural markers
in spite of a culturally diverse cast designates the promotion of an everyday
rendering of migrant multiculturalism.
Wildside (ABC)
Wildside follows on from earlier social-realist police dramas Scales of Justice
and Phoenix. Shot with multiple cameras, Wildside became noteworthy for its
overlapping dialogue and naturalistic performances (Schrembri, 1998, p 3).
The series employed a dramaturge to assist actors immerse themselves in
their roles, with adlibbing of dialogue taking on a hitherto unseen level of
acceptance in Australian television drama.35 The series received both Logie
and AFI awards, reinforcing its critical acclaim and healthy ratings (for an ABC
program) of between 8s and 10s. The series was supported as a major
investment in drama at the ABC by managing director Brian Johns and head
of drama Andy Lloyd James (both previous SBS managers). The producing
team of Ben Gannon and Michael Jenkins (from HBH) came to the ABC with
the show already in development, however it is the ABC who became the
majority funder (Oliver, 1997, p 4). Lloyd James was keen to promote a police
drama alternative to Blue Healers with a show containing cultural integrity
without a didactic or issues based agenda. In spite of the show’s producing
credentials and critical acclaim, it failed to attract significant overseas sales
and the poor returns on the 21 million dollar investment was seen as putting
at risk further commitment from the ABC for series drama (Meade, 1998;
Fidgemon, 1998; Dennis, 1998).
Only one episode from the final series was broadcast in the six-week
recording period. In it, the Olympics development in Sydney comes under
attack for the dispossession of homeless people, who are portrayed as a
diverse cultural group. The community legal worker (played by Mary Coustas 35 Writer for the series, Chris Hawkshaw, was often surprised at how his scripts would change after they had been locked off and he saw the broadcast product. Once filming began, actors would improvise atypical amounts of dialogue in the usually very controlled production demands of TV drama (Hawkshaw, 1999).
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in an ongoing role) enters into the conflict, which spills over into the nearby
police station. The pre-requisite murder plot sees a suspect’s girlfriend
(played by Chinese actor Nina Liu) brought to the station for questioning. Alex
Dimitriades plays a sustaining role as one of three main detectives. The
episode is typical in its portrayal of an inner-city geography with eternally wet
streets and a grungy aesthetic. Like its youthful cousin Heartbreak High,
cultural diversity permeates the vision of the series. What is dissimilar to HBH
though, is that explicit plots and themes related to cultural diversity also
thread through the show – particularly with regard to Indigenous Australia.
This was marked when Aaron Pederson took on the role of Indigenous
adviser in the second series, assisting in plotlines and bringing local
Indigenous community representation to particular episodes (Hawkshaw,
1999). Wildside offers the most emotive exploration of cultural diversity of any
of the programs examined, due to the fact that all its characters are involved
in high level crime and social worker territory. It complements and counteracts
the mostly cheerful surroundings of Summer Bay, Bondi or Mt Thomas, by
providing locations and roles which are compelled towards shouting struggles
of class and cultural conflict.
Something in the Air (ABC)
This rural serial sees the ABC return to familiar ground after the country town
soap Bellbird screened on the ABC in the 1970s. The familiar locations and
characters of the pub, small shop, doctor’s surgery and farm are connected by
the events and activities at the local radio station. Produced by Beyond
Simpson Le Mesurier, the series employed two actors of culturally diverse
backgrounds in ongoing roles: Joe Sabatini played by Eric Bana (later
replaced by Vince Collisimo) and local doctor Eva Petrovsk, played by Melita
Jurisic (later replaced by Nina Liu). The most significant aspect of Melita
Jurisic’s character is that she speaks with an Eastern European accent
(though one reminiscent of films such as Dr Zhivago). In the episodes
recorded, Eva’s romance with publican Stuart (played by Frankie J. Holden) is
put under pressure when she refuses his marriage proposal. Less
extraordinary than the doctor’s relationship with a small town pub owner is her
use of alternative therapies such as yoga and vitamin supplements in her
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practice. Such medical counsel is accepted by her rural patients and no
association or humour regarding her cultural heritage and the use of
complementary medicines is made. Nevertheless, an air of eccentricity is
doubtlessly present in her manner. The show’s setting is consistent with the
point made earlier, in that the era, social and physical geography of a series
necessarily bears a correlation to the portrayal of cultural diversity. Something
in the Air’s service of non-specific casting and plotting for two leads in a rural
context highlights the variety of programming and the respective
representations of cultural diversity on the ABC in 1999/2000, and
demonstrates that there is no rigid mode for the portrayal of cultural diversity.
