East West 101 as edgy text: Television police drama and Australian multiculturalism

Abstract

East West 101 is a television show that bears the traces of the highly charged social and cultural fields in which it is embedded. At one level, the show bears the traces of recent events such as the war on terror. At another interrelated level, we also find traces of a more long-standing and deeply embedded fantasy of White supremacy that marks Australian culture, even the official policy of multiculturalism. These traces are also entangled with yet another level, the industrial and political context of the show's production through the SBS network. My aim in this paper is to explore these complex entanglements in order to reveal how the challenge to the vilification of Muslims in the show is limited by the production context. Put another way, my aim will be to temper the celebration of the show as ‘edgy text’.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Chris Prentice and Vijay Devadas for their constructive criticism and support. Thanks also to Chris Russill and the graduate students in Journalism and Communication at Carleton University for the opportunity to discuss these ideas.