Recently there are a lot of debates about whether western media practitioners are culturally appropriating minority cultures for their own gains. The latest ‘uproar’ about a Sydney Film Festival winner seems to have further divided people whether it is appropriate for a white film maker to adopt or adapt non-white cultural phenomena into their productions. In a dramatic turn, the person who initially accused those film makers appropriating other people’s culture issued an apology a week later for an early film she made featuring black facing as a comedic sequence. Although in the sequence, the characters in question asked whether it is racist, they continued on and finished that black facing ritual anyway. With Black Lives Matter still raging on strongly around the world, the race debates, together with the cultural debate has never been more heated.
As an Asian Australian actor who has been championing diversity casting in the local industry, I feel compelled personally to discuss this issue.
First up, I must say that though moving in slower than glacial pace, the media and entertainment industry is changing. I started the Diversity Casting Australia group because I was done with being caricatured and stereotyped in the industry. When you are a Chinese, and then you didn’t get the job because they told your agent you are ‘not Chinese enough’ for them, you know how bad the situation is. Also, when you were in a casting, they asked you to put on a thick, exaggerated and unrealistic Chinese accent for a laugh because ‘it would make the scene funnier and more believable with that Chinese character’, you know the situation is bad.
However, things have changed. The younger generation was brought up in a more culturally diverse society. They have friends from all racial and cultural background. For them being racially or culturally different is just facet of their lives, and being brought up in such a way also helped them to understand other cultures better, thus will decrease the chances of reducing other people’s culture into caricatures.
Nonetheless, there will always be a sector of the society who refuse to change. They may see other cultures as beneath them, or they simply are not interested and think that their way of life is perfect and thus will work hard to protect this bubble. This leads to the debate of Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter, a movement that went into hyperdrive this year because of the on screen killing of George Floyd when a white cop kneed on his neck for a fake $20 bill that George might or might not know is fake (we will never know now), while George yelled 20 times that he could not breathe and died live on the camera, is a movement to re-address the racial division and inequality in America. Slavery might have ended, but bias and systematic undermining of African Americans has never stopped. In the past, before the social media era, these things went under the rug, but the world has changed, and situations like this will never go un-noticed. This is the same for the woman who called the police in New York’s Central Park claiming being threatened by an African American bird watcher simply because she did not comply with the rules and regulations of parkland usage, was another clear example of this. The white woman was eventually charged, but if this was not caught on camera, I believe the white woman expected the results to be a white woman’s claims against an African American man equals she will come out on top in the system and get the man charged because of her malice against being told to do the right thing in the first place.
This leads to some sectors claiming that ‘All Lives Matter’. For me this is a lowly paradox that is not even suitable for the bargain bins of paradoxes. To be honest, if you are a supporter of ‘All Lives Matter’ over Black Lives Matter, you probably are:
A person from a once, if not current dominant racial or cultural group
Someone who thinks cultural appreciation is nothing but going to restaurant of certain cultural cuisine once in a while
Someone who belongs to the privileged sector of the society racially or culturally
Someone who has not experienced discrimination on the receiving end
Black Lives Matter, although started as a movement to voice the inequality of African Americans in the United States, has evolved into an embodiment of people who were being treated unjustly because of their racial and cultural background. The word ‘Black’ now represents people who were thrown into the ‘black spots’ of the society and being kept in the ‘dark’. To trivialise it with ‘All Lives Matter’ signifies that it is ok to leave these people in the dark, and it is unnecessary to redress this imbalance in our society.
This comes back to the situation of cultural appropriation and perpetuation of cultural inferiority in the media.
