She'll be white, mate

25 March 2008, Blacktown Sun:

Look around any busy street and you'll have all the evidence you need that Australia has become truly multicultural. Look at Australian television, however, and you'll see a different picture. With a few notable exceptions - most of them on SBS - local programming is rigidly Anglocentric, in terms of the actors employed and the issues canvassed.

It's something that's bothered Leah Vandenberg for a long time. The striking thirtysomething actress has been appearing on our screens since the late '90s and is enjoying something of a purple patch at the moment ...

Nevertheless, she knows that as a dark-skinned actress her options are limited in this country."I know that it's an issue. My colour is taken into account. I know that. It's just the way it is. It's getting better but it's still very 'blondist'. Look at McLeod's Daughters. I mean, hello - how many blondes can you get on the screen at one time? It's hilarious ...

"I was in Melbourne not very long ago," she says, "and some lads go by on a Saturday night and go, 'Welcome to Australia, love.' I actually think we've gone backwards in the past 10 years. "Suddenly race is becoming more in the forefront of our psyche as how we view people and what they represent to us, which is why it's so important to put these faces in our lounge room - so that people can start seeing these people as people."

Australian television never has been a true representation of Australia. There's such a fantastic hotchpotch of stories we could be telling but we have such an Anglicised way of thinking on our television screens.
There you go ... not only do we lose our country, our identity, but a show full of blondes is now "hilarious". How about a white working-class TV season? More to your liking? ...
For it regards the white working class as a kind of vanishing primitive tribe towards whom disdain is only temporarily suspended in the interests of anthropological curiosity.
Yes we have gone backwards in the last 10 years. Why? Because immigrants have turned into a dominant force. Shouldn't we then suspend immigration and return to immigrants being a minority, and only from compatible sources? You've admitted it was better back then.

I don't watch much TV, but have started to notice the browning of some shows: I think there's a dancing show, and gladiators. Anyone know what time Mcleod's Daughters is on? Sounds like a good show ...

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Sadly McLeod's daughters has finished. It was a program that was a reflection of ourselves, but obviously a no-no in the pretend laa-laa land of multiculturlism, how dare "white" Australians affirm their identity by watching t.v programs made in their own likeness.

Abandon Skip said...

How dare they, indeed. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Australians with all the pommy immigration in the last 50 years are a minority anyway. We had harldy any immigration from 1890 - 1950 -that was when Australia was formed and the combination of Irish, Scots, Conrish and English happened. That the character of the country was formed. The people descended from this period are probably only 5 million now.

Mike Courtman said...

I don't really buy into this lack of ethnic representation on western tv.

I recently read a news article by Black UK commedian Lenny Henry, who was claiming that Blacks are underepresented on uk tv.

Form what I observed while in the UK, about 9 percent of uk tv actors were Black - while only about 3 percent are British citizens are Black

How is that underepresentation?

Anonymous said...

White Australians make up over 80% of the population, so shouldn't it make sense that they should constitute at least 80% of the faces on television as well.

Anyway, you can't blame the Govt. for not promoting multiculti. Take SBS for exampled, federally funded and one of (if not the only) TV station in the world dedicated to ethnic broadcasting.