Going Home (SBS)
Going Home was conceived by Hal McElroy and his wife Di. McElroy had
spent many years creating and producing costly commercial Australian drama
such as Water Rats and Blue Heelers. In 1999, McElroy wished to produce an
innovative and low cost program with a culturally diverse cast. Going Home
weaves the lives of eight or so commuters on a train along with recent issues
and news of the day. The scripts were a combination of planned plotlines
interspersed with topical news stories written, filmed and broadcast within a
few days of the actual events happening. Although the show was in the realm
of the experimental it nevertheless attracted a following large enough to
produce a second series. Viewers were given the chance to suggest
storylines and advice on character development through the official website,
receiving a mention in the end credits if their ideas were put to use. Issues
covered in the two-week recording period are: workplace bullying,
homelessness, Japanese whaling, genetically modified food, cystic fibrosis,
the Goods and Services Tax, vigilantism, donating blood, refugee smuggling
and sexual harassment. These issues are passed through the social and
cultural filter of each commuter as each expresses opinions - half of whom are
from a culturally diverse background. This allows the series to explore a wide
gamut of contemporary topics in quick succession and explore then from a
range of perspectives not available to the confines of most drama. However, a
significant portion of dialogue is set firmly in the banal – with a discussion on
the durability of shoes having no narrative or issues based function. Once an
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issue such as refugees is explored, the characters respond in keeping with
their age, class and education background, rather than in any anticipated
manner related to their cultural background alone. In some respects, the show
sits comfortably with the other SBS program at the time, Bondi Banquet,
which also falls into the innovative genre.
Bondi Banquet (SBS)
Sharing not only the locale of Breakers, Bondi Banquet is also set in one
building. Each week, the residents of two flats in the building cook a meal for
a mock documentary crew. The building contains almost the entire strata of
Australian society and culture. Mary Coustas plays herself, living in the
penthouse, while Rufus (Russell Dykstra), the homeless curiosity, occupies
the roof. In addition are first and second generation migrants, older and
conservative Australians, surfers, a gay couple, single parents and Chinese
refugees. Scenes of food preparation are interspersed with the residents
giving to-camera expositions of their cultural history or background. Typically,
the intent is wry humour combined with more serious moments when
representation of cultural diversity slips between the ‘everyday’ and
problematic within a few scenes. Like Going Home, the show combines genre
innovation with both familiar and unpredictable portrayals of cultural diversity.
Blue Heelers (Seven Network)
In the third two-week recording period, both episodes of Blue Heelers
contained markers of cultural diversity. In the episode A Little Faith, the Mt
Thomas police are investigating a young second generation Italian farmer who
is exploiting Italian women in the community, obtaining money from them for
his services as a supposed Magus (male witch). The episode presents a
number of Italian portrayals, from an elegant well educated mother who runs
her own business, to a younger expectant mother who speaks with a mild
accent (her age seems unlikely, given most Italian migrants who speak with
an accent would have arrived in Australia in the post war-period). The episode
could easily have fallen into a formulaic portrayal with its peasant farmers
represented as uneducated, suspicious folk. To a certain extent, this
evaluation is confirmed. What redeems the episode is an equal amount of
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screen time given over to examining one officer’s prejudices against alternate
religions compared to traditional Christianity and the fact that large proportions
of the Anglo community hold faith in spiritual knowledge such as astrology,
faith healing, conventional prayer and white witchcraft. Indeed, a main
supporting role in the episode is the town’s ‘Irish witch’ who assists the Mt
Thomas police in their investigations. In a rare instance in the series, long
time lead PJ (Martin Sacks) refers to his own Lebanese cultural heritage when
the station Sergeant accuses a younger officer of being racist for even
suggesting that the Italians would believe in such practices. PJ comments that
Lebanese culture contains similar religious customs, as do most cultures.
The episode is a curious mixture of everyday and amplified portrayal, which
attempts to explain and defend its position by concentrating on Anglo spiritual
practices which are meant to defuse any claims that the episode is targeting
rural Italians. The following week’s episode, The Gumshoes, presents a more
everyday portrayal of cultural diversity, when Indigenous actor/presenter Ernie
Dingo plays a private detective, involved in a backpacker’s self-engineered
disappearance. The episode completely avoids any cultural reference,
utilising Ernie Dingo’s capacity for humour, more than any other feature. In
other episodes in the six-week period, no other themes or storylines were
present related to cultural diversity. However, as the casting survey illustrates,
at least two sustaining and a number of guest roles are filled by actors of a
culturally diverse background in a non-specific manner.
