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Do TV shows with minorities appeal to wider audiences too?

Family Law writer Benjamin Law tells Q&A he used to play "Spot the Asian" on Australian TV.

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Last night Q&A tackled a valid question that has been raised in comments here before: specifically about whether TV shows that centre around minority groups have wider appeal to broad audiences too.

The panel last night included writer Benjamin Law (The Family Law), playwright, performer and commentator Nakkiah Lui, Liberal Senator for Tasmania Eric Abetz, Queensland Labor frontbencher Terri Butler and The Australian’s Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan.

Here is the discussion that unfolded thanks to the Q&A website.

WARWICK GRAINGER
Several TV channels have recently presented new drama and comedy programs that address issues of Aboriginality and gender preference. But these programs need to appeal to the general population as well as members of that relevant minority groups. Do TV channels and writers have a responsibility to deliver messages about minority groups that are generally helpful to understanding? And if so, how best can this be achieved?

TONY JONES
Benjamin, we’ll start with you on that.

BENJAMIN LAW
This is a good opportunity for me to spruik my show. I have created and co-written a show for SBS called The Family Law. It’s a six-part black comedy about a Chinese-Australian family in the midst of the funniest thing possible, which is a divorce. And it’s a classic Australian story.

(LAUGHTER)

BENJAMIN LAW
And, you know, I take your point in that when you are making an Australian TV show and when you’re making an Australian TV show for a public broadcaster, especially with taxpayer money, that it needs to appeal to as many people as possible. Now, someone might look at the show that I’ve made, that I’ve helped make, and say, “It’s got a 90% Asian-Australian cast, it’s about a Chinese-Australian family, what has this got to do with me or my life?” When I was growing up in this country, pretty much every face I saw on television was white. And that’s a slightly strange experience in retrospect. I mean, we used to play a game of spot the Asian on television and the game was just to get excited about when we saw an Asian on television – and we weren’t excited very often. And yet when we’ve made The Family Law, we were really quite conscious of the fact that we were making quite an Australian show. You know, 1 in 10 Australians have significant Asian heritage. And even beyond that, when the show was actually broadcast for the first time, what was really heartening was how many Asian-Australians finally saw a family like theirs on television. But what was also heartening beyond that was how many non-Asian Australians wrote in and said, “That’s my family on television.” Because I’ve been extending my imagination for my entire life to relate to families that don’t look like mine, I don’t think it’s a huge act of imagination to do the reverse for other people.

TONY JONES
Benjamin…

(APPLAUSE)

TONY JONES
Do you see it… To go to another part of the question, do you see it as your responsibility to deliver positive messages through your television show?

BENJAMIN LAW
I’m not sure a positive message is that some families fall apart and it can be really horrible sometimes. I don’t see that as my responsibility. What I see as my responsibility is to make a show with heart, with humour, where the characters are as 3-dimensional and complex as any other character that you’d see on television, where Asian-Australians are represented in their full range of complexity. And even though you’ve got a dad who is say the manager of an Asian take-out restaurant, that’s who my dad was, but that’s not all you’re going to see about him. You’re going to see his relationship to his children. You’re going to see him as a dad. You’re going to see him as a human being. And that’s what I think diversity is about.

TONY JONES
I’m just going to go to Greg Sheridan here because you wrote a piece recently, somewhat disparagingly, about Australian scriptwriters you say being desperate to show they’re the vanguard of social change. I think that’s part of that question as well.

GREG SHERIDAN
Yeah. They’re desperate to show it. And they’re completely incompetent at doing it. I’ve watched your program, Benjamin.

BENJAMIN LAW
What did you think?

GREG SHERIDAN
It’s a scream.

BENJAMIN LAW
Thank you, Greg.

GREG SHERIDAN
I loved it. Loved it. But I tell you what. For about a million years I’ve been telling Australians to get interested in Asia. There are terrific sitcoms produced in Singapore and Malaysia. Do any of them ever get on Australian TV? Never. Not only were all the people you saw on TV white, they were all Anglo Celts. There weren’t any Mediterraneans. Dear God, there were no East Europeans or anything like that. And so you get these kind of… And the weak point of Australian TV is scriptwriting. The acting is superb, the cinematography is great – not in your program – but in general.

BENJAMIN LAW
Thanks, Greg.

(LAUGHTER)

GREG SHERIDAN
But you get these… The column I was writing about was this show Doctor Doctor, which is not a bad show. It’s quite entertaining. But you get these sort of lame fall-about Aussie shows where everybody says, “G’day, blue. Good on you, cobber. G’day, sport.” And all the blokes show how great they are by drinking too much and somebody mocks religion. “And isn’t that clever? Oh, they’re so clever, these scriptwriters” And then, you know, there’s some nod to transgender sensitivities or something. But do they represent Australia like it really is? I mean, in my workplace there are Mediterranean Australians, there are Asian Australians. In Doctor Doctor there’s one token Asian character. I remember the ABC Series Love My Way, which was a very, very good TV series, I can’t remember any Asian character in that. And I don’t want scriptwriters to be trying to show that they’re virtuous by having a virtuous character who represents some identity group. What I want them to do is actually do what literature is supposed to do – reflect life in all its complexity and that will draw in Asian Australians and Aboriginal Australians.

TONY JONES
OK. Let’s draw in an Aboriginal Australian. Nakkiah, Black Comedy and many other shows, what’s your reflection?

NAKKIAH LUI
I’d like to say Black Comedy, we’ve employed a lot of white actors. We’ve given a lot of opportunity. We’re fairly diverse. No, I think the thing… You know, I’m not a politician.
It’s really great. I quite often talk about the comedy that we do on Black Comedy, you know, it being black fella humour for everyone. But at the end of the day it just has to be funny. And I agree with you, Greg, it has to be… It has to be good art. It can… We do comedy. It’s sketch, so it might not reflect Australia in its most realistic mode, But it’s satire. It’s wacky and it’s goofy. And the thing that I love about comedy is that my grandmother always says what can you do if you can’t laugh? And she even said that on her death bed. And regardless of all of our differences on the panel, we all laugh, right? And that is our empathy and that’s our humanity. And minds change through the heart, not necessarily the mind. So for me, I think at the end of the day, if something’s good, you’ll find an audience. And if it’s not good, the audience will slowly disappear.

You can watch the full episode here.

4 Responses

  2. It was a very interesting and robust Q & A last night. Nakkiah Lui was very loud, and often disruptive though. The song/sketch at the end of the show was very funny and clever.

  3. Than goodness Greg Sheridan doesn’t review TV all the time … Doctor Doctor actually avoids many of those “lame G’day Blue” cliches, but in presenting a modern country town, they still can’t win because the Asian nurse is “token” (guess he missed the black Irish Nurse then). I would argue that Doctor Doctor represents rural Australia today a hell of a lot better than The Secret Daughter (which featured just one “token” Indigenous girl trying to insert herself into a rich white family). And Love My Way wasn’t on the ABC, it was a Foxtel show. But Bravo to Benjamin and Nakkiah for bringing us two of the funniest Aussie comedies of 2016, and along with Here Come The Habibs, made Aussie TV a lot more diverse and a lot more entertaining this year.

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