For example, Channel 7 invited a panel of white people, some known for their white supremacist ideology to talk about the Stolen Generation in the Australian Indigenous community and let fly comments that there should a second ‘Stolen Generation’ to put these people in place and educate them is a blatantly calculated move by the Channel to incite controversy and create talking points to raise the programs profile. It is socially irresponsible no matter how hard they tried to justify the move for ‘diverse’ opinions. How diverse can it be when there is no diversity on the panel? Channel 9’s saga with Pauline Hanson, a well-known white supremacist in Australian politics, is another calculated move to have someone controversial to say something controversial to boost rating. The fact that Channel 9 now dropped Hanson as a ‘regular’ guest speaker does not mean that Channel 9 had banished her for good. Remember, it was Channel 7’s move to get her on to Dancing With the Stars that brought her back into the limelight and gave her a platform again to bring her white supremacist politics back into the Australian parliament. These are practices that need to be condemned, not just for a week or two, but consistently. But in the fight for cultural recognition and equality, have we lost sight of our goals and just practicing guerrilla warfare without knowing what kind of war we are engaged in?
Donald Trump as a white supremacist rising to become the US President is a master class of media manipulation. The US, and sometimes the world media, constantly provided knee jerked outrage and reactions to his tweets to a point that they become so soapy that Donald Trump knows how to get away with more serious issues. If there is no COVID-19 to keep constant pressure for him, it will be another easy road to four more years of Trump for the Americans. The death of George Floyd and the acceleration and further rise of Black Lives Matter simply laid bare Trump’s pure white supremacists’ agenda, as nowadays he does not even hide the fact that he is a white supremacist and he only aims for the white supremacist votes. Trump knows very well that, even if he lost the election, he would be able to amass enough supporters for his Post-Presidential career and business endeavours. What is great about the Black Lives Matter movement in the States is that they stayed focus, despite all the lies and framing from the now House of Lies White House and the white supremacist network Fox News, they stayed focused on their cause. This is why it gets on Donald Trump’s nerves every time, not the other way round.
For us as media practitioners, we have to remember what we are fighting for. I champion diversity casting and accurate representation of different cultures. That’s why I made it clear that I will not do roles that are caricatures of my culture, or as who I am. However, I will not be holding up my arms and rage against other people who portrayed my culture in their works, as long as they are accurate and honest. For me, yes, I, as a Chinese Australian, knows my culture a lot better as I grew up in it. However, this doesn’t mean that other people cannot have appreciations of my culture. I will not cancel someone simply she is white and wore a qipao for her prom because she loves the look and its tailoring. If I do so, that will mean I am disqualified to wear suits in the future, because that was an invention of the west, and by doing so I will be appropriating their culture. Similarly, if someone has genuinely researched on and understood other cultures and used them as inspiration for their projects, as long as they portrayed that culture accurately without diminishing them, why should we be up in arms against them? We have to remember that the film culture is popularised by west and it is this appreciation that we adapted this art form into our lives. We can’t just be taking and feel entitled to this artform, while condemning other people without properly understanding their intentions. For me accuracy and acts of diminishing are my scale to judge a production when it comes to touching other cultures in productions. This is not just about cultural supremacy but about respect and understanding, which is the first important step for racial and cultural equality. And as artists and art practitioners we all need to work together to make this industry a better place. It is not about individual cultural sectors but about our industry as a whole.
At the end of the day, everyone is a bit racist inside us. It is a natural trend to shirk things we don’t understand and naturally feel uncomfortable with them. Tackling racial and cultural misunderstanding and appropriate to achieve respect and equality is a multilateral exercise that involves everyone. Misappropriations must always be called out. But if we get too sensitive everytim you saw something related to your culture and not done or used by the cultural group, it will just stifle the conversation, and help us as an industry to improve. There will always be road blocks, as with all the social and cultural movements in history, but the most important things are:
Did we learn anything from our experience and our society’s history
Are we ready to be open mind about the experience we are about to have?
Are we able to deal with blatant and brutal oppositions whose world views that should no longer have a place in this world, take out the oxygen from these view and snuff out the fire tactfully without falling into their traps?
Racial and cultural equality and respect will always be a long road. One that might not even be able to achieved during my life time, but one thing I am sure for myself is that, I will continue to work hard and fight a good fight in a most objective and introspective way. Everyone will have a different approach to this, but as long as we are all focused and clear about our goals, I am sure the world will get there one day.