All Saints (Seven Network)
All Saints is a hospital drama set in Sydney’s South. In the episode Knowing
Me Knowing You, a man of Arabic background (Simon Elrahi) has been hit by
a car in the street. Unbeknown to the ambulance officers who transport him to
hospital, his diabetic son is in a coma on the back seat in his car at the scene
of the accident. With virtually no English language skills, the character is
somewhat desperate in trying to communicate the situation with the medical
staff. The episode is critical of the official translation service, suggesting it is
understaffed and overly bureaucratic. In the end, a compassionate nurse and
another Arabic patient manage to save the situation. The episode attempts to
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demonstrate that there is a lack of compassion amongst the mainstream
community for non-English speakers (for example, an arrogant doctor wants
the patient sedated, assuming the man to be mentally disturbed). However,
once again, the episode displays a pattern in the programs which illustrates
the divide between specific guest roles and non-specific ongoing roles in the
portrayal of migrant multiculturalism. As in Blue Heelers though, when it
comes to an Indigenous portrayal, the everyday reigns. In Shoot the
Messenger, Indigenous footballer Sede (Luke Carroll) is admitted with a
ruptured appendix. However it is discovered he only has one kidney, thus
putting his career in jeopardy. In addition to this everyday representation,
male nurse Jarad (Hungarian-born Ben Tari) has by now established a
relationship with regular cast member Dr Kylie (South East Asian actor Ling
Hsueh Tang). While All Saints has yet to achieve the sort of diversity
witnessed on the American series ER, it was the only commercial drama at
the end of the 1990s to employ a regular cast member from a South East
Asian background.
Home and Away (Seven Network)
In the six weeks recording Home and Away, no particular plot line dealt with
cultural diversity in an explicit manner. The cast of the series has a number of
actors from culturally diverse backgrounds, and in 2000/2001, an ongoing role
was filled by Chinese-European actor Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen.
Hawthorn’s (1996) criticism that there are no signs of a multicultural Australia,
even in the form of a Chinese takeaway are hardly surprising. The established
sets for the program do not extend beyond the local café, caravan park and
characters’ homes. More telling is Hawthorn’s (1996, p 65) statement that
when DCALB characters do come to Summer Bay as runaways (as most do),
the fact that they are devoid of family attachment (meaning cultural
attachment), means the character is left to ‘identify as 100 percent Australian
in terms of language, culture and personal style’. Young second generation
migrants educated in Australian high schools are very likely to speak with
Australian accents and will very likely identify with a global youth culture. To
suggest that they retain and display cultural difference for the sake of a
multicultural portrayal inhibits rather than expands the possibilities for an
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everyday portrayal. The geography of the series, generic conventions, target
audience and successful marketing of the program also make it unlikely that
Home and Away becomes a Breakers or Heartbreak High.
Stingers (Nine Network)
Producer of the undercover police show Stingers Roger LeMesurier has
commented that Stingers’ inner city Melbourne location offers a broader
scope for cultural diversity than his ABC program Something in the Air (Jacka,
2002, p 20). Two of five lead cast are from a culturally diverse background
and are on the whole cast non-specifically. In the episode The Big Picture, the
Italian head of the team (Joe Petruzzi) comes out from behind his desk to
pose as a Spanish buyer of stolen gold. A guest role sees actor Jaun Martinez
playing an overdrawn criminal character with obligatory accent. Of all series
programming captured, this episode of Stingers represents the most
outmoded exemplar of cultural diversity, relying on a straightforward
connection of crime and ethnicity.36 However, the other episodes recorded in
the period present an everyday portrayal of migrant multiculturalism in an
urban Melbourne landscape.
Water Rats (Nine Network)
In yet another police drama, Water Rats presents itself as a more
conventional police show in comparison with Wildside. Its utilisation of boat
chases on Sydney Harbour, slower paced dialogue and mostly neat
conclusions contrasts with Wildside’s pessimistic anger. However the
attendance of cultural diversity in Water Rats belies its conventional roots.
Containing a cast which includes two strong female leads (one gay),
Indigenous male lead Aaron Pererson and in 1999, skipper Jay Laga’aia, the
series continued to privilege creator Hal McElroy’s vision for an alternative to
the glamour model of earlier USA police shows. In all episodes recorded,
except one, the program maintains an everyday portrayal of cultural diversity.
However in the episode Low Blows, two Lebanese youth are mistakenly
36 In the acclaimed Wildside, an episode broadcast outside the six-week period dealt with Asian culture connected to drug related crime.
236
implicated in a series of bank robberies. Their portrayal is initially conventional
(with one of the two wearing heavy gold jewellery). But by the second half of
the episode, audience empathy is turned to the young Lebanese with the final
quarter of the show exposing an Anglo boy from an affluent home as the
eventual culprit (this outcome is reminiscent of Pizza’s Homeboy episode).
The episode functions as a morality tale, reminding audiences not to make
negative judgements based on cultural appearance or background. How
effective such liberal and progressive strategies are by scriptwriters is difficult
to assess without audience research. Nonetheless, as a series, Water Rats
avoids stigmatising migrant multiculturalism while employing a range of cast
and characters who do not conform to conservative social expectations.
