Ethnic Diversity within Australian Homes: Has Television Caught up to Social Reality?

Abstract

Inter-ethnic intimacy is on the rise in Australia, bringing an unprecedented level of ethnic diversity into our homes. Yet analyses of media representations of ethnic diversity have concentrated on the community level, neglecting the intimate sphere of family life. This paper explores the possibilities and limits of love within and across ethnic boundaries on fictional Australian television programmes. The results of a nine-week content analysis reveal a mixed picture. Inter-ethnic intimacy was regularly portrayed; but committed, long-term relationships across ethnic boundaries (marriage and co-habitation) were scarce. And although Australian television producers did not shy away from portraying physical intimacy across ethnic boundaries, emotional intimacy was often absent. Overt stereotyping of ethnic minority characters involved in inter-ethnic relationships was rare – instead, ethnic differences were downplayed or erased. Storylines were underpinned by the assimilation of inter-ethnic couples – in all their diversity – into the (white) mainstream.

Keywords:

• Intimacy
• Ethnicity
• Television
• Media
• Inter-ethnic
• Interracial
• Representation
• Prejudice

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments on this paper and Chris Counsell for research assistance.

Notes

[1] Figures refer to formally married and de facto couples, same-sex and heterosexual.

[2] Australian Foreign Minister, Senator Bob Carr, alleged his wife's ethnicity helped Australia to win a temporary UN Security Council seat: ‘it was an advantage for the Australian Foreign Minister to be accompanied by a wife…born in Malaysia of Indian and Chinese parents’ (Harrison 2012). For Senator Carr, his inter-ethnic marriage symbolised Australia's progressive multiculturalism.

[3] Each state/territory had an Aboriginal Protection Board, which exercised extensive paternalistic control over Indigenous Australians. The ‘Chief Protector’ acted as a legal guardian to make decisions in their ‘best interests’ (Probyn 2003).

[4] The standard requires Australian programmes to constitute at least 55 per cent of programming between 6 am and midnight (ACMA 2011).

[5] Phrase borrowed from Phillips (2012).

[6] Such racism persists. When the Kapoor family was introduced to Neighbours in 2011, racist comments appeared on the show's online fan forum (Thorne 2011).

[7] A scene was defined as ‘a continuous situation that takes place in the same setting. A scene ended only when interrupted by another scene or by a commercial break’ (Bramlett-Solomon and Farwell 1997: 7).

[8] Produced by Paul Fenech, these programmes share with their predecessor, Pizza, a ‘defiantly politically incorrect’ and ‘brazenly lowbrow’ approach (Ang et al. 2008: 168). They exploit, confront and re-appropriate sensitive issues and ethnic stereotypes through comedy (Ang et al. 2008). An important contribution of Pizza, shared by its successors, is the inclusion of Anglo-Australians ‘within the cultural diversity of the nation’, a departure from standard portrayals of Anglo-Australians as lacking ethnicity (May 2003: 222).