Above the Law (Network Ten)
Above the Law (ATL) was another creation from the McElroy production
house. Initially to be set in a building in Bondi (this would have made the third
Bondi building program), the location was changed to Parramatta. Like
Breakers, all action occurs in a vertical village, with a café and police station
on the ground floor – residential accommodation above. Like Water Rats,
McElroy wanted ATL to represent a culturally diverse community (McElroy,
1999). The ongoing cast include Chilean, Swiss and Malaysian actors with an
Anglo actor playing the role of a young police officer of Italian background
(though non-specific and accent free). In one of four episodes recorded, guest
actor Anthony Wong is trapped under rubble and eventually dies – he does
not speak with an accent and is portrayed as an educated and successful
man who was part of the initial Vietnamese refugee intake (he relates some of
his life story to the Chilean police officer as he is dying). The Malaysian actor
Meme Thorn actually plays Filipina housekeeper Sunny Rodriguez. Her role
develops through the series to the point where she is on more equal terms
with her employer, as her former professional life replaces her migrant
identity.37 This part of the story acts as a conduit for telling the stories of
migrants whose professional qualifications and experience are under-utilised
37 The feelings of contradiction for the actor in playing a role of a proximal culture were explored in Chapter Seven.
237
in Australia. In spite of the McElroy pedigree, ATL did not survive more than
one series.
Neighbours (Network Ten)
There is little surprise that in the six weeks of recording Neighbours, no
explicit plots or themes of migrant multiculturalism were evident. This is not a
criticism however. As noted in Chapter Seven, the program clearly functions
in a geography well outside of Footscray in Melbourne, Campsie in Sydney or
West End in Brisbane. While 10 years ago, Neighbours seemed to stand for
all Australian drama in critical debate on cultural diversity and television, the
above analysis of six weeks programming reveals how an expanded market
for diverse programming has relieved the improbable responsibility on
Neighbours, to represent Australia’s social fabric. Data from the casting
survey revealed how in 1999, almost one quarter of the cast were from
culturally diverse backgrounds. At various times, actors of non-European NES
background, as well as Indigenous actors have featured in ongoing roles (at
the time of writing in 2003, South East Asian actor Michelle Ang is a Ramsey
Street regular). Like the young cast in Home and Away, these roles are not
fashioned to interrogate the status quo in a manner as direct as Heartbreak
High, Wildside or Breakers. Audiences turn to such shows for a variety of
motivations based on a range of individual factors,38 not able to be contained
in a single pessimistic reading of Anglo domination.
The appearance of Network Ten’s Secret Life of Us after the recording period
in 2000 supports the view that a number of products are tested each year by
producers and networks. Some will engage more explicitly and persistently
with cultural diversity whereas others will reflect an everyday cultural diversity
by DCALB cast with occasional forays into plots of explicit issues around
cultural diversity. The comment that such characters do not reflect ‘real’
people from culturally diverse communities is a trivial criticism, as Anglo
38 Audience research into the motivations for viewing drama include: predicting storylines, working through problems, identifying with characters while not having to take responsibility for them and admiring certain characters/actors (NZOA, 2002).
238
Australians are also hardly representative of the lifestyles of the clear-skinned,
toned, attractive and eccentric inhabitants written for fictional programming.39
Conclusion Bell’s 1993 study did not have the quantitative instrument of the casting
survey for discovering the cultural background of casts, or the capacity to
discern the significance of second generation actors. If so, he may have found
a greater diversity than was stated. This assumes one is willing to accept that
actors from Indigenous, European or a host of other regions may not conform
to essentialised notions of race based on colour and accent in determining
cultural diversity40. However, it must be accepted that the appearance of
Australian drama was predominantly white in 1993. This chapter’s
examination of only six weeks of programming clearly illustrates this is no
longer the appearance of popular Australian television programming. While a
small number of drama episodes were disappointing in their portrayals of
migrant multiculturalism, the overwhelming representation of cultural diversity
has moved beyond the problematic, to an everyday representation
approaching an expanded mainstream. The diversity in programming now
offers persuasive argument that erstwhile analyses of Australian drama as
portraying either a worthy, critical and observable multiculturalism (such as in
Heartbreak High) versus unworthy, invisible and tokenistic portrayals (such as
in Neighbours from 10 years ago) have become difficult to sustain.
A program’s diversity hinges on a number of key factors such as the show’s
geography, genre, market position and degree of risk. Contemporary young
audiences in particular are also no longer conceived as belonging to, or
occupying, a fixed identity in what has long been a culturally diverse nation.
Intergenerational mixing across culture and sub-cultural groups makes it an
39 Equally large percentages of both a national sample (49%, N=1,437) and a culturally diverse sample (43%, N=2,008) expressed the view that the media do not reflect their lives (Ang et al, 2002). 40 McKee (1997c, pp 174-177) explores the way in which TV presenter Stan Grant offers a cultural meaning of Aboriginality over a biological determination, as Grant’s skin colour is not ‘immediately, visually obvious as Aboriginal’. McKee goes on to add that popular television in the form of quiz, entertainment and drama, has been the superior media for negotiating the ‘lived experience of Aboriginal identities in contemporary Australia’ (see also Hartley and McKee, 2000, pp 229 – 230; pp 249 – 253 and pp 265 – 266).
239
impossible task to produce programming which represents any imagined core
or periphery. What this chapter has attempted to show is that the range of
portrayals such as those in Neighbours, now complements programming with
portrayals of complexity, predictability and instability, in representations of
cultural diversity.
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Conclusion
Australian programming from the late 1990s and 2000 bears out a change in
representations of cultural diversity from those in preceding years. An
increasing number of DCALB actors played roles which inserted them into the
narrative and social world of the drama without the obligation of reference to
their cultural background. Programs located in typically multicultural
geographies such as Breakers, Wildside, Pizza and Heartbreak High
inevitably delivered more frequent encounters with a multicultural Australia
than those set in alternative locations such as Blue Heelers, Something in the
Air or even Neighbours. While Pizza frequently explored issues of cultural
diversity within a comic context and Aaron Pederson’s contribution to
Indigenous issues influenced Wildside, most other drama programs made
occasional excursions into explicit multicultural stories. However, from the
SBS show Going Home to Network Ten’s Breakers, cultural diversity was, as
the producer of Breakers’ mentioned, ‘part of the palette’ (Gould, 1999). By
this, he and other producers and writers are identifying an incorporation of
multiculturalism into a shows foundation, rather than making it an attachment.
This mainstreaming of multicultural representation by employing DCALB casts
in non-specific roles avoids the treatment of multicultural themes and actors
as ‘special’ one-off incursions into the multicultural.
Improvements in the participation of actors from culturally diverse
backgrounds in drama programming have been due in part to what Grundy
Executive Producer Stanley Walsh called, a ‘permeating through’ of
multiculturalism as a social reality and the increasing number of second
generation migrants into the acting profession. Virtually all the DCALB actors
interviewed for this study already consider themselves part of an everyday
culturally diverse Australia and wish to be cast that way. As research in
Chapter Seven demonstrated, some actors have benefited from this more
than others. While a focus on the second generation is inevitably limiting,
Chapter Two illustrated how this demographic is becoming increasingly
sizable and significant through cultural mixing. The demographics of
241
Australia’s second generation and significant cultural mixing combined with a
series of policy led initiatives which helped to foster DCALB actor participation
in television drama beyond the ‘stereotypical’, or negligible, as was the case
with Indigenous representation.
Discourses on issues of multiculturalism and Australian identity, equity, and
the utilisation of cultural diversity as a resource came to prominence in the
late 1980s, culminating in the Labor government releasing the Agenda for a
Multicultural Australia in 1989. The Agenda’s discourse was one of
mainstreaming multiculturalism into the social and economic fabric. The
multicultural discourse of the Agenda then to ‘permeated’ through, or
converged with wider policy discourse, as well as into broadcasting policy and
program output. Dating from the early 1990s, when the ABA released the
Australian Content Standard, the incidence of cultural diversity discourse in
broadcasting policy and debate becomes more prominent, with the Object of
the Content Standard closely aligned with the Object of clause 3 (e) of the
Broadcasting Services Act 1992, which constitutes cultural diversity as a
policy aspiration. Discussion papers and seminars begin to place cultural
diversity as an imperative discourse for developing the portrayal of cultural
diversity in the media and improving the lack of opportunities for DCALB
performers. In a 1994 ABA discussion paper, policy convergence is explicit
when it states: ‘the reference to ‘cultural diversity’ (in Object 3e of the Act and
Object of the Standard) is consistent with the Commonwealth’s multicultural
agenda’ (ABA, 1994, p 44). Such policy convergence was also to emerge
within the objectives of Commercial Television Production Fund, which
encouraged DCALB applicants. This aligns with the Agenda’s desire to make
the most of Australia’s cultural diversity as a cultural and economic resource.
The development of SBS television in the 1990s from ‘ethnic TV’ to culturally
diverse programming for mainstream Australia, also reflects the notion of
multicultural mainstreaming in the Agenda. This saw an ethos of services for
specialised populations in the pre-Agenda era change to the inclusion of
cultural diversity in all services and organisations.
242
The understanding that cultural diversity be a consideration in the recruitment
of actor trainees into post secondary courses also had its effects. The
motivation of university departments to actively recruit a diverse cohort is
based on the knowledge that the mainstream market seeks diverse talent,
and this now includes culturally diverse groups. In a follow up casting survey
to the one undertaken for this study (Jacka, 2002), the main drama schools
continued to report significant numbers of students from culturally diverse
backgrounds, with the Victoria College of the Arts (VCA) having established
an Aboriginal Access Program. How much of a contribution culturally diverse
recruiting has made is difficult to gauge officially, as the institutions do not
keep formal records of the cultural background of their intakes.1 However the
increased availability of DCALB actors has made its contribution to cultural
diversity and programming in addition to multicultural policy discourses
established with the Agenda, which continue in the New Agenda in the late
1990s.
By the late 1990s, programming which reflected a multicultural mainstream
demonstrated that the professional practice of television production
stakeholders had also changed. This was confirmed in interviews with writers,
producers, program creators and directors of a broad range of Australian
drama. These key personnel expressed the opinion that it was an awareness
of multiculturalism as an encompassing social actuality which had spurred
change at the level of professional practice. The commitment to the Agenda
by both major political parties in the late 1980s, endorsed multiculturalism in
the community as a concept and social policy, which encouraged equity,
awareness and tolerance. It began the embeddedness of cultural diversity in
Australian working and cultural life, moving beyond the notion of
multiculturalism as an accessory.
The influence of broad policy approaches to cultural diversity in other nations
has also had resultant effects on cultural diversity in broadcasting policy and
1 However NIDA provided information on students’ cultural background to Bertone et al (2000, p 31) indicating that 11% of students were first generation DCALB migrants, while a further 21% of students were second generation DCLAB migrants.
243
programming outcomes. In the USA, the results of the civil rights movement
for better living conditions for Blacks, preceded the establishment of well
organised minority advocacy groups to ensure policy and program makers
maintained an awareness of culturally diverse representations and
employment equity for DCALB employees. Both those in favour of and
opposed to equity measures in the US employed legislative challenges and
constitutional interpretation to secure positions on ‘discriminatory’ practices.
The long history of EEO employment hiring data being included into
broadcasting licence requirements meant that when this rule was overturned
by the Lutheran Church, the status of EEO practices and cultural diversity in
programming remained largely intact. In the US and to a lesser degree in the
UK and New Zealand, the market potential of mainstreaming the multicultural
was well established by the time of the Lutheran court challenge. Palpable
outcomes included networks and businesses courting DCALB audiences and
consumers and linking effective cultural diversity management strategies to
executive remuneration.
In the UK, the practice of locating cultural diversity more in the mainstream,
as opposed to specialised programming, gained acceptance by policy
makers, broadcast management, producers and audiences in the 1990s. This
was in part motivated by social changes in the UK where second and third
generation migrants began to penetrate wider fields of social, cultural and
economic life. In many respects, this mirrors the situation in Australia.
However in the UK, broadcasting management were more prepared to adopt
an explicit mainstream multicultural discourse. And as in the US, the market
potential of cultural diversity has been included into the language of program
production policies. The absence of these more explicit and commercial
approaches in Australia has lead to an incremental state of progression in
developing mainstream multicultural representations in Australia, as opposed
to more dynamic change in the UK. The idea of promoting culturally diverse
management, rather than simply managing cultural diversity, remains as Hage
(1998, p 131) states: ‘[a] repressed idea’ in Australia.
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New Zealand presents an unambiguous example of wider cultural diversity
policy impacting on broadcasting and program outcomes. The impetus of
Maori culture upon official policies in a broad range of New Zealand contexts
has conveyed a sense of biculturalism. In New Zealand, Maori culture retains
its specific entitlement to specialised services. However, there is the
obligation that mainstream institutions incorporate Maori perspectives and
participation as well. The application of these two approaches for the inclusion
of Maori culture in New Zealand institutions has transferred to broadcasting
policy and program production alike. And as in the UK and the US, program
makers are made aware of the need for producing culturally diverse
programming which can satisfy a mainstream market. The subsidisation of
local drama in New Zealand combined with bicultural program policies, helped
to build a critical mass in fostering DCALB talent. The relatively small size of
the domestic market and the reliance on government support means that the
now significant pool of DCALB talent in New Zealand remains in a precarious
state for employment prospects. However this is not a unique state of affairs
for performers in New Zealand alone.
In Australia, opportunities for actors of South East Asian background to work
in the mainstream are diminished.2 A creative-based solution to the dilemma
of South East Asian representation, suggested by Annette Shun Wah, is to
expand the potential of Asian portrayals through interesting, multidimensional
characters. While this occurred in the late 1990s for Indigenous actors, it is
only since 2001 that such roles have appeared for South East Asian actors.
Two possible reasons for the developments in Indigenous portrayal are
explicit funding for Indigenous creative talent and the changing representation
of Indigenous people and their culture in mainstream Australia. For example,
the Queensland Musical Theatre was able to cast an all-Black chorus for a
production of Show Boat with a significant number of Indigenous performers;3
an Indigenous model agency ran a competition in 2001 to attract new 2 Since 2001, the industry base for ongoing drama production is being challenged by the various forms of reality TV, presenting all actors with fewer opportunities for fiction-based work. 3 Interestingly, it was a stipulation from the show’s rights holder (Warner/Chappel Music) that only Black performers are permitted in roles usually occupied by BlackAmericans in the USA (Stacey, 2001).
245
Aboriginal talent to further their profile in Australia and overseas (Beaven,
2001); and in the summer of 2001/2002, the first professional Indigenous
lifeguards in Australia trained with Surf Life Saving Queensland (Balogh,
2001). As Democrats senator Aden Ridgeway states: ‘it’s cool to be black’
(quoted in Saunders and Hodge, 2002, p 10). What hasn’t happened with
South East Asian communities so much is media reporting and stories beyond
the problematic and victimhood to media coverage of breadth and everyday
texts, which to some extent, has transpired for Indigenous Australians (Hartley
and McKee, 2000).
The arguments of Hage and Stratton that ‘surrogate whiteness’ is not only
unattainable for Third-world looking migrants, but also undesirable needs to
be addressed in relation to popular television programming. In television
drama, and particularly in serial drama, actors are most likely to be young and
attractive regardless of cultural background. The state of affairs is well
articulated in the following comment by the writer/director of Chinese
background Tony Ayres:
Non-Anglo roles become in some way middle class and white through assumptions about who they are. Or on the other hand, their particular ethnicity becomes an issue. What is lacking is a complex and grounded way in which culture is integrated into identity – which is the way people live it. Identity is either the issue of the episode or it is invisible as acceptable middle class (Ayres, 1999).
What Ayres and Shun-Wah are hoping for, is a more composite
representation of cultural diversity through expanded creative horizons. This
need not translate to the abandonment of middle class portrayals as the
assured place of the middle class and ‘good looking’4 is an enduring symbol
of most television drama. But the current situation leans too heavily on the
side of representations, which willingly embrace cultural diversity, but on the
terms of a mainstream somewhat devoid of Asian influence. As networks
have ultimate control of programming, regardless of whether it is an
4 A definition of the ‘good looking’ is given by casting agent Damien Rossi as features composed of ‘impressive and straight, white teeth, an enigmatic smile, and well groomed hair, nails and face’ (Courier Mail, 2001).
246
independent production or an in-house one, an explicit commitment to cultural
diversity such as those in the UK and the US would achieve more vigorous
change in Asian representation for example.
In spite of a lack of explicit policy for regulating the representation of cultural
diversity or the presence of equal opportunity employment rules, changes to
cultural diversity and programming have taken place since the early 1990s.
Critical multicultural research from the 1990s on media representations
provided an important partnership to advocacy and policy activity for changing
what was an Anglocentric media. However since the early 1990s, critical
approaches to researching multiculturalism have been flanked by research
perspectives which take account of hybrid identities, the effects of the second
generation and an increasing ‘everyday’ multiculturalism. The changes in
industry practice and programming output in the previous ten years, have run
along side the development of theoretical perspectives in broad multicultural
research. This thesis has argued, that broad multicultural policies such as the
Agenda have also played a role in effecting cultural diversity as an everyday
experience in the Australian community, which was increasingly reflected in
drama programming from the late 1990s onwards.
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Appendix One
Casting Survey Questionnaire
The following research is being carried out by the Queensland University of
Technology (QUT) in collaboration with the Media Entertainment and Arts
Alliance (MEAA). The aim of the research project is to gain a clear picture of
the participation levels for non-Anglo actors in Australian drama and to
investigate the portrayal of cultural diversity on recent Australian drama. A
content analysis of drama currently screening on commercial television will
also be a component of the study. The research should have benefits for the
acting community by raising the awareness of casting practices within the
television industry, related to the employment of actors from non-Anglo
backgrounds.
The purpose of this questionnaire is to collect data about the ethnicity of
actors who have worked during July in Australian television drama production.
The questionnaire should take approximately five minutes to complete and
asks for information regarding family background and for comment on the
portrayal of cultural diversity in Australian commercial drama. Participation is
voluntary.
The information gathered in this questionnaire will be treated in strictest
confidence and kept in a secure manner at all times. Only members of the
research team at QUT and the executive of the MEAA will have access to the
data. Participants identities will not be disclosed in any reports resulting from
this research – published or unpublished – unless permission is sought and
given.
Should you have any questions regarding this research, you should contact
Harvey May in the first instance, who may refer you to other members of the
research team if necessary (see below).
Thank you for your time in filling out this questionnaire.
248
Research Team at QUT
Harvey May Ph : ************** (any time)
Terry Flew
John Hookham
Christina Spurgeon
MEAA Contacts
Simon Whipp / Eve Propper / Sue Marriot
What production are you working on
_______________________________
What type of role do you have (tick one) [ ] sustaining role character
[ ] guest role character
Q 1. Were you born in Australia?
[ ] Yes (go to question 2).
[ ] No. (a) In what country were you
born?_________________________
(b) For how many years have you lived in
Australia?___________
(c) Are you an Australian permanent resident or Australian
Citizen?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
Now go to question 2
249
Q 2. Are you of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander background?
[ ] Yes – if yes, which group do you identify with : [ ] Aboriginal
[ ] Torres Strait Isl
[ ] No
Q 3. In what country was your mother born? __________________________
Q 4. In what country was your father born? ___________________________
Q 5. If possible, please list the country / countries your grandparents were
born
Your mothers parents Your fathers parents
Q 6. For the purpose of this research, how would you define your cultural
background or identity? (for example: Anglo-Australian, Chinese, Indigenous,
Italian-Australian)
______________________________________
Q 7. What do you think are the key issues which affect the casting of actors
from non-Anglo background in Australian television drama?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
250
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
The research team are very interested to speak with actors from a non-Anglo
background about their experiences with obtaining work in Australian
television drama. The discussions would be approximately 30 minutes in
length and would be held at the MEAA offices in Sydney or Melbourne or a
location of your choice. We are interested in talking about your experiences of
the casting process, the roles offered and not offered to non-Anglo actors and
your perceptions of the portrayal of cultural diversity on Australian drama in
recent years. If you are willing to participate in such an interview, please
indicate this below.
[ ] I am willing to speak with the research team about my experiences
Name: _____________________________________________
Contact details: ______________________________________
Thank you for your participation
251
Appendix Two
List of interviewees who consented to be identified5
Sean Nash, (Writer/Dirctor, Breakers), 23/02/1999, Sydney. Jimmy Thompson (Writer/Creator, Breakers), 24/02/1999, Sydney. Kevin Roberts (Writer, Heartbreak High), 04/07/1999, Sydney. Chris Hawkshaw (Writer, Wildside, Good Guys Bad Guys, All Saints), 24/07/1999, Sydney. Rick Maier (Network Script Executive for the Ten Network), 22/02/1999, Sydney. Hal McElroy - (Producer, Water Rats, Blue Heelers, Above the Law, Going Home), 05/07/1999, Sydney. Dave Gould (Producer, Breakers), 23/02/1999, Sydney. Stanley Walsh (Executive Producer, Grundy Television), 05/07/1999, Melbourne. Tony Ayres (Writer/Director), 06/07/1999, Melbourne. Robert Klennar (Director, All Saints), 20/07/1999, Mewlbourne. Jo Horsburgh (Script Producer, Water Rats), 05/07/1999, Sydney. Tony Morphett & Inga Hunter (Writer/Creators, Above the Law, Water Rats, Blue Heelers), 06/07/1999, Sydney. Maura Fay (Casting Director, Maura Fay Casting), 07/07/1999, Sydney. Anne Robinson (Casting Director, Mullinars Casting) , 07/07/1999, Sydney. Kim Seville (Casting Director, Faith Martin and Associates), 14/07/1999, Sydney. Jan Russ (Casting Director, Grundy Television), 25/07/1999, Melbourne. Maria Jablonski (Agent), 25/07/1999, Melbourne. Heath Bergerson (Actor), 23/02/1999, Sydney.
5 Fifteen actors interviewed did not wish to be identified. Written comments were also received from most actors who filled out survey forms for the casting survey.
252
Don Hanay (Actor), 12/07/1999, Sydeny. Jason Chong (Actor), 11/07/1999, Sydney. Meme Thorne (Actor), 16/07/1999, Sydney. Jeremy Angerson (Actor), 26/07/1999, Melbourne. Annette Shun Wah (Actor/Presenter), 17/07/1999, Sydney. Tony Knight (Head of Acting, NIDA), 12/07/1999, Sydney. David Berthold (Artistic Director, Australian Theatre for Young People), 13/07/1999, Sydney. Jacqueline Martin & Paul Makeham (Academy of the Arts, QUT), 07/08/1999, Brisbane. Diane Eden (Head of Acting, Queensland University of Technology), 07/08/1999, Brisbane. Lesley Osbourne, (Australian Broadcasting Authority Officer), 17/02/1999, Sydney.
253
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